Fiction: Chips and Cake by Aekta Khubchandani

Chips and Cake

By Aekta Khubchandani
QuailBellMagazine.com

She would sit in that cold corner of the kitchen during days of their school times. She escaped afternoon naps. She remembered her childhood as the days she spent stuffing the walls of her mouth, eating her emotions out with chips and chips and more chips. She imagined peeled potatoes dancing, being sliced to jump in a pool of hot oil. Crispy, salt-flavored, oil-glazed potato chips. Its smell and taste took her dreams to potato farms and chip factories. She would lay there with pillows of potatoes for long hours. 
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Age hadn’t affected her as much as her weight had. The weighing scale would still frown at the glimpse of her feet. The thunder of her thighs would shake and choke its neck.
 
Misbah loved math as she made poetry with the count of chips speed diving in her mouth. When she gorged on those chips, stripping packets with her untamed claws, she chewed them to death, tuning in to match the sound waves of her head. Hiding packets of chips was like her hidden talent.
 
She filled in Aamir’s homework sheets and blank pages of his notebooks, every weekend. Extra money would mean more chips. Sometimes, Aamir would cover up for eating all the chips by saying he shared those packets with his teammates. Misbah’s tummy was a pit that was never satisfied, and Aamir’s list of favors was longer than the length of his arm. It worked in her favor, she thought.
 
When she walked those corridors, her cheeks gently swayed like her arms. The pillars of her thighs kneaded buds of sweat making the skirt stick, abruptly. She stuffed the mocking comments with potato chips in her pockets but she couldn’t avoid their gawking eyes. She was Santa Claus without a beard, her hair blew out of proportion like bowl of overflowing honey noodles-- her smile was an undisturbed plateau. She barely had friends so she grew closer to packets of chips, instead. She spent her lunch hours on the last bench repeating the chain of words:
 
“Eat another chip,
zip your lip
eat another chip
zip your lip
eat another chip
zip your lip
eat another chip
zip your lip
…”

*** 
 
The smell of the cake batter took her to back to fragments of innocent memories she had with the local bakery down the street. She believed that bakeries held the most prestigious jobs of all time. They layered each slice of cake with a potion of magic and spread happiness to every one, even to those who didn’t ask for it. Every one left the bakery with a broad smile, flashing all their teeth together.
 
Aamir was going to get home from work, and the cake had to be baked before that doorbell rang. Butter, batter, condensed milk, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, warm water, sugar, eggs. The cake from the local bakery drastically differed to the cakes she had been baking for Aamir. She broke eggs imagining that they were eyeballs. One, two, three, and smash! And a handful of chips slid down her throat with ease. She fed herself to some more chips. Eggs made the cake softer, but the eyeballs she felt on her body made her stiffer.
 
Every year on Aamir’s birthday she baked a cake. She wanted to make him happy. But, this time of the year, a stained memory would be imprinted to her present. The stretch marks and layers of flab could not hide the past. She would relive this memory coaxing herself that it was just another stubborn tape recording that wouldn’t stop but would eventually end.
 
When they were in school together, they took the same bus despite different classes. Misbah lived her school days eating chips in the shadow of her elder cousin. They didn’t bond so well, but the barter system worked out just fine. On Misbah’s birthday, Aamir gave her a small present during lunch break. She had untied the red ribbon and rolled it around her wrist with admiration. It was light, and she wondered if it’s going to be a pair of earrings, a toe ring or an anklet. But, her face turned as red as those stripped ribbons when she found wrappers of chip packets tightly folded and forced in that box. These wrappers were the ones she had hidden under the bed, in the corner of a closet under a load of books, taped behind the wall clock of the room, at the bottom of an almari, ironed between two thick matresses and places she didn’t remember. In that moment, she realized that her secret was exposed to broad daylight, and she didn’t know what to do.
 
The barter system prevailed as strictly as the written words in Quran.
 
180 degrees Celsius. The heat radiated from the pores of the shut microwave and had made a strange presence as pearls of sweat defining the contours of her face. The tingling feeling in her fingers made her feet rush towards another packet of chips. She remembered how Ammijaan forced meat in down her throat. She used to say, “One for Abujaan, one for Ammijaan, one for Daddijaan…” Since then, Misbah forced chips in a similar pattern, the only difference was that she loved the taste of oil glazing around her tongue and the crunch of the thin sliced, fried chips in her mouth. There was a power of control that led to satisfaction. For that moment, she knew that her happiness is as easy as stuffing chips between her parallel set of teeth and killing them slowly, wrapping their bodies with her saliva, chewing them like it’s their last rollercoaster ride.
 
It was a ritual to finish a few packets and gulp down two glasses of water before making way to bed. She used to lie down with her flab melting like an amoeba, unaware of falling to sleep.
 
Sleep, like her childhood, was another cursed aspect of her life. When she closed her eyes, she remembered those corridors and streets where everyone had their eyes glued to the fat that was growing back then. She hit puberty faster due to excess fat in her body. She shamed her body for growing voluptuously. She had built an image of their eyes getting wider and closer to her as she closed hers. Their eyeballs floated like balloons, tied to her fat feet. She had been a passive insomniac since those days.
 
With the growth of her body, barter deals progressed rapidly. Aamir’s list of favours had scratched his pant pockets. Hunger was what defined them. She needed those chips and Aamir needed her to need those chips.
 
A Tuesday night, when she tucked herself in bed she felt Aamir’s toes pawing for hers. He had sneaked in to cuddle while she’d sleep. Misbah let loose of all the troubles and gave in. Sneaking in her room was like saying goodnight. The nights were finally getting better for her.
 
Unlike the usual drill, when she got up at midnight to eat a few chips, she found Aamir’s arms holding her with force. He made her stay for the night, and she cried quietly giving in.
 
The microwave beeped. The cake had finally been baked. The clock struck his hands on eight and twelve. She gathered the wrappers and dumped their remains in the bin. She wished she didn’t know why she did the things she did for Aamir. He would be home any minute.
 
She walked to their room where their wardrobe had a mirror; she covered the lower lids of her eyes with thick black kajal and wore a fake smile. Red paint tainted her fingernails and she wore the silk green dress Aamir had bought for her on a festive occasion. She had lost track of what she liked anymore. Then, she whisked some fresh cream with choco chips to prepare the ganache for the cake. She slid the knife in warm water and then coated the cake.
 
The clock stretched his hands like arms waking up on a Sunday. It was thirty past eight, and the doorbell rang. Misbah’s legs froze in that moment. They say that history doesn’t repeat, but she had been living the same bad days for years together. Her fake smile was fading, and there wasn’t much she could do about it. The sound of Aamir’s laugh was accompanied by an unknown another and someone rang the bell again. Another man? She hoped not. Aamir’s birthdays were surprises she wouldn’t want to deal with. The thought of being in bed with two men who she didn’t like pierced her. She wished she was menstruating.
 
She carried the knife glazed with ganache, in her hand and moved towards the door. Would she be able to escape? Where would she go, if she did? Whatever she would do against her husband, she would be shamed and considered a woman of bad character.
 
Aamir grinned and kissed Misbah on her cheek. His happiness had no bounds. With glinting eyes, he licked the ganache off the knife.
 
“I want to make you meet someone,” he said.
 
Misbah was startled to see who he had with him. She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to his friend he’d got along. But, trying to be nice, she smiled.
 
“Meet my wife,” he said moving his hand to her shoulder and then told Misbah, “Meet my new wife.”
 
The cake smelt bitter to her. In an instant, it started raining potato chips in her head.
 
She could almost recall the drag of the words beneath her breath:
 
“Eat another chip
zip your lip
eat another chip
zip your lip…”
 
Her newest hiding spot for chips was the hall closet. She thought about a lock. About a whole room of locks, filling it up so quickly, like so many potatoes, blocking out even the tightest pockets of air.
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