text: “Groceries?” my father called from the armchair. This was his way of asking if I had remembered to purchase groceries for the two of us on my walk home from school. A single word was all he could spare. I watched a spiral of thick yellow cigarette smoke drift from his mouth and meld into the ceiling before replying. “Yes papa, I have them.” Two blonde women in bouncing bikinis were on the television. I hoped they would provide enough distraction for me to slip away. “Bring them over son,” my father said. One flabby finger clicked the off button on the remote, nearly swallowing the thing beneath folds of sweaty skin, and the girls disappeared. My heart sank but I did as commanded. I crossed the short room and placed the overstuffed plastic bags at his feet. The grocery store was six blocks away and my shoulders ached something awful. My fingers had turned to flaming concrete and they did not straighten when I dropped the bags. If the smell of cigarettes was bad, my father's breath was worse. Hot mucus. It flew into my face and up my nostrils. I sealed my lips, but did not dare flinch away. To look away from father whilst he addressed me meant certain punishment. For such a crime, I might have to wear a blindfold for the rest of the week. “Coke.” he said, not a question. I pointed out the two litre bottles of Coke-a-Cola. Three of them. Two was too few, four was too many. Buying too few bottles meant another trip to the grocery store at the very least. Too many bottles would mean having to drink the extra in one sitting. “Cookies.” I pointed them out. There were Chips-Ahoy, but cookies also meant Twinkies, Mr. Felix’s Buttercream Tarts, and a host of other baked goods. To name them all would require tremendous effort on my father’s part. ‘*Cookies’* would have to do. He considered my offering. “No ice cream.” Sweat broke on my forehead. This was the part I had been dreading since the moment I saw the empty freezer shelf. My father weighed over three hundred pounds, and to rise from his chair required several seconds of intense effort. Only by heaving back and forth, using his own weight to catapult himself forward, was he able to rise from bed or stand out of his chair. The time it took him to stand was all the time I had to defend my actions. Once he was standing, a punishment was delivered without exception. Either for the crime of disobedience or for the crime of taking too long to explain. “They were out,” I said. The store was not completely out of ice cream, of course, but No Frills *was* out of triple chocolate fudge brownie with chunks of cookie dough. The cashier mentioned that she had just sold the last tub to the customer before me. Then she asked, as they often did, why I was shopping alone. I answered as I had been taught to: ‘*My dad is sick and my mom ran out on us when I was a little kid’*. My father stopped his rocking, but did not settle back into his seat. I was not free yet. “So what?” he said. “I got extra Mr. Felix’s.” I pulled one flap of the grocery bag away to reveal the extra box of sweets and my father relaxed. I was safe. With the trouble of the ice cream out of the way, I breathed a sigh of relief. My father, perhaps noticing that I was no longer worried, hit a button on the remote control. The bikini girls were kissing. “Eggs,” he said. I showed him the eggs. After a pause of inspection, the Tv clicked off. My heart skipped, then took off. “These...,“ he said slowly, “are the wrong eggs.” My blood went cold. I snatched the carton, careful not to break a single shell. I read the label frantically as my father restarted the heaving process. “No,” I said, trying to interrupt the squeaking hinges of his chair. “No. These are right. These are...” But they were the wrong eggs. My father required twelve extra-large, free range, brown eggs from Campbell’s Farm. He required the expiration date to be no less than a week into the future, and for the price to be no more than $3.50 even though I was the one paying. The eggs were white. “No,” I moaned, “I’m sorry, I’ll go back. I’ll leave right now. Please.” “These are the wrong eggs,” my father repeated. He managed to get his hulking frame out of the armchair and his mass was such that I was forced backward against the television. I would go back to the store tonight, we both knew that, but not before being punished. “Come,” he said, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder. I was eleven years old, and all I had ever known was to obey the command of adults. I was as likely to consider disobeying my father was as I was to consider swallowing my Canadian History textbook. He guided me to the kitchen. One hand was locked on my feeble shoulder, the other held the offending egg carton. “Sit,” he said, directing me to a chair at the kitchen table. I sat. I whimpered, and my whimpers became tears which became heaving sobs, but despite my fear I did not dare move. To move from the chair before being excused would mean being forced to sit there for a whole day, even if I had to go to the bathroom. I did not know what punishment my father had in mind this time. This was a rule I had not broken before. My father lumbered to the corner cupboard. Bending at the hip, a task of not inconsiderable difficulty for him, he retrieved a blue plastic bowl, a white dinner plate, and a worn frying pan. He put the frying pan on the stove, and the plate and bowl off to the side. He removed one white egg from the carton, cracked it, fed the runny yolk into the pan, tossed the shells in the garbage bowl, then picked out another egg. He repeated this cycle a dozen times. When all twelve eggs were in the pan, he turned the burner on medium and whisked the eggs with a fork. The result was a yellowy soup. He did not so much as look at me while he prepared the dish. “Please papa,” I cried. “Don’t punish me, I’m sorry. Please.” I was ignored. A robin landed on the window sill outside and my father thumped the glass, scaring it away. When the yellow soup had gone spongy, my father salted and peppered it, then took a bottle of ketchup from the fridge and applied a generous helping to the edge of the plate. Then he slid the tremendous omelet from the frying pan. It landed on the plate with a wet slap. The firm eggs looked like earwax but smelled fine enough. If father had added something to the omelette, something bad, it was odourless. He sat in the chair opposite mine, the only other place at the table. It groaned in protest, as chairs often did when my father sat in them, but did not break. “Eat,” he said. But he did not present me with the titanic omelet. He gave me the bowl of shells. “Papa, please.” He did not answer. Instead, my father carefully carved a generous slice of egg with his butter knife, drowned it in his pile of ketchup, and plunged the wedge into his mouth. “If you don’t eat it all before I’m done,” he said, displaying a mouthful of yellow slush, “You’ll get another bowl when you come back with the right eggs.” “Papa I can’t...” He leaned across the table and slapped me. Then he belched, souring the air. My cheek burned from the slap and my eyes stung with heavy tears. I chose a medium sized white shard and placed it on my tongue. It had no taste. I closed my mouth and swished it around a little. The shell was sharp, and cut my tongue. “Ow,” I squealed, holding one hand to my cheek. “Chew,” my father said through a second mouthful. I chewed. It was like chomping down on glass. My blood mixed with the sharp fragments of shell to produce a coppery swill. “Swallow.” I swallowed. Ants bit my throat all the way down. “Good boy,” he said. *He’s already a quarter done,* I realized, staring at father’s plate. *I better hurry.* My trembling hands selected another hunk of shell and as I stuffed it into my bleeding mouth my free hand was already picking another piece. It cut my finger tips, drawing more of my blood. “Brown eggs,” my father said, and took another bite.