Fertilizer
by Sadie Kuhnle
Case Western Reserve University
Sadie Kuhnle is a freshman student at Case Western Reserve University studying psychology with a minor in creative writing. Through the mediums of visual art, poetry, and short fiction, they explore the experiences of others and themself.
It was a summer funeral. That’s something I’m sure of even though my eyes felt numb, even though I felt vaguely butchered. Crisp black suits, black dresses melting to tar in the heat, poured onto rows of folding chairs. I remember thinking it was a beautiful day to be at our parent’s farm. I almost laughed out loud during the service; I can tell everyone my brother went to live on a farm. Even funnier, I know I won’t say anything. My dad gave the eulogy. All I heard was the hush of heavenly wind over stalks of wheat and corn and sunflowers. I’m so used to my coworkers playing sweet in front of customers that it made my eyes strain to see them undercooked, formless, shaking my hand with pinched scarecrow faces. I shook their hands, and my hands shook, and I ducked into the house. When I bolted up the stairs, my gaze stuck forward, away from the hung portraits of us growing up together. I went up to my old bedroom and stared at the recipe cards in my closet. Every pastry under the brutal Sun. I know. Me and my brother had the same handwriting. I’ve only ever looked like him but younger. All of this, I know. The funeral was 3 weeks and 5 days ago, and my brother died 1 month, 2 weeks, and 4 days ago. I haven’t said it aloud, and I don’t remember what the wind or their hands felt like, but I know what was there.
And I know where I am. Handing out pastries and coffee and smiling so naturally. Sometimes, the muscles in my cheeks feel stretched and folded. I hold my ground, butchering the rotten parts of myself until I am presentable, food-safe, clean. My voice contorts loud and bright like sun off the lake. When a customer asks where the older one is, I count 3-5-1-2-4, 3-5-1-2-4, 3-5-1-2-4 until I easily tell him that my brother won’t be in today. When the rush melts down to a slow trickle, the cow in the mural on the wall looks at me like it knows I never learned how to butcher anything.
When two identical twin brothers walk up to the counter, my hands start shaking, and I pretend to be a part of the mural until my coworker steps in. Then, I calmly walk into the janitor’s closet. In those few square feet, I become something else. I become the cryptid my brother used to scare me with, the titan whose footprints made corn mazes; the piles of dead field mice the cat would bring for us in the morning, that we’d lay in the compost and that she’d bring right back to us until they started to fall apart; the half-eaten dog we found one night, barely alive enough to quake and howl. I become an only child.
I don’t know what it feels like to lose a brother. I only know what it feels like 1 month, 2 weeks, and 4 days after.
Interview with the Author
1. What inspired you to write this piece? What was your thought process throughout?
“Fertilizer” essentially stemmed from its final lines about not knowing what it’s like to lose a brother. Funny story, I first thought of these lines when writing The Bear fanfiction. References to the show, intentional and not, are littered throughout the piece. Additionally, I liked comedic strangeness of the line, “I can tell everyone my brother went to live on a farm,” so much that it guided some major reworks of the piece.
2. What struggles or challenges did you face while writing your piece?
This piece did take a few iterations. The main character was originally an elementary school teacher in addition to the family having a farm, but tying everything around the farm made things less cluttered.
3. What do you hope readers will take away from your piece?
I want readers to think about repression in relation to grief, the ways things can force their way out when you haven’t been able to spend time with grief.
4. What effects do you want the piece to have on the person, community or society?
I wanted to write a means to explore grief, especially its strangeness. The supernatural can be such an effective vehicle for talking about grief because the experience can feel so otherworldly. “Fertilizer” can help the reader sit with how grief can change one’s identity, how unnatural it feels to continue living in the same life after a major loss.
5. What is your favorite piece of fiction (short story, novel, flash fiction, movie, TV series etc.) that you’ve ever read or seen? Why?
Considering how much stories of all forms mean to me, this is a very difficult question to answer, but The Bear has had a chokehold on my life for the past few years. It explores grief and mental illness and family dynamics and a million other things so casually yet so tactfully. It feels high stakes purely because these characters feel so human that you want good things for them. Writing a story that explores heavy topics in such an informal life-like way is exactly what I want to do.
6. What are some goals/plans you may have for your future and for your writing?
I want to either be a school psychologist or a screenwriter. I’ve experimented so much with my writing lately that I’m not especially set on a direction. I want to write more short stories and poetry and hopefully, something longer. I’m more than happy to just keep writing anything!