ball of twinecrumbled cookies

Chapter One

For three years we’ve had earthquakes, volcanoes, plagues, looting, violence of every kind, starvation and death, then death again. Sash is a little pissy about it. I’m thinking about saying to my daughter that we have not lived through any other end of the world, so we actually don’t know if this is the “most fucked up.” Dialogue is currently not my daughter’s preferred mode of communication, so I keep this observation to myself.

Bertrand flickers back to snooze. I will choose to believe his statement was just a metaphorical murder moment. These days, silence seems the best response to most of my family most of the time. I move over to my mom’s intricately carved, purple elm breakfront bar to check the drug inventory for tomorrow. The bar cabinet divides the kitchen from the great room that my mother created years ago by taking down all the inner walls at the front of her condo. My daughter looks at me, impassive.
On my way, I walk directly behind Lulu. My mother’s fingers are touching her neck, I think maybe to check her pulse, make sure she’s still alive. It’s a tic that maybe signals that, at the moment, her wheel is spinning but the hamster’s dead. Not dead really—comatose. If Sasha heard Lulu, I imagine it made my daughter go eyes-to-sky with disdain.

“How was school?” I hear myself asking but not really expecting an answer.

“Are you speaking of my inane one-room schoolhouse?” She stomps past me into the kitchen on her tire-tread sandals. Sash’s large Oreo-dark eyes scan the room and then along the eleventh-floor windows that overlook the West Hills and the starlit multimillion-dollar houses (now worth zero) that dot them. Scratching her inch-long black curly hair, her eyes land on the roadkill jerky that’s laid out on the kitchen island. Her fabulous white teeth and full lips wordlessly shape, Shit.
I want to tell her that roadkill jerky is a big step up from watery termite soup.

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