Donations
By Donna Huneke
October 15, 2022
October 15, 2022
Your daughter asks you to buy sunflower seeds. For a snack or a garden?
A snack, she says. You hide your surprise. She always asks for mini chocolate cupcakes if she wants a snack. The apple slices, the almonds, the wheat crackers – she ignores them. So you buy the sunflower seeds.
She has been mad at you for days. The request for sunflower seeds feels like an olive branch. You knew she was still in the middle of Zoom class during the incident, but you didn’t know that she had taken her Chromebook downstairs to try to show her class your orange cat.
I don’t give a shit that he had to start an OnlyFans, you yelled into your phone. Your brother’s compulsive shopping reached new heights during lockdown. He impulse bought a Tesla that he is hiding in your sister’s garage.
Your daughter does not know what OnlyFans is, but her fifth grade teacher heard you. You had to suffer through an uncomfortable phone call with a woman ten years younger than you. Home has to be a safe place, she said.
Your daughter takes the sunflower seed snack packets up to her room.
When you check on her at bedtime, you scan her floor for stray seeds but don’t see any. The empty packets are in her wastebasket.
Look, your daughter says several days later. She sets a green malachite bead on the kitchen counter. You grab it before it rolls onto the floor. You recognize the bead. Where did she find it? She shrugs. The dining room closet? An old suitcase? Where is the rest of it?
That’s the only one, she says.
Your grandmother found the malachite necklace on a retirement trip to Egypt. You thought you lost it the last time you moved. Days later, another bead is on the kitchen counter. Maybe you never lost the necklace. Maybe your daughter had taken it years ago and hidden it away. You would have given it to her if she asked. You are mad at the way she is taking it apart bead by bead.
If you give me the necklace, I can put it back together, you tell her gently.
What necklace? she asks.
You are exhausted. You are not sure what your sister wants you to do when she sends you a link to your brother’s OnlyFans account. What could the content be? He’s not particularly handsome. Does he lie nude on the hood of the Tesla he can’t afford? His pseudonym is GucciBoy2000. Your brother is thirty-nine.
You drag yourself out of bed just before 7:30 to wake your daughter. Your wake times have been getting later and later as the months drag on. You read that Dolly Parton starts her day at 3 am. But you are a mere mortal. Your daughter’s room is unusually cold. She left her window open overnight. You find the sunflower seeds. They are lined up in a perfectly straight little row on her windowsill. Before you can close the window, you see her visitor. A crow. He eats one and then collects a couple at a time, flying back and forth to cache them somewhere. On his last trip he drops a green malachite bead on the windowsill. It rolls along the slope of the old condo, clicking into the corner of the window frame.
You see the murder of crows in an evergreen across the street. You think of what you’ve given over the previous year -- the money to your brother, unpaid overtime to your boss, Christmas with your daughter to your ex. You’re still angry about all of it. You look at your daughter, still sleeping. You picture her gently lining up the seeds for the crows, and the crows returning the necklace to her, once bead at a time.
END
A snack, she says. You hide your surprise. She always asks for mini chocolate cupcakes if she wants a snack. The apple slices, the almonds, the wheat crackers – she ignores them. So you buy the sunflower seeds.
She has been mad at you for days. The request for sunflower seeds feels like an olive branch. You knew she was still in the middle of Zoom class during the incident, but you didn’t know that she had taken her Chromebook downstairs to try to show her class your orange cat.
I don’t give a shit that he had to start an OnlyFans, you yelled into your phone. Your brother’s compulsive shopping reached new heights during lockdown. He impulse bought a Tesla that he is hiding in your sister’s garage.
Your daughter does not know what OnlyFans is, but her fifth grade teacher heard you. You had to suffer through an uncomfortable phone call with a woman ten years younger than you. Home has to be a safe place, she said.
Your daughter takes the sunflower seed snack packets up to her room.
When you check on her at bedtime, you scan her floor for stray seeds but don’t see any. The empty packets are in her wastebasket.
Look, your daughter says several days later. She sets a green malachite bead on the kitchen counter. You grab it before it rolls onto the floor. You recognize the bead. Where did she find it? She shrugs. The dining room closet? An old suitcase? Where is the rest of it?
That’s the only one, she says.
Your grandmother found the malachite necklace on a retirement trip to Egypt. You thought you lost it the last time you moved. Days later, another bead is on the kitchen counter. Maybe you never lost the necklace. Maybe your daughter had taken it years ago and hidden it away. You would have given it to her if she asked. You are mad at the way she is taking it apart bead by bead.
If you give me the necklace, I can put it back together, you tell her gently.
What necklace? she asks.
You are exhausted. You are not sure what your sister wants you to do when she sends you a link to your brother’s OnlyFans account. What could the content be? He’s not particularly handsome. Does he lie nude on the hood of the Tesla he can’t afford? His pseudonym is GucciBoy2000. Your brother is thirty-nine.
You drag yourself out of bed just before 7:30 to wake your daughter. Your wake times have been getting later and later as the months drag on. You read that Dolly Parton starts her day at 3 am. But you are a mere mortal. Your daughter’s room is unusually cold. She left her window open overnight. You find the sunflower seeds. They are lined up in a perfectly straight little row on her windowsill. Before you can close the window, you see her visitor. A crow. He eats one and then collects a couple at a time, flying back and forth to cache them somewhere. On his last trip he drops a green malachite bead on the windowsill. It rolls along the slope of the old condo, clicking into the corner of the window frame.
You see the murder of crows in an evergreen across the street. You think of what you’ve given over the previous year -- the money to your brother, unpaid overtime to your boss, Christmas with your daughter to your ex. You’re still angry about all of it. You look at your daughter, still sleeping. You picture her gently lining up the seeds for the crows, and the crows returning the necklace to her, once bead at a time.
END
Donna Huneke lives with her wife and son in New Jersey. Her work has recently appeared in Lammergeier. Find her online @dmhuneke.