Her neck has a red patch on it. The place she always scratches when she thinks. It is painful if she focuses on it. But she does not focus on it. She instead thinks of the birthday cake, the cake cake cake that she has to have done by eleven o'clock. She can't remember the child's name. That troubles her a great deal since she always remembers and never writes the names down. Now she can't even remember. She is becoming very upset with herself. Her fingernails, short as they are, dig into the soft flesh of her neck. How could she be so stupid? she asks herself with every worn breath. Her mind turns to the child, oh, the child. She has only seen the child once, when he came to her home with his mother to order the cake. She remembers the ruddy face and clammy child hands that put her off her lunch for some reason that day. That child, she recollects, smelled abnormally. Generally, she loves children, loves them all, excepting of course those that remind her of hers. Now she thinks about the birthday party to come, and how it would be with no cake. She imagines that child with the ruddy face and the bizarre aroma standing all alone in a corner, moping for want of a birthday cake, all of his friends off somewhere else, talking about him in another room, child-gossiping about poor Clancy.
She laughs at herself. Now. That is why she forgot his name. Clancy. Her boy's name was Clancy too. A glazed look comes over her face, and a misty, numb feeling incapacitates her. She hated that name. She is still standing there like a heap, still and cold as clay, when little Clancy and his fat mother come in through the front door.
Fat Mama gasps. The kitchen mistress is bleeding all over the beautiful layer cake. ~