Pies with Secrets

When Maggie and Judith ate the red-purple berries, they pooped red-purple. Mother knew this would happen: sourness must be sweetened and spiced. Then, wonderful pies. But hers were pies with secrets. How much sugar and cinnamon, but also what could be wrong inside. Little bubbled up through the holes she forked in the pies’ pastry lids. By June, Mother had a purple cough, quietly spat red into handkerchiefs. And she was, many summer days, sour. Stubborn berry stains on her clean floor, on the girls’ dresses when they tried to help. Scrub, soak, soak. Out of the kitchen! Out, out! Says Father one day in August, Mother has gone away. He swallows having found her crumbled in the kitchen, her skin pasty. Gone away for fresh air and rest—no baby robins with gaping mouths—and berries not so sour. For Maggie and Judith and for him too, Wednesday is test day. Little pricks in the skin like a fork in the pies, a nurse examining arms for what could bubble up. Mrs. Switch, the housekeeper, wears Mother’s apron in September. Doesn’t answer when Judith asks, How much sugar? Doesn’t look out the window when Judith points. That’s Mother’s berry tree. With a wooden spoon, Mrs. Switch bangs there’s no bloody time to make dinner and pie too. She’s done at 6 p.m. Maggie is red, pokes Judith. I told you so. For dessert, Father reads aloud from Mother’s letter. Funniness about the peacock in the next bed who still arranges her hair and paints her eyes with purple powder. And the rooster of a doctor who marches everyone about the grounds. Left, right, left, right. Once, then twice, Father stops reading. Stutters and stumbles. Bites his lip red trying to sweeten the letter, spice what he’ll tell Maggie and Judith.