Pumpkin

Pumpkin. I have been called that name for years. I hate it. I hate my mother for calling me that, for instilling in my naïve young mind the idea that I was actually a pumpkin. Clearly, I’m not. I don’t grow among wide, green leaves, nor did I spend my childhood whispering to ants and cutworms as they crawled over me. No eager children turned me over, checking for rotted spots or discoloration. I do not have rotted spots. I hate that my mother could imply that.

Pumpkin. I am not orange. Not naturally, I mean. I once used that spray-on tanning solution when I was sixteen in an effort to convince myself that it was not February and I didn’t have fish-belly pale legs, thus turning myself into a skinny, five and a half foot tall carrot-colored young woman. Maybe that makes me closer to a carrot, but not a pumpkin. I’m not built like a pumpkin. I hate the idea that my mother could imply that I was. Thanks, Mum. That’s good for my self-esteem.

Pumpkin: it’s just a cute word. Fuck that. “Bubbles” is a cute word. “Armadillo” rates pretty high up on the cute scale, too. But I don’t think “pumpkin” is cute. I mean, take it apart: pump and kin. The kin of a pump? Mother, I am not the kin of any pump. Well, I guess you could be a pump. God knows you’re a siphon, a vacuum. You’ve been sucking my patience from me for years.

If you rearrange the letters of “pumpkin” you can get “mink pup” or “knpumpi.” The latter really doesn’t make any sense, but the former has a sort of charm. I’d imagine a mink pup would be pretty cute, cuter than a damn vegetable, in any case. Whatever. None of this really matters. What are these things called? Anagrams? That sounds right.

If I could talk to my mother about this stupid nickname, I don’t know what I could say. I tried once. I said, “Mum, remember when you used to call me pumpkin?” It seemed like a good start. But she laughed and went on to reminisce about my childhood instead. Her smile was too warm, too fond for me to disrupt it with my complaints. My arguments, which I had been repeating and planning in my head for weeks, just slipped away under a wave of shame as she happily recollected the time when I was in kindergarten and told the teacher, “I’m not a little girl, I’m a pumpkin!” I felt guilty for hating the nickname that had followed me like a cocker spaniel puppy through two decades of my life. Like all mothers, she disarmed me with guilt. I hated it.

You know, he probably didn’t deserve it, but it happened before I knew what I was doing. He didn’t know better. Whatever. It doesn’t change anything. The blood is still drying on my hands and making my fingers stick together. The kitchen knife is still lying among blood splatters and crusty pumpkin seeds on last week’s newspaper covering the table. My pumpkin is still grinning at me with crooked teeth, winking because I hadn’t finished the left eye yet. Its left, not mine.

I can only see his feet from here. His socks, dirty from walking out on the back step to retrieve the pumpkins we had bought earlier in the day, hung lifelessly on stiffening toes. He should have showed me what he was carving. I could have told him, “No.” His smile was so proud as he finally showed me the finished pumpkin with our names carved into the orange skin around a elegant heart.

He did do a great job on it, though.