After noon
by Cheryl, posted on July 16th, 2010 in Red Writing Hood
Today – and every Friday – I will be participating in a creative writing meme called the Red Writing Hood. Ericka from Alabaster Cow and I are hosting it over at The Red Dress Club. Join in, link up, check out all the posts! This week’s prompt is to begin a short fiction piece with the words, “Your mother.” Disclaimer: I’ve never written fiction. So be gentle, interwebz!
After Noon
Your mother was so beautiful. Ephemeral, really.
She was. She was, and I wonder what happened. Why that day.
Did you know? Could you have, at age almost-six, known anything at all?
There were surely clues, a trail of breadcrumbs to collect. You chose instead to look up, up at the shapes of the clouds in the sky. A unicorn! A duck! An elephant!
You would’ve been alone, of course, lying in the tall grass that itched the backs of your knees. Your mother? She was in bed, it being after noon. You could hear the cicadas humming and you thought how nice it would be to walk back into your house and be greeted with an icy glass of tart lemonade and a plate of still-warm chocolate chip cookies. Even Oreos from the box would’ve done.
You continued to lie in the grass, even though you were now covered in a sheen of sweat.
Because it was better. So much better to have scratchy knees and a grumbling belly and a sticky shirt and sweet obliviousness than to go back inside.
As long as you stayed there, hot and drowsy now, you could imagine she wouldn’t still be in bed, after noon, with the shades drawn and a near-empty bottle of sickly-sweet brown liquid clutched in her hand like a lifeline. You couldn’t have known, as you searched for a whale! a parrot! about the knife and the blood and the pain that finally left her. You could believe, for another minute or hour, in that cold glass of lemonade and the aroma of vanilla.
That this time, it would be different.
This time, you’d go home to find your Mom.
Tags: after noon, alabaster cow, cold lemonade, ericka, red writing hood, shapes in the clouds, the red dress club
Kelli Says:
Thanks so much for your comments, and for linking up your story!
Janine Says:
Cheryl Reply:
July 16th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Aw, thanks, Sunday! Much appreciated!!!
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