My Father’s Hunger
- Oct 27, 2023
- 2 min read
by Max Schmidt Wheeler
I carry my father in a glass vial around my neck. I take a sniff of him, like smelling salts, to settle my nerves or return to my abandoned body.
It is a sharp, briny smell — he is a seahorse flecked with green and gold. He flexes his curved tail, and I pop off the cork to drop in a flake of treat.
His voice is so quiet now that I have to lean close to hear him:
You’re gaining weight. But then you’ve always been a big girl.
Alas, he is my talisman, my mascot, my good luck charm of questionable efficacy. I navigate each gut-lurching day with a hand on my chest, where he hangs and mutters,
Just like your mother,
And I smile and give the vessel a shake. His tiny eyes cross. I am packing for a conference in Philadelphia, and when I fold my shirts sloppily he changes color in dismay. I sigh and try again.
I will have to check you, I tell him; the people at the airport can’t say for sure that you aren’t a weapon. He goes slack, and I unclasp the chain. I wrap him in a sock. Muffled, he continues as always,
Measure twice,
And I protect him in the very heart of the suitcase.
I am a child again, flying. I cry when we hit rough air and the man in the center seat shrivels from secondhand embarrassment. The surface of the earth folds and cracks below us, divulging no secrets. I drink a gin and tonic and then a tomato juice and then I lick the salt off the bag the peanuts came in. I hold my breath when we land. I grin, relieved, but do not join in the applause. My hand goes to my chest, where it finds nothing.
I walk laps around the baggage carousel while I wait for the horn to sound and the luggage to start tumbling down. I wince as I see mine collide with the metal edge of the machine, and I rush to claim it and I heave it over the lip and I open it right there on the floor, digging through fabric to where I’ve nestled him. I un-ball the sock — it is damp — and am startled by a sliver of pain. The sock glistens and bristles with the remnants of my father’s tiny retirement home. Blood blooms on my hand. My heart is loud.
He is there, caught in a fold, dried out and even smaller than before. He is just a crumb in my palm. I cup my hand around my ear. I can hear the ocean. And there is still a faint voice, tirading —
Fuck you. Of all the careless —
And I smile as my blood trickles onto him, nourishing like the sea.
Max Schmidt Wheeler is a trans writer and teacher from Oakland, CA. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Astrolabe, Beaver Magazine, The Metaworker, Heavy Feather Review, and Ouch! Collective. You can find him and his medium-quality bird photos on instagram @mxwheels.
