She stared down at it while Mom set down the plates for Dad and then herself, before returning to the kitchen to get something.

“Eat,” Dad said.

She got her knife and fork and held each clenched in one fist, waiting until her mom returned.

“Eat while it’s hot,” her mom said, before sitting down. She began to pour drinks, while Kanzi set to working on her dinner.

It was like when nachos were overcooked in the microwave, and the cheese boiled and got super hard. The difference was that she still wanted the nachos when they were overdone. The dinner knife refused to cut the hard crust. Pressing down on the hard portion made the runny goop in the middle ooze out onto the plate right in front of her chin, and the smell was worse.

Her dad was having trouble cutting up the food too. She opened her mouth to say something, and between the smell and the feeling that had been worming through her belly for the past hour, a barfy feeling surged up. She stopped herself before it became actual leaving-the-mouth barf.

“Hurk,” she couldn’t stop herself from making the sound.

Her mom’s chair scraped on the floor. Kanzi’s shoulders drew forward her head down, while she tried to breathe as little as possible.

“I worked really hard on dinner,” her mom said. One hand rested on the back of Kanzi’s chair, the other on the table by her plate.

“Just eat, Kanzi,” her dad said. “You don’t have to eat it all, but eat.”

“I would like her to eat it all,” her mother said. “I slaved away in the kitchen for hours, with the expectation that my daughter would appreciate my work.”

“Alright, Irene.”

Kanzi gripped her utensils. She made a renewed effort to cut her food. Her knife slipped and scraped against the plate, producing a screech. She was startled enough that she dropped the utensils. The knife clattered to the plate, while her fork fell, clattering to the floor.

“There’s no gratitude.”

“I’m sorry,” Kanzi told her mom.

“We give you everything. Nice clothes, nice food, a hairstylist, a nice big house, and there’s no appreciation.”

She looked to her dad for help.

“Listen to your mom. We need you to try harder when it comes to these things.”

She moved her chair back, so she could go down and get her fork off the ground. Her mom reversed the course, pushing the chair in, hard.

“Where are you going? What did your dad just say, Kanzi?”

She froze.

“He told you you need to try and your first thought was to get up from the table?”

She’d wanted to get her fork. That was all.

She was cornered. There was nothing she could say or do when Mom got like this. She could only try to listen.