Gabriela Gonzales
On Making Hamburgers
maybe it’s a little bit my fault
because i didn’t tell you or whatever
but i grew up learning
how to make hamburgers.
it was probably something like
the way you learned to play guitar
or memorize bible verses
at your private christian school,
but i remember standing on a step ladder
with my dad behind me,
using gloved hands to push hunks of meat
into the grinder,
pressing it down with a stick
when it would get stuck in the blades,
so it would come out of the spout
like raw red spaghetti.
my dad owned a meat market
for most of my life.
i was a meat snob,
when i was little
because sometimes my dad couldn’t afford to pay himself--
he just took home
a few extra packages of chicken and steaks.
sometimes it was my job
to take the fresh ground beef
and fit it into little plastic circles
and mold it into hamburger patties,
weigh it out,
package it
in the white waxy paper
that we took home for birthday signs,
stamp the label on it
with rubber and black ink.
sometimes i put it in the white window trays,
stabbed the tiny prongs
of the price signs into it.
sometimes i ran it over to the kitchen
where my dad taught me
how to make secret seasoning
with garlic,
and onion,
and other secret things,
sprinkle it on top of the patties
and cook hamburgers for the customers
waiting outside in the booths
with the menus i made
teaching myself design on the computer,
my mom as the waitress
serving drinks,
my brother in the back, washing dishes.
so it was funny,
the day i watched you rolling prepackaged meat
into balls with your hands,
standing over the george foreman grill
in the kitchen.
i said
why are you making them like that?
when you set the balls on the black surface,
sprinkled them with salt and pepper
and turned the heat on.
my hand could still press them out into red discs,
the memory of the perfect size
of a quarter pound burger
branded into my memory
and you said,
gabriela, this is how you make burgers, okay?
and you cooked them until they were black spheres,
set them on a plate
like pieces of charcoal
that everyone used to bring on camping trips
when they knew our family was coming
because of course we’d be having perfectly cooked steaks.
i ate half of it
because i like you
and it was your birthday
and threw the other half in the trash
when you weren’t looking.
so next time i get my hands
on your guitar,
you know,
the one you named after
my favorite book character
a couple weeks after you told me
you didn’t love me,
go ahead
and correct me
when i try to play a g-chord,
fix my finger placement if you want to,
but don’t ever
tell me how to make a hamburger
again.
because i didn’t tell you or whatever
but i grew up learning
how to make hamburgers.
it was probably something like
the way you learned to play guitar
or memorize bible verses
at your private christian school,
but i remember standing on a step ladder
with my dad behind me,
using gloved hands to push hunks of meat
into the grinder,
pressing it down with a stick
when it would get stuck in the blades,
so it would come out of the spout
like raw red spaghetti.
my dad owned a meat market
for most of my life.
i was a meat snob,
when i was little
because sometimes my dad couldn’t afford to pay himself--
he just took home
a few extra packages of chicken and steaks.
sometimes it was my job
to take the fresh ground beef
and fit it into little plastic circles
and mold it into hamburger patties,
weigh it out,
package it
in the white waxy paper
that we took home for birthday signs,
stamp the label on it
with rubber and black ink.
sometimes i put it in the white window trays,
stabbed the tiny prongs
of the price signs into it.
sometimes i ran it over to the kitchen
where my dad taught me
how to make secret seasoning
with garlic,
and onion,
and other secret things,
sprinkle it on top of the patties
and cook hamburgers for the customers
waiting outside in the booths
with the menus i made
teaching myself design on the computer,
my mom as the waitress
serving drinks,
my brother in the back, washing dishes.
so it was funny,
the day i watched you rolling prepackaged meat
into balls with your hands,
standing over the george foreman grill
in the kitchen.
i said
why are you making them like that?
when you set the balls on the black surface,
sprinkled them with salt and pepper
and turned the heat on.
my hand could still press them out into red discs,
the memory of the perfect size
of a quarter pound burger
branded into my memory
and you said,
gabriela, this is how you make burgers, okay?
and you cooked them until they were black spheres,
set them on a plate
like pieces of charcoal
that everyone used to bring on camping trips
when they knew our family was coming
because of course we’d be having perfectly cooked steaks.
i ate half of it
because i like you
and it was your birthday
and threw the other half in the trash
when you weren’t looking.
so next time i get my hands
on your guitar,
you know,
the one you named after
my favorite book character
a couple weeks after you told me
you didn’t love me,
go ahead
and correct me
when i try to play a g-chord,
fix my finger placement if you want to,
but don’t ever
tell me how to make a hamburger
again.
Biography
Gabriela Gonzales is a Nashville-based writer who writes about the beautiful tragedy of human communication. She won first place for fiction in the Sandra Hutchins’ Humanities Symposium Writing Awards in 2016, 2017, and 2018 and received the Ruby Treadway award for fiction in 2019. Her work has been featured in Belmont Literary Journal, Awakened Voices Literary Magazine, formercactus, Synaesthesia Magazine, Waxing and Waning, Cosmonauts Avenue, Lost Balloon and Wigleaf. Read more of her work at gabrielagonzales.com and follow her on Twitter at @gabrielag2597. Gabriela really appreciates giraffes, the Oxford comma, and babies dressed like hipsters.
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