Melissa Scholes Young

Melissa Scholes Young’s work has been published in the nationally syndicated Front Porch Magazine, New Plains Review, Stone’s Throw Magazine, Literary Mama and in Mothering.  She has been anthologized in the book Cup of Comfort for Teachers.  She won Front Porch Magazine’s Best New Nonfiction Author Contest. She has also written feature articles and humor columns for Family Forum and Capital Culture. In addition to her writing, Melissa has taught English and Creative Writing at all levels from middle school to high school, from community college to university and finally, at an international school in Brazil.  She is currently working towards an MFA degree in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University.     

Chocolate

            Luciana likes to sift the flour first, leaning her hip against the marble counter and watching the powder fall like fresh snow into the blue bowl. She pumps the handle on the metal sifter and tiny pin pricks line the surface of the flour.  It’s her mother’s bowl, a deep cobalt with chipped edges, the one she watched her make cheesy pao de queijo and sweet brigadeiros in.  The one she found after the flood.  Luciana shakes her head at the wonder of a heavy ceramic bowl balancing on a piece of driftwood floating to the surface and her mother, light as a feather, sinking below. “Luci, always the flour first. Sift it fine so the chocolate mixes well. Flour, chocolate, sugar, salt and a pinch of coffee. Add the wet ingredients last,” her mother said in Portuguese. Luciana shakes the bowl and watches the flour settle into a smooth mound. She reaches for the chocolate and the measuring spoons.  She adds the sifted flour and chocolate to each layer from the bowl watching the pile grow smaller until only a light brown dust remains. One layer of crème de leite with condensed milk, one layer of crème de café with Brazilian coffee, one layer of crème de liquor.  “Sweet, bitter, strong.  Always in that order, bonitinho,” her mother said.

            Eduardo complained that the chocolate was too expensive when he added up her nightly receipts.  Sitting at his tidy desk in the study, cigarette smoke curling from his fingertips, as he pounded away at the keys on the adding machine. “Buy American chocolate, Luci.  It’s cheaper.”  It wasn’t a question. Luciana couldn’t understand a man who thought American chocolate tasted anything like Brazilian chocolate.  But she didn’t understand much of Eduardo anymore.  Two years in this country and she can’t remember why they came.  “Everything’s ruined here, Luci.  Everything’s gone.  We need to go, too. Let’s go, amorzinho. Let’s go while we can,” Eduardo said pressing her hands into his. They left on the ship the next day with a blue bowl wrapped in handmade sweaters packed in the bags beneath the deck.

            Luciana leans her whole body over the cold, reflective surface of the counter and watches herself lick the wooden spoon and her mind travels back. The spoon tastes like home and she smells chocolate baking and cinnamon and sticky sweet icing and sees chickens in the road.  They scatter as she skips toward her mother hoping she’s not too late to dip her fingers into the blue bowl and drip chocolate onto her waiting tongue.  Her mother leans her hip against the wooden table with the wobbly left leg and dries her hands with a stained dishtowel.  Smears of chocolate brown on white cotton, crusty and dark as blood. A smile fills her mother’s face as Luci licks chocolate fingers. He mother spits into the towel and wipes a smear of brown from Luci’s cheek and kisses the clean spot.

            Today, Luciana wants to talk to her mother most of all.  She wants to tell her how Eduardo has changed. “It’s this country,” she’d say, “nothing makes sense.  Everyone has everything and no one’s happy. Not even Eduardo. He’s never happy anymore.” Her mother would know that it’s actually something else. Her mother would narrow her eyes and stare hard at Luci.  The silence always made Luci talk faster. So then she’d tell her about the small things.  Eduardo staying out late but coming home sober.  Eduardo working at the office all the time but less money to buy groceries. Eduardo calling another woman’s name in his sleep.  Luciana heard it clearly. Serena. She wonders if she is an American.  Luciana pictures Serena as a blonde, a tall woman who wears pale pink as the Americans do when they jog.  Serena has curly hair and blue eyes like her mother’s bowl.  The other woman is the exact opposite of Luciana with her thick, black hair that hangs down her back like a rope.  Luci hardly reaches Eduardo’s shoulder.  He used to pick her up like a doll and set her on his knee like a child. He’d nuzzle into her long hair and inhale.  Luciana smoothes her hair from her face now with the back of her hand and leaves a white trail of flour in the black strands. She stirs the batter harder, the wooden spoon clicks loudly banging against the sides of the blue bowl. She pours each batter into three round pans and slams the oven door behind them.

            Luciana measures out the powdered sugar for the icing as the cakes bake. She glances at the clock. 2:12.  17 more minutes to bake. An hour to cool. She’ll ice the cake and add the fresh strawberries to the top. She’ll drizzle the chocolate over the strawberries minutes before Eduardo walks through the door. She’ll stand in front of the cake and he’ll see it over her shoulder as she steps forward to peck him lightly on the cheek. “Ah. Chocolate,” Eduardo will say into Luciana’s hair, holding her for a moment in his arms. “I thought it was blood.” Luciana’s eyes will flash and narrow as Eduardo traces a stain of chocolate up her arm.

            The final ingredient, the rat poison, which Luciana ground with her mortal and pestle, will make Eduardo double over in pain. Luciana imagines his bleeding ulcer bleeding more. His insides twisting in agony. Eduardo rushing down the narrow hall and retching again and again into the toilet bowl.  His hairline dripping, his eyes closed against the pain.