Saturday
[Editor’s Note: Each Wednesday, FF.Net will feature a reprint of our favorite flashes that originally appeared in print.]
Wool
by Claudia Smith
Falling in love when the rain is falling in the early morning and there’s no word for the way you feel except maybe plum, rainy, morning, dew. In the back seat of your grandparent’s Buick, you are imagining a walk in a forest in the rain, no a ship in a storm in the rain. A long journey, and a soldier, no, someone Nordic with horns on his helmet. It’s hours before you arrive, hours to look out of the window and watch land moving in wagon spokes. A man will tell you someday how lonely and sad you must have been, how he will fix it. I wasn’t always unhappy, you say, and he looks at you in a way you like at first, and then, later, makes you feel like a wet rat. There are places in your head in basements, with ripping inside, and, then, there is you alone with cheese and milk, reading about a girl and her grandfather, goats and cliffs, and a boy named Peter who loves her. When your mother and father are at the table, eating rump roast, passing pepper, and there’s icicles in the trees outside, you can feel Christmas glimmering in your heart. You ask your grandmother if there is a Santa and she says, What do you think? You tell her, I think he is real in our hearts. You hope she will say, he is flesh and blood. But instead she nods as if you and she share a secret together.
You talk to the man about having children. He says if you get better, and are well enough to have his children, you will teach them the truth. There is no Santa. You will not lie to them about anything, about God or Death or Money. He is talking about your genetics, and insanity, about your small mouth which is lovely, but will not do for a boy. You are hearing him now, and years from now, when you will live in different states and you are married to someone else. Now he is talking about his mother, what she will cook next week for the Thanksgiving meal, what you should wear, how you should prepare the french onion green bean casserole, how you should cut your hair at an angle over your cheeks when you go to the mall with him. His mother has a straight white line down the middle of her dark hair, a perfectly centered part. You could never achieve that without a ruler. You are in a forest, a forest with fairytale trees that scrape the clouds. The warrior is behind you, calling you “kid.” He says “you’re tough, kid.” The man asks you to tell him about the rapes. That’s what he calls them, “the rapes.” Until you tell him about them, all of them, and everything you did, you will not be well enough to marry him.
You are young, but you feel old in a way you never will feel again. I wish I could read the way I used to read, you tell him. He isn’t listening. You want to tell him, I loved that table and my father when he was at that table. I loved the apple dessert made with red hots and I love that wet, old smell. It was heavy, scratchy, like wool that itches but lasts for years. Later, you and your brother will take a basketball outside, throw it in the trees, and shatter ice. It never snows in Waco, but there are ice storms. You tell your brother the fairies have come and cast a spell. Your heart is frozen, and you will not love again until a warrior finds you and carries you to an ice palace. I’ll save you, your brother tells you. I’m a warrior. It has to be a Norseman, you explain.
I’ll just take you inside and melt you over the heater, your brother says.
It’s not like that, you say. It’s a spell. It’s on the cellular level, dummie.
Oh, your brother says. His nose is red, and you should take him inside. Inside, there is hot cocoa and a plastic tree of silver icicles. Pecans to crack, and Christmas specials. You push your fingers deep into your pockets. Your brother is bonking your head with the ball, but you are frozen. It’s the best feeling in the world, waiting with your fingertips like chips of ice, just thinking about the toast and chocolate inside.
Originally appeared in Redivider, volume four, issue two, spring 2007.
Appears here with the author’s permission, @ Claudia Smith
FF.Net Author’s Bio
Claudia Smith teaches and writes in Hattiesburg, Mississippi where is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her short-short collections The Sky Is A Well And Other Shorts and Put Your Head In My Lap are available from Rose Metal Press and Future Tense Books respectively. Her collection Quarry Light, a book of short stories and one novella, is due out from Magic Helicopter Press. More about Claudia and her work may be found @ claudiastories.
