Exoskeleton

A slim, sharp knife slides along the arc of the shrimp’s back, and my grandmother removes its shell to reveal a translucent body beneath. I stand on a stool beside her. I make a pile of the bodies. Once the shells are removed, she holds each shrimp, one at a time, and with a flick of the thumb, removes their heads. Each head falls into a bowl, beside the heads of other shrimp. She laughs with each beheading.

A zebrafish can regenerate its heart after injury or ventricular amputation. Heart cells divide and regenerate, sourcing new material from what remains of the wreckage. Within 90 days, the muscle beating life through the zebrafish is thumping and new. The heart of a shrimp does not share this power. It does not beat behind a rib cage, protected by bone in the cavity of chest. The heart of a shrimp rests instead inside its head, behind the body’s thickest armor. To prevent it from harm. To guarantee, or bet on anyway, its survival.

My grandmother is the daughter of Slovenian immigrants. Two years after her parents made a home among Slovenes on Milwaukee’s south side, near St. John’s Catholic Church on the corner of 9th and Mineral, she was born. Many Slovenes struggled to find an economic foothold in Milwaukee. In response, the community created Sloga, an organization of Slovenian immigrants helping one another. With mortgages, medical bills, the cost of burying a body, departed. Sloga. Unity. Her mother stitched together garments for my grandmother and her many siblings, stitched traditional patterns on fabric scraps, stitched, once, so the story goes, an open wound back together again with embroidery floss and a needle passed through the purifying light of a flame.

Sometimes food was on the table. Sometimes. Rarely love was declared. Rarely.

In her parent’s tongue, the word vendriti translates as to take shelter in the rain, wait for it to pass, and continue on your way. On the counter is a bowl of hearts. In my ears is the laughter of my grandmother, a sound I know to be rare.

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Elizabeth Grey is a writer and facilitator living in Oregon. Her work is published or forthcoming in Ocooch Mountain Echo, Eastern Iowa Review, and Five Minute Lit. greyelizabeth.com