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The fur

After many months of drought, Monsoon sets in—season of mixed abundance, more crops, more floods. Rarely more crops cause,’ there were more floods than not. I scrape last night’s vegetable peels off from the kitchen floor and chuck it away in a compost bin. I hear my neighbour, Rosina scream from upstairs. 

            “Too much rain. This Monsoon is particularly bad for chillies. How’re you going with yours?”

            I don’t say much but continue to scrape away the last of the tidbits, scraps. I have a roof-top pot garden where I grow my daily requirements of vegetables—chillies, cauliflowers and green spinach. This home-made compost helps. Monsoon destroys crops, specially chillies, they say. I hear it, but doesn’t bother me much. Rosina is right. The fate of chilly farmers is at odds as always.

            I press down the bin’s lid to push down some of the scrap; the bin fills up too fast. I carry it to my garden on the roof to distribute it evenly around into all of the pots. My chillies don’t shrivel in the Monsoon rain. I pluck a few plump ones. The overcast sky looks grey as expected. I walk to the edge of the roof and look over to peek into Rosina’s flat. I see an empty chair. I wonder where she may have disappeared. Perhaps, she is washing up in the bathroom or taking a bath, even. I decide to give her a couple of chillies. I call her. “Sina, Sina, Are you at home?”

             I hear nothing. I decide to go downstairs and knock on her door. I knock a few times. Rosina unbolts the door and stares in silence. She is wrapped in a towel. I try to move my face away when I hear her laughter. 

            ”Don’t be shy, I’m in the bathroom washing up,” she says.

            “I won’t stay, I just want to give you these.” 

            “Of course, thank you, chillies are way too expensive, these days.”

             “Yeah, I agree. Any way, I’ll leave you to it and maybe see you another time?”

             “Sure,” she said and shut the door to my face.

            That is rude, the way she shut that door. I come down the stairs feeling miffed, I open the door to my flat and get in. I put the chillies in a bowl on the table and walk to the verandah. I hear a scream coming from Rosina’s place. I wonder what’s up! Although, it still peeves me the way she shut her door to my face, I scream nevertheless at the top of my voice, ‘Sina, Sina, are you okay?’ I hear more screams, then a moment of quiet. I think, she must be okay. But I am not completely sure and fear something is wrong. I have half a mind to call the other neighbours. They hear it too. By now, I see a couple of them necking out through the window. Our eyes meet. 

            “I think we need to call the police,” I say. 

            They agree.

            The police come. I am upstairs again with the police. The door is ajar. We enter and we see Rosina on the floor. Her body is covered in some kind of a furry substance on her shoulders and chest but she breathes. Her eyes are closed. I call an ambulance. They take Rosina to the hospital. However, when I look around the room, I see that my chillies are broken, crushed, and messed up all over her table. I’m confused and look at the police.

            “She had a hairy visitor, who doesn’t like chillies,” an officer said.

            “What? Why? What do you mean?” I ask.

            “The visitor didn’t think she deserves any chilli of yours.”

            “What’s going on?” I ask.

            “Rosina did not atone for her sins. She didn’t say, ‘sorry.’ There’s a new hairy beast in town who will strip to the bare bones if someone’s soul didn’t grow, they take the target’s happiness away because of their inability to say, ‘sorry.’ Here’s its signature note.”

            “Really? I never knew. What’s her sin, though?”

            “The worst kind, one who doesn’t acknowledge in her heart that they’ve sinned.”

            “Hubris?”

            “Poison hearts. The beast knows better he’s a soul-reader, a snatcher and a compost-maker of new souls.”

            I grab the chilly scraps and rush out of the flat before the hairy beast destroys me, too.

What you leave behind

Walk around in the square of the living room. Step on the hardwood and the carpet just to feel the difference against your heel. Stop by the kitchen and twist the timer still sitting on the countertop. Listen to the timer tick tick tick. It sounds like a sprinkler spitting water. Tick tick tick. Twist it again, bring it back to zero. Briiinnnggg. Do this just to know it works. The minute marks are rusting. This timer is as old as your second-oldest daughter who’s fifty-nine. Twist it again. Let it be the metronome to your footsteps. You have fifteen minutes before you must go back, fifteen minutes to remember everything you forgot while you were alive. 

Your feet move across the hardwood. You know when the floor will be uneven, where it will slant, what spots will creak beneath your weight. But there will be no sounds. You will not leave any marks. You could claw your fingernails through the paint in the living room and none of it will come off on your hands because you cannot leave permanent traces on this earth anymore. Someone nearby might be able to sense your presence, if they believed in that sort of thing, and even then, they’d have to convince themselves it was real. That you were real. 

The house is on the market after it bore your name since 1959, after you raised your children here, lived and aged with your husband, forgot things you never thought you’d forget like your daughters’ names and your wedding anniversary. You lived in this house until you died. Now your husband is dead too and at least one of you had to come back to see what you left behind.

On the stove, a note taped above the burners next to the bake button says HOT!HOT!HOT! like the extra exclamation points might help you remember but still you let the burners sit unattended until they glowed and smoked. You turned on the stove and let things burn, turned on the stove and burned yourself. Your husband learned not to leave you unattended in the kitchen, not to leave you unattended in a car, not to leave you unattended on stairs, not to leave you unattended. 

You’re not the only one who haunts this house. Traces of your husband linger. The pieces of paper with your phone number, his number, instructions for how to dial 911, the list of important dates you once forgot how to remember like 4/15-wedding anniversary and 1/12-Jennifer’s birthday line the side of the refrigerator next to his detailed calendars. January, February, March, April, May. He never made it to May, never paid the cable bill on the 15th or turned 93 on the 6th. As he neared his death, the writing on the calendar shifted from neat cursive to illegible scribbles as his hand shook, his body breaking down. The remembrance card from your funeral and your daughter’s funeral, dated three years apart sit next to the calendars. Yours has a picture of Jesus on the front. Hers depicts a patch of flowers and says our reunion will be a happy one. 

Inspect the dining room briefly. Remember the eight of you crowded around a table, pulling chairs in from other parts of the house to fit together. The beer and wine glasses and teacups in the China cabinet stack on top of each other collecting dust. You and your husband drank until you stopped and then gave in again. Then stopped, and then gave in again. If you looked hard enough, you could find the beer glass with your husband’s name on it and the tiny wine glass you drank from, pouring a fourth of a glass at a time. Repeating just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit to yourself each time. 

During your last Christmas in this room, your oldest daughter pulled a set of keys from your hand. You don’t drive anymore, remember? She asked. And you blinked into the white space in your brain, found a buzzing instead of clarity. I gave up my own life to raise you, you said, unsure of where the rage came from, wondered if was always inside you. 

Move on from this. Head upstairs. Open all the doors to all the empty rooms where your daughters slept at various points in their lives, rotating through the rooms as they got older and new siblings were born and others moved out. Go into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror to inspect how your body looks, trace your curves with a curiosity for your body you were only allowed to feel when you were a child. In life, your body was a vessel for others. Whisper to yourself: mine, mine, mine.

Your husband left your room as you did. Walk around on all the bumps between the hardwood. Remember how you always picked up his clothes off the floor and brought them to the washer in the basement. Remember when you came home early one day and found clothes all disheveled like they were taken off hastily next to the nightstand. You picked up clothes that didn’t belong to you but were left behind by someone whose name you’ve never asked for and never wanted to know. Your husband moved out of your bed at your request, then the house. And you’d never come back together again completely. Eventually you told your husband he could come home. Not out of necessity but because the roof started leaking and the bank account wasn’t in your name and suddenly the front door was an open mouth that had swallowed you. 

Find all the photos before you go. Make eye-contact with everyone. Feel longing. You can remember their faces. You’ll never forget now. The timer is still ticking downstairs. You hear it brrriiinnggg again. For real this time. It’s time for you to go back. Walk out the door. You don’t need to lock it.

Prayer for Silence

Every night, I wish the day would never come. In the dark air, it was easier to feel the pulse of the concrete under my feet. I longed to feel the beat of too many souls lost over the years to count. It was the only thing loud enough to manage to drown out the one-sided conversations in my head, eating away at me for as long as I could remember. 

In the darkness, I didn’t have to worry about how close I would come to crossing the lines that were engraved on my body and burned into my skin. Boundaries were blurry in the confusion of the shadows that haunted all the places I passed through like a ghost. The bold letters of the signs I passed told me I was beautiful, or that I should let the animal out. Every time, while I was lost in the beauty of the stars and the throbbing music and the sparkling bars, I thought I could even believe them.

Out on the cold, hard dance floor, I knew that there was at least a small chance that I could feel alive, that someone would look into my eyes and see all the parts of me that I tried so hard to hide away. In the candlelight, I could still pass for something mythical, someone worthy of being worshiped if only for an hour or so. I could even fall in love with my own reflection when I could barely make out my features in the mirror. 

In the early hours of the morning, the harsh light in McDonald’s didn’t bother me, even though I knew my eyes were covered in mascara bruises, and the red lipstick, like blood, had smeared out beyond the wrinkles at the sharp corners of my mouth like some kind of grotesque mask. Even as I ate a quick and greasy breakfast, I felt dangerous and impossible, flying above all the people stumbling out of the clubs to sit on the curb and wait for a taxi to take them home.

I never wanted to go home, because every time I slipped into the shower and my sweat swirled down the drain, my armor was lost. I was once again nothing more than a body sliding between cold sheets, my arm brushing against the frozen concrete wall as my eyes closed and the sun rose. I would be jolted awake in the full light of day where I couldn’t hide anymore from the voices, my voice, really, screaming all the things that I would never say aloud.  

Even when I closed my eyes, it wouldn’t stop. I spent my days writing long letters that would never be sent in an effort to push away all the things I ever wanted to tell the people who had passed even briefly through my life. There were so many of them, and some needed letters upon letters before the memory of their presence was washed out of me, and that voice would rest and give way to another stranger I had once known.

I hid from the sun, but it always managed to find me anyway in some forgotten corner of my kitchen. I could only escape once the dusk fell and I could cover the bags under my eyes with makeup and run over the empty city blocks, eager to be anywhere else.

Life went on like this for so long that I thought it would never change. I wasn’t even sure that I ever wanted it to. I didn’t care if it felt like I was living like a criminal. But as the days and nights went by, the voices were stronger and more persistent with all the things that I would never be able to say. The letters on my dining room table, addressed to my family, friends, lovers, or strangers I had passed on the sidewalk, took up more and more space, and even putting the words that echoed in my brain on paper wouldn’t stop the agony. I could feel the folded notes screaming at me in a hundred hungry voices, and I knew I needed them out of my house. One night I slipped a few in my purse without really knowing that I would do with them.

There was an empty space in a forgotten corner of the first bar I slid into, so I taped the scrambled message to no one there, and a moment of calming silence like the light flickering through the breaks in the music came over me. After that, I posted another note on a lamppost and left another on the bench of a bus stop. The city was full of places that needed to be filled with something. By the end of the night, all the letters I had with me were gone out into the world on their own, and I was left alone at the bus stop as the first rays of the sun hit my face for the first time in as long as I could remember I didn’t wince.

The Storm

The sun is sinking in a molten blaze of glory, suddenly visible below the leaden mass of cloud that has brooded all day over the two men. Now they are lit up as if on a golden altar as they sit on the wagon’s running board clear above the hedges that otherwise keep the lane in a deep shade.

“A storm is coming,” says the older man.

“D’ya say so?” says the younger, wiping a sleeve across his grimy forehead.

The older man glances sideways at the younger, then clicks at the two horses that are pulling them and their cargo peaceably along. 

“Well?” asks the younger.

“Maybe you think it isn’t true”

“I see no sign of your storm.”

The wagon rumbles on, piled high with sheaves that the men have laboured to cut, gather and bind. It fills the lane with its bulk, heaving its way between the aged, crowding hedgerows that scratch away at the flaking paint on its lofty sideboards.

“Father Matthew says that the truth is… ”

“… and who decides this… truth?” interrupts the older man.

“The Lord decides.”

“The Lord God Almighty or the Lord of all this?” the older man takes a calloused hand from the reins and gestures at the land all around them; at the high hedges and the balks and ridged fields that stretch away down to the dark line of the river.

“He says in truth that sin is everywhere; and that Bell… Bee…”

“Beelzebub?”

“Yes. …corrupts all those who are not pure of heart.”

“Your Father Matthew is quick to cast stones.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I know a truth or two about the Father Matthews of this world.”

They sit in silence while the horses plod on, a cloud of gnats spiral aimlessly above them in the late summer heat. Horse harnesses jingle, a high treble above the ever-present bass rumble of the wagon’s wheels. 

“You’re not curious on the subject of liberty?” the older man begins again.

“I know that each of us has his place in God’s order.”

“And your place is not to be curious?” he grins wryly at his companion.

“My place is to bring in the harvest.”

“And to do nothing else? Not to use the gifts God has given you for His Glory?”

“What gifts?”

“Your voice to speak the truth. Your mind to perceive righteousness. Your hands to take action.”

“Those gifts are equal in us all.”

“Are they now? Did you not take arms in the Great Rebellion?”

“I did. I fought for my Lord at Newbury.”

“You fought for your liberty?”

“I fought against tyranny.”

A pause, the wagon lurches over a deep rut. 

“I expect you saw a lot of other dead Carters and Commoners ”

“At least we now have peace, and the tyrant king is imprisoned.” 

“So do you have your liberty? You and your dead Commoner companions?”

As they round a bend in the road a great house comes into view set on a low hill below them; it sits in a verdant expanse of grass, its sides studded with tall dark windows, columns support its wide portico.

“Why are you afraid to answer?” 

“This again? Will you question me throughout the livelong day? I’m not afraid.”

“Are you a man who would read the Pamphlets then?”

The younger man says nothing. He looks fixedly at the silent house below them.

Then he says “At the Assizes months back before the feast of St Thomas there was a man who talked like you do.”

“Oh yes?” 

“Father Mathew read us his pamphlet.” 

“..and what did you think of that man’s pamphlet?” 

The metal strakes on the wagon’s wheels are studded with hobnails to cope with the Surrey mud; now on the dry compacted surface of the laneway they make a sound like millstones grinding against each other.

“They took off that man’s ear.”

The younger man looks sideways at the older man and raises an eyebrow.

“I lost this ear to a musket ball lad.” The older man fingers the ragged skin hidden behind his long greying hair.

“Foot or Horse?”

“Horse. Dragoons.”

“And now it is over.”

“It is far from over,” says the older man. “There is still work to be done.”

“And so you have come here.” 

“I go where the work takes me.”

“Harvesting?”

“Harvesting… Gathering.” The older man makes a seesaw motion with the flat of his hand. “It is hard work, but it is eased by help from those like yourself.”

“I still see no storm.” 

“It will come upon us both nonetheless.”

The wagon rumbles on into the gathering dusk, it’s cargo of sheaves rustling and whispering.

Our Lady of Sorrows 

It’s cold inside the church, as cold as charity. Maria shuffles up the nave under the anguished gaze of Jesus, her down-at-heel brogues slap-whispering on the flagstones dinted by thousands of feet before hers. The feeble winter sun stripes the grey pillars with pastel colour.

She eases her bag down carefully onto the altar steps and rubs her aching shoulder.

‘I brought you these,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t think what else to do with them.’ 

Her words bounce off smoke-stained pillars, echoing round the vast, vaulted roof. 

‘It’s not a peace offering,’ she adds, in case God gets the wrong idea. ‘I’ve not forgiven you for taking him.’

Her voice sounds strange, unfamiliar to her. These days, now Patrick isn’t there to to talk to, she listens more than she speaks. She still visits the hospice every day, even though he’s been in the ground for months. Now she sits with those who have nobody, holding their crepe paper hands and stroking wispy tendrils of hair from their faces as the end approaches.

Sometimes, they tell her things – shameful things they don’t want to be buried with: clandestine affairs; a secret love child; crimes that went unpunished; slights and spites, things said and unsaid. 

Maria doesn’t know what to do with these confessions, so she puts them in her tote bag and takes them with her. But they’re weighing her down, immobilising her; she can’t go back, but moving forward is like wading through treacle. Today, unable to bear the increasing heft of them any longer, she brings them here. 

‘They’re yours now,’ she tells God. ‘I never asked for them. I’ve got enough burdens of my own without carrying other people’s.’

She upends the bag, and a stream of guilt, regrets, recriminations, weaknesses and missed opportunities flows out across the chancel; they collect in crevices, form shallow pools, disappear down cracks. The surge of relief leaves her breathless. 

On her way out, she pauses to light a candle for Patrick. A wisp of smoke drifts upwards, lifting the weight from her soul; the flickering flame pierces the grey fog of her grief. Slinging the empty bag over her shoulder, she leaves the church with a renewed lightness in her steps and in her heart.

When You Get Old, You Become a Silly Goose

On the Singer your grandmother left you, you sew the bodice, tack a thousand white feathers to the paunch, and carve breathing holes into the black leather beak. Zip until you feel metal on the base of your neck, then flex your arms in their wire-and-mesh wings. On a lark, you honk until your granddaughter joins you in front of your full-length mirror. She anoints you Silly Goose with her plastic princess wand.

Wearing the costume out of the house – ducking through the doggie door, waddling across the cul-de-sac – brings you attention you forgot you missed. Men step into gutters when your painted orange flippers slap the pavement. Packs of teenagers intent on their phones clear the way after you honk with the bicycle horn sewn into your dewlap. Nice to be noticed, to be seen, to be invited to the Halloween parade, in step beside your granddaughter, who is wearing your old lace coronation gown, your tiara pinned in her hair.

You’re on top of the world until you’re not, until you totter past your granddaughter’s room and hear her asking a Magic 8 Ball if Grandma will ever come back. Outlook not so good. Until her little friends visit and your goosey excretions stain the trains of their taffeta dresses. Until you remember that geese aren’t made for company. 

When frost encrusts the lawn, the clover loses its flavor, and you decide you’ve had it with this disguise. You reach behind your back, but your wingtips can’t manage the zipper’s pull. You have no thumbs to unshod the flippers, no voice beyond your beak. You honk for rescue, for transformation, for your granddaughter to put on a sweater and help you out. You honk until the neighbor bangs on the fence and threatens you with cookery.

In this suburban backyard, it’s getting colder, and your granddaughter has pulled her curtains closed. You understand. You did the same to your grandmother. Your world was bright pink, and hers had turned downy white, her face an embarrassing reminder of the shortness of one’s reign. 

Settling your wings back into place, you hunker down in the crook of the fence, seeking the earth’s last bit of warmth before your end. A flock flies overhead, a rollicking V of Canada geese. Their honks are frivolous, reviews of golf courses and grubby inland lakes, but they stir something, nonetheless. In pining for what you’ve lost – satin slippers, petal-soft cheeks, golden thrones – you’ve forgotten what you’ve gained.

The backyard is just long enough for a runway. Once you begin, nature takes over. Air balloons under your feathers, feet flatten against your paunch. The higher you rise, the richer the winter smells. This is the world, this sky: bigger and stronger and wider and more permanent than princessy fixations. You may be a silly goose, but you, you have learned to fly.