Picking up the tiny spoon that’d been stuck into the black gook, Asia shuddered. “What exactly is caviar? I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never tasted it.”
Picking up two tiny pancakes and putting them on his plate, Dad reached for the creamy chive shit and spread a little on top of them as he answered.
“It’s the roe from a Sturgeon.” Looking up at us, he rolled his eyes. “It’s the eggs from a Sturgeon. You can get roughly twenty-seven kinds of caviar because there are so many breeds, but this stuff’s from a Beluga Sturgeon.”
I squinted at the gook, noticing belatedly that it was, in fact, thousands of tiny little black balls. “Wait, these are fish eggs?”
“Sturgeon eggs, yes,” Dad corrected, like the breed of fish made a difference to me.
Shaking my head and holding my hands up in front of me, I leaned away from the poor fish babies. “No, no, hell no. I can’t eat that.”
“Eating chicken eggs is any different?” he challenged, raising an eyebrow, knowing he had me there.
“Fuck my life,” I mumbled under my breath, feeling slightly better when I heard my sisters all saying something similar under their own.
Picking up one of the tiny pancakes, Dad smirked at all of us. “Now, you get one of these little blinis—”
“Wait, that’s a cocktail, not a pancake,” Tara scoffed.
“No,” Dad drawled, “that’s what these are called. The cocktail’s a bellini.” At our blank looks again, he ground out, “Okay, granted they sound the same, but they’re spelled differently. Anyway, it’s possible for things to have different names but still be the same thing, isn’t it?”
Mom picked up her glass of wine and drank half of it in one go. Dad was going on the defensive, which meant he’d gone off on a tangent to try and distract us from what he wanted us to try tonight.
I’d wised up to this tactic of his years ago, but I wasn’t sure if my sisters had.
Proving me right, Asia shot back, “I bet you can’t name two of them.”
“Cilantro’s coriander and eggplants are called an aubergine.” Leaning forward, he added, “And, just to blow your mind, a zucchini is also called a courgette.”
Seeing that he had her, he went back to the directions for fish baby murder. “As I was saying, you spread some of this crème Fraiche mixture that your mom found online onto the blini, then take a spoonful of the caviar and pop it on top. Now, some people add finely diced onion, too, but y’all hate raw onion, so we skipped that part.”
Saying we hated it was an understatement. Even the mere mention of it had my gag reflex kicking in.
Dad reached for a chunk of lemon, squeezed it on top, and then rolled his pancake up. “Okay, you guys try it.”
It had to be said, we’d been down similar roads to this before, so none of us moved.
“Tell you what, you eat that one first, then we’ll try your caviar,” Dariah said as she reached for a blini but only got as far as putting it on her plate.
Knowing how stubborn we were, Dad sighed and bit half of the pancake off and chewed it slowly. “It’s not bad. I could get used to eating this stuff, you know.”
Given that he hadn’t shuddered or made any sort of face, we followed the directions he’d given us. Once we’d all rolled our caviar blini stogies up, each of us, including Mom, waited for the countdown.
“Three,” Asia called out, “two, one. Go!”
At the same time, we bit into them and began chewing. The taste hit instantly, thanks to the crème Fraiche and lemon, but then the caviar registered, and that’s when my brain and stomach rebelled.
They tasted fishy—obviously—but it was the little balls popping and the mental image of baby fish begging me not to eat them. Then my brain went to the fact the crème Fraiche could be fish sperm, and it was mixing with the eggs in my mouth, and—
Leaning over my plate, I spat it out at the same time as Mom, Asia, and Tara.
“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” Dad muttered, spitting what was left of his into his napkin and then using it to wipe his tongue. “I couldn’t do it.”
Dariah, Giselle, and Aariyah were still chewing theirs, and seemed oblivious to what the rest of us were doing as they tried to make up their minds about it.
“I’m sorry. It was when I pictured the crème Fraiche mixture being fish semen and mixing with the eggs in my mouth.” I gagged loudly this time, holding my stomach, and praying I didn’t do it again when my new piercing screamed at me.
Spitting noises beside me told me my description had hit the other three hard.
“Yeah, no, I’m done.” Dariah pushed her plate away as she glared at me. “I was enjoying it until you put fish cum in my mouth.”