February Reading

I read five books in February, four nonfiction and one fiction, only partly because I’m trying to front-load the nonfiction this year.

 

In fiction, I read (fine:  devoured) Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.  I had already watched and loved the show, but, as usual, the book was even better.  It was the latest in the Pratchett books that I am getting from my awesome older kid for holidays.  It’s funny, deep, and rich.  Two thumbs up.

 

I had been meaning to get to reading Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras since my unsuccessful attempt to complete yoga teacher training.  (I will succeed someday, if only because I will never have to have another hysterectomy.)  I liked some parts better than others.  Perhaps as a result of experience, I always bring a healthy dose of caution to any organizational system that wants me to surrender.  That said, the yamas and niyamas are, on the whole good and useful things.  I like to think about Big Questions and the book gave me plenty of opportunity.  This particular edition also has lovely pictures.

 

My Grandma Marian died about twenty years ago now.  One of the things of hers that I have is her prayer book.  She was a devout Catholic.  The book, by Father F. I Lasance, is titled My Prayer Book.  Grandma Marian’s sister Anne gave it to her in 1945 and it sat on the table next to her chair in the den as long as I can remember.  There are various prayer cards tucked inside and one dry leaf.  Now that I’ve explained why I’m keeping it, I will talk about the contents, which are… strange… to my Protestant mind.  First of all, the book is full of stuff to do during Latin Mass.  I presume that the idea was to occupy the minds of the congregation with something since what the priest was doing was in a language a lot of them didn’t know.  Then there is the glorification of violence.  I think I get the whole Mel Gibson torture porn thing now.  I am not going to believe in a God who requires that kind of suffering.  I’m just not.  Which, apparently, is all right as long as I say enough of the sanctioned magic words:  there are prayers upon prayers that will grant a devout prayer various lengths of indulgence.  This seems so very transactional.  And, of course, the text is extremely male-dominated and obsessed with virginity.  Please note:  I know and love many people who are Catholic.  I am not setting out to disparage them or the way they choose to worship.  It is just very different from my culture.

 

Speaking of my culture, it received a corrective in the form of Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States.  Thanks to my awesome younger kid, some of the contents had managed to filter into my consciousness through other books, but I still learned a lot about how political the teaching of history is.  Zinn worked to put the nonwhite, nonmale, nonwealthy back into the history.  It is not a pretty picture, the way the white supremacist capitalist cisnormative patriarchy has systematically oppressed the poor, black, brown, and female people of this country.  We need to do better.

 

Finally, I read The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist.  I had mixed feelings about it.  On one hand, it is a super important exploration of one of the key problems about our money culture:  the idea that there isn’t enough.  Thinking from scarcity is what fuels the hoarding of money and the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.  On the other, it doesn’t go far enough.  The author is a fundraiser by profession.  Having done that professionally, I can both admire her skill and decry her need to use it.  A lot of the job is convincing rich people that they are generous for giving money.  That is better than rich people not giving money, but maybe it would be better still for those people to create systems in which money doesn’t need to be given.  Twist does not question the capitalist basis that allows the super-rich to exist in the first place, which means that we’re talking about partial solutions.

 

Winter reading total:  10 books.  Year to date total:  10 books

February Flash Lit 10 - If the Shoe Fits

And now, if e’er by chance I put
    My fingers into glue
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
    Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
    A very heavy weight,
I weep…

Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 8

 

 

 

Butterfly locked the bathroom door behind her and leaned on it.  There were no tissues because Clive thought it was a waste of money.  “And people just steal the boxes anyway,” he said.

 

You probably do, she thought, but the rest of us don’t necessarily want to wipe our noses with the cheap, non-absorbent toilet paper.  The little oblongs scratched the corners of her eyes as she wiped away the tears.  It could have gone worse, she mused.  It wasn’t like she expected a parade or anything.   Somehow she had figured her twenty years in this job meant something.  Silly to cry about not having a card or a cake.

 

She flushed the wad of paper down the toilet, rinsed her face with water, and dried it with coarse brown paper towels.  Then she returned to her desk, put her coffee mug and her Beaches of the World calendar and her mostly-dead African violet in an empty computer paper box.

 

“It’s not five yet,” Clive said.  “What are you doing?”

 

“Leaving,” she replied.  “What are you going to do, fire me?”  It felt childish, but also satisfying.  “I’ll take my final check, please.”

 

He gave it to her.  Too cheap to buy a stamp, she thought.  She put the envelope in her purse and walked out fifteen minutes before five.

 

It was getting dark already.  Butterfly breathed in the twilight air and considered how she felt:  afraid, for sure, but also just a little bit curious.  For once, she did not know what would happen next.  She passed the dry cleaners, the nail salon, and then stopped at the lighted window of the shoe store.  Rain boots for children in bright colors and animal patterns lined up toe to heel along the window ledge.  Behind them, she saw various sneakers and boots and some very fancy heels.  She could feel her toes, pinched in her professional pumps.

 

The door opened with a jingle of bells.  She set her box down on one of the chairs, kicked her pumps underneath another, and padded around the shop in her stockings.  The bored kid behind the counter snapped her gum and did not look up from her texting until Butterfly approached the counter with one red Converse high top in her hand.  “I’d like to try these on.”

 

“Size?” the girl said.  “Men’s size, that is.  That’s how they come.”

 

Butterfly said, “I don’t know what size I wear in men’s shoes.”

 

The girl rolled her eyes.  Butterfly was humbled to think that this scrawny person who typed entirely in emojis knew more than she did about shoes.  That’s Bonnie thinking, she told herself.  “So I wear a six in women’s shoes.  How does that convert?”

 

“Four,” the girl said, slumping down from her stool and slouching to the back.  She returned with the box and shoved it at Butterfly.

 

Butterfly pulled the tissue out of the toes of the shoes, laced them up most of the way, and slid her feet inside.  They fit, with room to wiggle her toes at the end.  She paid and left the shop wearing her new shoes, the box left behind. 

February 2021 Flash Lit 9 - On a Dark Desert Highway

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought poor Alice, “it would be of very little use without my shoulders…”  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 1

 

 

 

 

In 1976, Bonnie turned 8.  She got braces on her too-large front teeth.  Her mother made her put barrettes in her hair for school to keep it out of her face, but they always gave her a headache, pulling so tightly on the roots.  She would have taken them out if she thought she could get away with it.

 

Then Grandma Brown came to visit.  She was her dad’s mother and everyone said that Bonnie took after her.  Bonnie looked at the wisps of hair escaping from Grandma Brown’s bun and had to agree.  She wouldn’t mind having an arm full of silver bangles that jingled or big hoop earrings, either, but her mother wouldn’t hear of her getting her ears pierced.

 

Grandma Brown drove up in her VW Beetle, George.  “George is the handsomest,” Grandma said. “I’d love to go for a drive with him.”  Mother’s smile froze on her face, but Bonnie laughed.

 

“Where would you go?” she asked.

 

Grandma Brown spread her arms out wide so her green crinkly caftan looked like an embroidered kite.  “Oh, maybe to see the redwoods, or to the desert for a vision quest.”

 

“What’s a vision quest?” Bonnie asked, hoping it was more about swords and less about glasses.

 

“Nonsense,” her mother said.  “Just self-indulgent nonsense and no indoor plumbing.”

 

Grandma Brown winked a tell-you-later at Bonnie.  “How about some presents?” she said.  “Help me carry this stuff in.”

 

Bonnie took the pale blue suitcase in one hand and the matching make-up kit in the other.  Mother accepted a tote bag bulging with crochet yarn.  Grandma Brown brought up the rear with her fringed leather purse and some paper bags.

 

“You help Grandma settle in,” Bonnie’s mother said.  “I need to get dinner started before your father gets home.”

 

Perched on the squat green chair in the guest room, Bonnie watched as Grandma Brown kicked off her sandals.  “Ahh!  I hate shoes,” she said.  “I like to feel the earth.”

 

“Mom doesn’t let earth get on the carpet,” Bonnie said.

 

“Figuratively,” Grandma Brown said.  “Now, where did I put those presents?”  She riffled through an untidy pile of bright cottons in the suitcase and emerged with a string of amber beads and a kaleidoscope.

 

Bonnie thought the beads looked like frozen sunshine and said so.  “More or less,” her grandma agreed.  “Petrified tree sap, which the trees made from the sun.  Amber clears the mind.”  She put away a few more things as Bonnie looked through the kaleidoscope at a shifting rainbow landscape.

 

“Kaleidoscope is the collective noun for a group of butterflies,” Grandma Brown said.  “And who doesn’t need more butterflies?”

February 2021 Flash Lit 8 - When the Fog Lifts

“And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.” Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 1

 

 

 

Butterfly could have done without Colt’s parting gift, a cold.  She got to choose between the fog of decongestants or the continual dripping of snot.  Mostly she chose decongestants.

 

She took the whole week off.  Clive was pissed, but she had the sick time saved up and all the paperwork would still be there when she got back.  She shuffled from bed to bathroom to kitchen leaving glasses with the white residue of Alka Seltzer Plus Cold medicine in the bottom all over.  Sometimes she looked at the little pile of papers on the table, the ones that had her practicing her new name in her head.

 

Butterfly.

 

The third day of the cold, her mom called.  Butterfly thought about not answering, but that wouldn’t work for long.  “Hello?” she said thickly.

 

“Bonnie, are you all right?” her mom said.  “You sound terrible!”

 

Better get it over with, Butterfly thought.  “Well, Colt moved out, I have a cold, and Uncle Magnus died and left me his house and some money if I change my name to Butterfly, so I’m doing it.”

 

She heard her mother choke on her coffee.  When the spluttering subsided, her mother said, “What?”

 

Butterfly repeated herself.

 

“But Bonnie!  What will people think?  You can’t!”

 

“Actually, I’ve decided I can.”

 

“But Colt will come back…” her mother protested.

 

Butterfly smiled wryly to herself.  “No, I don’t think so.”

 

“He’s such a nice man.  With a good job.  And polite.”

 

Butterfly faked a fit of coughing.  “I need to go rest.  I’ll talk to you later.”  And she hung up.

 

That was about what she expected, Butterfly reflected.  God forbid other people might think something about her.  And of course her mother took Colt’s side—he was better than Butterfly deserved in her mom’s opinion.  She could hear her mom in her head saying, “You’re not getting any younger, dear.  I wish you’d do something with your hair.”

 

After another nap, Butterfly thought maybe she should have asked her mom about Uncle Magnus.  What had made him disappear from the family?  Next time, she decided.  I’ll stick with the conversation until I get some info.

 

Her phone rang again.  It was Colt.  She was halfway to answering it when she realized she had nothing to say to him.  Especially since she was pretty sure he was calling because her mom had told him about the house.  She fixed herself some bouillon and filled out name change papers while she drank it.  She took a hot bath, so hot that the mirror stayed fogged up for a good fifteen minutes after she drained the tub and wrapped herself in her old pink bathrobe.

 

Butterfly went back into the bathroom after the fog cleared to get more Alka Seltzer Plus.  In the mirror, she saw a woman in her fifties with damp graying hair and clear blue eyes.  Blue Morpho, she thought.  That’s the kind of butterfly I am.

February 2021 Flash Lit 7 - Stuffed to the Gills

Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a high wall—such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance—and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he didn’t take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure after all.  Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6

 

 

 

The taxidermied rat on top of the bookcase had perfectly beady little eyes.  Butterfly almost jumped out of her skin.  She managed to avoid flinging herself into the plenteous spiderwebs that decorated the doorway into the living room.  Ms. Journeyman, the lawyer, sneezed.

 

“Your uncle wasn’t that interested in housework toward the end,” she said.  “But, to be honest, he wasn’t that interested in it ever.”

 

Butterfly looked at the piles of boxes, the bales of papers, the books, the pillows, the cast-off garments, the overstuffed chairs, the rat, and wondered if she had made a terrible mistake in accepting Uncle Magnus’s legacy.  Her old apartment, poky as it was, had at least not been a major habitat for dust mites, spiders, and rodents.  “I didn’t know him,” she said.

 

“No,” Ms. Journeyman agreed.  “I think he was afraid to contact you before he died.”

 

Butterfly ran her hands through the mop of her graying hair.  She was not a tall woman, a little pudgy, often disheveled.  Intimidating was not the word that came to mind in connection with her.

 

“Magnus needed a private detective to find out that you existed.  He hadn’t spoken to your mother since 1965, so he didn’t know she married your father or that you were born or anything,” the lawyer continued.  “His relationship with his family was…”

 

“Nonexistent?” Butterfly suggested.

 

“Did you know your grandparents?” the lawyer asked, clearing a path through the hoardings to a worn table in the dining room piled with yet more boxes and books and papers.

 

“They died when I was small,” Butterfly answered.  “Grandpa had a heart attack and Grandma had cancer.  I remember Grandpa reading to me.  Grandma was terrifying—she lost so much weight toward the end that she looked like Cruella DeVil.”  Butterfly removed the empty plate and creased newspaper off of a chair and passed it to the lawyer.  “How did you know my uncle?”

 

“Oh, we met at protests.  Against the war, against nukes, for free speech, civil rights.  We boycotted grapes,” Ms. Journeyman straightened up in her chair.  “And then we got smart and decided that we should use the law against The Man.”

 

Butterfly noted the pride in the older woman’s brown eyes.

 

“Magnus was the only reason I made it through law school.  In those days, a black woman like me had to deal with a lot.  He used what would now be called his white privilege to advocate for me at every step,” she said.  “Of course, he was also sometimes kind of a jerk.  Not a flexible person, back then.”

 

“Family trait, I think,” Butterfly said, thinking of her mother and her stubborn silence even now about her brother.  “We’re stuffed with stubbornness.”

February 2021 Flash Lit 6 - Feeling Some Kind of Way

Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: “Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2

 

 

 

“That’s it?” Bonnie said.  “You’re done?”  The bacon grease sizzled and spat in the pan, a few droplets leaping out to burn in pinpricks on her forearm.

 

“Yes,” Colt said.  “Like I said last night.”  He had a duffel bag over his arm along with his computer bag.  Bonnie didn’t look up from the pan, but she saw the expensive sneakers, the just-faded-enough jeans, the ironic t-shirt anyway.

 

He shifted his weight.  “I’ll come back for my other stuff on the weekend.”

 

“Fine,” she said.

 

He shrugged.  “What do you want me to say?”

 

Bonnie didn’t answer.  She put the last few strips of bacon on the paper-towel-lined plate.  She heard the door close behind him.  Her sinuses felt like a sponge left sopping in the sink overnight—too full and dank-smelling.  She poured off most of the drippings in the pan and fried three eggs in the last bit.  Then she ate them and the entire pound of bacon standing at the counter, even though the smell made her want to puke, even though she wasn’t hungry.  She left the pan on the stove, the dirty plates on the counter.  She dialed her job, told Clive she was sick, and shuffled back to bed.

 

She woke up in the peculiarly golden light of afternoon.  The sheets and blanket were tangled around her legs.  She felt wrinkled, unwashed, fuzzy.  She probed the other side of the bed with one hand the way she used to poke at the space where a baby tooth used to be in her mouth.  Was she ever that child?  Who was she now?

 

“I need to pull myself together,” she said, out loud.  The bedcoverings fought her, but she was no triceratops, helpless against the sucking tar pit of despair.  She won.  Her prize was throwing up in the bathroom, brushing her teeth twice and flossing them, and showering.

 

Then she cleaned.  Stripped the bed, scrubbed the kitchen, even vacuumed.  She piled Colt’s things into garbage bags and lined them up in a neat row by the door so he wouldn’t even have to come inside.

 

The bell rang.  She opened the door to find a FedEx guy handing her an envelope.  “Sign here.”

 

Bonnie zipped open the envelope and found a sheaf of documents.  Her uncle had died.  Her uncle?  Did she have an uncle?  She had never met him.  And he left her his house and some money, if she would agree to one stipulation:  she had to change her name to Butterfly.

 

“Butterfly,” she said.  “I could be Butterfly.”

February 2021 Flash Lit 5 - The Nays Have It

 “…Who’s to go down the chimney?—Nay, I shan’t! You do it!—That I won’t, then!—Bill’s to go down—Here, Bill! the master says you’re to go down the chimney!”

Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 4

 

 

 

When she thought about it, Butterfly realized that she had been silly, thinking that the chimney sweep would look like he came straight out of Mary Poppins or even Busman’s Honeymoon.  Still, the slightly pudgy Filipino guy named Angel in cargo shorts was a bit of a shock.  The rods and brushes looked reassuringly Victorian, sooty, and heavy.  She pulled herself together, “So… what do you need from me besides a credit card?”

 

“I’ll need a plug for the shop vac,” Angel said, spreading tarps over the floor and taping plastic over the fireplace opening.  “Other than that, I’ll just let you know if there’s any problem.”

 

Butterfly never knew quite what to do with herself when there were workers around.  It seemed rude to stare curiously at what he was doing, but it was hard to settle to cooking or cleaning or gardening or reading with an Observer there, even if he was just banging around on the roof with a bunch of tools.  Eventually, she managed to convince herself that weeding was always useful and would keep her handy enough in case Angel needed her.

 

Chickweed was growing like bubbles at the edges of every garden bed.  In theory, it was edible, but Butterfly was not yet at the point where eating weeds seemed sensible as long as she had lettuces.  She threw a few handfuls over the fence for Charlie’s chickens.  The roots came out of the ground with a satisfying ripping sound.  Roly-polies and tiny spiders scattered.  One little lizard, affronted, fled deeper into the shadow of the tomato leaves.  Butterfly found a plastic horse, about an inch long, half buried under a dandelion’s star of leaves.  She rooted her out, neighed at her companionably, and tossed her over the fence, too, since she was sure that Cinny had left her behind accidentally.

 

Naturally, Angel heard her.  “Um,” he said from above.

 

“Oh!” Butterfly said, blushing.  “Yes?”

 

“I’m done on the outside, but I need to use the shop vac inside since your clean-out is rusted and painted shut.”

 

“Sure,” she said.  She wiped her hands on her crinkle-cotton skirt and headed back inside to open the front door for him.

 

Angel peeled back the blue tape.  “Hmm…” he said.

 

“Problem?” Butterfly asked.

 

“Oh, just a nest and a few skeletons,” Angel noted.  “Not unusual.”

 

Fascinated, Butterfly looked at the blackened, but still recognizable bundle of twigs and the remains of two baby birds and one lizard.  Angel scooped them into an orange utility bucket and sucked the remaining creosote and soot into the belly of his shop vac.

 

After he left, Butterfly thought that skeletons in the chimney were preferable to ones in the closet, although she would still vote nay on skeletons in general.

February 2021 Flash Lit 4 - If It Quacks Like a Duck (and yes, the picture is a chicken)

It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2

 

 

 

Butterfly trudged into the nature center at Tilden.  She had what she was sure were two truly disgusting and painful blisters on her heels, her arms were sunburned, and she needed to pee.  There was nothing to do about the sunburn except make yet another promise to herself that she would remember to keep the sunscreen in the car, but in the bathroom, she took care of one of the other problems.  Then she begged a couple of bandages from the helpful person behind the counter, plopped down on a bench and unceremoniously stripped off her red high tops and her purple socks to survey the damage.  A toddler who had temporarily escaped from her nanny while her baby sibling was fussing came to investigate.

 

“Owie,” the child said knowledgeably.

 

“Yes,” Butterfly agreed, sticking one bandaid firmly over the angry red rupture on her left heel.  Maybe she should get actual hiking boots, she thought.

 

The little girl leaned toward Butterfly’s foot and kissed the air over it.  “Better.”  Her curls were ridiculously blond and light, like dandelion fluff.

 

“Marisol!” the nanny cried, “Where are you?  Want to see the animals?”

 

“Duck,” Marisol said and plunged, like an avalanche, toward the door.

 

Butterfly did feel better.  In fact, maybe she would recover from her too-hot, too-long, too-steep, accidental trek of doom by looking at the creatures next door at the Little Farm.  Herds of small children roamed outside the fences, so the animals were safe, at least. 

 

A naturalist was talking to a group of kindergarteners next to one pen.  “We have a visitor here at the Little Farm,” he said.  “Who knows what kind of animal this is?”

 

A forest of hands sprung up.  “Yes?” the naturalist said to one child in a grubby and obviously much-loved tractor t-shirt.

 

“Is your Mama a llama?” the boy shouted.

 

“Very good!” the naturalist answered.  “This is Amy the llama, visiting us for a week or so.”

 

Amy, rock star status assured, did not pander to her fans.  She stared at them aloofly until the naturalist said, “And now who wants to give Amy some celery?”  That made her smile delicately and accept offerings with a bat of her long eyelashes.

 

Butterfly gingerly tested out the bandages on her heels as she strolled past the sheep and the cows, surveyed rabbits in the dusky dust of the barn, and paused again outside the pen where the chickens and ducks had an uneasy truce between those in favor of water all over and those opposed.

 

The bandages were holding and Butterfly sent up a tiny grateful prayer.

 

“Quack,” a duck remarked.

February 2021 Flash Lit 3 - Third Time's the Charm

At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said, ‘A pawn goes two squares in its first move, you know. So you’ll go very quickly through the Third Square—by railway, I should think—and you’ll find yourself in the Fourth Square in no time. Well, that square belongs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee—the Fifth is mostly water—the Sixth belongs to Humpty Dumpty—But you make no remark?’

             ‘I—I didn’t know I had to make one—just then,’ Alice faltered out.

‘You should have said, “It’s extremely kind of you to tell me all this” Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 2

 

Amanda adjusted the belt of her dress to line the buckle up more precisely with the row of fabric-covered buttons.  She loved the yellow dotted swiss and the tiny daisies embroidered on the edge of the white collar.  She clasped her mother’s pearls around her neck, put on her watch, and then struggled with the charm bracelet.  The tiny nub that retracted part of the loop to catch the opposite side kept slipping away from the pressure of her fingernail.  It took three tries, but at last the bracelet jingled cheerfully around her right wrist.  “Are you ready, Alistair?” she called.

 

He padded into the hall outside the bedroom, one toe poking through a hole in his dress sock, holding two ties.  “Which one do you want me to wear?” he asked.

 

“Go change your socks!  You can’t wear holey ones today!” Amanda replied, turning from applying her pink lipstick.  “And wear the blue tie; it brings out your eyes.”

 

Maybe it was the bracelet making her sentimental, talking about Alastair’s eyes.  He had given it to her after they’d been dating for a month, just one little heart charm on it then.  Over the years, he’d given her others.  A cat because he always said she was as regal and precise as one, a little horseshoe for luck, a tiny car because he’d worked making them for so long.  She knew most of them by touch.  There was the prickle of the palm tree from their honeymoon trip to Hawaii, the smooth curve of the apple he had given her to tell her she was the apple of his eye.

 

And there were the three disks.  Amanda tried not to touch those, not today when they were going to celebrate Cal and Charlie’s tenth anniversary.  She could not afford to cry  now.  Angelica, Alexander, and Adam.  Three pregnancies, three miscarriages at six months, three thumbprints on her heart and preserved in gold.

 

She turned from the mirror to find Alastair, his tie perfectly knotted and his shiny shoes tied.  He wolf-whistled at her.  “I know I’ll have the most beautiful date,” he said.

 

“You’re a charmer,” she said and flicked invisible lint off his shoulder.

February 2021 Flash Lit 2 - It's the Cheesiest

“—also they live on cheese” Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6

 

 

 

 

“Come on in,” Cal said, taking the tray of cheeses from Butterfly.  “The game is on soon.”

 

“Great!” Butterfly said.  “But I need to slice this…”  She held up the baguettes.

 

“Kitchen first then!” Cal suggested.

 

Butterfly wove through the knots and tangles of people, past the crowded couch and the dining table full of snacks and a few toys to find the kitchen just as full of humanity, plus a vat of chili and several coolers of beer and soda and juice.  She didn’t really know anyone except the Elwood-Castanedas, although she thought that a few of the people looked familiar from the neighborhood.  A man who looked like a slightly younger version of Cal cleared a space for her at the counter and introduced himself, “Miguel, Cal’s brother.”

 

“Butterfly, next door neighbor,” she replied and tried not to bump him with her elbows too much as she cut the bread and piled it into the red basket she had brought.

 

“Who are you rooting for?” Miguel asked, conversationally.

 

“Um…”

 

“Not a fan, then.”

 

“I like parties and food and cheering when everyone else is…”

 

“Fair enough,” he said.  “But don’t tell Charlie.  Her team didn’t make it to the Superbowl, but she has Opinions.”  Butterfly had noticed:  the bright yellow wedge of rubber cheese on Charlie’s head was a hard-to-miss clue.

 

Butterfly had just placed the basket next to her tray when Amanda and Alastair arrived.  Alastair dutifully carried Amanda’s contribution to the feast, Triscuits and a nut-crusted cheese ball of the kind Butterfly hadn’t seen since she was a child.  He, too, was dressed to support a team not playing, a black Jim Otto Raiders jersey over his windowpane check shirt and gray slacks.  Amanda wore a pale yellow sweater set and a navy skirt as if she were headed to work for Perry Mason rather than watch sports.  She sniffed as she made space on the table for the cheese ball.  Cinny and Ches and a shoal of other kids schooled in and out through the adults, Ches pausing for a moment to tell Butterfly, “Mouse.”  She nodded and he shyly showed her the plastic Mickey Mouse figure in his hand.  “Baby,” he said.

 

“Meow!” said Cinny and Ches was off under the table, where he had made a nest of blankets.

 

Conversations stopped briefly when the game kicked off, but soon Butterfly heard snippets ranging from greatest quarterbacks to best organic oatmeals, all punctuated by various animal noises as the kids shape-shifted from one to the next.

 

Several hours later, one team had won and the other had cried.  There was no more chili.  Amanda stood up from the straight-backed chair in which she had sat all afternoon happily disapproving of everything to find her cheeseball still on the dining room table, untouched except for a Mickey Mouse plunged headfirst into it.

 

“Ches said it was the cheesiest,” Cinny explained.  “For his baby.”

February 2021 Flash Lit 1: Whatever Floats Your Boat

So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes.  Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5

 

“Forty five minute wait to sit at the sushi bar,” Cal told Charlie, who sighed tiredly.  “But,” he added, “we can get a table in about five minutes.”

 

“Want boat,” said Ches.

 

Charlie shrugged her shoulders.  “Take the table.  Ches will cheer up when he sees Yosh.”  Cal nodded and pushed through the crowd back to the check in desk.

 

“Want boat,” Ches said again.

 

“I know!” Cinny said, “We have a boat book in the bag!”  She unzipped the diaper bag, spilling a pack of wipes, two diapers, four crayons, and some board books onto the floor and the feet of strangers.  One person turned around to glare, but Cinny was too busy looking for the right book to notice.  Charlie noticed and hoped that the spotless sorority sister ended up with seven snotty children and a large dog to teach her a little sympathy.  Then she felt bad and un-hoped it while helping Cinny put the diaper bag contents back in place.

 

“Want boat.”

 

“Look, Ches, it’s Little Toot!” Cinny cried.

 

“Boat!” he said happily and plopped into the nest of her crossed legs to listen as she read to him.  Charlie thought her heart might burst with love.

 

“Cal, party of four,” the kid at the reception desk called.  Cal had not quite made it all the way back to the rest of them, but he caught Charlie’s eye and they shepherded the kids toward the table.

 

Ches caught sight of the sushi bar with its string of boats circling, laden with rolls and nigiri.  “Want boat!” he said, reaching.

 

Somehow they made it to the table, where things immediately got better.  Yosh, the restaurant owner, loved children and always had something special for them.  Cal and Charlie had been coming for sushi since before Cinny was born, so Yosh considered Cinny and Ches part of his own family.  “Cinny, you smart girl!  Reading so well!” he said.  “And Ches!” 

 

The little boy stood on the chair to hug Yosh.  Then he said, sadly, “Want boat.”

 

“Of course you want a boat!” Yosh said.  “I’ll tell you a secret…  I have some extra boats that don’t float so well.  I’ll bring your dinner on one, just for you.”

 

Ches glowed.  “Boat.”

 

True to his word, Yosh brought Ches his California roll on one of the wooden boats.  “And for you, young lady,” he said to Cinny, “I have this special seahorse plate, suitable for marine biologists, pirates, and princesses, depending on who you are today.”  Cinny giggled and thanked him.

 

Ches, overcome with love for the boat, reached out to hug it and spilled Cal’s water all over the table.  For a second, he looked like he was going to cry, but then he gulped and said, “Float?”