Your uncle is breastfeeding one of his goats in the yard, and you’re standing by his side, wondering what the right collective noun for baby goats would be. You remember goatee was the word your father used for that big hairy abomination on his face, his lips framed like a shelf placed on top of another broken shelf. He used to be a Harvard-flunk-turned-Target-cashier; these days, he’s busy being dead. Now it’s upon your uncle’s shoulders to deal with the beasts of nature. That’s including you, the lovechild of two dead capitalists from Bumfuck, Idaho.
The goat in your uncle’s lap bleats as if she has something important to tell you. You wonder if she’s your father reincarnated, trying to deliver you a message from the Other Side. Cradling the animal with one hand, your uncle asks if you had a good night’s sleep and you start talking about the distant hum of cars at night, about how you would doze off to the song of nightbirds back home. He nods blandly, placing the goat back on the mulchy grass. He says something neither you nor the goat seems to understand. Your mother, too, would test your French at times, your father tongue. She would make a mess of the grammar, mistaking tartare for torture. She would gargle after each session as if the language left a foul taste in her mouth. You wonder what she must be doing today, if not harassing your father somewhere beyond in the same way she once harassed you.
Later, you help your uncle with herding his goats back into the pen. The animals are making a ruckus of the whole ordeal, acting like children from hell. All of a sudden, you’re stricken with this urge to kick them in the lungs. You want to tear into their flesh with your teeth, chomp the bones down until nothing is left. You remember the day your mother told you that the best way to shut a man up is to feed him a nipple. She said, What could give life to an animal could also taketh away. She said, Your breasts could suffocate them to the point of drowning. She said, The white of your milk replacing the rust red of their blood. Mixed with the black of all the grit and grind.
At dinner, your uncle asks you to start with a prayer you knew from an earlier age. Parting your lips, you realize you lack the right words. The language escapes you. You mistake food for good. Ripple for nipple. There’s a steaming plate of ribs in the middle of the table, and you wonder if the meat is from one of the goats you herded back to the pen earlier today. You leave your fork on the side of your plate and lean forward to hear the animal better. That’s when the plate starts talking to you, sotto voce, reminding you that you’re just a mere servant in this world, the grand-grand-something-daughter of Adam’s ribcage. It’s a female voice, and you like to think it’s maybe Eve talking to you. Or your mother.
Your uncle breaks the ribs into two pieces and throws one in your direction as if you’re one of his sheepdogs. He tells you to gobble the whole thing down before it gets cold. To go back to your bed before it gets dark. Dark is a concept your father would know very well, having rotted away in a windowless prison cell for everything he’d done. He would drink and drink and come into your room in the middle of the night. He would tell you things you didn’t like to hear. He would do things you’d rather forget. At times like these, it was to the distant hum of cars you’d fall asleep. Today, the whispering of your mother’s ghost would have to do.
A writer of Turkish descent, Sarp Sozdinler’s short fiction has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, DIAGRAM, Normal School, and Maudlin House, among other places. Some of his pieces have been selected or nominated for anthologies (Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Wigleaf Top 50), and awarded a finalist status at various literary contests, including the 2022 Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Award. He’s currently at work on his first novel.
Image: npr.org
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