He worked four nights a week potato picking because his mother was in debt. She laid at home, fumbling through objects clean and dirty, old and new. They reminded her of a time when recording memories wasn’t considered. She couldn’t tell the difference between things from before or after the Split that sent her son to the fields. Maybe she shouldn’t think about it.
When I emerged, I knew everything. I just seemed to know how it all worked from that minute. I knew the midwife’s wonder, I knew that the soft pillows of my mother’s arms were home. I knew I belonged to them, and to everything else in that room. So I knew it all.
When I started school, I was taught everything. They said I had the potential to know all there is to know. I learnt how to write my name, and spell and do my basic sums. I learnt how earthquakes are made, when the queen was crowned and what others believe about creation. I yearned to know more, to explore. So I was taught everything.
When I left home, I wanted everything. I had a goal, an ambition, a career that’ll thrill me. I practiced the skill of resilience, I practiced hard work, commitment, drive. I didn’t let the jeers of others stand in my way. I was hungry, I persisted. So I wanted everything.
When my daughter was born, I was terrified of everything. I wrapped my gentleness around her and shunned anything that could harm it. I became her home, her entire support system, her only source of warmth. I became conscious of evil in the world, that it was there to harm my little girl. It haunted me. I was protector. So I was terrified of everything.
Nowadays, I’m everything. I sit around a centre from which it all began, amongst everything else. I’m a small fragment of the universe. I feel my learning dissipate through the earth. I trust it does us good. That’s it’s purpose. I didn’t achieve my goals, so now I’m a traveller without a destination. I function as part of a whole. That’s me, that’s everyone.
There’s a sort of happiness in it.
If wishes fell like rain, then certainly I am a storm. Never ending. I shower upon sunrise for the day to open and bloom with good things. I shower in the evening, too. I shower to wash the world in things better than itself. I’m doing it a favour.
Every day, after the last drops of dew are sucked up by the sun, I pour until exhausted. But I keep pouring, i don’t want it to stop, it mustn’t stop, it can’t, it’s impossible! More, more, more rain, please! There has to be an infinite supply or the world won’t survive. -without hope! Everything will die. Please. More, please!
I’ve run out. I feel strangely nourished.
Can we all just be a bit quieter in here? Sorry, but you need to tone it down. I’m not being rude, I’m just saying-just asking if you can lower the volume. I know you want to have fun, and I get it. I’m not one of those people. I’m not the police or anything, or a swat, or anything like that. But it’s very easy to chat quietly. I’m just saying. Please, it’s giving me a headache.
Why do you always feel the need to produce so much noise? Couldn’t you practice your fruitless tasks with slightly less overwhelm? How am I supposed to philosophise and create profound things when your pointlessness is always in my ear. I can’t think. Have you ever considered that? Can you think about how you override everyone else’s thoughts with your conversations that, may I add, seem completely superficial and unimportant. Us over here, are exercising something greater than you could ever think of. So, please, could you stop being on autopilot for a second and let us be?
Oh, how I’d love the chance to show you.
“I don’t know why, I just couldn’t help myself!” He hung his head at what was left of the sticky brown heap on the shop floor. “Martin,” Florence’s face laboured a horrified grin, but her eyes sparkled with amusement. Martin buried his chin in the scarf he’d forgotten to take off on coming in, and suddenly her smile changed to that of a cynic who found the irony in everything. “You’ve eaten all the cake.” They both glanced down again at it. His eyes were moist but he was determined not to give that away to his friend. It was a pitiful image: yesterday, ‘the most enchanting piece of baking the town had ever set its hungry eyes upon’, now most of it either clumped together in the pit of his belly or spread out across the tiling. He felt ashamed, too, that in a few hours the entire district’s prying population would have to be turned away starving. He stuffed his entire face in his scarf. He could no longer look at his best friend anymore. Florence endeared Martin’s familiar guilty look. “Show me your face.” He pulled unravelled his scarf tentatively but still avoided her glance. A warm, knowing smile inched across Florence’s face. “You could’ve asked for a fork.”
Tightly closed window on left. All toys away in box below. Bed empty on right, facing mirror. Colourless door in middle. Rocking horse in front of door. Horse swaying in breeze. Clown puppet shadow on ceiling. Little girl’s reflection in mirror. Her dress red and white to match door.
MARTHA: I’m not being lewd, but I’ve got to tell you about Miss Gilberte’s cleavage. Unbelievable. I mean, you can see them knockers from afar-blimey, they’re not hard to spot! You can see them poking out right through her dress and they’re all wrinkly and look a bit like Mount Rushmore. It’s bad enough having to see them from that angle but when she gets closer...(gags). I don’t know, it just makes me shiver. It’s the greasiness that gets me; honest to God, I’ve got no idea why it does. It’s so visible you can almost smell it. And if she bends down to help you, she’s got a great long peeling rash right down her cleavage and once I see that, that’s it. I’m gone. I decide that as long as those gargantuan, big sweaty boobs are near me, I’m not doing French. So I ran out. I know it sounds silly but seriously, you’ve got no idea about the experience I had to go through.
(MISS FALIMORE laughs)
MISS FALIMORE: I had a student once who kept repeatedly picking his nose throughout one of my lessons when he thought I wasn’t looking, and then about three-quarters of the way through, I caught a bogey fly from his desk and land on the smart board I was teaching on.
(MARTHA heaves. Both laugh).
That was the closest I ever came to resigning.
MARTHA: I would’ve resigned if that happened to me.
MISS FALIMORE: (Smiling) You don’t know the fulfilling perks of being an educator, Martha.
MARTHA: I don’t need to, I’m not becoming a teacher. I want to be a fashion designer.
MISS FALIMORE: A fashion designer?
MARTHA: Yeah, I’d like to do weddings. I helped with my mum’s dress, you know. We didn’t need to get it professionally fitted or worry about costs or anything because she had me.
MISS FALIMORE: Sounds like your mum’s extremely lucky to have you around. You must be very talented.
MARTHA: I am, actually.
(The bell rings).
MISS FALIMORE: Come on, you’d better get to class.
(MARTHA turns to go).
MARTHA: Miss?
MISS FALIMORE: Yes?
MARTHA: Detention wasn’t as bad as the tedious hellhole I thought it was going to be.
MISS FALIMORE: (Smiling) Go on.
(MARTHA leaves, still leaving MISS FALIMORE chuckling to herself).
Dear Lover,
You seem to have stumbled upon my little garden here, or, as I had better hoped, you will have noticed the budding hollyhocks and roses from the lighthouse. Perhaps it is spring, in which case it’ll all be in full bloom by now. It’s been long since I looked on the garden but I know this one-not like the others-will continue it’s cycle of blossoming and wilting for as long as both you and I live. It never fails.
I wonder how well you fit in it? You’re probably incredibly handsome. The garden, I know, has caught something of its sapient counterpart in your eye, and it’s a well known fact that glory attracts glory as much as power attracts power.
Well, since you’re most likely in one of the lanes leading to the fountain in the middle, I say don’t be tempted by the water just yet. I encourage you, if you can handle the thirst, to wait a while and observe how the birds grace the bushes. They’ll have a manner about them that shows they’re oblivious to the branches’ ancient construction. That secret, my dear, is only exchanged between us. Take some regard for the ones I planted like a canopy over your head. I always planned to create a flower garden with walls and a roof that I would often frolic in. Now I reside in that grey, undying fountain right before you. Come on, now you can wander down the narrow floral paths towards my home.
I’ve laid here, my lover, since a while ago a few days after I felt these very waters wrap me up in their silken sleeves and fill me with a softness unknown to any man. I’ve been resting for all that time since then: the fountain has decided to keep me within it, but I intend to find solace, my darling, in your consciousness of me.
Although I can’t see your endearing face, or hear your weakening steps across the turf, I can take comfort in knowing that you stand in my immortal garden and gaze at my little damp grave. So when the time comes, my lover, for you to take your place in death as I did, find me down the garden path.
Yours fondly,
A flower girl
