Responsibility, Identity, and Agency

Scattered across the stained floor panels and squished between their every crack, crumbs of fermented beef sketch a salty path to the pantry. My sticky hands stretch towards the beef floor, but they keep reaching until my nails are painted with shadow from the dusty coves beneath the lowest shelves. Within the darkness hide twin boxes of dog food, just past my decorated fingers. 

“Can you feed the dog?” my mom calls from the kitchen. 

I run upstairs and hide. 

“Can you feed him tonight?” she tries again the next evening. 

“How?” I answer, wondering what disasters I might be forced to claim should I . My dog is older than me, but tonight he dines according to my competence. 

“Figure it out. Use the scoop.”

I do manage to figure it out after scanning the piles all over the pantry floor. Using my soft knees for leverage, I peel the lid from the more eroded box of food and fill the scoop hibernating inside until it’s brimming with beef bits. As I tiptoe across the hallway to the dog’s bowl, I’m careful to only drop a couple of pieces. 

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“Mom, we’re out of napkins.” 

Big kids shouldn’t wipe their hands on their shorts anymore. 

“Refill them with a pack from the pantry.”

I pad into the pantry and gaze about the different levels of shelving. Just below my line of sight, on the very lowest shelf, three full packs of  napkins sit in an unshakeable tower. The one on the top is bigger than the rest and ornamented with watercolor wildflowers. The rectangular pack on the bottom carries the rest of the napkins on its naked back. In the middle, a pack boasts the silver contour lines of ocean waves. I like those napkins the best. 

“Grab the boring white ones, so we can get rid of them.”

I don’t. I choose the waves, and watch the kitchen’s fluorescent lights flash against their decorative foil as I slink back to the dining room table. 

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My mom isn’t home today. I try to imagine what she would tell me if I complained about my whining stomach, but nothing I can conjure up sounds quite right. 

Inside of the pantry, I find a few boxes of hard pasta on the highest shelf. One level below, I find a few boxes of cereal. Whereas the pastas are quite beige and isolated from the rest of my snacks, the childish cereals invite me with fantastical promises of artificial sugary magic. 

A fluffy bunny mascot with floppy pink ears draws my attention, so I take his box back to the kitchen counter with me. I pick a matching pink bowl, a deep spoon, and the milk shivering in the back of the fridge. My dinner is more colorful than any other meals I can remember. 

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A spider scurries through the dust as I drag a folded step stool from the corner of the pantry. Across the kitchen, a heaving pot sags under the weight of the water I’ve used to drown it. Underneath its drooping stomach, the blue flame on the stove burns bubbles into the scalding water. 

I release the step stool from its pretzeled shape, letting it breathe, and stretching it out on the ground. I climb up its legs to the highest shelf, where cold beige pasta has waited years to be cooked. 

I pluck the penne, pour it into the sweltering pot, and pack the step stool back into its corner. Soon, I won’t have to use it again. 

I paint waves in the pot with my wooden spoon and imagine long legs sprouting beneath my hips.