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Carla’s Point of View
I sat outside with a plate of toasted rye and a cup of coffee going cold at my elbow, and I ate it crust and all.
The bread was two days old. I’d wanted it that way. Mom had been in the kitchen since before the light came over the ridge — I’d heard the pan go on, oil first, then the radio turned down low because she never could work in silence — and when I told her what I wanted, she’d stood in the doorframe with her arms folded and called it a sin.
We’d quarreled about it the short way, no heat, done before the coffee cooled, and she’d lost, and she’d made it anyway. Flour still on her forearms from breakfast baking. I could smell the lemon worked into her skin from the night before.
She sat beside me and looked at the stale toast like it had insulted her.