“Darla, what’s in the paper bag?”

I check on Darla once a month. She’s a ward of the state. It’s sad, most people laugh when they hear about someone being dropped on their head. But Darla was. Darla’s mom and her mom’s boyfriend were playing catch with her, dropping her onto a glass coffee table littered with warm beer cans, all filled with cigarette butts.

Darla was basically a shut in. Not because she was slow, but from the stares she got from the crevasse that ran in a perfect slash across her face, from her right temple to the left side of her jaw. You see, the coffee table was already broken before she landed on it, nuff said.

“It’s a baby. I found it. I put it in the paper bag to ripen.”

Darla lived in a camper in a ravine, nuff said there too. Her mother lied about the accident and, after she sobered up, filed a claim with her insurance and set Darla up for a mediocre life.

The bag sat in the window sill, facing the sun. It moved.

“Darla, what’s really in the bag?”

“I’m ripening Ruth!”