.II.

Where does the air come from? When you boil water, big pockets of air collect from somewhere the pot and bubble to the top in a burst of steam. Where does the air come from? When you heat up water, apparently some of it turns to air. But if you were half an inch tall and submersible, June wondered, what would it look like down there at the bottom of that pot? Maybe you would look around the bottom edge and you’d see water lift off the sides, bending light in a swirl of heat and air, and it would fly off the bottom and shoot towards the top, and it would do this all over the place. Surely it would be nothing short of frightful to watch the seething and exploding from inside it.

June slid the boiling pot over to the side of the charred stovetop so the water wouldn’t boil so strong and added a few spices for the crabs. The boiling slowed, and the size of the bubbles flying towards the surface became smaller, about pea-sized. The steam rising off the water carried the scent of the cayenne pepper, bay leaves, lemon, and various other ingredients with it. She had learned this recipe from her grandmother Janice who came to Florida all the way from Louisiana. Janice and her husband Jonathan were both second-generation emancipated slaves, and their parents had both belonged to the same wealthy politician. This politician had a predilection for smoking opium while Jonathan’s father played sad songs on the fiddle, and in this way they had built a more informal relationship than was common between slaves and slave-owners. As this was the case, when Jonathan’s parents found themselves emancipated by order of the federal government, the politician gave them a large and expensive piece of property near his own. Jonathan inherited the property when both parents expired in a barn-fire, and he promptly married Janice, sold the land, and moved himself and his newly-wed wife to Florida. June remembered her grandmother from this smell, the smell that was tied up in the steam that swirled towards the gray wooden rafters of the house.

Something punched the window the next room over, and the window rattled in its pane from the impact. June’s eyes reacted quickly enough to glimpse a little bird drop form view. Oh Lord no, she whispered. They always do that. I hate it when they do this. June hurried to the window, pushing a dining room chair out of her way she could get to the window. The dove was squirming painfully down in the grass below her window. Can’t they figure it out? Lord I hate it when they do this. The glass was dark and shiny and had the wooden frame right through the middle; it was easy to see. There was even a white curtain that hung down right inside the window. The dove picked itself up lamely and flew painfully to a nearby pine. It hurts me every time they do this. Why can’t they learn? Last time, the dove had broken its neck on the window. It broke its own neck! How can a thing kill itself? Doesn’t life beget life? How can something alive bring itself to death? It is a matter of life and death, that the doves learn to see the window; why can’t they learn? If I could tell them, I would. June’s eyes were filled with pain. She wished she could explain the danger, what glass is, and what it’s for, and how to see windows. That was the hardest part, that she had to sit behind the glass and watch them break their necks on it, and there was nothing she could do to make them stop. She wished she could open the window and shout to those doves that they are just killing themselves and ought to be careful what things they throw themselves at so confidently. She wished she would never again have to look down and see that mess of awkward brown and cream-colored wings and black spots writhing in the grass. I’d save them if I could. I’d save each one if it was my place, thought June.

She stepped back over to the stove and looked at the steam rising of the turbulent water. Isaiah and Caleb should be home soon.