Peeps

The chocolate Easter cupcake was as big as my closed five year old fist. The top was heavily frosted with emerald green frosting and dozens of rainbow sprinkles strewn across the top. But what made it really splendid was the lemon yellow peep perched in the center of the cupcake. It was nearly as tall as cupcake itself, but it was only half as wide. Peeps were always my favorite part of Easter. Not only were they the sweetest candies I had ever eaten in my short life, but I also believed that they were beautiful. Their sugar crystals glistened in the light and showed off their canary yellow color. They were shaped so elegantly and when they were held in just the right way, they looked like an “L”. In my mind, the “L” stood for Lauren. They were made just for me.
I watched as my brother shoved a handful of cake into his mouth. It looked good. He chewed the moist chocolate cake between his few small teeth. Alex rubbed his eye, and I noticed a small speck of cake above his eye. The cake had chocolate chips in it. The cupcake had some of the sweetest foods known to humans on it. It was a five-year-old’s dream. A crumb fell onto the floor and my grandparent’s dog eagerly lapped the rich, sweet cupcake into his mouth and finished it in less than a second. I started to salivate. The cake had disappeared from my brother’s plate already. It must be fabulous.
I was overcome with the desire to gobble the cake up in a second, like the dog had. Or maybe to stick my hands in it and shove it in my mouth, like my two-year-old brother. I didn’t eat meat, I didn’t have anything to eat for Easter dinner, and I was starving. I started with the Peep, my favorite part. I squeezed the whole thing into my mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was going to fit, but I was able to fit the sweet, delicious Easter treat inside my lips. The crystalline sugars melted on my tongue and made way for the even sweeter marshmallow underneath. This taste filled my whole mouth and made the sides of my jaw sting from the sweetness. I had to chew, but I had taken too much in one bite, and I couldn’t close my jaws. I knew it wasn’t polite for me to chew with my mouth open. I hoped nobody would see me. My cheeks were puffed out as far as they would go, and I was sure I looked like Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks. My face heated as the effects of humiliation started to show on my body. I chewed faster, thinking that if it was over soon, no one would have time to notice my puffed up cheeks and blotchy red skin. Then, I heard someone laugh.
“Took too much in one bite, Lauren?”
I continued to chew hastily, begging no one to notice her talking. To just ignore her, and to ignore me until I finished my Peep. I was not so lucky. The entire table looked over me as I tried to finish my Peep as quickly as I could. If I finished soon, then everyone would forget about it and let me finish cupcake. No one would remember that it had happened. Then they started to laugh. I heard my grandfather’s laugh first. It was a great booming belly laugh. Then I heard the tinkling laugh of my grandmother’s daughter. My grandmother joined in next with her loud hoarse laugh, which reminded me of a donkey’s screech. Then my uncle exploded into a loud and heavy laugh that was uncannily similar to that of his father’s.
There was an oppressing pressure in my throat that made me feel like I wanted to disappear. The empty feeling that made me realize that I was all alone, that no one was on my side. I wanted to run into the kitchen and eat my food all by myself, where no one would laugh at me and where no one could see me. I hated it when grown-ups looked at me the way they were now. Like I was a funny little kid, just a source of entertainment. No one laughed at them while they ate, so why were they laughing at me? I simply did not understand and I was sure that they were just picking on me. I crammed my jaws together again, and again tears of laughter came to my family’s eyes. After that, I knew I had to make them stop. I force the peep to the back of my throat and swallowed the thing whole. My throat burned as the small, kid-sized thing stretched out to fit the Peep down. I stared at my dish, waiting for the adults to calm down. When they finally did, and I thought my humiliation was finally over, my grandfather made a joke:
“I could go for a Peep right about now!”
An eruption of laughter followed. It was loud and jubilant, and mocking me all the same. In their eyes I was there for no other purpose than their amusement. It didn’t matter that they were making me feel small and terribly inferior to them. I stared at my plate again. I didn’t really want the cupcake anymore.
However, I tried to enjoy it all the same, like I would have enjoyed the Peep. I tried to savor it, but it wasn’t the same. The warm cupcake I could have year round, but a Peep is different. A Peep is something you can only fin in April, around Easter time. The Peep was what I was looking forward to the most, and I never got to enjoy it. I never got to savor the sweet flavor of the sweet Easter candy. I was forced to swallow it before the sugars had even fully exposed the marshmallow underneath. Now, all I had left was the cupcake.
The cupcake, standing alone and peep-less, was now a symbol of my humiliation. T mocked me, just like my family had. So, when the laughter died down, I ate it. In small increments, so it didn’t fill my mouth all the way, and so I could drag it out as long as possible. I sat there; eating the cupcake, for fifteen minutes after everyone else had finished theirs. I took a small nibble, the size of a dime, and flattened it with my mouth, letting the flavor of the chocolate linger on my tongue. Then I waited for my saliva to dissolve it away, for it to just disappear. Or maybe for myself to just disappear. I swallowed, and I began the process over again.