Surviving The Shadow

It’s time for another Friday writing session with my dear friend Texasblu.

Tex suggested the prompt this week. It is  a soft answer.

Bit of a tricky one, actually, but I finally got there. Before I start, I just have to say –

I got my laptop back and everything is A- OK.

Thank you laptop gods!!

Here’s my story –

{Image by Party Hat at DeviantART}

Everyone’s Mama is always supposed to be right, but I’ve come to the conclusion my Mama was wrong. About men, mostly.

She was a fool for every man she ever liked. Right from the start. She let them in to her heart, her soul, just like that without really knowing what they were about.

I know why she did it, she wanted them to heal her, to paint over the remnants of what my Daddy did. But they never did. How could they? They were just like him.

My mother could never resist looking into the darkness. It was a form of amorality she found titillating. I saw it, the delight she took in it, when they treated her badly. She complained about it, but she liked it too.

She liked having something to cry about on a beautiful day. She liked coating every room in the house with shadow. It was safe for her. It was more dangerous to let the light in.

It made me nervous for a lot of years. The shouting. The hard responses to my mother’s questions like nails being driven down a wall, gouging, splintering brick. I thought that men couldn’t respond to direct questions like: Would you like green beans with your meat? without flying off the handle.

I don’t like shouting. It doesn’t do anything but feed anger more and more until it becomes a beast hiding behind coats at the back of the cupboard, waiting to spring out when the door is opened.

But there is so much of it. When  I sit on my balcony at night I take in the chorus of conflict on every floor. A stranger to this world would be forgiven for thinking that no one in this city can agree, that the only way we get what we want is to shout about it. My Mama, at 56 years old, is still letting the men she loves show their disparagement at regular intervals.

I met Chili in the book store. He was looking at The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. He was reading The Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through by D.H. Lawrence. I felt it was a moment of prophesy –

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh delicate, a winged gift

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself…

Chili smiled at me. He asked me if I would like to join him for coffee. He had a tattoo of the sun on his hand and freshly polished Blundstone boots. I could smell the polish rising up through the morning like beeswax.

Chili and I got on. He worked in his father’s shop repairing old clocks. He liked clocks with pendulums the best. I told him I liked clocks with chimes, it was like hearing the bells on Christmas Day every single hour.

Chili and I went out. Over and over. Before we knew it we had been seeing one another for three months. He asked me to move in with him. I was elated and afraid. My Mama had a cut on her lip  from another man who was supposed to be different from the others.

I thought Chili was different but I didn’t trust my judgement. I was sure I had inherited my ability to assess someone’s character from my Mama. Chili could be a devil in disguise.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the day we had met. The poem about yielding to the wind. Surely I couldn’t be wrong about the measure of such a man.

I packed up my things. My poetry books. My clock with the chimes. My earplugs to drown out the shouting. I moved in with Chili.

Mama cried. She thought I was a moth drawn to the flame of destruction. You’re going to be just like me, she said. She had a slight smile at the corners of her mouth. Like mother, like daughter. She wasn’t unhappy at what she expected my fate to be. There is constancy in shadow.

After one month I grew tired of waiting. Chili’s flat was so quiet at night all I could hear was him turning the pages of his books and the stolid sweep of his pendulum clocks.

So I asked the question I was afraid to ask, clutching my ear plugs like life jackets : Would you like green beans with your meat?

The answer was the way rain sounds at the end of a drought. Soft, welcoming.

Whatever suits you, sweetheart, he said.

* Don’t forget to go and read Tex’s story. I know she would appreciate it.