Acorn Cakes

We’re having acorn cakes for breakfast tomorrow.

Gramma’s pancakes yield a special flour she concocts from buckets of acorns that fall from the old, fat oak tree in the front yard. Bobby and I always help her pick the acorns up off the ground, break their tiny little tops off, and wash ‘em clean in the sink the night before, so that’s exactly what we do tonight.

Everyone in the shack knows when Gramma’s making acorn cakes; The sound of the mallet crushing up the countless oak nuts ‘til they’re a fine powder never fails to wake me up early. Bobby always misses it ‘cause he’s a heavy sleeper.

The kitchen’s so foggy with white dust that smells like nut butter that I choke on it when I walk in. Gramma cackles in her flour-stained, baby pink nightgown that covers her toes, curlers still in her brittle gray hair, the one tooth left in her yappy mouth miraculously hanging on by a single root. Been like that forever.

She finishes stirring the ingredients in the bowl and offers me a taste of the batter, but I wanna save my appetite for the feast.

Scooping up a glob with the wooden spoon in hand, she winks at me before happily sticking the spoon in her mouth. But the second her mouth closes, her eyes grow large with panic. She almost yanks the spoon out faster than it went in. Now, she yells and curses in pain, and I think I see blood leaking from her lips. By the time Pop runs in to help, the blood’s trailed all the way down to her wrinkly chin.

On the spoon? Cake batter, blood, and a tiny little light brown acorn top; Its sharp, light green tip looks like that of a flower in bloom. A dark chevron pattern streaks smoothly across the outer shell, and, nestled within the top’s hollow, rigid underbelly, is Gramma’s last tooth.

Bobby still sleeps.