THE STAIN

by T. Abeyta

On my 9th birthday, I really wanted McDonald’s french fries, but I tried to put the crunch and salt out of my mind. “It isn’t worth it,” I told myself. “I don’t want them that much.” It was as if my mother could smell the french fries in my thoughts because she told me to get into the car for lunch. I put on the seatbelt and noticed the hair was raised on my arms even though it was a hot September day.
My mother always custom ordered her hamburgers and, of course, they’d go and stick the onions in or the pickles. She’d sit right there in the car at the drive-thru window after paying and unwrap and inspect before driving away. If it was a large order, she’d shut the car off. That day, my mother saw a stain of mustard as if the burger assembler wiped it off in afterthought, so used to putting together a sandwich in a standard way. She held the bun up to the cashier at the window.
“What is this?”
“Oh. Uh, the yellow? I think it’s a mustard mark, ma’am.”
“No shit, Sherlock!”
“I think they wiped it off.”
“I have eyes. Bringum out here.”
We stayed idling in the drive through while a long line of cars piled up behind us.
My heart was beating heavy as I slouched down in the seat. I looked at my red Mickey Mouse watch counting each second until the assembly person presented himself.
When he did, she launched into how I was allergic to mustard even though my own hamburger was a perfectly standard order, getting cold in a bag by my foot. She pointed at me and even somehow got herself to bubble up with tears. I was so embarrassed that I was sure I was bright red, but in case that didn’t look sick in the right way, I closed my eyes and rested my head on my right shoulder. The cashier asked if I was alright in a stutter and offered to call 9-11. My mom said it was not life-threatening. Then he offered her a refund, opening the cash register. She didn’t expect a refund, she countered. All she wanted was for them to get it right. He nodded and said of course and that he was really sorry. The assembler stood there with greasy gloves, hamburgers probably piling up behind him like the cars behind us.
Whatever most people had in them for protecting the feelings of others, my mom had the opposite impulse. She would complain a few times a month without any of the drama becoming less interesting for her. Sometimes she threw in a dramatic refusal to eat what she went through so much trouble to report, exchange, and reprimand someone over. She sat there satisfied with something more filling to her than food alone. My mom ate up power.

ugly
colored pencil, micron pen, watercolor, pastel
r.a.d. Leng Leng