Biscuits, Gardenias and a Funeral

Her aunt is outside. In the trunk of her car. Awaiting her funeral.

She writes about layers of landscapes. Stories peeled back like blistered feet after a long walk.

No. Wait. What a disgusting metaphor.

Stories as complex as an exquisite mole sauce. Up to fifty preparatory steps. Simmered for several days. Yeah. Her stories can be chocolate and chiles, five kinds of nuts and mystery ingredients one can’t find at the store, crushed and mashed and stewed in a pot. Toothy. With a nose and an orgasmic release when she’s on. Only the most discerning palates appreciate the dishes she creates.

She hasn’t been on in a while. Shit happened. And shit is done now.

She’s got her aunt boxed up in the trunk for her funeral. Sealed in layers of plastic and wood and cardboard, surrounded by a weird melange of pictures and jewelry and newspaper articles and other remnants of a crazy-long life lived well.

Or not.

She never really figured out whether her aunt was content, but these days it doesn’t matter. Her aunt asks for gardenias and biscuits from the unseen. One soul’s final requests, as maddening and bonkers as the ones she made in life.

Biscuits, when her aunt called her every day to reiterate how she could not eat the gluten they served at the hellhole dining room.

****As she clears the fridge of umpteen cornbread packets, mostly made with wheat flour. BUT THEY WERE SO GOOD WITH SUGAR FREE JELLY THAT WASN’T IN FACT SUGAR FREE. DETAILS DO NOT MATTER WHEN ONE IS NINETY-FREAKING-TWO.****

Gardenias. Her aunt’s wandering soul pines for them. Somewhere. Another inexplicable request she tries to honor. A bush. Planted in east Tennessee.

Who cares where?

For more than a month, her aunt’s cremains live in her spare bedroom. Sealed in a wooden urn, cradled by a gleaming outer case. Whenever she misses her aunt, she goes into the room. Sits on the bed. And plays one of her aunt’s complaining voicemails.

Hellhole. Misery. Her fault.

She does her best. Nobody helps. But when one is kin to narcissists, what does one expect? Empathy? Assistance? An actual, literal hand?

NOPE.

So she talks to the charred remnants. Tries to seal the box with dignity. Loads it in the trunk. And drives it to its final resting place.

A hillside in East Tennessee. The landscape part of the radioactive stew that spawned her, one she grows enough shoulders for a planet of hunchbacks to carry, because that’s what everyone expects her to do.

All that shit gets buried with her aunt, too.

But that doesn’t stop her from braking on the ridge. She exits the car and breathes. Ocoee. Hiwassee. An ancient, ancient being, she is. Everything she sees and smells, touches and hears is part of her, going back millions of years.

Where the most discerning palates dare to dwell.

This post is a continuation of The Aftermath of Death, She Was Venus in Fur, Grief Out of Balance, For the Love of a Gun, and Death by Toilet. All are fiction.