Lita drags the tip of her finger across sticky wood, shards of cedar protruding from the aged picnic table. Her pointer finger dodges the slivers then doubles back, hovering over a splinter and waiting for her arm to grow tired, for her hand to fall into it, her flesh to be punctured and made scarlet with irritation.

A soft, warm breeze touches her bare arms, the plastic beads of her braids creating a chorus of clicking down her back. The soles of her feet itch, the feeling of wet grass against skin, and hymns meander through lazy winds from a tiny stereo at another table. The sun’s rays, immediately above, are broken by the pavilion’s vertex, spreading it about the grass. A few feet away, next to the building, the central air unit hums.

Much of the crowd has dispersed across the church’s back lawn. Some men, the elders, huddle near the building’s entrance, murmuring, suit jackets removed and left sweat-soiled on the wooden benches. Women go in and out of the back entrance, hands full, replacing glass bowls and colorful serving plates stained with the outline of pork juice with long trays of cakes, brownies, puddings, and jellos. A group of girls, older than Lita, lounge at the end of the grasses near the church gate. At the edge of the parking lot, a gaggle of boys leer. From the girl’s side a rock is thrown. One of them, a girl with lackluster brown hair and reopened scabs crawling up her legs, stands to wipe the grass and leaves off her beige dress and then, at hearing a woman’s sharp voice calling her, stomps inside. Before she disappears inside, a second rock is thrown to the side in pitiful defeat. The boys howl.

The church’s back door is thrown open, its metal beating brick. Lita stares at the jutting bit of wood and her arm wobbles.

“Help me with this,” her mother says, holding up a sheet of plastic, transparent lavender to match those of the other tables. A headband of a similar color holds back her mother’s dense black curls. Lita glances up, irritation budding behind her eyes, her arm dropping to the table, flesh unblemished. Her mother raises a sharp, dark eyebrow.

As Lita slides slowly off the bench, the bottoms of her legs scrape against the decaying wood, and the sharpness pressing into the fleshy bits of her brown skin feels like a rush of air forcing its way through her.

The two of them replace the table cloth, her mother leaning forward to press out the creases in its plastic. A few more women file out of the building, hands full. The soft frills of her mother’s light blue dress press against the lavender sheet. Without looking at Lita, she says, “Please go get the ice cream out of the pantry. Make sure you get enough for everyone.”

People are joining them under the pavilion, the ever-enduring scent of afternoon dessert wafting about, roping them in. From the edge of the parking lot, the boys walk leisurely up the grass, fragile baby birds waiting to be fed. Lita lingers to the side, the masses resettling, before stepping into the building and closing the door behind her.

Except for the dulled voices and music through the door, the building is quiet. Down the hallway it’s dark, the auditorium’s double doors closed and locked. On the left side, the bright entrance to the kitchen. On the right, one of the study rooms, its walls lined with books of all colors, their spines discolored with age.

In the kitchen her mother’s voice confounds her. Go get the ice cream out of the pantry. She’s sure her mother misspoke. On the tips of her toes, she peers into the empty freezer when her mother’s voice knocks on the side of her skull again. Go get the ice cream out of the pantry.

An internal groan. Deeper inside the kitchen, around a corner and past the nasty closet with the leaky sink, the pantry. A square of canned goods, mason jars, sagging cardboard boxes, cases of water. Lita closes the door of the freezer, huffing. She goes past the long metal table. Turns the corner.  The pantry’s door handle is cold, shocking her hand. She rubs a finger against the handle’s long back side, and when it comes back, her finger is wet with condensation.

Inside, the pantry is lined with the familiar boxes and cans. Lita doesn’t step in, doesn’t wander under its weak light. She stares at the hole in the concrete floor, its coldness radiating up and searing her face. The pantry is less than four feet across, the hole taking up much of that space, its circular edge ending just before the start of the door.

Lita steps away from the pantry, back around the corner of the kitchen to see if anyone is there, if anyone is watching, waiting for her exclamation of surprise. But it’s as empty as it was before, fluorescent light buzzing from the ceiling. She returns to the pantry, her chin touching her collarbones. Staring. The pit burrows deep into the ground, its frozen sides slick and layered with ice. With ice cream, immaculate and white. Her stomach churns with wrongness, discomfort. But her mother’s voice fills her, as does a sudden, cutting need to taste it. She kneels, reaching a hand to touch its side, digging a bit of it under her nails and bringing it to her mouth. Its harsh sweetness burns her tongue. Standing again, she leaves and returns with a bowl, a scoop. Extending the top half of her body over the pit, she drags the scoop across one side of it, a perfect circle of vanilla flecked with ice. She drops it in the bowl and repeats this action until her arm begins to ache, though the bowl is far from full. Lita stretches her arm out once more, the edge of her yellow dress beginning to moisten against the ice of the pit. Her arm wobbles; the scoop isn’t quite full. Extending again, her body betrays her, the pit swallows her. The bowl falls with her, she and it clattering to the bottom, a quick drop.

Then, silence. Suffocating cold and pain aching through her.

Lita tries to climb out. She digs holes into the ice, blooding her nails, splitting her fingers, her elbows shaking as she forces herself up, falling backwards and harder each time, every failure as poisonous as the ice was sweet. The cold, white of the ice cream coats the front of her dress in crystals. It sticks to her arms, her flesh lost under it. The movement of her feet cause the pit’s icy bottom to give way, her feet beginning to sink. Eventually, she is exhausted. The ice is asking her, kindly, to lean her head back, to fall asleep.

A cradle, the ice cream pools around her: first her braids, the ribbons and beads in her dark hair are consumed. Lita breathes deeply, exhaling ice in a dusty cloud. Her eyes flutter, her face sinking into frigidity. At this moment her whole body tingles, her skin and muscles unraveling, flesh made liquid, bones to powdered sugar, cracking and mixing with bits of skin and flesh. It settles into a smooth, silky basin of unblemished white, the bowl and scoop bubbling to the top. The building continues in silence, but for the sounds of hymnals aching through the metal door, straight through and into the pantry so that Lita might hear them if her ears had not melted off her skull.

A sound. The door opening, a heeled shoe placing itself carefully on tiled floors. Footsteps, soft and then louder, making their way from the hall to the kitchen. The creak of another door.

Lita’s mother stands in the pantry doorway, chin to her collarbones. She looks hard at the bowl, its hard slopes creating a soft indentation in the ice cream. She leans over it, searching. A beat and the woman gets on her knees, pulling up the skirt of her dress, hooking her leg around the base of one of the pantry shelves, and letting the top of her body fall into the pit, arms reaching into the shadow to retrieve the bowl, half full, and the scoop, which belongs to the church. The tips of her fingers grace the edges of the bowl. Extending herself more, she grabs hold of it, her heart beating against her ribs, blood rushing through her skull. The surface of the pit is faultless white, but for the small dip where the bowl sat. With one arm, scoop in hand, she twists her wrist, filling the scoop, and heaves herself back up.

She rests the back of her head against the cool outer wall of the pantry, breathing hard. She holds the bowl close in her lap, her arms shaking. She holds the scoop tightly in her grip. With her other hand, she dips a finger into the ice cream bowl, and then places it in her mouth. Sweet, saccharine, she licks it off her finger, triumph melting against her tongue.

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DJP is a Midwestern bookseller and artist with fiction featured in bodyfluids magazine, Back Patio Press, and Mouthfeel Fiction. Twitter: @especiallymidd