"Hearty Stock" by Kelli Short Borges

Olivia has seen pictures of the men. Pictures in the big brown book on the glass coffee table at Opa’s house, along with lots of letters that made words underneath them, words she can’t read because she’s only five and in kindergarten and just learning her ABCs. The pictures are of her ancestors, Mommy says, and Olivia practices saying it, an-ses-ters, a funny word that slithers and squirms on her tongue like a rattlesnake and makes her laugh because that’s a lot of s-es. 

Every time they go to Opa’s, Olivia goes right to the coffee table, right to the big brown book to look at the photos of the men who’d come in the olden days, to Phoenix, Arizona, where Olivia lives, from somewhere in Germany, which was very far. They floated across a huge ocean called the Atlantic. Olivia knows these ancestors are kind of like daddies to her, they are related. You have the same blood, Opa explains, but that was silly and she doesn’t understand because she’s alive and they are dead. How long ago the olden days were isn’t clear, but it must have been a very long time ago, like when the dinosaurs lived, because the pictures are black and white, not in color like the ones Mommy takes with her iPhone. 

The men look weird. They have on fancy clothes like she’s seen in church, dark suits with white shirts and high collars buttoned up to their necks, which must have been sweaty because Phoenix is hot like the sun. They wear tightly tied ties (that’s what Mommy calls a tongue twister) and have long beards like Santa, but they aren’t smiling and they don’t hold bags of presents. Instead, they stand next to wooden wagons or big brick buildings, or they sit straight like kings in fancy old chairs, looking very serious with squinty eyes like they’re mad. Olivia wonders, do the men have wives? What did they eat in the olden days if there was no Trader Joe’s? Why don’t they smile? 

You’re obsessed with this book, her Mommy says every time Olivia picks it up. Opa says the book had been printed because her ancestors were very important in Phoenix, they had started the city, built those big buildings. He smiles with all his teeth and looks over at Mommy whenever Olivia asks him to tell her more. She thinks that might mean he’s proud of her. Thinks that might mean she’s important too, since they share the same blood, although she doesn’t say that out loud because Opa might tell her she’s bragging, which means you think you’re great. That was supposed to be bad. Maybe if she lived in the olden days, she would be very important, because it seems okay for the men. Then it wouldn’t be bragging.

Opa says they’d crossed the ocean and snowy mountains and almost the entire United States to get to Arizona. It took them six months to ride in their wagons because there were no cars in the olden days, which he explains is from now all the way to Olivia’s birthday in June and that is a very long time. The men were brave and smart and strong. You come from hearty stock, Olivia, Opa teases. Olivia isn’t sure what that means, but she thinks it has something to do with cows, and it makes Opa laugh when she says that. 

When she’s looking through the big brown book alone, Olivia plays a secret game where she looks for a woman in the book. It’s a fun game because it feels like she’s searching for the golden egg at Easter or something. It’s Mommies who have babies, which is an important thing because the very important men had mommies once (so one must be in the book), but that’s not all that they do because her Mommy takes care of people at the hospital all day, she’s a doctor who helps people get better. It’s a very important job and Olivia thinks someday she might be a doctor, too. 

She knows that a woman like Mommy must be there somewhere. She's just hiding.

Kelli Short Borges writes from her home in Phoenix, Arizona. Her fiction has appeared in Fractured Lit, Moon City Review, Centaur, and elsewhere. Recently, Kelli's work was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist and the 2024 and 2025 editions of Best Microfiction. She’s currently working on her first novel.