Diane refused to eat. She looked at the plate of macaroni and butter and pushed out her bottom lip in an exaggerated frown. 

“Just take one bite,” Shelly said.

“No. I don’t want it!” 

Shelly stood next to the stove holding a fork in one hand and a potholder in the other. She watched the breaded eggplant sizzle inside the cast iron pot.

The little girl jumped down from the chair and headed for the back door. Shelly pointed the fork at her.

“Don’t you dare open that door!”

Diane froze.

“Get your butt back in that seat or else.”

Diane’s face fell. She could ignore her mother’s command, but she knew all too well about Shelly’s propensity for spitefulness and considered her next move carefully.

“I don’t want it!” She stamped her bare foot onto the fake wooden floor. 

“You have no choice. Now sit down, shut up, and eat your food!”

Shelly faced her frying pan again and flipped over the eggplant. Diane pouted all the way back to her chair. Diane’s plate sat within a small clearing of clutter. She could only see hints of the green marble slab that they used as a kitchen table beneath all of the crumbs, old newspapers, expired coupons, and assorted mail.

The phone rang. Shelly put down the fork and picked it up.

“Hell-o” She answered in a nasal singsong voice. “What’s doin’?”

Diane stared at her plate. She picked up a dirty fork and stabbed an elbow of pasta. It jumped. Diane crinkled up her nose and frowned. She looked out of the picture window before her at the Atlantic Ocean’s calm low tide. She wanted to run and play on the beach—to listen to the soothing sounds of waves crashing against the shore. 

“Diane is giving me a hard time,” Shelly barked into the telephone. “She refuses to eat. She doesn’t clean up after herself— everything in the house is a mess—her crap is all over my living room—“   Shelly stopped complaining for a moment.

An old episode of Matlock played on the TV. Diane left her chair and flicked through the channels until she found Tom and Jerry cartoons. 

Shelly held her hand over the receiver, “Don’t change it! I was watching that!”

Shelly continued her conversation. “I can’t even watch a program around here!” She paused. “Yes mom, I know, but— okay… okay mom. I’ve gotta go.” She returned the phone to its cradle on the wall.

None of the adults in her family ever ended a phone call with a salutation. They just finished speaking and hung up.

“What did I tell you about finishing your food!” Shelly screamed. “You are not getting out of that chair until you eat what’s on your plate.” 

Nothing felt safe. From her earliest memories, Diane feared her mother. Her instincts told her not to trust this woman. She returned to her seat and stared at the cold and tasteless macaroni. 

Once again, the little girl picked up her fork and stabbed into an elbow, this time securing it between the tines. She chewed the very al-dente macaroni while tears slid down her chin. Pushing the remaining pasta around with the fork, she fished out the softest elbows in the bunch and ate those first, leaving the crunchy ones for last. 

All the while, her mother ranted through another tirade. “ . . . Nobody appreciates how hard I work to put food on this table. The least you can do is eat what I made for you!”

The smell of the frying eggplant filled the open space that contained their kitchen and living room. Shelly ate the cooling slices as she worked. “I wake up every day at four o’clock in the morning and I have to wash you, dress you and drop you off at school, and then work a full day— just to come home to aggravation.”

Diane tried to tune it out. She reached the last of the soft pasta. About five macaroni elbows remained. They still kept a dark yellow color and hardened exterior.

“Put my program back!”

The little girl got up and returned the TV channel to where she found it.

“I’m finished,” she informed her mother.

Diane picked up the paper plate and folded it into four triangles. She placed the folded plate into a plastic shopping bag that hung from a kitchen draw handle. She looked at the tray of fried eggplant that lay draining through a paper towel on the counter. It smelled much better than the macaroni. Her mother kept her back to the girl as she dunked a raw slice of eggplant into a bowl of whipped eggs. 

Diane grabbed a cooked slice from the cooling plate and put it in her mouth.

Shelly reached around and took it away with an exaggerated exasperation that almost appeared comical. 

            “That’s for dinner!” She waved her arms up and down in a frenzy.

“Okay,” Diane muttered, but the little girl knew that within the two hours it took for her father to come home, there would be no eggplant left.

She snuck into the front hallway while her mother cooked. Diane grabbed her pink jelly water shoes and walked out barefoot. The concrete cut into the bottoms of her feet as she walked up to the street, past her neighbors’ houses, and around to the formal beach entrance. She found the gate locked, but she slipped through the hole in the fence.

Her feet sunk into the hot dry sand as she ran parallel to ocean and hid in a quiet nook between the rocks. She felt safe here – alone on the beach. She created giant sandcastles with deep moats, wore a seashell crown and carried a driftwood scepter. Magic shimmered through the mica-speckled rocks, glistened across each peak of the glimmering waves and glowed through the iridescent underbelly of the abandoned clam, oyster, and mussel shells gracing her castle entrance. She stayed there until the sky grew pink and the shadows, long. 

She knew she had to go back. If her mother realized that she was gone, Shelly would get angry, scream at her for leaving, punish her—or worse. She held the little pink jellies in her hand as she waded through the sand back to the beach’s entrance, stopping to put them on by the cement. She passed her neighbor’s house, waved to the family across the street and walked up the front porch steps.

Her father called from behind.

“Hey kid-o”

She turned around as he ran his big hand down the front of her face.“You out playing on the beach?”

She nodded. He saw the sadness in her eyes – too much sadness for a little girl. He picked her up, kissed her forehead, and carried her inside. Here, in her father’s arms, she knew that everything would be okay.