When she thought about it, sausages were disgusting. They were pieces of ground meat (what meat? Cafeteria mystery meat! Not-meat meat?) stuffed inside a tubing like feces coagulating in intestines. She had the image stuck in her head ever since she saw a chef in a restaurant making sausages from scratch. She'd had half a mind to complain to her father that she wished the pane of glass separating the open kitchen from the rest of the dining room should be a wall instead. She didn't want to see sausages being made- she just wanted to eat them! Now that she was more worldly, now that she'd seen the documentaries on television talking about how the human body (curious thing) worked, she knew better than to fall into the trap. She held her worldliness above her head like a trophy, telling everyone she came across about how sausages were disgusting.
They would always smile at first, but as they listened on something in their faces would change. They would be frozen like that -aunts, neighbours, family friends, strangers- and look at her strangely until her father rushed up to hustle her away. Why did he have to apologize to them so profusely? Maria could not make sense of it, and she looked down at her feet always until he came to get her. What was so shameful? Was it the sausage, or was it the fact that she talked about what inevitably happened to it?
She asked Antonio this, and again was confused when he flushed all over.
"It's not proper to talk about... what happens to food once you swallow it, Maria," Antonio pulled at the sleeves of his suit so he could occupy his hands. He did not look at his daughter while he spoke. Then he corrected his tie so it would look like his neighbour's. Antonio had been trying to get his tie to look like that for weeks, but he was too haughty to ask the man to just show him. Why was the damned neighbour even here? He wasn't his family! He wasn't invited to this dinner! Antonio squeezed the tongs in his hand violently, and then remembered to turn the sausages on the stove.
"Why are you wearing a suit?"
Maria kept pulling at his pants, the girl. God, please. Just make her go away! "I need to be presentable."
"Do you want to hear a poem?" Maria had not written it down, but it came to her a moment ago and she would be able to remember it (or make it up on the spot).
Flip. Sizzle. His brother, Juan, was coming towards them now. Even without turning around, Antonio knew his brother's steps on the tiled floor. Juan always dragged one of his legs because he never quite recovered from the car accident he was in some years ago. Better look like a father, Antonio grudgingly realized. "I would love to, dear. What is it about?"
"The cat you ran over this morning!"
Juan came up beside Antonio to look at the sausage being cooked, and he even had half a smile on his face. He was about to say something to Antonio when he heard Maria, and turned to her, stunned. "If she weren't my blood," Juan whispered to his brother in a low voice, "I would have her exorcised." And then he crept back out of the kitchen, leaving Antonio standing there with his mouth filled with fluid and every line of him seething. The sausages were burning.
"I don't want to hear it."
Maria accepted this with a small sniffle. "Then what do I do?"
"Go play with your cousin."
"I don't like them!"
"Then go bang your head against the wall!"
"You always say that!" Her voice was reaching higher pitches now, and Antonio could already imagine all the gossip about them in the dining room now. Antonio, who could not get his wife to the hospital in time. Poor Anna, had to die to give birth to that worthless child. I hear she drinks pig's blood, the child. Do you hear? Even now, they are arguing. What a sad family, what good fortune that I have well behaved and nice children.
"Then bring these to the table." He handed her a plate of the borderline burnt sausages. He didn't bother to cut them because he wouldn't want his family (and the neighbour from across the street) to think he was a cheap ninny. Let them take what they want, so they would have no complaints.
Dutifully, Maria carried the platter to the dining room, where her family was gathered at the dining room table. Two roasted chickens, peas, carrots, cakes, breads, take-out burritos, all compiled by the whole family. These sausages were to be Antonio and Maria's contribution. Someone must have told a joke, because the room burst suddenly in nervous laughter. She went up on her toes and set the sausages on the table. Her cousins all fell silent, one by one, looking at her. Her aunts and uncles looked away and tried not to see her.
It isn't my fault that I killed my mama, she wanted to scream, because she knew it was what they were thinking.
Anyway, the sausages. How someone could eat them and not think of the image of overstuffed intestines evaded her logic. One of her aunts handed her a sausage in a bun –a hot dog, as Americans called it. Probably she did it so Maria could walk with it and wouldn't need to sit at the table with her own children. Without thanking her, Maria ran away to feed it to the dog, taking great delight.
Her father yelled when he saw it, but she was not really afraid. Antonio was more afraid of his daughter than she was of him, after all. She'd seen the way the colour drained from his face when she told him about her poem. Or that time when he caught her eating the houseplant that was dying. She knew what he said about her to the people gathered round the table: a mad child, why in God's name do I keep her?
"You must eat it because we are among family," he reprimanded her harshly, in low tones like a lullaby but also inexorably violent. "Eat." He looked from side to side and was relieved to see that none of his brothers and sisters and their children were staring at least. How rude, to feed your meal to a beast!
Maria didn't understand this inseparable connection between eating and being among family, as he put it. It was the same awkwardness at Thanksgiving, the same silent chewing (who was the one chewing so loudly? How rude!) at Christmas dinners, the exact same sideways glances during birthdays. Awkward orchestras with no conductors, with the little Maria sprawled out on the floor eating the crickets so even they did not dare to stir. Violins and bows –knives and forks- poised to play –to eat- with no meaning, no motivation behind it but for the necessity of the dry action! Think of it, how funny. Family made everyone utterly miserable. Maybe this was why they felt the need to eat at family gatherings. So they wouldn't have to look at each other and be reminded of how much they hated one another. She stood amidst the boos and hisses, clapping on her own at the funny tragedy until the hall emptied for intermission. Until the next holiday or birthday or once in a while a funeral, which was even better because it meant people could excuse themselves early without losing face.
Antonio made her another hot dog. "Go play outside," he opened the front door and the dining room fell silent, waiting, breaths suspended. Maria walked out the door out of habit and turned to look at him, momentarily jarred. What...? Her father smiled when she didn't respond, and closed the door.