annashay 
by Nora Esme Wagner
THROUGH THE BUBBLE WRAP, Leigh-Ann could see the KitchenAid was dark red. Tucked inside the silver bowl were four paddle attachments—rubbery and flat, wiry and sharp—that reminded her of a pirate’s collection of hand hooks. Were there really that many ways to mix things? Leigh-Ann wondered.
‘Baby,’ Leigh-Ann spoke to the wriggling creature strapped to her chest. ‘Baby, why is this here? Mama didn’t order this.’ Baby cooed unhelpfully, seeming puzzled.
Everything on the homestead was done by hand. Udders squeezed, eggs basketed, jams jarred, bread kneaded. Hair dried not with a fancy, electric blower, but outside on the porch, Baby in Leigh-Ann’s lap, tugging at the crunchy, half-wet strands.
Leigh-Ann loved rocking on the porch with Baby, but she never lingered long. Too much pleasure was wrong, sinful. Especially when Husband was hard at work rebuilding the decrepit second barn, where all the animals would be moved once it was new and sturdy and red.
She’d offered her opinion on paint swatches last week. In fact, she realized now, her secret favorite had been nearly the exact shade of the mysterious KitchenAid, black-red like leaves right before they fall. But she’d pointed to an orangey red, a happy habanero red. Husband had approved.
Leigh-Ann unwrapped the KitchenAid, feeling, for a moment, the same thrill her baby shower had stirred. Each bean-filled plush toy seemed like a precious key to a hidden chamber. One for mothers, only mothers, and their private knowledge. Just women had attended the shower—Husband’s idea—and their coy smiles, their friendly shoulder pats, had convinced Leigh-Ann the chamber was real. She was on the cusp of entering it.
Pressing her hand to the KitchenAid, she expected its motors to hum with warmth. But the metal was cold. Baby squawked and sneezed when Leigh-Ann brought her chubby fingers to the bowl, needing another’s touch to confirm it existed.
‘Baby doesn’t like the mixer,’ Leigh-Ann said, hoisting the KitchenAid and hiding it behind brown sugar bags and the revolving spice rack. It’d be safe there. The kitchen was Leigh-Ann’s exclusive domain. Husband never ventured into the cabinets. He’d never find it. It would remain untouched on the high shelf, like how Leigh-Ann had once imagined her virginity.
But Leigh-Ann couldn’t stop thinking about the KitchenAid. Not while scrubbing Baby, not while demucking the barn, not while serving Husband the biggest helping of hand-whisked mashed potatoes.
Part of it was the mystery of who’d sent it. Her only friends were other homestead wives, who would regard the KitchenAid with the same horror as they would a mother feeding their child formula (why Leigh-Ann endured the chapped, bleeding nipples).
Her sister Ann-Leigh was the only suspect. Their reversed names seemed to mirror the backward way they’d charted their lives. As teenagers, Ann-Leigh had been pious, deferential, pinafore-wearing. Devious Leigh-Ann had slept in on Sundays, pecked boys, turned her nose up at lumpy, unpasteurized milk. Sometime in adulthood, they’d transposed. Now Ann-Leigh lived in Milwaukee, contentedly childless, with a “life partner” she never intended to wed, firmly opposed to the institution of marriage.
When Leigh-Ann once confided that vaginal dryness might be affecting her ability to get pregnant, Ann-Leigh—horror of horrors—mailed her a purple vibrating penis! Just like the KitchenAid, it was banished to the bottom of her underwear drawer.
Over the phone, a traditional model with a cord and huge plastic buttons, Ann-Leigh denied and denied. Without being face-to-face, Leigh-Ann couldn’t watch for her sister’s lying tic (the twitch at the left corner of her mouth), so had to take Ann-Leigh at her word.
It was like the virgin birth of Jesus, Leigh-Ann decided. This verdict was, in a way, scarier. If the mixer was sinless, then why not use it? The thought led Leigh-Ann to vanish into her mind, mechanically tearing a bread roll, kneaded by hand, of course, before offering one to Husband first. He prayed out loud for her that night.
One day, Leigh-Ann woke up exhausted. All night, she’d sung to shrieking Baby, who calmed only until Leigh-Ann attempted to tip-toe out of the nursery, then resumed wailing. Husband needed his sleep. Early that morning, he was set to finish painting the barn.
‘We’re close,’ he said at breakfast, as Leigh-Ann yawned into her oatmeal.
She needed to bake an angel cake for a church potluck. Truthfully, Leigh-Ann hated the yolk-less cake, thought it tasted like wood shavings. But how perfect was its name?
The gelatinous egg whites looked like a bowl of snot. Leigh-Ann bounced still-fussing Baby with one arm and whisked with the other. The whites refused to transform.
‘What am I doing wrong, Baby?’ she asked. Baby had no answer.
Leigh-Ann whispered a prayer. ‘Fill me with the Holy Spirit, and give me the perseverance to keep going.’
The image of the KitchenAid exploded into her head. Was this God sending her a message? Approving?
With trembling hands, she removed the mixer from its cloister. It seemed an even deeper red now, matured.
Giddiness swelled in Leigh-Ann as she dumped the mucousy whites into the bowl. ‘Pay attention, Baby,’ she said, though it wasn’t necessary. Baby was already watching, reverently silent. It was as if they’d finally unlocked the hushed chamber.
When Leigh-Ann flicked the switch, the paddle began to spin vigorously. Baby clapped her hands slowly, awe-struck, like the dazed applause following an especially good sermon.
It was a miracle. Almost instantly, the eggs transformed into sea foam. Transfixed, Leigh-Ann watched the machine beat and beat.
Over-mixing was dangerous. Dry, grainy, inedible cake. But she let the paddle turn until the egg whites became sheer, snow-capped mountains. Cliffs you could fall from, or jump off.
oOo
Nora Esme Wagner is a junior at Wellesley College. She lives in San Francisco, California. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Smokelong, Wigleaf, JMWW, Milk Candy Review, Flash Frog, Vestal Review, and elsewhere. Her stories have been selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50. She is an assistant fiction editor at Pithead Chapel and the Co-Editor-in-Chief for The Wellesley Review.
