My biggest joy is roasting almonds while stalking prey.

A little about myself before I talk about my favourite pastime of roasting almonds.

I was born in June, though there are in some quarters the feeling that I was actually born in July because someone had forgotten to turn over the month on the calendar, which was glued to the wall in the kitchen of the trailer I was born in.

Even the year is in slight dispute, but for the sake of my sanity let’s say I’m somewhere around 52 years old give or take a few months. My earliest memory is waking up one morning and feeling the trailer was moving. I opened my eyes and looked out of the window, and indeed we were moving. That had never happened before. I was quite confused. I was around 3 or 4 years old. I looked across the cupboard which doubled as my bedroom and saw that the bed next to me, which housed my sister and her dolls when she wasn’t there, was empty. It was obvious that my sister was up.

Now came the problem. I wasn’t sure what to do next. Finally, after thinking about the predicament I was in, I opened the cupboard door and was greeted with a scream. My sister had decided to get dressed in the bathroom which doubles as the kitchen during mealtimes and hadn’t locked the door. I giggled and closed the door. I went back to bed and waited for my sister to finish dressing, which she did a few minutes later. She came into my part of the cupboard and scolded me. There wasn’t any use trying to defend myself because she was 23 years older than me and would’ve hit me hard, the way she hit her dolls hard when they wouldn’t sit up straight at the dining room table.

After she paused for a breath I said, “we’re moving.”
“We are?” she asked and then looked out of the window, “oh wow!” she continued, “I didn’t realise that. I better go and talk to mum and dad and see what’s going on.”
And with that, she opened the kitchen door and fell out of the trailer. I looked out of the back window and watched her bouncing along the road. I felt sorry for her. I promised I would ask her how she was, if I never saw her again. The trailer stopped and there was a knock on my door. It was my mother.

“Have you seen Rita?” she asked.

“Nah,” I replied, “not since last night.”
“I thought I heard her scream,” my mother added.

“Not me,” I replied wondering if I should tell her the truth or just leave it be. I decided not to tell my mother.

She left my room calling out for Rita and I smiled because I had the cupboard all to myself. She returned a few minutes later and looked at me. “Find her?” I asked.

“Nah,” she replied, “I think she must’ve fallen out and that was the scream I heard.”

“Maybe,” I said and then added, “where are we going?”
She smiled at me. “It’s a surprise. Your father saw an advertisement on a roll of toilet paper he used at the last gas station on which someone was selling an almond tree farm for next to nothing so, he decided he loved almonds and so we are off to the almond farm.”
“Where is this almond farm?”

“Nebraska,” she replied.

“But we’re in New Jersey. Won’t that take a lot of time?”

She was about to answer when we heard a police siren behind us. We both looked out of the back window and saw a cop car stop us. The cop got out dragging my sister from the back seat. She was all banged up and bleeding. We watched as he dragged her up to the driver’s side window and said to my father, “one of yours?”
“Nah,” he replied. “Don’t recognise her. I have all my children with me.”

“Oh ok,” replied the cop dropping my sister on the side of the road and driving away. My mother got out of the trailer and lifted my sister up and brought her inside.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said my father, “I thought we had all our urchins.”
“Nah,” replied my mother, “this one fell out.”

I jumped out of my sister’s bed and back into mine. I put all her dolls back on her bed so when she came in she wouldn’t think there was anything wrong. “Hi sis!” I waved but her face was swollen, her eyes were shut and it looked as if the right arm was broken in a few places. Other than that, she looked good. She didn’t reply but just walked over to her bed and collapsed on it.

“You’re bleeding,” said my mother the ever so observant woman that she was. “Are you menstruating?”
“Nah,” replied sister, “I broke a few bones when I fell out of the trailer.”
“Oh dear,” my mother didn’t seem too concerned. “I guess they’ll heal like the others you’ve broken in the past.”
“Yea, I guess,” she replied pulling the quilt up to her neck with her only functioning arm.

“Hi sis,” I said once my mother left the room.

“Piss off!” she replied and then added, “why didn’t you ask dad to stop the trailer when you saw me bouncing down the road?”
“I didn’t know it was you,” I lied, “I thought it was a doll you had thrown out.” She groaned but said nothing more. Karma is brutal I thought to myself. “We’re going to an almond farm,” I told her as she spat out a couple of her teeth on to the floor. Pleasant, I thought. “I guess you won’t need them anymore,” I said looking as they floated in a pool of blood.

“Why are we going to an almond farm?” she sounded drunk.

“Because it’s free,” I replied adding, “plus, I’ll be able to do what I always like to do and that is roast almonds.”
She sat up slightly. “You’ve never roasted almonds. You don’t even know what an almond is.” I shook my head. I wasn’t about to remind my sister of the dreams I had nearly every night since I was born. They were dreams of what I would do for a living. I would sit on my porch on the almond farm my dad bought decades ago with my sister sitting next to me with her broken arm still in a sling 20 years later, roasting almonds on the open fire, near what used to be our trailer until it burnt down.

I felt sorry for Mona. “You know what sis?”
“What?” she asked rolling her one eye.

“What would make things just peachy is if we roasted almonds while going hunting for otters.”
“You don’t hunt otters!” she looked at me in disgust.

“Then pray tell me, what is it we hunt for?”
“I’ve no idea and neither do I care,” she replied in her nonchalant tone. “I just don’t want you to roast almonds while you’re looking for prey.”
“Why not?” I asked stunned by her inconsideration of what I wanted out of life.

“Because the last time you roasted almonds while looking for prey, is when you burnt the trailer down and now we have to sleep in the open.”
“It’s like camping,” I replied. “Come on sis, don’t you have any adventure in your life?”
“What life?” she asked as I took a burnt almond out of the fire and threw it at one of her dolls.