From My Other Body:
Sisterhood
"She fixes her gaze on the plate. . ."
Joyce and I sit at the kitchen table. Mama and Daddy have carried Hunter to their bedroom to watch TV; all the melamine
plates are cleared away but Joyce’s. Her plate sits centered on a green placemat that’s embroidered in pink with her
name. Joyce's long, brown pigtails fall forward over her shoulders, the pink orbs on her hair elastics perched atop each
ear. Lost in her sullen, frustrated pout, Joyce stares at the remnants of her dinner. Her eyes narrow, her eyebrows flatten
into oppressed lines, and her cheeks flush. She wants more than anything to cry, but grits her teeth and refuses. She fixes
her gaze on the plate, on its last smear of potato and gravy, on the three radishes, their peppery red skins and flat white lids.
"I'm not going to wait all night here for you," Mama’s said. "But you're not moving from that table 'til you eat them radishes.
Ann, you get down and go play."
"Okay," I say, but I don't move.
"Eat one of them," Daddy tells Joyce, and follows Mama down the hall.
Joyce glares at the radishes. She shifts her gaze from plate to my eyes and back to plate again. "I'll be sick if I eat them,"
she whispers to me, miserable in the injustice of obedience. "I'll throw up. Ann, I can't do it."
Decision churns inside me like a paper scrap in a table fan. I know that spankings are terrible with mortification, combining
pain with public embarrassment, much like when you realize that if you stand up you won't make it to the bathroom in time.
You can't do anything to make a spanking stop. But Joyce's face crumples with grudge and revulsion. "Listen," I whisper.
"What," she bats back, as though I want to distract and cheer her.
"No," I say. I motion with a glance toward the hallway. "Listen for them." I reach across the table. I scrape my front teeth
down the hot curve of a radish, peeling a chunk of its skin and flesh. I drop the chewed globe on her plate and apprehend
the loose bite between my molars. Daddy appears around the door frame.
"She managed a bite," he calls.
"May I have another glass of water," Joyce says. A tear of relief jostles out of her left eye.
"You can be excused now," Daddy says to Joyce. I bear the radish fragment between my teeth until we reach our room, then
chew it happily.
"You know I can't eat your beans for you next time," Joyce says.
"Ewwee," I say. "I wouldn't ask a dog to eat beans for me. I like radishes."
"You're nuts," she says, and jumps on top of me on the bed and hugs me, and musses my hair with both hands.
