These rooms have always tried to tell me something about my relationships
- by Heather O’NeillHeather O’Neill Illustration by Emily Taylor, Updated 13:36, Jun. 21, 2023 | Published 11:49, Jan. 11, 2018This article was published over a year ago. Some information may no longer be current.
Illustration by Emily Taylor
Seven years old, Wilson Avenue
I had been sent to live with my dad. The tiles on the kitchen floor were red. There was a blue melamine table whose surface was covered with small gold stars.
My dad told me he’d learned how to cook in a prison kitchen. He had a wonderful recipe for butter cookies. He got me to help him make the round bits of dough and drop them on the baking sheet. He cursed at me the whole time, saying I was doing it wrong. Then he pressed each one down with a fork. That required artistry.
The next morning, I put the cookies in a Tupperware container and hurried off to school. I placed them on the table with all the other sweets at the bake sale. And even if you looked hard, you would not be able to determine which belonged to a child without a mother.
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