SHELLL

Don’t you just love Saturday mornings?

Shelll by Sherry Cassellls

When you look at a map, Ireland looks like it’s blowing away. I used to think it was on the wrong side. Everything’s been off kilter my whole life maybe because I was one of those kids born left-handed and forced into right-handedness, I did not have my bearings, not in the slightest.

And it should come as no surprise after that opening paragraph when I tell you I overthought almost everything, wait, I overthought everything, including established fundamentals such as gravity and what happens when you hold your breath for too long, is there a parallel universe or another me somewhere who is righted in her space, lands on her feet in a coordinated universe, unlike my ballad of a life in which both my parents were freshly dead, like O’Leary and O’Reilly, neither of them knew the other was dead, they died in separate accidents during the same ice storm, and I was alone in the world, my only goal was to become a left-handed orphan.

I was 12.

Q: How many syllables are in the word twelve?

A: If you say it quickly there’s only one but if you say it like the lady at children’s aid, like a cough you’ve had for too long or too heavy a burden, it has many moving parts, hinges more than syllables, t-w-el-ve.

I had to fill out forms with my hieroglyphics, my checkmarks went backwards, I curled my tongue in concentration, it was difficult like chin-ups, how easy it would have been to quit or switch to the other hand but this was my quiet rebellion, my chance at authenticity before I knew the word. The hardest was my name, Shelby, I couldn’t get the final three consonants to comply and so I turned them all into ells, my triple consonants looked embroidered, I wrote it Shelll.

Nobody could find my birth certificate so they gave me a new one with my name Shell Ernest Frost and my place of birth Castlerock Beach although I was actually born in Belfast, the city on the fraying coast I always thought belonged on the left of the island, facing Canada, where I landed a year later, after a stint of special education due to bad penmanship, but once I got the hang of it, my rise to the top of the class was rapid and shocking, I was moved into the normal curriculum and again, rose to its top.

It was discovered I had a aunt after all and she came for me.

And as if in a ballad she fell to her knees when she saw me, I heard her bones against the floor, I walked solemnly toward her clutching my suitcase, I looked down at my pigeon-toed feet in their black heavy shoes, I was dizzy and frazzled, she took me in her arms and I felt some sort of digestion take place, I don’t know how else to explain it, that hug was a work of art, and as such I do not wish to study it too closely.

I don’t think I had laughed for a year but I couldn’t stop, I was embarrassed, so used to being in the same old ballad, she let go of me and reached for my suitcase with her left hand, she winked at me, she said we had to hurry to catch the plane and I know how this is going to sound but it wasn’t until we were in the air I realized what was going on, I looked through the window, through the fog, her hand was on my shoulder, and everything was in the right place.