In a bit of a balloon over this one, there's something about releasing part one of a story that's unfinished, I've been writing maybe 600 words each of the past three days, I am on part four today and will finish tomorrow. It's all I think about. It's all I want to think about. My other life (which I love btw) is on a sort of hold, up in the air a little, there’s your balloon reference.
She Loves Me She Loves Me Not by Sherry Cassells
Part One of The Wallflower
I have soft shoulders, my mother says I am afraid of shadows, she is a literary snob who calls me The Child of Shalott. I hear her soaked lips spread across her teeth, it is getting dark, one day past summer solstice, one drink in, and I am for a short time the apple of her eye. She invites me to sit on the chair with her, there’s no room but I pretend to fit, my filthy summer knees with knobs of insect bites next to hers, a thin and pale eleven, like me.
This is the childhood I remember, the window I can today see through, I have learned that if I keep this imaginary window clear of clutter and debris I can return to the sprawling gardens of my childhood, my mother would have shoved the word privileged before childhood, like most people she believed wealth and privilege were the same thing.
Peace in the twilight of a generous backyard – fireflies light, butterflies collapse, breezes flare, the heave of nearby shores – I recall all of it.
My mother smelled of damp roses and gin, my head rested upon her soft shoulder, I squinted into the partial sun. I can hear her mouth open, the way she took in the last of the light and exhaled it in a sweet column of alto, somewhere on the flat cusp between hymn and dirge, her throat hugged the notes with acute control, she could torque it to soprano at any time. It felt, and I remember this deeply, as if a balloon were about to burst as I waited, grateful when it didn’t come, I preferred she save that shrill for the stage.
The gardens were many, they were beautiful and brief, we stayed five weeks in Barcelona once, long enough to see the midnight blue Irises into flower and back again. Usually we stayed in place for two weeks, my mother and I, as well as the supplied chefs, maids and gardeners, and her manager Mrs. Buettner who wore midi dresses always, one sleeve long and fastened at her wrist, the other short and gathered at her elbow. I’d seen her at bedtime and her nightgown was the same. The numbers on her forearm were blurred and indistinguishable, I only asked once, she said they spelled out hell, and my mother cleared her throat. Everyone took notice when my mother cleared her throat. Mrs. Buettner inflated sharply, I pressed against her, she was my closest, my only, friend.
My busy mother left me to either Mrs. Buettner or the tepid pool of maids. Too young to disbelieve my intuition I understood languages, and aside from being served shell-accompanied slime once when I’d ordered a hot dog, my words were understood. Things I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about I couldn’t communicate, once a gentlemen asked me what my famous mother was, and I replied, in Spanish, a polish hen.
He smiled, his teeth were too big for him, I found it hilarious and we laughed together, he at my poltricidal accusations, me at his teeth, I urged Mrs. Buettner to get me something to draw with and I built that man from nothing to something over and over again, each time I laughed.
Whoever he is, he is visible through the aforementioned window, and although I only saw him once, his face may be the first I recognize in heaven.