Julia Mallory
Fiction
“They were like fish meal
poppin in a greasy skillet
cracklin hot at sunrise.” – Jayne Cortez
He caught the fish and she fried it. That had been their arrangement for the last_____ years.
It all started on the first day Orlanda saw him roadside. She was a little short, most of her cash paid for a bus ticket to this tiny sea-side town from a place she swore to forget the name of. Walking up to his makeshift stand, she ran through her lines in her head. With barely a greeting, Orlanda started to haggle like she learned by watching her grandmother perform out of desperation, even if it was dressed up in the upper hand. Talk down the product. Talk down the price. Walk off with the bounty.
Herman was in no rush to talk. He always chose his words carefully when he knew there was no space for him to change his mind. By the time he spoke, Orlanda felt like the heat had rushed her. He looked her right in the face and laid out clear as the sky staring down on them: “Ma’am. I know my fish is good. I’m not gonna discount it when I already price it fair.”
And without missing a beat he added in between her fast blinking: “But maybe you can do something for me and we both benefit.”
Her cornflower blue dress offset her rage.
“Maaaaan, I know you ain’t asking me to do that for a lil ol piece of fish.”
His intention had been so far in the right direction that it took a minute for his mind to travel back to where hers was.
“Oh, no! Nothing like that, ma’am. I’m saying that since I gotta catch the fish, come out here and sell the fish. It would be nice if someone else could fry it. I’m offering fried fish for both of us on Fridays.”
In trying to get her mind right, she relaxed her shoulders as the petals of the tiny daisies on her dress straightened out. Being raised by folks that always had a string of tales lined up formed a bad habit in her. The third man she ever loved told her she said ‘no’ before he could finish his sentences. Her mind already made up as he made his point, even when there were no questions or action needed on her part. So listening to this pecan brown man with matching groove lines in his forehead offer her something in return for her bad faith negotiation soldiered up ‘no’ in every nerve ending in her body.
Herman just stared at her and let the silence fight his battle. She stared back. Too used to getting her way because people hated that much eye time on them. But she was in front of a man who didn’t need to win anything. He had what she wanted and he knew it. Why else would she be carrying on like kindness had left the state? He wasn’t even offended, just slighted that she didn’t think he could spare a piece of fish.
See, it didn’t make him no never mind either way. He wasn’t attached to generosity. He gave when he felt it or didn’t bother otherwise. And he slept good on both nights. But Orlanda’s mood managed to turnaround and meet him halfway and a new friendship was formed. Herman didn’t know her from a can of paint but had a feeling her food would be good, or figured she would have at least told him otherwise since they now had some truth between them.
She had always been a good cook. From the time she was small enough to snap peas and beat cake batter for the reward of the sweet spoon. Her grandmother hadn’t been prone to eating other people’s food or fish, a complaint always seem to follow:
Lot’s wife must’ve salted this fish.
The fish is hard as the tail. Can’t tell a lick of difference.
Fisherman stood outside all day to catch this and she couldn’t wait until the grease was hot.
But in Orlanda, she trusted. So Herman was surely in good hands.
Now, this isn’t to say this arrangement didn’t have a funny way of complicating both their lives. Potential suitors couldn’t understand:
Why you frying fish for another man? No, it don’t make sense to me at all.
Why you eating another woman’s fish? Am I not good to you?
But one day, she found her a man with some sense. When he finally tasted her fish, he understood. Especially since he didn’t have to buy or fry it, he was just as happy to receive the gift of flaky, fried flesh, putting the little he saved towards a down payment on some happiness he thought could be theirs.
Herman’s situation took a little longer to smooth out and hit its stride. It seemed harder for the women he met to accept this arrangement. Maybe because they were taught that most of their value was supposed to be tied up in their pots. It was like women of a certain age all shared the same grandmother that shouted: don’t let another woman in your kitchen. Your table today. Your bed tomorrow.
Herman’s latest main (and only) was a medium height, medium build, medium brown woman with a face that the sun favored. Her cheekbones dared you to look away. She had a right eyebrow that was always raised in inquiry even when her face was relaxed. Orlanda thought the like was mutual. Then came two weeks in a row when her assumption was tested.
The first Friday that showed her the error in her thinking, Orlanda stopped by Herman’s house to drop off his portion of the cooked catch. She was met at the door by Mayrie, who assured her Herman had stepped out. There is always a first time for something but when her offer to leave the plate of fish was met with disinterest, a nasty feeling crept around her as the door closed the possibility of it being anything other than jealousy. And Orlanda was understanding—it took a while for her sympathy to sour. Mayrie was telling the truth–Herman had stepped out–but his departure was orchestrated by her sudden need for a cold drink to go with the fish she pretended to be dying to taste for the first time.
The following Friday, Herman hinted at Orlanda’s absence and she apologized for not getting word to him that the heat had pulled her under the weather. He knew a lie when he heard it, which synced up with the lie Mayrie served him. Both of them telling a story about the same situation could only mean one thing.
The next time Orlanda returned to the pink-periwinkle house, Mayrie refused to open the door altogether. Undeterred by Mayrie hiding out in the house, Orlanda yelled into the cracked window. Even the hydrangeas spread their petals in suspense, prepared to spread the scent of gossip in the air.
“I know what you’re trying to do. Imma sit right here on this porch until Herman returns if you don’t come out.”
Now, to be fair, to say that Herman or Orlanda hadn’t thought about it wouldn’t be the whole truth. Especially, with feeling like there wasn’t a whole heap of people that would get their peculiar ways. Yes. They had to admit it, they had some ways about them. So when Orlanda found her person she told Herman to hold out hope a bit longer since she was the more surly of the two of them. From time to time, he’d tease her about her trying to steal fish from him the first time they met. And she’d mock him for trying to sound like some wise old man who was telling fortunes and not selling fish. When he laughed just a little too hard, she’d call him a fish oil salesman.
Orlanda could have just told him outright about Mayrie, but figured they needed to work it out as women. She wasn’t trying to lie to Herman, but she knew exactly how it would go. He’d confront Mayrie about her ways, she’d play confused, her right eyebrow playing right along, he’d fight his way through feeling like he was being lied to everyday, eventually settling into a pattern until he snapped (out of it). No, Orlanda leaving the problem to Herman wasn’t going to shrink Mayrie’s doubt that was starting to crowd them out of the home they were trying to build together.
Sitting on the porch with her back to the door, she started in when she heard it ease open.
“Mayrie, I know it ain’t easy to trust me on account that’s just how the world is. But believe me when I say, this benefit you, too. You really wanna clean all that fish and then have to clean you up after? Scales glittering everywhere? Washing three times on Friday?
Orlanda let her logic settle. Putting too much on it could move Mayrie back in the wrong direction, who was now standing in the crook of the doorway, tapping the foot that she wanted to use to nudge Orlanda from her porch. But there had been something about the way Orlanda had said the word three, like it was pleading its own case, that made Mayrie turn her hearing back on.
Her intention had been so far in the wrong direction that it took a minute for her mind to travel back to the front porch to shake hands with Orlanda’s sincerity. Mayrie wouldn’t force a smile because she didn’t feel like it but she wanted to try. She paced her reckoning, turning one sentence into three.
“No. No, I do not. At all.”
With the question no longer lingering between them, Orlanda stood to face her and gave her grin a chance to warm up as she slowly pulled back the foil from the plate like a magician. Mayrie’s nose was the first to tell her how silly she had been behaving. She reached her Revlon Red nails toward a piece of fish that she just knew had to have had her name on it.
Herman watched the entire exchange between them just shy of where he could be seen. Something about anticipation sank him into the second-hand memory of the moment that everyone fed him pieces of over the years. He rubbed a spot on his arm as if it was the waxy skin of his mother’s where the hot fish grease had turned her flesh into agate, her arm a layer of protection above his toddler head.
He couldn’t name any of it as a child but knew after the accident that the air had been thick with wait and worry. His mother had been calm throughout the entire ordeal, further confusing his understanding of the moment. But to his benefit, the memory would not hold in this heat. A single tear of sweat managed to find the hollow of his back and irritated him back to the present. Orlanda and Mayrie were now outlines waving in the haze of the day, the aluminum foil flashing word of a truce. Peace, followed quickly by gratitude, washed over him that he didn’t have to break his own heart: he could have his fish and eat it too.
Julia Mallory is a storyteller, whose foundational creative love language is poetry. Julia’s work can be found in A Gathering Together, Barrelhouse, ARTWIFE, The Offing, Torch Literary Arts, Obsidian, Emergent Literary, Michigan Quarterly Review, So to Speak Journal, and elsewhere.Julia received the 2022 CUSP Prize for Fiction and the 2023 Mayday Micro-Chapbook Poetry Prize. In addition, she is a Poetry Editor for The Loveliest Review. She is also a visual artist and emerging filmmaker whose work has screened from Toronto to Iceland. Julia is the mother of three children and is from the Southside of Harrisburg.
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