The Refrigerator

Callaloo 19.1 (1996) 151-152

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THE REFRIGERATOR

Kendra Hamilton

  They built it together, Jack and Emily, but he just had to have the terracotta tile. Nothing would dissuade him Not the grout she predicted would fill with grime, not the winter chill that at this moment welds her feet, frozen, before the sink. He's just a man, not a master; She repeats it, her mantra. Try getting him to believe it Maenad in bunny slippers she stirs, savage, the bowl of batter, feeling the chill in her Magwood legs, dipping a finger to the bowl but tasting only his words faintly petrol tasting like Cool Whip or that twist of tobacco caught in your teeth you keep worrying with your tongue . . . She curses, slapping the batter with the wood spoon, whipping the sash on her pink robe to chenille frenzy with each sharp elbow jerk. Wasting all your chances at Neiman Marcus last call-- that's what it's like, this picking of a man to hold like a hatrack all your fancies. No, it's worse for no Lily Daché ever turned to bite with pink velvet lips  the hand that preened her. Might as well go ahead, break the bank , dance in aisles with Kamali at last call-- just don't ever think you'll ever get a straight answer from a man. She fumes, whipping her wrist so hard the batter pancakes against the panes. She can see him, through the window, striding as he does through all his days as proud, as holy as any St. Helena Island planter, neck stiff as if he wore starched collar and cravat tied with a flourish. And all he surveys, as through a telescope, backwards, shrinks so insignificant that a simple request, for a straight reply, to the question about the baby, Jack, the baby-- you said when the house was finished . . . This flashes across his sight for only a faint, keening instant then falls, small and black, a gull vanishing into the sun. Just a man, not a master: she repeats it, her mantra, then curses again, and drops the spoon to slide on pink bunnies to the fridge for another egg. And screams. For inside, there are no smooth white walls, no eggs, no halved onions steaming in Ziploc bags. The walls writhe blue in the light from the tiny bulb. They are carpeted with mold--thick, hairy mold like Spanish moss, but trailing roseate blossoms and petals and stems of corruption from the once-gleaming egg rack to the now-mottled crisper. She screams and screams again, head thrown back, abandoned to the terror of molded roses--a prom night corsage clutching horribly the refrigerator's white moiré breast.  

Kendra Hamilton, who has studied at the University of Houston and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, received her MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Virginia, where she edits Iris: A Journal About Women.

Selected works by Kendra Hamilton:

• The Great Depression
• The Science of Wearing a Dress
• The Refrigerator

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