I’m riding shotgun with our big grandma of a fridge sticking out the back. She’s sandwiched between the hatch and the rusted bumper, tied by the rope from my tire swing. I rub her smooth metal top where she held my cereal. We’re headed to the dump. It’s where Dad says quitters go. He isn’t one to give up but his last attempt to fix her only got us a week of semi-cool air before she stopped altogether. Mom spent the morning not sleeping after the night shift to cut cry onions for beef stew and Shepherd’s pie so that the defrosted round roast was used before it spoiled. The smell made me nauseous, but she says a meal isn’t a meal without meat, which is another of the differences between me and them.
In the crusty beige console is a pack of cool blue gum. Only two slivers are left. They’re limp, having lived the morning in the back pocket of Dad’s jean cut-offs. I peel off the foil and stuff a rectangle into my mouth. The flavor fades real quick, but the chewing is good enough to keep going on and on.
It’s fixable, Dad says, just needs a new compressor, but GE doesn’t make them anymore ‘cause they want you to buy a new one every goddamn decade. On eBay, there’s a guy in Clovis, California, who’s charging an arm and a leg, plus shipping and handling, for one, which is criminal but still way less than buying a used fridge from Ollie’s Appliance Outlet. But Mom is still boiling hot about cooking stew and pie on a summer morning, so asking her to live a week without a crisper is a no go.
The car smells like the cigarettes Dad promises Mom he isn’t smoking, and she believes him even as she steps over butts to go to work every night. It’s hot enough for Dad to have the windows rolled down. As we speed along the highway, I lean out with my mouth open to trap more cool into the gum. It’s not hot enough for the AC. AC hot is triple digits ‘cause he says it uses up gas. It’s like how he paid extra for a car that’s manual shift with crank windows in order to cut out the middleman. It’s not just about the cost of the thing; it’s the add-ons they’ll suck out of ya. And yet, he’s never mentioned how much it cost to get me. To buy me? I found the adoption paperwork at the bottom of his gray metal lockbox that’s never locked. I was thousands, and that’s just the upfront price. I’ve had a good amount of extras over the years, too. I keep a tally and don’t know if he is too, or this is another of the big differences between me and them.
As we bump down the back road to the dump, dust sticks to my failed attempt at blowing a bubble, so now it feels like I’m chewing a clam. We’re waved over to the recycling road entrance, and Dad squeezes the steering wheel tight as we pass by rows and rows of grandma fridges just like ours; wide and squat with welcoming round edges. The metal detailing on their handles shines ‘cause they’ve got none of that plastic crap that Dad says will be the end of us.
The stained t-shirt attendant shows us where to park. He hangs his head sorrowfully and mutters, such a shame, she’s a real beaut, as Dad gets out. I watch from the side mirror as the men shake hands and wonder if they can feel each other through their thick thumb blisters. They pull in close for tap, tap, taps on each other’s backs before separating. Dad recounts the injustice of the whole thing, his hand on the attendant’s shoulder for support. Then they put on their work gloves and get down to the business of haulin’ out the trash. Gently, they nudge her frigid metal body out of the car and set it upright. The attendant assures him it won’t get crunched, he’ll see to that, someone’ll at least pick her up for spare parts.
Dad returns and slams the driver-side door so hard I choke, swallow my gum. He peels out, leaving a cloud of dust that looks like fireworks. I wave goodbye through the sparkling dirt. When goodbyes are too hard for me, Mom says enough now, you were too young to remember. But this is the biggest difference between me and them, being left is who I am. So before the ride to the dump, I tucked a note inside grandma fridges’ metal icebox telling her that she was loved, that she was a perfect fit even though we aren’t perfect, and that we wanted to keep her, but it was too hard.
At home, I pretend the place where the grandma fridge lived is my kitchen bedroom. The wall behind her was painted a hubba bubba pink that’s so bright the fridge shape color radiates onto the oil-splattered white walls around it. The floor is a fluffy filth covered with magnets, bottle caps, and rubber bands. But a sweep of my hand shows that she had been protecting the tile underneath, it’s still shiny new.
For dinner, we eat more of the same from lunch because Mom says, waste not want not. It’s the remains of our dead grandma’s fridge, jars with just a scrape of jam, pickles that are mostly onions and mustard that disappear into bread that’s been saved for the birds. Mom makes a serving platter out of plastic hamburger and hotdog bun bags and puts paper napkins under our chewing as plates. Cleanup is just brushing away some crumbs, and we are done. There is nothing left to do but ignore the emptiness, the wide openness, the space no one’ll ever talk about.