Assistant Editor Lisa Low: At the beginning of “boysenberry marmalade,” the nine-year-old narrator tells us about his Tía Nora’s new “atomic guts.” This instance of playful language is the first of many moments that express not only a child’s transformative imagination but also the challenge to understanding the chaos of illness and the body. In a scene that recalls—and is, at the same time, much more than—a role-play scenario from the D.A.R.E. program, the perspective of JJ Peña’s young narrator is as illuminating as it is vivid.
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boysenberry marmalade
when i was nine, the doctors gave my tía nora atomic guts—to kill the rot branching, spreading inside. when she came back from the hospital, she went straight to her room & locked herself within. i knocked on her door hours later, & she screamed, i’m sick. stay away. opposite advice to what she had told me in the past, when she said, while rolling an uncooked egg on my forehead, mirarte! heat’s spilling out. mijo, you tell someone when you don’t feel good. sickness doesn’t lonely someone. i avoided going near my tía for the rest of the day—imagining radiation leaking out of her skin, a boysenberry marmalade she wiped away between commercial breaks with her palm-tree sheets underneath, a green that slashed & burned into soot. until she called for me & whispered behind her door, bring me a cigarette. i need silence. i argued with her: but didn’t the doctor say no smoking? the door cracked open slightly & half of her face came into view. do you want me to get better? i nodded. then go. i went searching—thinking maybe some people are only intact in smoke. after i found her lighter & pack of marlboros, i handed them over: she snatched them quick, hugged the cigs to her chest, & shut the door on me. she sparked one up & exhaled, i love you. her insides fogged, & i wondered how much bad someone could shove deep inside before their bellies were bursting with black jam.
JJ Peña is a queer, burrito-blooded writer living in El Paso, Texas. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions, and is included in the Best Microfiction 2020 anthology, & the Wigleaf Top 50 (2020). His stories have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, Hobart, Wigleaf, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere.
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