Thomas M. Disch by Minnesota Gothic

Author:Minnesota Gothic
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-13T15:36:25+00:00

HAECKEL

1898-1923

Three times she circled it, crooning anxiously, and then three times again, but in the other direction.

“Who’s inside?” Gretel asked, but Minnie wasn’t listening to her ward. “My grandfather,” she persisted, “is going to be burned. Mommie is bringing the ashes home in a jar. Is that your brother?”

Minnie finished her pacing and started back to the road, still oblivious of Gretel. Gretel was piqued. She considered hiding from her unresponsive guardian, as she had often hid from her mother when she (her mother) needed to be punished, but it was too cold and wet a day to go into the woods. Gretel would remember not to forget.

Minnie’s stove was already crackling; the kitchen was soaked in a warmth that drew a history of odors from the cracks in the woodwork: smells of last year’s apples and this summer’s onions, of nutmeg and cinnamon, the scrapings of stews, the coffee burnt on the iron stove, the musk of drying wood in the orange crate by the stove, of snuff, and, strangely, of cigars. There was a wooden sign above the porch door, painted in crude, black letters. Gretel sounded them out—CIGAR FACTORY NO. 4.

“Is this a cigar factory?”

“Not any more. My brother makes cigars before he is too sick. It makes a little money. It is a good thing to make some money. I sell vegetables in town. And go to the sick people. It isn’t much. He makes them just to smoke nowadays. I have to sell the land sometimes.”

“Has your brother lived here a long time?”

“Oh, a long time. Can you cook?”

“Mommie won’t let me. I’m too little.”

“I teach you to make cookies, eh? Little cookies—just for you.”

“Okay. Is he as old as you are?”

“We don’t talk about him now. What is this, eh?”

Gretel shrugged at the handful of white powder Minnie had taken from a glass cannister.

“Silly girl. It’s flour. Everyone knows flour.” Minnie put three more handsful of flour into a mixing bowl. “First, you put the sugar with the lard. Then, the flour.”

“Ich.”

Undaunted, Minnie detailed all the rest of the steps in making the dough. Without cups and measuring spoons, Gretel was doubtful if the results would be edible. “What is it?” she asked, losing all patience.

“It’s gingerbread. You don’t know anything.”

Gretel gasped. Gingerbread. She stuck her finger into the magic brown dough and tasted it. Like swan or mermaids, like nighttime or a candy cottage with panes of sugar. She gloated at the forbidden, old sweetness.

“You don’t eat it yet. We roll it out on the table and you can cut out the people. Little gingerbread girls, eh? Then we bake it: Then we eat.”

“Aren’t you going to make anything?” Gretel asked cautiously.

“I have a cutter. I show you.” Minnie dug through a drawer of unfamiliar-looking utensils and drew forth a cookie-cutter in triumph.

“What is it?”

“It’s a rabbit.”

Gretel examined it closely, first on the outside, then its cutting edge. “It’s a toad!”

Minnie backed away from the little girl. She cocked her head to one side.

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