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On birthdays but sometimes not, Ruth lived to fan out the jumbos with her thumb. The dirty work, of course, came first. Her fingers stiffened under the faucet as she extracted the dark, shiny string from the inner and outer curl. Her mother once taught her how to use cold running water to dislodge the grit, purge traces of the past.
Ruth had since developed a trick of her own, but only after the shrimp had been poached and chilled: a 3 to 1 ratio of ketchup to horseradish, lemon to parsley, and plate to mouth, her own mouth. For every three of the treats she spread out for guests, one went bang into the cakehole. All in the name of quality control, and anyway, it was the chef’s goddamn right.
Not that her daughter, out on the sofa, would care. She was the one who used to sneak in a few extras, even get swatted away, but since leaving home she had turned her back on shrimp. This from the same child who begged to inspect them for any slivers of shell the faraway laborers might have missed. Her more recent technique, sharpened with every visit, involved a grating Are you familiar with? right before the rant. The landmark study this. The cockroach of the ocean that.
Ruth was rinsing the last few when her daughter shuffled in to refill her boyfriend’s drink. As she pawed around in the freezer for ice, she asked if her mother knew that deveining actually described the removal of the garbage-impacted digestive tract.
Uncanny, Ruth thought, spotting a tangle of intestines – right there! – in the drain.
And was her mother familiar with the fact that the Bible wasn’t such a fan, to which Ruth muttered Amen! under the hiss of the tap.
But what Ruth wanted to know was why her daughter was so hell-bent on spoiling the cuteness of shrimp. They had every right to paddle along in oily, beaded waters – shimmy through someone else’s trash.
Her daughter leaned against the counter and waited. Ruth bladed her hand on the cutting board and pushed. The slack, fleshy clump blanched as it hit the surface, breaking apart in the churn. She would just have enough time to empty the sink strainer before yanking the shrimp from the heat.
Once, twice, she slammed the strainer on the trash can. Again, harder – the saucepan shuddered and spit. The knot of shrimp guts clung to the steel, and soon it would be too late. The water would seethe and foam, scorch the dead and all the witnesses, but she banged, kept banging, and willed the dark, shiny string to let go.
About D.B. Miller
D.B. Miller’s short fiction, creative nonfiction and offbeat profiles appear in FlashFlood 2023, Ellipsis Zine, Bending Genres, Idle Ink, Litro, Reflex Fiction, Split Lip Magazine, Offshoots, NBHAP and Stanchion Zine (2024). follow her on dbmillerwriter.com or Twitter (@DBMillerWriter) and Instagram (@dbmwr
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