Subject: UnJust Desserts
From: awright@falcon.cc.ukans.edu
(Ashley Wright)
Date: 17 Apr 95 08:38:38 CDT
I never wanted to see another chocolate bunny again. I rolled over on my side and groaned, clutching my tummy in the cool moist dirt under the back porch... the battle of Luxembourg was being reenacted in my guts and the south was losing.
I wanted to die, rolling back over onto my back and laying there in the soft underporch muck of old leaves, pop bottles and a couple of long lost pop flies. I stared up at the underide of the creaky slats of the porch and tucked my skinny, bruised legs up top my chest and tried not to puke. Up in the world of the living, I could hear Buddy yelling and heavy footsteps clomping around and I knew they were looking for me.
I knew I had a good lickin' coming for being selfish and stealing Buddy's chocolate bunny out of his Easter basket, but at the time it seemed like the perfect crime... now as realized the wages of sin, with my mocha-encrusted mouth and rumbling belly I wasn't so sure. I was never allowed to have chocolate, being cursed with a "sensitive" stomach and allergies to everything under the sun. Now, most of the time I endured this handicap stoically- politely sitting at birthday parties with my Twinkie while my playmates chowed down on devil's food cake and rocky road ice cream; declining with gritted teeth the various Oreos, chocolate cupcakes, fudgesicles and m&m cookies that were passed out as treats at school; trading the pound and a half of miniature snickers bars, milky way, butterfingers, baby ruths, almond joy and innumerable other concoctions of the cacao bean at Halloween to my cousins for their taffy and bubblegum, and even going so far as to choke down hot Dr.Pepper (!) at wintertime caroling parties while my other little frosty-nosed companions chugged mugs of thick, creamy topped hot chocolate like there was no tomorrow. I was a good girl, and never complained when I was stiffed a treat at somebody else's party or when visiting. I just politely put it in my pocket until "later" and then took it home and gave it to Elvis, my cousin's dog. He musta been the only dog in the world with acne.
But Easter was the worst time, especially since my older brother Buddy delighted in tormenting me. He would sit right there and stuff Cadbury creme eggs down his fat face and taunt me, "Nyaaah, I got real chocolate eggs an' a choc'late bunny an' about a pound o' m&m's and Hershey's kisses in my Easter basket an' it sure is goood..." while I sat there with my pitiful marshmallow chicks and jelly beans and hard boiled eggs. It wasn't fair- everyone in the whole family got to have all this great stuff except me. Some daddies pass on their grandfather's heirloom pocketwatch or money for a college fund. I inherited my father's allergies.
My folks tried to be nice about it-- Uncle Luke always went out of his way to find candy I liked- like jawbreakers and those wax candy in the shape of bottles full of colored liquid- but it wasn't the same. You could eat that stuff any day of the week. I know it seems petty and silly now, but at age 5 these things take on monumental importance. And my brother, three years older than me, really did go out of his way to torment me, describing the pleasures of biting into his milk chocolate eggs and ducks with as much luscious sensuality as if he were devouring the proverbial forbidden fruit.
This fateful morning of my fifth year, I had seen my oportunity and grabbed it. The house was crowded with family- cousins were running about and Mama was occupied with putting my 10 year old sister Jamie's hair up in curls. Buddy was outside throwing dirt clods at my cousin Nathan and my other cousin, Junior, who was 7, was off with my sister Cissy; probably under the porch kissing. Mama was not as yet remarried and was concerned with making herself and her children look our best so everyone at church would no that we weren't trash even if she had gotten hooked up with two no good men in the space of 10 years.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, puzzling out the words to one of my older sisters' books, "Just So Stories" and following the words with my finger industriously, while my Aunt Katie was putting the finishing touches to Easter dinner. Uncle Luke was supposed to be watching all the kids but he was sitting in the living room in the recliner, tipped back with his size 16 boots propped up, snoring with the tv turned to ladies wrestling.
I don't know if what Father O'Kelly at Our Lady of the Blessed Shroud used to say about evil being in the minds of the innocent is true, but at the age of five, stting at the kitchen table with my family around me on the most holy day of the year, I suddenly was stricken with a most devious inspiration.
I could see the back porch from where I sat with the book, and could see the pyramid of brightly colored and beribboned Easter baskets, one for every child, waiting for us to eagerly rip into in the interlude between church, dinner and the climactic egg hunt. Uncle Luke had expressly warned everyone to keep their grimy mitts offa them Easter baskets until after church, on pain of a smarting backside.
I looked up and acertained my aunt was busy with preparing the feast. She danced about the big sunny kitchen lightly, humming to herself and occaisionally addressing Uncle Luke in the next room in her lilting voice, to which he replied with a half-conscious unintelligable mutmer and soon resumed his snoring.
"Hon', now rememeber, you promised you'd come with us to services today, right? And you're gonna help the kids look for eggs while me and Lisbeth clean up, right?"
"Uhmuhnmuhm."
"Oh, baby, be sure and tell Lisbeth you think she looks real nice, okay? You know that whole thing with that bastard Leroy has just about wirn her out and she's worried about what you think of her..."
"Muhumhnmuph."
"NATHAN DALTON!! I have told you three times to put that air rifle away!! Next time I catch you shootin' it off, I'm gonna come right out there and put y'over my knee right out in the yard, hear?!"
While Aunt Katie was busy hollering at her firstborn, I took the opportunity to slip out the back door and sidle over to a point in between the porch and the side of the house where I could see both the front and side yard but was not visible from any of the windows.
Looking quickly around with my heart pounding, I determined that no one was withing range to catch me at my devious act. I then crept up to the side of the porch and peered ove rit at the glorious mound of candy and dime store novelties that were soon to be dealt out. Nathan and Junior's Easter baskets held baseball cards, gum and small toy cars in addition to their candy, and I could dimly make out a glint of metal in the fake grass of nathan's basket- my 11 year old cousin was getting a Case pocketknife. My sister Jamie's contained packages of hair accessories and real nail polish in addition to candy, lip gloss and a coveted "bride" Barbie. My other sister, Cissy's contained troll dolls and little birthstone earrings-- her birthday was April 29th-- and mine had a soft fuzzy stuffed bunny I was tempted to cuddle right then and there and risk getting a whipping. But Buddy's basket was what led me into temptation-- for in addition to the usual 8 year old boy stuff- the plastic bugs and the yoyo and all that crap-- was the biggest chocolate Easter bunny I had ever seen!
In my nostalgia-dimmed mind, the thing stands 2 full feet tall and was as long as my arm. In reality, it was probably a good 8 inches high, as big around as my two fists, and covered with garishly colored tinfoil. I stood in dumb amazement at this, the king of all bunnies, rsting before me on his throne of lurid plastic grass, and wondered, awestruck where on earth my parents had found it.
I was just peeling back a tiny corner of the tinfoil to see whether it was cream filled or not, when I was suddenly struck in the small of the back from behind and knocked to the porch hard! I hit the deck and banged my chin hard and let out a howl, whipping around to face my attacker with fists at the ready. My older brother loomed over me, his crewcut and evil sneer blotting out the sun.
"Hah! I caughtcha this time! Uncle Luke said not t'touch them Easter baskets 'til after church!! You're gonna git it! I'm tellin'!!"
I scratched and punched at my brother but he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me inside, shouting gleefully, "Mama!! Uncle Luke!! Ashley was tryin' to eat the Easter candy before church and I caught her!"
"Ow! Lemme go ya big brat! I wan't neither I was just lookin' at it!" I protested, punching at him and hitting my pituitarilly overloaded sibling as best I could with my feeble 5 year old fists.
Aunt Katie grabbed Buddy by the arm and slapped his dirty hand sharply, making him let me go. "Buddy! That's no way to treat your baby sister!" she scolded, "You git back outside and worry about yourself, you hear me?" My pretty young aunt spun my hated brother around and swatted him sharply on the seat of his jean with the wooden spoon she had handy, and he yelped and ran for the backyard.
I had no time to relish this moment, however, because I found myself suddenly under Aunt Katie's arm and was being firmly carried into the other room and dumped uncerimoniously on the lanky lap of my Uncle Luke.
"Luke, you keep an eye on her, she's been gettin' into things and Buddy said she was messin' with the stuff on the porch," Aunt Katie announced when her husband sat up with a starled exclaimation. "I got enough on my hands without trying to keep Ashley outta mischief."
Uncle Luke turned me around to face him and asked sternly, "Ashley Lisbeth, is this true? Were you messin' with that stuff??"
Looking into my handsome uncle's stern blue eyes, I felt my face grow red and I fumbled with my hands. "I was just looking, Uncle Luke--"
"What did I say about those things, young lady? No, you answer me-- whatdidI say?!" Uncle Luke held me tight by one arm and shook me a little to emphasize his point.
"I was just looking!" I didn't like being yelled at or shaken and my mouth turned down into a stubborn defiant look- the wrong response, as it turned out. My uncle had no patience for willful little girls.
"Young lady, I believe I told everyone of you kids to keep yer dang hands off them Easter baskets until after church, and you deliberately disobeyed me. You old enough to know better, Ashley Lisbeth!"
I couldn't look my angry uncle in the face, so I put my hands over my ears and looked down at my lap. That only served to make him angrier though, and in half a second he had upended me, shifted the recliner to an upright position, swiftly set me on the floor between his legs and unbuckled my overalls, and had me face down over his lap before I could say jack robinson.
"All right," Uncle Luke exclaimed curtly, "since you don't wanna listen to me, I guess you'll have to feel. You're a very naughty, disobediant girl, Ashley Lisbeth!" I started to struggle and kick but it was no use-- my legs were mile above the floor, suspended over my tall uncle's lap. He raised his big hard hand and brought it down on my underpants with a smack. I jumped at the sting, and kicked harder, my face red and teeth gritted from the unfairness of it all!
"I'm very disappointed in you," my uncle continued to smack my bottom five more times during the course of this lecture. "You're old enough to know better. Ain't you shamed of yourself, you bad little girl?" As far as spankings go, I was being let off easy because of my age but my uncle's hand was big and strong and my little bottom was tender. It hurt! I fought and cried, and shouted angry accusations against Buddy and the whole world. I wasn't a bad girl! Buddy was the bad one, not me!!
"You best behave yourself for the rest of the day, missy cuz next time I take you over my knee, you'll get the hairbrush, you hear?" my uncle punctuated this threat with fave last rapid fire swats to the back of my thighs and I shrieked in earnest. He then set me back on the floor and did up my britches for me before marching me upstairs to my room and plunking me down on the bed.
"You jest stay up here awhile until you're ready to behave, you hear?? You think about what a naughty girl you are and when you can act nice, you can come down and 'pologize." I flopped on the bed and sobbed, rubbing my tingling rear and hating the world while he shut the door behind him tightly and stomped back downstairs to resume his interrupted catnap.
The spanking having been a mild one, and more shameful than anything, however, I quickly recovered and was sitting up with red rimmed eyes and thoughts of revenge within minutes. I crept to the door to see if the coast was clear. From the sound of things, Jamie had finally reached the appropriate level of adorableness and was downstairs helping Aunt Katie. Mama was apparently in the shower, and the rest of my siblings were outside. I would have to act fast.
I slipped out the bedroom door and shut it tightly, then crept down the stairs as stealthily as I knew how. Peering around the corner- I saw Uncle luke had tilted his chair back and was snoring again. Suddenly, I ducked into the hall closet as the screen door slammed and the three boys came thundering into the house!! Nathan and Buddy raced into the livingroom and scuffled briefly before the tv set. Junior dashed in immeadiately behind but was detained by his Mama in the kitchen while she scolded him for getting grass stains all over his new clothes. Uncle Luke awoke suddenly and shouted at the two older boys and I took advantage of the moment to slipout and seize the coveted bunny from Buddy's easter basket on the porch.
I don't know what I was intending to do to it, really. But once I had scrambled underneath the porch with the heavy chunk of calories in my hands, I was overcome by an increadible urge to eat it. All the times I'd been denied treats and desserts because of my damned physiology suddenly rose in my throat like bitter gall. I sat there in the soft semi-darkness under the porch and regarded the grotesque charicature of a rabbit in top hat and tails on the foil wrapping of the prize before me. Slowly, as if in a dream, I peeled back the tinfoil to expose an ear.
Buddy's loud, boisterous and bossy voice suddenly exploded forth from above me, shattering the silence of my contemplation. He was yelling at my sister. With a sudden, unthinking and spite induced reflex, I snapped off an ear of the rabbit and slowly brought it to my mouth. Even in my five year old innocence, I got great satisfaction out of eating that damn bunny while listening to my hated older brother yell his fat head off in his usual dumb way.
While he called my sister Jamie a "stupid slut," I ate both ears. When he kept daring my cousin Nathan to shoot the bb gun at a robin perched on the eave of the house, I nibbled away the rabbit's face and part of its head. My heart was pounding, my blood rushing, my ears ringing and my salivary glands were on overdrive. Under that hot, dusty porch, I got my first sweet tastes of chocolate and revenge.
By the time Mama came out to call everyone in to change for church, I had worked my way through almost half of that rabbit and was beginning to notice a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. Suddenly, my skin seemed too tight and my eyes hurt. My belly was uncomfortably full.
"Where's Ashley?" I heard Mama ask my sister and her mumbled, incomprehensible reply. I spat out a half chewed moutful of liquified chocolate I couldn't swallow. My uncle's distant voice could be heard faintly, "...put her in... til she could... go git her..." I moaned and tried to get up into a crawling position so as to get out and get back to my room before I was discovered. I had chocolate on my fingers and it became crusted with dirt. I dropped the half eaten remains of the mangled bunny to the ground, where it became immired with grit.
Moments later, quick footsteps were heard coming towards the back door and my uncle's voice sounded again, worried. "ain't in her... I dunno..." I heard exhasperation in my Mama's reply, "Well, I don't know where she is. That child..." Mama called for Jamie and soon an all out search was in progress. I lay under the porch, watching the shifting beams of dusty light as people tramped back and forth above me, and moaning softly as I clutched my knees to my chest in an effort to soothe my belly which by now felt as sloshy and turbulent as a storm tossed sea.
My brow was clammy with sweat and I closed my eyes in mute suffering- apparently the Lord was getting even with me for being selfish and naughty on His holiday... It was Junior who found me. Alwats prone to seeking sanctuary under the porch himself when he'd just gotten a spanking or had his feelings hurt, he hit upon the idea to crawl under and check it out. I heard his raspy breathing and felt his sticky hands grabbing my shoulders.
"Daddy! Mama! Aunt Lisbeth!! Hey, I found 'er, ya'll!" Junior exclaimed, and his triumphant shout was deafening in the small confines beneath the porch. I couldn't move but let myself be manipulated like a boneless, mindless thing, and heard the sounds of thundering feet and annoyed exclaimations as our kinfolk gathered round.
"C'mon out, honey," Cissy cajoled, and my Mama demanded, "Ashley Lisbeth, this is your Mama talking! You get out her and explain yourself."
"Young lady, you best come right out here before I count to three," Uncle Luke added, then abruptly reached in and grabbed Junior by the ankle and hauled him out. "Hey!!" exclaimed my cousin indignantly, "I'm th' one who found her!!" Aunt Katie set to wiping him off with the dishcloth and the light from outside was suddenly blotted out by the massive shoulders of Uncle Luke.
I opened my eyes weakly and saw that he was kneeled in front of the steps and had reached underneath to drag me out like he had done with his son. "Don't--" I began but he already had me by one wrist and one ankle, and I was swiftly drawn across the soft earth and in a moment was sittingin the yard and squinting at the harsh sun, while a dozen giants loomed over me, looking down with diapproval and scolding simulataniously.
"You should know better than--"
"I was worried sick! You--"
"Now we're gonna be late to Mass--"
"You're gonna get it..."
"Why'd she go hide, Ma?"
"What were you thinking?!"
"You're a big girl--"
Suddenly, Uncle Luke picked me up under one arm and announced, "I warned you before little girl, and you disobeyed me again. Now you're gonna get the hairbrush on that naughty bottom--"
He started to carry me in the house but the upside down motion, the lurching, the abrupt transferrence of positions and maybe even the prospect of the impending spanking all combined with the festering bunny in my belly and resulted in my coughing twice, choking briefly, gagging loudly and then barfing extensively all down my uncle's right leg, his boots, and the porch.
"Holy shit!" Uncle Luke exclaimed, Aunt Katie rushed forward with the dishcloth, Mama ran inside for a glass of water, Jamie leaned over and was sick into the tulips and Junior exclaimed, "Boss!" with an element of awe in his voice.
As for me, my entire being was fixated on my seemingly uncontrollable reflux, and I retched miserably as the entire bunny came back to the land of the living, along with the remains of several gallons of Kool-aide, a popsicle, last nights meatloaf and a crayon. My nose and eyes ran and I gasped for air, feeling as though I were drowning. My aunt held my head. My Mama returned with ice water and a cool cloth and held my hair back from my face as they tipped me safely over the side of the porch, Mama exclaiming "Oh shit!" in a continuous refrian. Uncle Luke ran his hands through his hair helplessly and averted his eyes.
Of course, the truth came out (along with the bunny rabbit). The chocolate smeared around my mouth and on my clothes, my suspicious behavior before, my sudden unexplainable illness... it all added up. Buddy was furious, shouting, "She stole my bunny?! Whip her butt!!!"
As it turned out, I didn't get whipped. After I was completely empty a good 10 minutes later, my Mama and aunt carried me weak and limp into the house and stripped off my clothes and put me in a cool bath. I was given a gentle lecture about why grownups know what's best for little folks and keeping your hands off things you aren't supposed to have, and then I was put into my pj's and given a dose of Kaopectate and tucked into my Mama's bed.
Mama and Aunt Katie rounded up the rest of the kids and went to church and Uncle Luke threw his splattered jeans into the wash and stayed home with me, getting me 7-Up and crackers and watching old gladiator movies. I didn't get any of the candy in my Easter basket, and instead of Easter dinner I got jello and chicken and stars soup in bed. While Mama spoon fed it to me, Uncle Luke told me about the many fine lickin's he used to get for all the ornery things he did as a boy, and although he did grumble that he ought to spank me as soon as I got well, I guess they decided throwing up and missing the easter egg hunt and all the festivities of the day were punishment enough.
Of course, Buddy held a grudge about it for years afterwards, and he took his opportunity for revenge at the first opportunity, but that's another story...
Jackrabbit