That’s Fucked up, fam
Juicy Ham
A family affair (Sister stories part one)
When I think back on it, I feel like I’m watching a cheesy cop show from the ’90s, where everything is musty and dark with a soft yellow glow.
The apartment kitchen was a tiny box with stained yellow walls, cheap dark wood cabinets, and old sticky brown carpet, ripped and worn from fifteen-plus years of heavy traffic and four kids. It always smelled of stale smoke.
This day, it smelled like Thanksgiving. Turkey, gravy, pies.
And smoke.
It would be crowded soon. Our extended family would gather shoulder to shoulder, babies crying and toddlers screaming. The men would watch football, the women would look at the black Friday ads, and all the cousins would play Barbies and football and color on the walls in my bedroom.
The seven hundred square feet we lived in would simultaneously grow and shrink because even though we were cramped and crowded and it was SO loud, we loved this way of gathering. We were all best friends in different ways. Our cousins were like our siblings, our aunts were second moms, our uncles were like cool brothers, and so on.
My brothers and dad would get restless and start throwing the leftover rolls –the ones too burnt at the…
