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Jell-O Salad

Howell, MI

GABRIELLE MONTESANTI

Ask anyone from Podunk, from Backwoods, from Flyover. Find one of us redneck, white trash, Honey Boo Boo bitches. Talk to somebody whose dad wore a jumpsuit—either at the shop or in the slammer—and make sure their mama couldn’t help with homework past the fifth grade. Somebody who never had their own bedroom. Somebody who thought the county fair was vacation and Hamburger Helper was some real gourmet shit. What I’m saying is to ask the Lowdown, the Nobodies, the Hicks and the Hillbillies. Find one of us and ask. We’ll tell you about Jell-O salad.

Mine was cherry. Served in the glass bowl where Goldie died. Blueberries frozen like hail over a rocky pretzel wasteland. Cool Whip or mayonnaise to taste. Each year at Christmas, there were no chairs at the table, just a bucket of chicken and Jell-O salad for dessert. Paper plates, plastic forks, Grandma’s crucifix looking down on it all.

I’ve crawled through caves under Naples and dodged tourists in Times Square, but I’ve still never found a space tight as Grandma’s house. Cousin Cal always tried claiming the couch’s armrest; he’d perch there and squawk cuss words until somebody told him to get the fuck off before he breaks the damn couch. Aunt Susan camped out in the kitchen in case anybody needed a cup of well water tea or an off-brand Oreo. Aunt Donna sat on the floor in front of the La-Z-Boy to clip Grandpa LeRoy’s toenails, which were yellow and thick as quarters.

All nineteen of us cousins ate our Jell-O salad in the hallway, the only place we weren’t underfoot. We dug out the fruit with our fingernails just to chuck it down the laundry chute, threw around funny names for our future kids, like Ankle Biter and Butt-Licker. Most of us planned on staying in Nowheresville, or we just didn’t know we had any other choice. Cousin Jessica was perfectly content staying put even though she got called Hoebag by all the boys and Floozy by the gray-haired neighborhood gossips. Cousin Tony liked that his teachers remembered having his daddy in class and knew him as the most charming mailman in town.

Some of us cousins were I’ve-Gotta-Get-Out-Of-Heres. Cousin JoJo talked about how she was gonna marry the first rich man she met, didn’t even care if he was an Uglyface. Cousin Chris fooled himself into thinking he would play for Detroit, even though he couldn’t catch a baseball if it smacked him between the eyes. Mom once found a drawing of skyscrapers in the margins of my journal and tossed it out into the rain.

Every summer, Mom and Grandma shaved the dog with the same sheers Grandpa LeRoy used to trim his beard. They’d hammer a stake into the soft ground between the old chicken coop and the moss-covered Virgin Mary and tie Lucy to it. Mom put her in a headlock while Grandma went to town. A dull hum. Lucy’s ragged breath. Tumbleweeds of fur carried off by white-throated sparrows. Every now and again, Mom would loosen her grip and half-shaved Lucy would run as far as the leash allowed.

What I’m saying is, I know what it’s like to be tethered to Bumfuck, running in circles like an animal. It doesn’t matter how far away I move or what City Slicker skin I try on. Nobody cares that I use ten-dollar words like juxtapose or that I juxtapose everything I am now with all the places I’ve been. Doesn’t matter that I cough up extra dough so I don’t have to wipe my ass with that thin-as-a-Bible-page off-brand toilet paper. Doesn’t matter that I learned in college that Mr. Right is a Miss and now we’re planning a Gay Wedding in a Gay City five hundred miles from Grandma’s house.

Here’s what matters: I keep a box of cherry Jell-O in the pantry behind the red lentils and the flax seeds. On days when I’m feeling like some kind of Posh White Whole Foods Biddy, I think about whipping up some Jell-O salad, but something always stops me. Maybe I’m worried I can’t make it like my people. Maybe I’m afraid I won’t like the way it tastes.