Talespinning

Word Count: 263

It was wondrous, joyous, everything they’d promised it would be. That amazing and terrible moment when you take the dare, crush all inside of you threatening your freedom of fear. When you come face to face with that monster in your mind that your mother assured you did not exist. When you fly through the air and crash through the veil of the water below and the bubbles rise like white shiny stars to the surface. Your fingers waving pale and desperate to catch them in your hands. Your hair fanning out in flags of celebration. Your feet flicking like the silver fish at this intrusion in their world.

And amid all those last loud jeers that turned to cheers as you flew scared and proud from the highest bank by the river where the others stood and urged you on, when their keenest support turned away in disinterest  as you hit like a stone in a rainbow splash, when you didn’t come back up for lifesaving air, they weren’t watching.

So you cling to that all important moment, that confirmation that despite your trepidation and disbelief, you had it in you after all. But the feeling of belonging that you sought, that made you take that final step to prove yourself, that cloak of validation from your peers; you’ll never taste the victory more than for that instant as you sink into the arms of the sun-warmed river. And you wonder if they’ll always remember that at least you had leapt into the summer, at least for a moment you’d flown.

Word Count:  375

I had heard that she’d painted the walls red, deep red, which was all that would cover the stains that would bleed right through three, four coats of paint, even deep evergreen like the old firs that shaded the cottage. They would bleed like a freshly cut wound, or the scab picked before it was ripe. Blistering through, a shade every day, darker, deeper, eventually matching the original blood-red that spattered each room.

It made me laugh, when I heard that. It was so typical Mama; persistent, insistent, edging and pushing and squeezing all breath from your lungs.

We’d all left, Sadie, and Frieda, and Bobby, and me right before Daddy had died. I’d gone to New York and came back just for his funeral. Though Frieda and I keep in touch with newsletters at Christmas, I haven’t been back in seven years. Sadie’s got a house and a family somewhere out in Ohio, but Bobby and Frieda have their own places right there in town.

“She’s gone,” Frieda said on the phone. That was on Monday and I’d made reservations at a motel and packed a few things for the drive. Frieda said that I’d have to stay a few days to settle things up with legalities but I told her she could do what she wanted and I didn’t care what became of the house. Really, I didn’t think they could sell it at all. Maybe just raze it and level the ground.

But I did stay on a bit longer, after the service, after the last snickering neighbor had eaten the funeral feast over at Frieda’s and night flickered down. And I came back in the morning and sat with my siblings and none of us said it aloud. Finally Bobby got up from the table and said he’d go over alone. We made small talk as families who don’t really talk to each other must do to fill up the time.

He came back an hour later and I knew just what he’d say. “We’ll have to burn it down,” Bobby said, “just get rid of it.” He looked up and his eyes were all hollow and dark. His fingers twitched on the table. “It’s bleeding more than ever before.”

Word Count: 485

She painted the kitchen first, a rich deep red like her mother’s, that first kitchen she remembered of her childhood, upstairs from her grandparents, her father’s folks. She painted the cabinets bone white because she couldn’t remember what color her mother’s had been.

This was her first house after years of apartments. She bought it with money she’d saved since her first job at St. Augustine’s Hospital, her first job as a nurse. She’d been there twenty-two years and now she was Head Nurse of the floor, the night shift which was always her preference. She’d always hated long dark nights alone and now the days were spent sleeping and in the day, she’d always felt safe. Safe enough to close her eyes. Safe enough to sleep.

The dining room opened from the kitchen so she painted that the same color red. She got premium rates for the night shift and a raise from the recent promotion so she bought a small oriental rug for under the table. It looked beautiful, exquisitely lush on the newly waxed walnut floors. She made white lace curtains that she hung on rods that set into the wide trimmed windows. She loved the effect.

The dining room was tiny, with two doorways and two windows that cut the room into tall narrow-stripped walls. She had plenty of red left over and started in on the living room soon after she’d finished.

You’d think, as a nurse, she’d be weary of red but she wasn’t. Blood didn’t scare her. Blood was the color of life. She was a very good nurse, one of those with the balance of caring and straightforward service. Everyone liked her, the patients, the doctors who trusted her dedication, and the other nurses and aides on her floor. You wouldn’t say they were close nor shared gossip, but rather a deep respect for the professional she was.

She bought more carpets, sewed all the curtains, room by room, waxing the floors, painting the walls. The same blood red walls and the same bone-white curtains downstairs and up in the bedrooms.

When the last room was finished, all the furniture put back into place, she remembered that she’d been mistaken; her mother’s kitchen had been bright sunshine yellow until the very last day.

She awoke as the sun smiled into her window in late afternoon, showered, dressed, and prepared a small salad. The kitchen walls glowed as she sat down with paper and pencil to write a few notes out for work. Muffins, she wrote. She’d stop and pick up some muffins for the nurses as a snack as the night shift wore on. They’d be surprised.

Charts was the next thing that came to her mind. She’d show the staff the new chart system.

Blood Drive, she wrote. And underlined it twice in red ink for she’d used more paint than she’d thought.