drabblegrrl

Two old sisters sat in the quiet, dusty shop. One had hair of old-lady-blue, and eyes that could see right through any lie you could ever dream up. The other had hair of old-lady-purple, and a smile that never seemed to stop. They sat, and they waited.

Eventually, a young man came in, bright and full of wonder. The old ladies greeted him kindly as he marveled at the treasures in the shop. Something caught his eye, and he lifted it, examining it. He turned to the women and asked for a price.

The one with the purple hair smiled that smile and said, “We can’t sell that. That belonged to little Jimmy, and I remember back in 1980 when we bought it for him.” Her sister huffed and said, “It was in 1982, and it wasn’t Jimmy at all…” and began to weave a tale the likes of which the young man had never heard. He listened transfixed as they created a history rich and full of wonder and woe. He came to know that nothing in the store was for sale. But he left satisfied; he’d gotten more than he could have ever hoped for.

Late in the day, as the sun began to set, the sisters closed up shop and smiled at each other. “Another day, another satisfied customer,” said the elder sister, the one with the old-lady-blue hair. “I reckon so,” said the younger sister, and that glorious smile spread across her face. “I wonder who we’ll find tomorrow.”

I walk through the house, feeling her beside me. I hear her collar rattle.

I reach down to pat her head, but my hand finds no reassuringly fuzzy ears to touch. At night, I hear her whimper only to wake to the emptiness. I trip over paws not really there.

I look up, expecting to see her eyes watching me with curious intensity.

But there are no eyes watching at all.

Moments pass, and I wonder if there ever really were. If it was all in my head, all along.

Ghost dog, haunting my heart. Here and gone again. A flash of white, a glimmer of her wagging tail, then nothing.

She held her breath. Stepping up to the mic ripped her heart open. Her voice carried her emotions, playing out over the crowd in streaks of blues and reds. This is why they loved her so – she wore her songs like the finest of cloaks. She draped her music over their shoulders, pulling them into her, safe inside her heart.

She wasn’t ready.

She was never really ready.

Standing at the edge of the stage, at the edge of the world, the bright lights shining on the emptiness.

She held her breath.

The people in the audience, her people, held their breath.

Everything froze. Suddenly, she could feel the boundaries between them fade. The crowd blurred and she blurred, they opened, fuzing together.

She stepped onto the stage, eyes closed. She began to sing.

On March 16th, 2007, a girl drove her lovely wife to work. Dropped her off. Went for coffee.

As she went through a yellow light, a careless driver made a careless turn and their cars collided.

He was a bully. He made the girl feel responsible, and shamed her into avoiding the police. He trivialized her injuries. He forced his information on her and then left the scene.

The girl, shaken and frightened and hurting, called her wife. “I can’t get you coffee,” she said; “I’ve just been in an accident.”

That afternoon, the girl wound up at the doctor’s office. Her shoulder, you see, had begun to hurt too badly to ignore. But when the nurse, compassionate and helpful, moved the girl’s wrist, they realized it, too, was damaged.

Her wrist had been crushed, in fact. Multiple fractures, a crushed carpal tunnel, and lots of tiny tiny tears in the soft tissue.

Her shoulder was abandoned in favor of fixing her delicate wrist.

But the fixing of her wrist took nearly a year.

By the time her wrist was healed (as much as it would be, in any case), her shoulder was permanently damaged.

The girl had to fight the bully and his bully car insurance to pay her a meager sum that just about covered her expenses. That she was permanently disabled didn’t bother them – she was a number, not a person.

Life goes on.

Now, five years later, the girl finds that her hands no longer work without pain. Her shoulder, constantly dodgy since the wreck, has taken to hurting – or flat refusing to move – with the slightest provocation. The stress and fear she felt through the weeks and months of healing from the accident pile upon her, and the doctors confirm.

This is permanent. This is from the accident, all those years ago. Injuries left untreated. Injuries unhealed.

The girl, now a writer and an artist, faces a decision.

To give up her heart’s calling?

Or to face her disability and stay strong in her path?

Funny how it seems so simple when you say it like that.

This story is dedicated to Patti Digh, whose work challenges me to keep going when I feel like I just can’t. Life is, indeed, a verb.

The witch regarded the boy who so suddenly burst into her cottage, upsetting the cats and scaring the birds. His face flushed, eyes wide with fear, words tumbling out so fast she could make no sense of them.

“Slow down, boy,” she said, placing a hand on his shaking shoulder.

The boy gulped for air but found only tears.

The witch sighed, bothered by this interruption. She struggled with the desire to boot this kid and his woes out of her little house, but her heart wasn’t that cold.

Yet.

She pushed the boy into a chair and handed him a mug of water. He sipped between sobs and gradually they subsided.

“It’s my mama,” he whispered. “She’s terrible sick and she’s gonna die. We need your help.”

The witch’s heart iced over a little more. Her eyes involuntarily flicked in the direction of her long abandoned bookshelf, barely visible now under the spiders’ webs and dust. Her cats, sensing the storm, made themselves scarce. The birds stop their singing.

The very earth appeared to hold its breath.

“No.” The witch watched the boy’s heart break.

“But you are our only hope!” The little boy cried.

“Then you are out of hope.” The witch walked to her door, holding it open for the boy.

But the boy didn’t move. “Why?”

The witch shook her head.

Still the boy didn’t move. “We need you.”

The witch crossed her arms. Her gaze flew around the small cottage. Her neglected cauldron, her abandoned books, the jars of herbs long unused, the dusty altar. She bit her lip to keep the tears back.

The little boy stood. He walked over to the witch. He put his tiny hand on her scratchy elbow. He looked up into her face.

“Magick is a verb,” he whispered.

The witch looked down into his bright eyes. Fear engulfed her like flames. She hadn’t had any magick work for her in so long, she’d grown sure she’d never make it happen again. It had become so much easier to give up than to fail.

But suddenly, she had to try.

She stood in front of the mirror, fighting back tears.

Again.

“How long?” she asked.

The mirror’s soft, smokey voice patiently answered. “Two more hours, majesty.”

She began her slow pacing, back and forth across the tiny room. Time crawled by. The mirror waited for her to ask again, but she managed to restrain herself.

At last, she could hear him; his horse’s hooves echoed like heartbeats across the empty valley. She raced to the window to watch his approach, fear and hope and anticipation crowding her throat, making it difficult to breathe.

She watched him leap off his horse and fight his way into the castle, then lost sight of him. But she could feel him now; she knew the perils that lay in wait, and her mind traced them as he fought them.

And, at long last, he broke down her door.

He stood, framed in the doorway, the golden sunlight shining upon him.

Her breath caught. He was so…

Wait.

He was sweaty, breathing hard, almost scrawny. His eyes, in her mind so gentle and loving, were hard and impatient. He sneered at her, leered at her, and she instinctively took a step backwards. When he spoke, she heard not the words, but the cruel tone and cold reality.

He was not charming, not in the least.

Her eyes filled with tears. This was who she’d spent her life waiting for? This snarling brute of a man?

Now what?

He reached for her; she recoiled.

She knew exactly what to do.

She pushed him, grabbed his sword, and ran past. She fought her way out of the castle, past the traps and monsters she’d feared all her life. She emerged, blinking, into the glorious day. Laughter bubbled up and sprang from her lips, echoing through the valley. She grabbed the reins of his horse, freed the poor beast from its bindings, and lept upon its back.

She rode off into the sunset, all by herself.

She skipped into the café, holding her mother’s hand. Her aunt sat at a table, awaiting their arrival. She bounded over to her aunt and held out her new pendant with pride. “Look, look, I just got this. I passed my test!”

The aunt, fingers instinctively reaching up and touching a similar pendant around her own neck, looked up at her sister, who nodded. “She did quite well, actually.” The mother’s hand fell onto the little girl’s shoulder.

An undisguised look of relief passed over the aunt’s face. “I was concerned.”

“As was I,” said the mother, and a shiver ran through her.

But the little girl beamed. “It was so easy! Let me show you what I did!” She reached into her pocket and began to pull out a slender wand.

The mother’s grip on her shoulder tightened. “Not here, dear. Not in front of others.”

The little girl frowned. “But they’re sleepers. They won’t even remember!”

“Nonetheless,” the aunt chimed in, “we don’t do such things out here. You know better.” The mother and girl sat at the table, the girl kicking her feet to and fro. The aunt leaned in and had a hurried whispered conversation with the mother, the two of them discussing a fate the little girl will never know she brushed against.

Tears fell from the mother’s eyes as she looked at her daughter, proud and afraid and relieved.

She stood up, looking around herself in horror. What have I done? she thought, and she panicked. She bolted, grabbing her purse and keys and darting to her car. She sped down the street, tears streaming down her face. What now, what now, what now?

At a red light, she flipped down her visor. She looked into her bloodshot eyes. What you need, she told herself sternly, is a coffee.

She looked up and saw a Starbucks, just there on the corner. Perfect, she decided.

She pulled into the parking lot. There was only one other car, so all she had to do was get past a couple of people into the safety of the bathroom. Then she could wash up and compose herself. She took a deep breath and got out of the car. She walked in, flustered. There was a couple of women at the counter, chatting with the barista. She hesitated. Maybe I need to order first?

The women laughed, enjoying the conversation with the barista. No, she decided. Everyone was distracted. Bathroom first.

She darted through the door and up the little hall to the bathrooms. In and locked the door, and finally, for a moment, she felt safe. She took off her gloves, horrified at her hands. She ran them under the water, cleaning them frantically, losing track of time. After a few minutes, she heard voices in the hall outside the bathroom.

Dammit! Those women were coming. She turned off the water. One of them tried to get in, but the lock held. “Just a minute,” she shouted – a little too loudly, a little too edgy. She frantically looked around. The sink was a mess, so she grabbed paper towels and silently cleaned it as best she could.

Her phone chimed. Dammit! She grabbed it out of her pocket. It was her sister, demanding answers. She silenced it and laid it on the toilet paper holder, flushed the toilet so it’d sound like she was being normal, then washed the sink and her hands again. Her hands… they were almost clean.

She darted out of the bathroom. A little too quickly – she forgot her phone. The two women went into the bathroom together, but she stopped them in time – “I left my phone, I think. Can you see it?”

The shorter woman smiled. “Yes,” she said, handing it to her, “here it is.”

“Thanks!”

The pair of them smiled at her and shut the door.

Alone in the hall, she realized her hands were dripping. She hadn’t dried them. And they still weren’t clean. She dashed into the men’s, hoping to get her hands clean and get out before anyone noticed. After scrubbing a few minutes, they were finally clean. She dried them off and opened the door, only to find another woman standing in the hall, waiting to use the bathroom. The other woman gave her an odd look, but said nothing.

She panicked. She mumbled something inane about needing to pee but the men’s being too dirty, and the woman offered to let her go first – so she tried the door. The voice of the short girl rang out, “Just a minute!” and she wanted to bash her head against the door. Of course they were still in there – why else would this other girl be in the hall? Finally, the two of them came out, and she avoided their eyes and darted back in.

Door closed, locked. She sat on the toilet and took great gasping breaths of air. What have I done? What am I doing? What now, what now?

Finally, she decided. Get coffee, get out of here. Call my sister. Make a plan.

Get coffee. Get out. Call my sister. Make a plan.

And that’s what she did.

“I don’t want a baby girl,” I said, my eyes filled with tears without release. “I want my baby girl.”

But I lost her, I won’t ever have her. There are days when I wake up wondering where she is, and then I remember that she was never even born.

I see other people with their daughters, and I miss mine so much. She would be 7 years old this August.

I don’t want a baby, now. I want my daughter. I want my little sister for her big brother, who loves and misses her like I do. I want to have never lost her, I want to not have never gotten to meet her.

For a long time, just the possibility of someday maybe having another baby mitigated that pain – even if I didn’t want to have one, knowing I could helped. For a while, I planned to give other people what I had lost, and that filled the hole in my heart, eased the ache.

“And now I’m losing that, too. And my heart is breaking all over again,” I said, and the tears found their release.

Wind dances through the grass, rippling waves of sharp green tendrils waving. Stalks of dandelions tipping touching kissing the ground; their delicate white seeds whirling like snow across the yard. The sky above so clear – the blue that makes you fall in love – while the sun warms and caresses my face gently. Scattered single blossoms, colors vividly varied, open to the day’s sweet encouragements, as a few single-minded bees diligently dart to and fro.

A lone cardinal alights on a low branch, his feathers the bright deep red of lust stark against the calm mellow browns. He bursts into song and I burst into tears.