Toasting Frogs
I sit by the window and watch the rain fall. Some splatters on my head as it leaks through the thatch roof. Absently, I rub my hand through my snarled hair and feel the droplets collect under my bitten fingernails.
“You should go outside, Janelle,” Etain says from his seat by the fire. He shifts on the stool and picks up a long, whittled stick. I notice a jar of brownish-green undulating things by his feet.
“Are you toasting frogs?” I ask, scrambling down from my perch on the window and come to sit at my older brother’s feet.
“Yes,” he says reluctantly. I know that he doesn’t like it when I watch him toast his frogs. But it has always fascinated me, ever since he started doing it five years ago. “But I really think you should go outside.”
“It’s raining,” I mutter, picking up the glass jar of live frogs and staring at them. I always look for their private parts to tell if they are boys or girls but I can never find them. I see their eyes, though. Big bulging yellow and black things that flick around, panic-stricken. As though they know what’s about to happen. But of course they don’t, because they’re just frogs. “Stupid frogs.”
“I know it seems stupid,” Etain sighs. “But you know what the physician says. They help me to stay well.”
I had always taken this fact at face value. I had been too young to remember when the physician came to look at Etain. That was when Mother and Father had been alive. Before they disappeared. I do not remember Etain without his frogs, so I don’t know what would happen if he was ever without them. I highly doubt anything would happen. I strongly suspect that he made up the physician and his treatment. He just likes burning the frogs in the fire as much as I like watching.
He plucks the jar from my hands and I fight back the urge to scratch him. I watch him unscrew the jar and pull one of the frogs out. It is funny how gentle Etain is with the thing – he doesn’t squeeze it like I would have. He doesn’t want to see its eyes pop out and green frog blood squirt out of the soggy little body, I guess. He handles it like it’s a precious thing, as though he wasn’t going to skewer it through the next instant.
And then he does. He lifts that skewer and sticks it right through the frog’s squirmy middle. The creature doesn’t make any noise, but it wiggles so hard it almost falls off the end of the stick. I laugh as Etain keeps it from doing so by tilting the skewer upwards.
As I watch, Etain sticks the skewer into the fireplace. The flames curl around the frog. Now it does make a noise, a quiet sighing squeak. The smell of charred animal wafts bitter and acrid to my nostrils. I glance over at Etain, who’s face is full of wrinkles put there by flickering shadow and light. He is watching me, and he looks worried.
I laugh at him, too. “Etain, don’t be so worried. They’re just frogs.”
He seems to think about this, then shrugs and nods. “You’re right. Now can you get me the pestle and mortar.”
“Can I grind them up?”
“If you hurry.”
I jump to my feet and kiss Etain on the temple before dashing to our kitchen cupboard.