The room is like nothing Naomi has seen before. It’s a kitchen, yes. But, it’s as if the space is what people in the 1930s think a kitchen of the future would look like. There’s linoleum everywhere, for one, with big red and green circles printed all over it. The walls are forest green, the cabinets a lighter, mintier shade and made of shiny plastic. But the most interesting part of the kitchen is the wall that bisects it. At the base of the wall is a round counter that juts from the kitchen into a small dining space on the other side of it. Within the wall are big square cutouts and within each of these cutouts are plants of all kinds—prickly cacti and long, drooping pothos. A bright red bromeliad and a variegated croton in stippled yellow and green. A couple aloe plants whose leaves have started to droop with heaviness. And a many-headed Venus fly trap, most of its fanged buds opened like tiny baby birds waiting to be fed.
Which is exactly what Naomi is doing. She watches in amazement as her own two hands take a pair of long tweezers and pluck a few crickets from a jar then drop them into the jaws of the Venus fly trap. “There you go, Benedict,” Naomi hears someone—wait, is it herself?—coo. When Naomi is finished, she places the jar on the round counter and turns it lazy-Susan-style so the dirty jar is now in the kitchen.
The whole thing has the effect of a rainforest meets the Jetsons meets a Victorian botanist.
Naomi walks to the other side of the wall where a woman is washing dishes at the kitchen sink. The woman picks up the newly-bug-free jar from the counter and makes a face at the dirt caking the bottom of it. “Why can’t we have normal plants that don’t require bugs to stay alive?”
Naomi skips to the woman and reaches up to peck her cheek. “Be nice, sister,” she says, plunging her hands into the soapy water. “We’d have a lot more flies in the kitchen if it wasn’t for Benedict.”
“That may be true,” the woman grumbles good-naturedly. “But I still somehow always end up with muddy jars dirtying up my dish water.” She sighs, draining the muddy sink and filling it with fresh water. Suddenly, she shrieks. “A worm, Deborah!”
“Whoops,” Naomi—she must be Deb!—says. Is this a memory then?
Deb plucks the worm from the bottom of a soapy teacup. It’s warm and slimy and wriggles in her hands and it is as if Naomi is the one holding it and she desperately wants to fling it away from her, but instead she finds herself walking to a fiddle leaf fig tree in the corner of the dining room. She dumps the worm in the soil and says, “There you go little buddy. I’ll be back for you later.” Then she returns to the kitchen to finish washing the dishes.
“Why do you play in the dirt and mud, Deborah?” the woman, Deb’s older sister by the looks of it, sighs. “It’s not what girls do.”
“It’s what I do, and I’m a girl,” Deb says. Internally, Naomi snorts. Can’t beat that logic.
“You are,” Deb’s older sister says. “And you’re getting to the age where you can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Playing around, Deborah!”
“I’m not playing, Violet. I’m doing research. I’m running an experiment on the growth rate of Venus fly traps when given varying amounts of protein. I’m establishing a baseline right now with crickets and houseflies, but I’ll eventually move on to feeding Benedict worms which are higher in protein, iron, and amino acids.” She dries the dish her sister hands her and adds, “You’ll be happy to hear that I’m moving Benedict somewhere more remote so he’ll be out of the kitchen.”
Violet shakes her head. “You know what I mean.” The simple gold engagement ring on her finger flashes as she hands Deb another plate.
Naomi eyes the ring furtively. She can feel herself—Deb—trying not to roll her eyes. “Ubi amor, ibi dolor,” she mumbles under her breath.
“What was that?” Violet asks.
“Just practicing my Latin,” Deb replies.
Her sister laughs out loud and splashes water at Deb. “Quit sulking,” Violet says. “Love is not pain.” She pins a soapy hand around Deb’s shoulders and pulls her into a hug. “Remember who taught you your Latin.” She kisses the top of Deb’s head. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Ship me off to an Ivy League next year?”
Her sister laughs again. “Audentes fortuna iuvat. Fortune favors the brave, dear sister.”
Naomi feels the world begin to slip. The sisters continue chatting and washing dishes, but suddenly everything becomes distorted as if Naomi is viewing it from a fishbowl. She feels a tug deep within her, as if a huge hand is pulling on her stomach and lungs. It becomes difficult to breathe. This time, instead of shadows, the light sharpens and brightens so intensely that she must squeeze her eyes shut against it. When she opens them, she is back in her kitchen, her cheek pressed face down on the cold granite countertop, sweaty, shivering. Weak morning light seeps through the windows. She’s been out for hours.
“Morning, sleepy head,” Deb calls cheerfully from the kitchen table. She gestures to a newspaper that’s still bound in its plastic wrapping. “Think you could open up to the crossword for me?”
“What the fuck,” Naomi says, rising shakily from her stool, “did you do to me?”
Then she turns and vomits.
Yeah! I have Been waiting on this to post!