Twelve Red Grapes

We squat under the dining table, blanket spread beneath us. The dogs whine, anxious at this odd late-night picnic. Three glass bowls sit at our feet, with twelve red grapes, glistening wet and ripe, in each. At the stroke of midnight, my daughters and I are to devour them—a New Year’s Eve tradition circulating on TikTok, the official fount of knowledge and wisdom for teen girls. Twelve grapes for twelve months, twelve wishes for good luck in the new year. There are other rituals, too. Dollar bills stuffed in our pockets. My younger daughter wears a polka-dot shirt with a polka-dot tie around her neck. Her sister rolls her eyes but tucks pennies into her socks. All our downstairs windows are open; the back door, too. There’s a pot of black-eyed peas on the stove, and on the counter a lemon studded with toothpicks, meant to look like a pig. We’re all wearing white undershirts and red panties. I’m not sure what specific luck these are meant to bring, but we all agree we need as much as we can get this year.

The clock tocks down. Ten minutes to midnight. The floor reminds me of my tiff with gravity, both of us as unforgiving as this past year has been. I bump my head on the underside of the table. “Ow,” I say. “Focus, Mom,” my younger daughter chastises. I’m the child now, whining about the hard floor, the smell of overripe grapes, sickly sweet and honeyish. Three minutes to midnight. The dogs bark, and I whack my head again.

Earlier that night, I had asked each girl what she planned to wish for.

“That we all stay healthy and live a long life,” my younger said.

“To work out every day, stay away from the drama, and finish the year with A’s and B’s.” My older girl, as practical as her mother. She often tells me what I want to hear.

I tell them how proud I am that they’ve survived this year. The day after tomorrow will be twelve months since their father died. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. We are all devastated still.

In The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li writes, “Living is a game of rock-paper-scissors: fate beats hope, hope beats ignorance, and ignorance beats fate.” He could not escape his fate. Hope abandoned us all. Perhaps superstition is a kind of ignorance. I don’t care. There are a million ways to give up, but we choose magic over grief and despair, and tonight we’ve decided to eat twelve grapes for twelve months. Twelve wishes for twelve ways to learn to live without him.

A minute from midnight, my older daughter pulls out her phone and flicks on countdown mode. Her sister swivels hers to record us. I’ve forgotten mine but run to grab it from the bedroom and open it so the screensaver photo of their father lights up. His smile warms us, and I imagine him here, sipping from a flute of champagne, kissing the girls’ flushed cheeks, and stroking my lips with his fingers. He should be here with us, I think, and touch the empty spot on the floor beside me.

Twenty seconds to go. Our hands hover over bowls. The countdown begins: 10, 9, 8 … We grab grapes, slick and squishy. 7, 6, 5, 4 … I’m laughing now. “Mom. Concentrate,” my younger hisses, but she’s infected too, and the giggles roll back and forth between us.

3, 2, 1! The phone rings midnight.

We stuff grapes into mouths. I choke. My younger girl laughs so hard she spews chewed up grapes all over the blanket. My older girl calmly pops grapes into her mouth one at a time, chews and swallows. “Done!” she yells. Her sister downs wishes 8, 9, 10. I’m laughing and choking. I’ve swallowed 3, maybe 4, and now my older grabs my remaining grapes and gobbles them up. “That’s cheating!” her sister squeals. She swallows wishes 11 and 12. I choke and laugh, and suddenly hope sparks in my chest. I know that no amount of wishing will bring him back, but we need magic and wishes and silliness if we are to have any chance of surviving this. We chorus “Happy New Year!” and hug each other. The dogs bark again, and I knock my head against the table above me. “Ow,” I say again. The girls laugh and hug the dogs, letting them lick grape juice from their fingers.

Jamie Etheridge’s writing has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Bending Genres, Essay Daily, Identity Theory, JMWW, Pithead Chapel, Porter House Review, Reckon Review, X-R-A-Y Lit, and elsewhere. Jamie’s wins include Porter House Review Editors’ Prize finalist, Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, Fractured Lit Anthology Prize, Kenyon Review Fellowship finalist, and nominations for the Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net series. Follow her on BlueSky @lescribbler.bsky.social and at LeScribbler.com.

This essay is a Short Reads original.