I named Rainy after Mt. Rainier in Washington State. My own name means tower or hill in Gaelic and I wanted her to be a mountain of a force. Braithe was a shortening of the last name Braithwaite, which I thought was beautiful. The rest just fell in my head at the right time.

The Wrong Family

by Tarryn Fisher

1

JUNO

Juno was hungry. But before she could eat, she had to make it to the fridge without cutting herself.

She eyed a safe-ish route through the largest shards of glass that led past the island. She wore only thin socks, and as she stepped gingerly from a black tile to a white, it felt like she was playing a human game of chess. She’d heard the fight, but now she was seeing it in white porcelain shards that lay like teeth across the floor. She couldn’t disturb them, and she definitely couldn’t cut herself. When she rounded the island, she saw a green wine bottle lying on its side, a U-shaped crack spilling wine in a river that flowed beneath the stove.

Juno eyed all of this with mild curiosity as she arrived at her destination. The old GE hummed as she opened it, the condiments rattling in the door. The shelves were mostly empty—clean, but empty, Juno noted, the essence of this house and everything in it. Except today, she thought, looking back at the slaughtered dinnerware. She pressed two fingers to her lips and sighed into the fridge. They hadn’t been to the market. She tried to remember the last time they’d come home with bags of groceries, Winnie’s reusable sacks sagging as badly as Juno’s tits. They’ll go soon, she told herself. They had a child to feed, Samuel, and thirteen-year-olds ate a lot. But she was still worried. She pulled the only two Tupperware containers from the shelf, holding them up to the light. Spaghetti, three days old. It looked dried out and clumpy: they’d toss it tonight. She set that one on the counter. The other contained leftover fried rice. Juno held this one longer; she had smelled it cooking last night from her bed, her stomach grumbling. She’d tried to name the ingredients just by their smell: basil, onions, garlic, the tender green pepper Winnie grew in the garden.

Prying the lid off the container, she sniffed at its contents. She could just take a little, skim off the top. She ate it cold, sitting at the tiny dinette that looked out over the back garden. They’d been fighting about the house, and then money, and then Winnie had slammed the casserole dish on something—presumably not Nigel’s head, since he was alive and well as of this morning. The wine had been knocked over seconds later.