The ice dam outside is melting. She watches it seep through the cracks in the white molding around the window and collect in a puddle on her hardwood floor. But it’s hard to see how much water has accumulated (squinting can only aid so much). She hoists her tiny frame, brittle and bent, off the chair for a better look, guided by Mr. Walker, her trusty companion who sports a snazzy pair of tennis ball shoes, though he doesn’t play any tennis.
Too much water. Now she’ll have to call someone. Who? A plumber or a roofing man? She’s feeling a bit dizzy. Her nose begins to run and a lonesome drop falls, uniting with the puddle on the floor. “Don’t look back or you’ll be sorry,” a boy’s voice bellows down below.
She skates back along the floor with Mr.Walker and flicks the light switch. How had that bare light bulb in the overhead fixture, replaced just months ago, become as yellowed and grainy as the slush dissolving out on the streets below?
Time, perhaps. Time seemed to turn the brightest gem dull and scramble each day into a casserole of hours and months, with a side of years and decades. She doesn’t cook much anymore these days, except with the Black woman who comes to visit her each day. Otherwise it’s just cold cereal—or cookies. She also doesn’t wear any rings, her hands having grown into a pair of scraggly branches. Some days she believes she is a tree.
As she passes her dresser, she notices a reflection in the cracked makeup mirror that stands behind a hodge-podge of perfume bottles, jewelry boxes, photo frames and pill boxes. Why, it’s Mother Tree! No, wait. It is herself she sees with all those brown spots and lines which mark her face, as splintered as the languid liquid memories that had once defined her but now drift like plankton in the sludge of her cerebral cortex.
But a root starts to break through, one glimmer of recall that thaws and flows in a steady series of pulses between neurons. Je me souviens…I remember…
She is no longer in her apartment gawking at Mother Tree, but disembarking an airplane, catching a transient glimpse of her reflection in the terminal’s larger-than-life observation windows—her eyes, as blue as the ocean she’d just crossed, and her visage, smooth and round, crowned by gleaming strawberry blonde locks. She finishes her hasty primping (not that she needs any) and moves forward. Oh, my! There she is!
Zoë is waiting for her right at the gate, looking just as she has in all the photos included in her letters over the years—except even more striking, in a way that makes her palms bright red and drenched with perspiration the her eyes linger on Zoë.
Something is happening in her legs too. They feel weighted, as if a tidal wave has come unexpectedly from the margins and swept her up in its force. When Zoë’s head turns in her direction the walls and clocks, the other weary travelers scrambling toward the baggage claim, even the strumming of her thumping heart all wash out into a surreal peripheral vista. She wonders if she can keep herself afloat, but realizes she might not when Zoë pulls her in.
Her nerve endings trace the warm impression of Zoë’s strong arms, Zoë’s full breasts pressing against her own, the faint scent of freesia in Zoë’s seal brown waves. Their shared embrace secretes the sensation of a temperate morning giving way to balmy afternoon. All feels calm again…until she holds Zoë out at arms’ length and peers into eyes that refract with amber, green and gray hues. Kaleidoscopes.
No, I can’t…I can’t even think it, let alone say it!
Phonemes stick on her tongue. Petrified. The silence passes as Zoë’s gaze holds her.
The reminiscence also passes as Zoë’s hazel eyes begin to turn crystalline so that they are no longer Zoë’s eyes but her own, unblinking. She is no longer in the airport with Zoë, but alone in her apartment and her own eyes are disparaging her from within the looking glass on the dresser. Too much to bear! She hoists the mirror and flings it with what little strength she can muster.
“Zoë! Oh, Zoë!”
She shakes her head and scans her surroundings. Dozens of shards have rained across the floor along with some of the hodge-podge from her dresser top. One such item, a gold photo frame, lies in the midst of the shards. Limp, but vivid.
She knifes the tears from her face and struggles to grasp the frame. She glides her gnarled fingers along the gold-painted wood and glass, impervious to the photo’s faded hues. It is an image of her and Zoë, arms around each other, laughing, a lemonade stand behind them. Their clinked glasses glisten in the light of the sun.
She smiles, recognizing that this might some kind of window, a different memory. Perhaps she will be taken back through it one day.
Outside the sun sets without apology. But there is no need. It will return in the morning to once again melt the ice that has begun to refreeze.
- - -
A finalist for the 2009 Rita Dove Poetry Award, Jennifer A. Hudson's work has appeared in Art Times, Lunarosity, Blinking Cursor, Dark Lady Poetry, The Helix, The Broken Plate, Eleutheria: The Scottish Poetry Review, Nefarious Ballerina, and Sage Woman, amongst others. She is working on her MFA at Albertus Magnus College.
0 Responses
Post a Comment
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
