Ether by Ben Ehrenreich

Author:Ben Ehrenreich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2011-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

Sweetness.

The old woman’s lower lip quivered in sleep. Her gray tongue darted in and out behind it like some blind and hungry rodent unconvinced of the benevolence of the world beyond its hole. And rightly so: the boy held a caterpillar between his pudgy, nailbit fingers. He let it hang just above his grandmother’s lips. The caterpillar was brown and each segment of its back was intricately marked with an oval of red inside a black-bordered band of white inside another red oval. It had ceased wriggling hours ago, and swayed limply back and forth in time with the old woman’s breathing and the to-and-fro-ing of her tongue. He lowered it until its black face just touched her fallen lower lip. The tongue shot out. He pulled the caterpillar quickly up and away from her face and began to put it in the pocket of his t-shirt. He thought better of it, and laid the caterpillar on her shoulder. It didn’t move.

The old woman snorted and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her clouded eyes blinked open, sightless though they were. “That boy,” she muttered to herself. The boy, fat, with an uncertain, shifting gaze, tiptoed three long steps backwards.

“Sweetness,” she croaked. “You home?”

“I’m right here grandma.”

“Come here and give your grandmother a hand.”

The boy helped the old woman to stand, his eyes on the caterpillar beside the collar of her blouse. “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Just point me at the kitchen and I’ll be fine.”

She counted her steps until she was standing in front of the small stove. On the third step, the caterpillar tumbled from her shoulder onto the floor. The boy leapt out and grabbed it, then ran with it into a back room. The old woman took the kettle from the burner to her left, filled it with water from the sink, and lit a match to ignite the gas. “You eaten yet?” she asked.

The boy reappeared at the edge of the linoleum that separated the kitchen from the small, uncarpeted living room. He held his hands cupped one over the other. He was panting slightly from his sprint across the house. “No, grandma,” he said.

“Well fix yourself a sandwich if you’re hungry. There’s ham in the icebox. You know what to do.”

The woman took four slow steps to her right and extended a hand until she felt the formica tabletop. She pulled a chair out, lowered herself into it and waited for the water to boil.

“You need anything, grandma?” asked the boy.

“You’re very sweet,” the old woman said. “Just bring me the teacup from the drainboard.”

Closing his left fist with care, the boy placed a cup and saucer in front of the old woman. He fished a teabag from the box on the counter, and emptied his left hand over the cup, freeing a thumb-sized beetle. The bug lay on its back at the base of the cup, its feet scrambling for purchase on the air. The boy laid the teabag on top of it.

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