Birthday Pie

image curtesy of the Public Domain Review

by Josie Braaten

Rain wasn’t in the forecast for my tenth birthday. I spent the morning walking from room to room—telling myself that by the next window, it would have stopped. It was a Saturday. A lucky day for a birthday. After lunch, I walked the dog.

We walked through the downpour that, magically, refused to stop. I ducked my head between the macrame gray glass of it & pushed down the dog’s. I steered us around puddles, brushed water off mailbox tops, wondered who was waiting to get their mail until they wouldn’t get wet, couldn’t remember if mail actually came on Saturday, thought about peeking (just to see) didn’t.

I told myself that the cars couldn’t see us. That we were submerged. We were splashed once, at a close curb. I held my breath until the driver didn’t roll down his window to apologize.

You watch me through the stippled shower glass.

I’m rinsing. Rinsing away soap, sweat, & the bodies of biting midges. Later tonight, while switching from night top (tight soft cotton) to pajama top (loose soft cotton), I’ll look for bites. Water runs down the culvert of my stomach line. The midges are carried single file.

They disappear against the tiles that are polite shades of cream & coffee.

You’re watching me the same as the first time you watched me dive. I said, “Watch me dive.”

I don’t know what that kind of watching means except that you are watching.

I know now that the Leatherback was a ghost—too unreal to be real. She left behind her body print, but that’s it. A trace or whatever the appropriate terminology is.

Does the sidewalk shadow count if you can’t see the sun?

You drape a towel over one of the shower’s sliding doors. Before you leave. I tell the closing door that I don’t want privacy. I keep rinsing. I think this is what it might mean to stop—

To stop. To shutter the half price BOGO ticket circus of not having. This feels dangerous. This is the feeling of the still-running Dodge Caliber at the Conoco Phillips off I-94 East in March of 2016.

My mittens smelled of gas until I lost the right one.

The rain stopped sometime before dinner, sometime as I was helping my mom sugar my own birthday pie. My hair was already dry. It was thin—the width of an Expo marker when looped into a ponytail holder—& didn’t hold water well.

I ate the meatballs that my mom had rolled (after portioning them out with a cookie scoop) until the waistband of my jean shorts cut into my little underbelly. I ate them by the threes. An odd, two hours later, when I changed into my pajamas, the crease would still be pink.

Some reports from some meteorological society, or maybe Zillow, says that between May & September, days below 108 degrees will become increasingly rare.

I rinse but not long enough.

You run a finger down my arm & call me soapy.

I blew out the candles that my mom poked (carefully meaning slowly) through the sugared crust. It was brittle, that was the thing.

Cherry pie was my choice. That night, my family ate it because it was there. Nobody but me cared about the leftovers. For the next four nights, every night after dinner, I ate a piece for dessert.

Then it was gone, & my mom put the pie dish in the dishwasher.

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