Katie Tonellato: BABY, SWEETHEART, HONEY • Cleaver Magazine

Katie Tonellato
BABY, SWEETHEART, HONEY

When I was young, they called me baby, sweetpea, honey, cherry pie, chubs. So often they called me these things, that when they called me my name, my real name, I curdled into myself, unfamiliar, anticipating something unknown the way animals cower in their homes, teeth bared. They called me those things until I grew teeth, grew wings, snarled at them.

My mom used to read the paper on Sunday mornings, curled up in bed, without makeup on her face, reading glasses resting on the rim of her nose. This was when I was small, in the way we were all small once, nestled at our mom’s feet under the covers of her bed, hand wrapped around her ankle.

Little Bear Cub, she would call me, taking stock of my tiny-ness: the bean pod–shaped ears, the jagged tic tac teeth, the slim transparent fingernails, sharp enough to leave a mark. A dishy daydream, swallowed by blankets, I could believe I was how she imagined me to be: cute, unreserved, preserved in my youth. Yet, even then, the sense bestowed in me, frantically crawling like a wasp through time to the surface, was that I would get older. My cheeks’ baby fat would shrivel, my mouth would grow, push my baby teeth out to clang like coins to the floor, my limbs would engorge, stretch, until the baby metamorphosed into a different sort of creature, one that resembled a smaller form, but grew ugly, its value pruned from it like leaves snipped from a mangrove tree, drifting down between breathing, raveled roots.

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Days flipped through like pages of a kineograph. Sunday mornings dissociated from my mother. Written in lead pencil on the page, I launched myself down lush grass hills, conquered the gnarled branches of maple trees, reaped summer fruit through mazes of blackberry bushes. In the corner of each drawing, my little brother trailed behind, screaming my name, screaming slow down slow down slow down.

When I arrived home, my brother was nowhere behind me. My parents reached for him, shouldering me toward the kitchen sink, but their hands came away with phantoms of my play: blackberry juice, dirt. Out the front door, down the steps, my mother turned back.

Satan’s Spawn.

I grin. Devilish, born to be.

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A boy approached me, creeping over stick branches and the underbrush, hands coaxing gently. He took his time, waiting in the periphery until I was used to his scent, until it was like he’d been there all along, until he got close enough to call me baby. His gentleness smelled of soured milk. I am told I am full of wickedness. He can’t see it, so I will make him see.

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A door slammed, footsteps echoed into the house, a thief rummaging through the dark stealing the baby dolls from my closet to sell, but it was only my mother. Her breath smoky, pungent, like rotting fall leaves, like smoke still hot from fire, like what the fuck are you doing just sitting around.

Her face hovered inches from mine, a dragon, her eyes lidded, staring straight through my pupils into what rested in the pit of my stomach, my center, raw and shriveled, a kitten shrieking. You little Piss Ant. She sunk her nails into the soft skin of my jaw and punctured through the baby fat. The howls from my belly poured out of the hole in my cheek. I imagined she heard them, silvery sweet-toned scores, pitching from one note to the next.

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A man rushed in. Immediately with Baby, Sweetheart, Woman. I devoured him, crumbled, shook and shook in his arms. The hunger made me weak; the want made me want more, and those devilish parts of me sloughed off. I wanted to be small again. He wrapped me up, pretended to feed me, but before I could notice there was no nourishment, before I could bat a hand away, he held me in his arms and forced it down my throat. Come on, Darling, another hit.

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The streets were kind, filled with walls, divots like chairs, cement textured like a rug. The streets became a house. I held a spoon in one hand, a lighter in the other. I did not look at the people invading my house. I burned the spoon, brought it to my eyes. I was struck. We’re fucking eating here, Dirty Crackhead.

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I cried in the hospital ferociously, the sorrows of my life spilled onto the floor in a great heap, so the doctors could see. I begged: diagnose me, give me a cure. The doctors ignored me, passed me over like the animal I was, caged up, leashed by IV drips and oxygen monitors. They sliced me open, took out my heart, and slipped a changeling inside, grotesque, weak, with half the capacity for love. A nurse checked my drip and flinched away from the pockmarks on my face. No one said a word to me for days, for hours, for minutes, for seconds. Nobody here knew my name.

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My mother washes my face with a damp cloth. I know it is her, I know her hands, like I know the next step of the staircase in my childhood home.

Oh Sweetheart. I reach up for her. Call me something, call me anything, I’ll become whatever you call me.

Katie Tonellato is a queer writer based out of Flagstaff, Arizona. Originally from Tacoma, Washington, she is currently an assistant teaching professor and coordinator for Northern Arizona University’s MFA program. Katie Tonellato organized The Bird in Your Hands Prize, a contest centered around BIPOC voices. She was a runner-up in the Writer’s Advice Flash fiction contest in 2021 and participated as a judge for the contest in 2022. Katie Tonellato has been published in Northwest Boulevard and The Hive Avenue.