Page 17
Mama shouted from the living room. “I told you to watch my muffins!”
“I am watching them!”
“Clearly the hell not!”
I snatched open the oven and smoke rolled out. Klair stuffed more pepperonis into her mouth.
“You should’ve set a timer.”
“You should’ve helped.”
“I don’t live here.”
“Neither do I.”
I grabbed the pan with an oven mitt and dropped it onto the stove. The bottoms of the muffins were black.
Klair leaned over. “Damn.”
“Shut up.”
“Both of y’all shut the hell up!” Daddy yelled, never taking his eyes off the television.
Klair and I both laughed. My sister Klair was twenty-nine years old, beautiful, and brilliant. She hadn’t brought a boyfriend, girlfriend, or anyone home once in her entire life.
For years, my parents thought she was hiding something. Mama tried to gently ask if she liked women. Daddy tried to not-so-gently ask if she liked women.
Klair told both of them the answer was no. She didn’t want men, and she didn’t want women. She didn’t want a partner, a spouse, or anyone asking what she wanted for dinner every night until death did them part. She was aromantic.
It had taken my parents approximately five years and seventeen Google searches to understand that it didn’t mean she was waiting on the right person to “fix” it. Daddy still didn’t completely get it.
I envied her sometimes. Klair cursed me clean out when I suggested her aromanticism was some tragic side effect of watching our parents’ marriage. She claimed that she simply didn’t experience romantic attraction the way I did. Growing up in that house had definitely made her comfortable with one thing: She had absolutely no interest in forcing herself into the kind of life everyone else considered normal.
Klair looked at the muffins again.
“You gonna scrape the tops?”
“I’m gonna throw them away.”
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Daddy will eat it.”
“You’re right, Daddy eats anything.”
She laughed because she knew it was true.
“Food ready?” Daddy asked as he entered the kitchen.
“Yeah. Everything but the muffins.”
He reached toward the pan, and I slapped his hand.
“Don’t touch that.”
Daddy snatched his hand back. “I’m hungry.”
“It’s burnt.”
He looked at the muffins, then back at me like he was waiting for the part that mattered. “So?”
