Fiction

Moving Day

A Short Story

My bedroom now stands almost completely empty. When I blink, I can still see the way it was only two days ago. The double bed with the crimson sheets. The black desk in the corner — only I could have done that bad of a paint job. Still, it was better than the screamingly bright white exterior when I found it at a garage sale. Black belongs among the dark palette of my clothes and other possessions.

I stand like an idiot in my empty room, the last box ready for the moving van, envisioning the multiple different states this room has been in. The earliest I can remember is when the walls were light pink and the floor was littered with several fairy dolls I didn’t like. The time I had posters of Johnny Depp and the members of Kiss grouped near my bed. Various magazines on the desk hiding homework assignments I was procrastinating.

I pick up the last box and close the door behind me when I leave.

Mama, emerging from the living room with a lamp she said I could have, says to me,

“Hey, Julia, go grab the stuff in the kitchen and we’ll head out soon,”

I set my box in the van and pick up an empty one in the hallway. I cross through our spacious dining room and into the kitchen. I grab some plastic cups I’ve collected over the years from the odd arcade, restaurant or high school event, some bowls and plates Mama agreed I could have. But when I open the drawer to the silverware and utensils, I’m not sure what to take. My eyes linger over one object: a large kitchen knife that’s been in the household as long as I can remember. Its light-brown, wooden handle has faded through countless uses and washes. The blade remains sturdy, just needs a sharpening. We haven’t had a reason to replace it.

Either that, or it stays because of the memories Mama, my sister Jenny and I associate with it.

It was the knife that Jenny and I carved pumpkins with as kids. Mama would use it first to pierce down through the top of each of our pumpkins, creating a hole so we could stick our little hands in to shovel out the seeds. Jenny and I weren’t allowed to use this knife for the longest time, understandably.

“You’ll cut your finger off like a carrot!” Mama would warn me when I asked for it.

I remember feeling like Julia Child when I first began to use the knife in the kitchen. She was the first TV personality I knew of that shared my name. Jenny and I acted out our own cooking show — avid theater kids — putting on her trans-Atlantic accent and mixing in some choppy French that we were both learning in school.

This knife was present for every Thanksgiving Mama hosted. It was roughly every three years, as our family rotated between spending the holidays with our grandparents and Mama’s brother, Uncle Adrian. Grandma never failed to interrogate both of her children about why they were still single. Contrary to her, Jenny and I felt pride in knowing that Mama left her husband — a man unworthy to be “Papa” in our vocabulary. Still, Grandma would point the knife at Mama, scolding her for not having found a father for her granddaughters.

Unfortunately, it was also the knife that I defended myself with when Uncle Adrian tried to rape me. But I don’t want to talk about that.

I distinctly remember that we used this knife to cut the cake for my Sweet 16. We held the party in the backyard and served the cake out by the poolside.

June was the nicest month to use the pool. It marked the real, official beginning of the summer here. It wasn’t like when you go to the pool in the middle of the scorching July and August days just to survive. When we used the pool in June, maybe for the first time of the season, it was a happy occasion. We welcomed the comfortable temperature of the water, enjoyed a cloudless sky and grilled burgers or hot dogs on the deck. Summer was a novelty, we’d been begging for it on the mornings Mama had to trudge out to scrape the windshield in the driveway, car running for five or six minutes before we could leave.

My friends and I used the knife to cut various slices of the dark chocolate cake. The guys, shirtless and dripping from the pool, took the largest ones, of course, and the girls took only the smallest slice of cake their body-dysmorphic guilt would allow. I was less worried about the calories in my cake than the carved quality of my left forearm. I had started cutting it when I got overwhelmed.

This knife was not, however, the knife that I cut my arm with. I used a pocketknife from our camping set because it was easier to hide. But I don’t want to talk about that either.

Lately, the knife has just existed in the drawer, pushed off to the side with the least-frequently used spatulas that have slightly melted on the edge of hot pans. Mama recently upgraded her set of knives and keeps them in a wooden block on the counter. This knife clearly doesn’t fit with the others and would look clumsy in the sleek, new block.

For a moment, I think about throwing the knife away, but I’m not sure what might happen if Mama notices it missing and brings it up when I visit from college. I’ve had recurring nightmares of this knife lodged in my chest. Lodged in my uncle’s chest. There’s something within me that demands me to keep this knife hidden, unspoken, in its place. Moving it will move too much within me.

So I shut the drawer, label the box “Kitchen” with a red marker and bring it out to the van.