Stories by Mikki Aronoff
Crossing Margo’s Larder Off Your Bucket List
Margo’s Larder is the most celebrated larder on the Trail of Crumbs and no wonder. Margo was born to flourishes, ejected with a crescendo the night the river flooded. And to fulsomeness, like her full-bosomed mother, a baker of madeleines and macaroons, whose lover, the butcher, kept his gluttonous thumbs on a scale sticky with sausage casings.
Margo’s Larder is secret until you blow your bonus on a ticket. You can’t stop grinning as guides usher you past cupboards that can’t shut for jam jars and ant bait traps, past pantry shelves creaking and moaning with BOGO overflow. Her larder is Rubens and Rembrandt. A water-swoll camel. Scarlatti and Handel. A puffy pig. Your chef-y grail. Hold onto your stub, follow what sags to enter the sanctum. Behold, then, the chambers, the four-poster that sways with the spread of Margo in the flesh, dipping turkey quills in squid ink, scratching lengthy grocery lists onto vellum.
Margo will tire of the task. She will set her scrolls aside, then give you a glance. This is only temporary, and you don’t have much time. You stutter your devotion. She extends a limp hand and her remaindered book, which she will gladly sign. But first, you must hoick and hitch the billowing edges of her culinary promises. It is not unlike struggling with unruly sheets. But you’ve been practicing for weeks. She regards the width of your fingers. A simple dip of her chins signals success. Margo pats a corner of her bed for you to sit, lays out your portion of morning’s sweet spoils. You can’t believe you’ve made it this far. You tilt your toque, unpack your cutlery, tuck a napkin in your collar.
Marking Time
~ after the art of Frank Jones, and for Gertrude
Early mornings, you organize your tiny life. After dawn duty in the laundry, you gulp your weak tea in the chow hall, scrunch your eyes against encroaching images of thrusting shivs. You scan the matrons, necks thick as tree trunks, as they lean against walls and gossip without moving their lips. Their vacant eyes swoop the room, dimmed searchlights sweeping and scanning for fathers.
Afternoons, you draw in the rec room, one hand gripping pencil stubs: orange, black, forest green, metallic green, purple. Idle people stand too close, rock from foot to foot. You can feel their hot breath on your neck. They scowl, poke mocking fingers at your miniature window-less houses with an apple tree to the side. Your stick family stands outside, straight as broomsticks. The onlookers jab at your back. Where is the sun? Why is there never a father? Why don’t you give them mouths? Why don’t you ever erase?
Sunset, and comebacks choke your throat, but your drawings shout from the graph paper you hoard, paper that greys and buckles and curls in the pen’s cold damp. The day shift matron with bloodshot eyes rations it out to you by the page, although no one else needs or asks for it. For this, you are beholden.
Evenings, you plot more marks, one square at a time. Your pencils loop, scribble, and cross hatch. You arrange diagonals, verticals, zigzags, meticulous squiggles in dizzying patterns. Scratches and dashes and scrawls fall onto paper like rain.
At night while you sleep, your marks fly off the paper. They flit and dive like midges barraging your periphery, whispering messages only you can hear. Come. Your bony limbs lift and attach to the glyphs. You shut your eyes and ride the skies, unburdened by memory.
Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Flash Boulevard, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, 100 word story, Atlas and Alice, trampset, The Offing, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.
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