"If I get delirious and you have to take me to the hospital," I told Flip, "remember to tell them it was moldy prunes."
"Sounds like a rock band," he said. "The Moldy Prunes. Maybe. A rock band of old ladies, I thought, but I didn't feel that he should be making jokes with me on my deathbed.
We were out of ice cream, and also mochi. There were no cookies to be had. I needed a snack to watch the season finale of SVU and apples crunch noisily, so I grabbed an open bag of prunes and some Brazil nuts and went back to my show. After eating five or six of the prunes, I happened to look at one. It was white and furry. I spat into a napkin and looked in the bag. They were all like that. I might as well have been snacking on kittens. I am not good at vomiting. I have not barfed since my last pregnancy, and my baby is now a woman. I was never even able to stick my finger down my throat to get out of school; I had to lie about it.
I drank some water and rinsed my mouth about a million times with Listerine. The moldy prunes are still sitting at the base of my throat, waiting for me to drop off to sleep so they can strangle me. Or drive me mad like the women in "The Crucible" who ate moldy rye bread and were tried as witches. Mold is mold, and I'm allergic to penicillin. I even avoid Roquefort cheese. My stomach hurts, and so does my jaw. I wonder if you can get lockjaw from moldy fruit. It wouldn't surprise me. It would be ironic to die of this as I don't even like prunes much. I prefer them when they are still plums.
When I was three, my mother made me eat one and I choked on it. My father held me upside down by my ankles until the whole prune fell out of my mouth onto the kitchen floor.
It has taken most of my life for me to be able to even look at one again. There is obviously a reason for this. I have bad prune karma.
I'm so tired, but if I let down my guard, they'll get me. I am in prune hell.
Pray for this sinner now and at the hour of my death.
Amen.
