HERby Bridget Morrow
An excerpt from Chapter 1
The extraordinary looks just like anything else
Rosie
Part 1
Existence before the age of five was a concept Holland struggled with, but there was proof - Kodak pictures.
While Holland was still young, a baby, each picture taken with her Grandma Rosie left two things certain. The first was Rosie's lips, a perfectly shaped bow near Holland's ear; the second was golden light, two yellow circles touching each of them in the photograph like dual suns greeting one another. The melding would happen in different locations: sometimes near Grandma Rosie's neck like a radiating goiter, while the other would rise from Holland's hair -- a tiara of light. Then on another photo one would seem to shoot from Holland's stomach on the right side and Rosie's shoulder on the left.
Film was changed, sleeker cameras purchased through the years, different fingers would press shiny flat buttons to take the picture -- but the golden lights remained.
Grandma Rosie would say deep into Holland's ear as she waited for others to set up the shot, “They gonna miss you girl but now it's our turn," or "Sho glad you can stay with us for awhile," and "It ain't been that long for you, try to remember -- you don't never have to look for the light, you are the light." And finally, "been waitin for you a long time Holland.” These are the things Grandma Rosie would say until Holland believed it, deciding to make it a true thing.
This Saturday night the evening was grayer and cooler than it needed to be causing Rosie to turn toward the sink, grab the window ledge with the tips of her fingers and slam the window closed.
"February'll chill you down to your bones if you let it."
She was speaking to Holland and to no one in particular. There were always invisible gatherings, hidden crowds - mythical people. They loitered around the refrigerator door, fantasy folks walked out Rosie's back door as if meeting someone on the porch, others shimmied past to make their way into the small pink bathroom where Rosie's favorite soaps lay in small pools of water on each side of the sink.
Holland inhaled deeply, smelling roses -- red ones, she just knew it; sweetness rested in her lungs whenever the almost people were near. She dangled her legs over the kitchen counter. Something wet lay under Holland's right thigh; she knew it hadn't come from her so she kept swinging her legs. She'd seen Grandma Rosie wipe down the counter with the soapy wet kitchen rag before swinging Holland up there with a groan and a "whooh" as if Holland weighed more than she'd imagined. That was why Holland was wet. She swung her legs up, mid-air, and then let them drop to the wood of the cabinet that lay underneath her heels, the sound jarring and youthful. Holland wondered how many times she'd be allowed to shatter the silence before being given the look to stop.
The woman wearing the straw hat and the plain dress stopped directly in front of Holland, and when Holland kicked her legs in the air she seemed to make contact with the woman's full stomach but the woman didn't seem to mind, didn't even seem to feel it. If Holland's mother Cal were here Holland's legs would be spanked hard for doing such a thing. After squinting her eyes and turning her head to the side a little Holland noticed the woman looked like one of her aunts, but the woman coming out of the pink bathroom with the nice dress on looked like Grandma Rosie used to in old pictures before she grew up more.
These people were different, the ones who roamed around Grandma Rosie's house, never looking finished or complete, only crudely drawn characters with no weight or substance. Features were distinguishable, but no one looked like someone she could name. They stood almost on top of one another and when standing side by side they seemed able to share the same arm or leg, never was their space between them.
"Hey," Holland said to the little girl who was played with and held by the adults. She was younger than Holland. The little girl seemed to smile in Holland's direction, but Holland knew she wouldn't be able to hear her. One of them.
Grandma Rosie turned and looked in Holland's direction when she said "Hey." Holland looked down; she could never address her grandmother in that way but didn't know how to explain who she'd been talking to.
"Do you see them?" Holland had wanted to ask Grandma Rosie but something stopped her, it was the same thing that stopped Grandma Rosie from asking her the same question.
Holland and Rosie began discussing familiar subjects over a skillet of sizzling cornmeal, the handle was quickly transferred from the grip of Rosie's right hand to her waiting left; the right hand now unencumbered, drifted upward securing unruly strands of hair.
“Here comes yo granddaddy now, can't wait for me to take it out the skillet.” She was no longer surprised by Grandma Rosie's ability to hear Grandpa Emmett long before anyone actually saw him.
Rosie had leaned close to Holland's face when she'd spoken leaving a glimpse of something circular, tan and shiny on her tongue -- butterscotch, Rosie opened her mouth to speak again but Holland interrupted.
"Can I have me one?"
"One what?"
"Some of that you eatin'."
"You about to eat your dinner, no candy right now."
Holland's legs finally halted, so did the sound of wood being punished beneath her heels.
Holland finally heard Emmett's hard shoes coming from the living room, and then nothing while he walked on their circular brown rug, and then the sound resumed as he made his way toward the kitchen, the smell of fried meal tempting. He stood tall and lean in the doorway.
Rosie was grinning at her reflection in the window that she'd closed only minutes earlier. Holland wanted to touch the cool glass and she did, putting her hand on Rosie's image where her mouth was reflected. The surface was so cool Holland was certain the shock, the difference in temperature, would go through her entire body, but it stopped at the palm of her hand. Holland heard no frying sound, and then a second later the frying sound started again as Rosie flipped the bread over from the wiggling yellow side to the more formed brown one.The quiet happened when it was in the air Holland realized. The yellow matter heavy yet free in space, soon to be in Emmett's empty stomach. Things were coming together, making sense for her; she didn't have to ask her sister Lola or her parents so many questions anymore. Answers unfolded in her mind, blossoming like something green and flowery would if enough water soaked into it.
“I swear little girl; you sho remind me of somethin good.”
"You always say that grandma."
"Cause it's always true."
The butterscotch was much smaller but it was there. Holland touched Rosie's mouth, the real one this time, not the smooth cool glass one. Rosie took Holland's fingers into her mouth and bit down on them after wrapping her lips over her teeth so that it wouldn't hurt. Holland's fingertips felt warm air. Rosie's eyes met Holland's as if suddenly remembering something important to tell and then Rosie changed her mind.
Published by Turner Maxwell Books
Copyright © Bridget Morrow 2009
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