Assistant Editor Emily Rose Cole: The metaphor at the heart of Anu Kandikuppa’s “Housewives” is deceptively simple: the figurative consumption of housewives’ time, physical energy, and emotional output is transformed into literal consumption of the housewives’ bodies. It’s a consumption that only women seem to notice. In a time upended by quarantine, a time when so many women are shouldering extra burdens of housework and care work in the home, the exhaustion woven into these words is particularly acute. For me, the deepest tragedy in this piece is how relieved the protagonist, Sarita, seems to feel when her youngest son absently eats the last bit of her. At the end, Sarita is so resigned to self-annihilation that instead of feeling rage or sorrow at her own erasure, she takes comfort in knowing that her son can exist without her.
To hear Anu read the story, click below:
Housewives
Her husband’s nibbles were gentle enough, though his gouging out of a space for himself in her hurt. But the babies’ attachment hurt more. Sarita couldn’t bear the touch of cloth, so she went topless in the house, twin bull’s-eyes resplendent on her chest. There was no respite when she started the children on table foods—they continued to partake of her to complement the increasingly complex dishes she prepared for them: mashed potatoes, ravioli, rajma, vegetable lo mein, paneer makhani, samosas. At the farmer’s market on Thursdays Sarita couldn’t help but notice the prickle-edged bitemarks marring the contours of other women. In the hope that they would be seen as more than food, the housewives made eyes at the vendors, then poked and prodded and picked the best produce for their families—they themselves made do with stale fruit and bread, yesterday’s rice and rotis. In the evenings Sarita tried in vain to provide the children with stout counsel for their homework and course electives—she did have a master’s degree in business after all—but they were now consuming her at a faster rate than she could offset with the poor fare she allowed herself, so her voice emerged only faintly. When one day Sarita’s youngest reached absently for the last morsel of her and preparatorily dipped it in ketchup, she at least had the comfort of knowing he was old enough to make his way in the world without her, very well, thank you.
Anu Kandikuppa‘s fiction has appeared most recently in Calyx, Epiphany, and McNeese Review. Her work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net anthology. Anu worked as an economics consultant in a former life and lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Her website is www.anukandikuppa.com.
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