25 Antropofaga
Ananda Lima (2019)
She devoured tiny Americans that came out of the vending machine. They slid out inside thin metallic plastic packages that almost opened themselves when punctured. Emerging from their wrapping with their tiny hands on either side of the rip, they proclaimed their nutritional content (calcium, sugar, fat, 350 mg of synthetic protein). Sometimes she decided to diet and promised: no more Americans. But she walked by, with an eye on the spot between the Ruffles and the Doritos, salivating. And before thinking much about it, there she was again, inserting the coins, hot and sweaty from her palms, into the machine’s mouth.
The first time, it’d been a pinkish, overweight man—flowery shirt, white sneakers, and socks biting at his thick ankles. He laughed and talked to invisible friends, pointing at things only he could see in his surroundings. He didn’t notice when she lifted him up, index finger and thumb under his little armpits. Holding a selfie-stick with a phone the size of a lentil, he posed in front of her giant, open mouth, as if she were the Statue of Liberty. Right after the timer took the picture, Béia swallowed him whole.
She knew eating from a vending machine was unhealthy. And the satisfaction it provided was brief and superficial. When possible, she preferred to bring a fruit, rice and beans, or leftover takeout. But that first time, she hadn’t packed lunch in the morning. She hadn’t slept well and felt off-kilter. Cleaning the speckled light-green floor of the hospital where she worked, she thought about her phone fight with her ex-boyfriend and about her new roommate, who hadn’t washed the dishes. And while she thought, the back and forth of her mop took her like a current to the corridor, where she found herself alone with the machine, its chocolate, chips, and Coca-Cola shining bright under the strategic white light.
The machine had always been there. But it was the first time she stopped to face it. As she stared, propping her hand and chin on the pole of the mop, she began to grow angry. The lazy roommate who’d replaced her boyfriend. The money she never managed to save. The many times she stayed quiet, or smiled, or thanked people without wanting to. The child, house without a fence, dog, and wedding that went down the drain in a counterclockwise swirl before ever happening. Grinding her molars, she hunted for coins in the pockets of her ugly uniform, more out of rebellion than hunger, wanting to do something she was not supposed to do.
She hadn’t planned to come back a second time that very next day. Without interrupting her suction, she pointed down to a deconstructed version of her beverage spread out on the floor: ice cubes sliding on a pallid pink puddle between the dome lid and the body of the cup, which was now wide open, like the mouth of the woman’s child, who screamed for her lost drink.
It was almost lunchtime. But she couldn’t leave that mess there. Somebody would sue. Or she’d get fi