WOULDN’T HAVE FIT
Elissa Washuta

The peach bottoms have soft spots like black eyes. Jill halves them, quarters them, slips the knife just under the skin and slides it all the way down their rosy bellies, exposing gooey flesh.

Brad dashes through the kitchen. “I’ll be back around six,” he chirps too cheerfully, and heads toward the door. He turns, looks thoughtfully at Jill, and plants a tender kiss on her cheek. His saliva feels like the slime slugs leave on leaves’ undersides. For the past few weeks, every time Jill has heard Brad’s voice, she remembers their Long Talk, his gentle but firm insistence that their lives are very hectic now, and money has been tight as it is, and he needs to have an equal say in this. We’re in this together, he assured her. After the door slams, Jill draws her sleeve across her cheek.

Now most of the peaches are cubed and Jill transfers them to a Tupperware container. Quarter full, half full.

One peach is beyond ripened, its epidermis a furry purple and dermis nearly fluid. The stone sits in a swamp of putrid brown syrup, and when she frees it, white speckles are exposed. Almost no yellow left.

Jill sighs and carries the peach to the sink. She turns on the faucet and flips the garbage disposal switch. It roars. She wonders, are there blades in there? Is that how it works? Jill slices the peach over the drain, and the whirring sucks the maroon fruit out of sight. Every incision breaks her heart: watching the spoiled skin go down, the smooth muscle and tissue, tiny bits of succulent yellow. As the last piece slips into the hole, Jill feels as though ulcers are crawling up from her stomach to her throat, down into her tangled intestines, clinging to the walls of her hollow uterus.

Her hands are unsteady now. Maybe she would have named the baby Joel, Gregory, Percy. As she finishes the last one, the Tupperware is almost full.

Oh well, it’s for the best, she tries to convince herself. It wouldn’t have fit anyway.

© Elissa Washuta

Elissa Washuta is an undergraduate at the University of Maryland and a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Her fiction has appeared in Oasis and Lichen.

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