What Became of the Tortoise Julia Withers
When Grandmother took her out of the oven, I was nearly in tears. How could she have baked a tortoise? Her body was shriveled and brown, protruding from her great shell like petrified wood. That body, which had borne the burden of time for far longer than I, went from someone to no one by the careless hand of my mother’s mother in a matter of minutes. She set the tortoise upon the table and I approached tentatively. I’ve never been able to bear the sight of death up close. Her mouth hung open, fat dead tongue, eyeballs melted into her skull, shell cracked and belly split down the middle. She was stuffed with apples, pears, cranberries, cabbage, artichoke leaves, orchids. Somewhere in the house, Mother wailed. I shuddered. There was a sound like a train and suddenly the flowers and fruits and guts in the tortoise’s belly began to churn. Organic matter became a sinister paste, so dark brown it looked almost like tar. The paste assembled itself into a square, and from the square emerged a face. It was the smoothest, whitest face there could ever be, with massive saucer eyes. I’d seen those eyes many times before, staring back at me in the bath-
2020
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