Nuns & Spoons
We hold our cards in front of our mouths to hide the smiles. Draw, check your hand, discard. Keep an eye on the line of spoons. Tonight I’m the only kid still awake, surrounded by my mom, aunties, grandma, and my great-aunt, who is a Catholic nun. I sit tall among the women seated around the dessert table as we pass cards and scrutinize each other for any motions.
Then an auntie pulls a winning hand, and the stealth begins. She reaches out and slowly slides a spoon into her lap. Waits for others to notice. I see it happening, manage to grab another spoon. Others follow. My mom and the nun are the last to notice. And only one spoon left.
They reach at the same time, hands locking on either end of the spoon. “I got it! “No, I’ve got it!” They collapse into giggles but their grips stay strong. I’m entranced, watching. I can’t believe the women are acting like this. My mom, wrestling over a spoon with Sister Sharon Anne.
They are out of their chairs now, standing, gripping the spoon. “You’re a nun!” my mom exclaims as she tries to twist the spoon away and instead falls to the ground. “What about generosity of spirit? Turning the other cheek?” My great-aunt follows her to the floor. “Not….during….Spoons!” she responds, and with a final twist, wrenches the spoon free.
How to stay calm on the plane
When the message comes to you, pinging your phone as you watch Dune on the seatback screen thousands of miles up in the air, your mind a galaxy away as your body flies through space. It surprises you – who knew you could get texts up here, somewhere above the Atlantic. The zeros and ones convert to a most unwelcome message that detonates in your aisle seat: your neighbor, wondering about the ambulance at your house, wondering if everything is okay.
There’s a ringing in your ears you hadn’t noticed before. You can’t reach your husband at work. You can’t reach your mom, who is caring for the children. So you watch Dune. And breathe deep. You are terror-still in your seat. On screen they move across the sand in skips and slides to mimic the wind, to hide that they are humans, to fool the sand monsters underneath that would rage up and swallow them whole simply for being human, for carving out a little space for themselves on this earth.
You watch Dune. You breathe deep. You perch-cling onto the edge of your inner optimist, the one who says that your identity is probably still intact. The flight attendant comes down the aisle. Would you like peanuts or cookies? Are you now a wife or a widow? A mother or…the unspeakable? You recall that Dune was a favorite of your grandfather’s, who, when he saw it in the theater, was able to recite line for line from memory. Who, in late summer last year, passed away with library books still checked out. So don’t sweat the small stuff, you suppose. But also, people die.
You watch Dune. You breathe deep. You want to be on the other side of this, to stand in your too-white kitchen and trade stories about your week away. You don’t want to know. You must know. Outside, your spaceship speeds through the sky, but inside you barely dare to move.
Sarah Barbo
Sarah Barbo writes about family, identity, and sense of place. Her work has been published in Hippocampus, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, In a Flash, and The Ekphrastic Review, and nominated for Best Small Fictions. Find her in the Colorado mountains and at www.sarahbarbo.com.
