How They Could Kick Us - Mikki Aronoff
Some crossed the river to settle in my hometown; others, continents. They made sausages, taught us the singsong of learning by rote. The streets smelled of fried catfish and pork, caraway and beer. The yeasty spoor of Butter-Nut Bread baking for the city wafted over dressed geese and rockers on falling-down porches. There was a Chinese restaurant past our school by the pinball place on the main road that snaked through town. We worked flippers and tracked silver balls in their orbits until our parents dragged us back for steamy cashew chicken with rice in mounds scooped like ice cream. Lunchtimes at school, we wound around an old stone fountain next to the cafeteria to wet our hands before eating. Our fourth-grade music teacher taught us to play “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” on tonettes. Once, she asked me to fetch something and I found a half-drunk glass of Hudepohl in her desk drawer, foam still on top. I didn’t tell on her because we didn’t tell on anyone. That’s how things could keep happening. The Vice Principal snapping his cane over the bent backs of rowdy boys in gym, with its polished wood floors and shivers of young bodies. How we learned to detect the sweat of tweed, how bullies got even with their world. How one day they could kick us because they never saw us cry, and the next day we’d be back to drawing cartoons in basement bedrooms or catching crawdads in the creek behind our houses. That was when we learned to flaunt or hide our young breasts, to consecrate all the town’s fountains with the steam of our bodies. That was when we raced bicycles across the tracks, over to the cemetery, breathless, knowing the wrong boys would catch us there, but the dead couldn’t.
Originally published by Moon City Review, Spring 2024
Mikki Aronoff lives in New Mexico, where she writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. She has stories in Best Microfiction 2024, 2025 and 2026 and Best Small Fictions 2024 and 2025. She is a co-author of the book, Neverafters. More at https://www.facebook.com/mikki.aronoff/
