The Peach River

A mother's leftover feelings of insecurity follow her into adulthood.

She pressed her middle and forefinger together and punctured a messy hole into the peach, and when it winced and tried to roll away she held it down to the counter with her other hand. It was a trick her mother had tried to teach her, but she was starting to believe that it was a talent that belonged solely to her and the shape of her fingers alone.

Miranda wondered if she was supposed to tolerate the mush of peach guts wedging deep underneath her fingernails, and considered again that she was doing it wrong. Peach juice trickled sickly down the counter and onto the linolium, smacking it with a vomit sound. When she felt a tiny river of it begin under her big toe and develop a path along the lines in her bare foot, she took a break, wiping her forehead with the clean back of her wrist.

Andrew, outside, was chasing the exotic tug of the fenced bulldog next door. He'd managed to stick his fingers between the metal and call happily to it by the time Miranda stepped out of her peach puddle and onto the front porch.

The puddle continued, a liquid event Miranda's mother had never produced, along a crack in the floor, toward the refrigerator.