Saturday's Storyteller: "The last time we were here, the rain fell on the roof like a waterfall."
by Belinda Roddie
"The last time we were here," she intoned, "the rain fell on the roof like a waterfall. The blossoms were still descending, but they were soggy, heavy with angelic tears. In the puddles, I could see the reflection of my inner demons. And the stones, when swimming in the damp soil, looked like God's calligraphy."
I approached her and reached for the crook of her arm. No other desire pulsed in my mind save for the desire to cling to her, watching the moon force its way through the clouds. Here, the sun barely shone. Gold, in lumps or in warm rays, was always hard to come by.
She allowed me to hold her, to press my hip deep into the curve of her thigh. I was much shorter than she was, and I knew that, if she wanted to, she could bury her lips deep into the crazed tufts of my hair, kissing the raw and white scalp beneath. When I traced the shape of a tear against her cheek, she did not flinch. I was the struggling artist, attempting to rub fate away from her troubled face.
"The last time we were here," I finally managed to say, "I never wanted to leave."
We lit a fire beneath the brick mantel, and when we were fully settled in, she concentrated on a kettle of mint tea. I looked around the room and saw that not much had changed - the wallpaper was beginning to curl near the corners, but the picture frames were still straight, the table surprisingly lacking a coat of dust. I had breathed an immense sigh of relief when the rusted bronze key had properly turned in the door. I had feared, secretly, that my uncle had changed the locks on the property, never wanting me or her to ever set foot onto God's alleged promised land again.
The smell of peppermint soothed my burning nostrils, and I sank deeper into the plush couch. Outside, the crickets were beginning their rehearsal. Later in the night, they would perform an entire percussive symphony. She brought me a steaming cup and sat in the chair across from me, retrieving a thin cigar from her shirt pocket.
"You can have one," she murmured. "It goes well with the tea."
I shook my head. "Maybe later."
She lit up, and I bathed my senses in the ensuing smoke.
***
My uncle's property had been ravaged by Mother Nature's dexterous fingers. The tapestry she had woven while we were away was wild, but beautiful. When I stepped out of the cabin early in the morning, I could catch the amber dew glistening on a patch of tall grass clustering beneath the nearest windowsill. To my right, flowers that I could not identify grew in romantic swaths. To my left, the youthful rise of a new sequoia, too juvenile to bear cones just yet.
I found my way to a mound of untouched earth and let my sandals indent it. I, being the so-called destructive human I was destined to be, was more than willing to let my feet temporarily mold the mellow dirt beneath me. When she stepped out of the cabin after me, I could see her limp toward me like she were traversing a long, treacherous bridge. When she crossed the imaginary peril, however, I could see a different glow in her eyes than I had noticed the evening before, when we had first managed to arrive here. And when she kissed me, it was warmer than it had been for many months.
"I slept well," she told me when my eyes gave away my curiosity. "I always sleep better when I don't feel like there are shadows judging me from the other room."
She told my hand and led me to the creek, which was swollen from this year's rainfall. It was a far different sight than I was accustomed to, the deluge a stark contrast to the drought of my hometown. Here, cacti was replaced with sprigs of green weeds and blackberry bushes. Near me, the shrubs were nearly flattened into the soil, so heavy they were with ripened fruit.
Seeing my lips curl at the sight of fresh berries, she left my side and plucked a good handful of them from the thorns. She offered half of them to me, the largest ones, and I ate them greedily. Then she impulsively sucked the remaining juices from my stained fingers, absorbing my laughter like one would slurp soup from a spoon.
Outside, we were free. The wind whistled in the misty air like the reeds of oboes. The sun barely shone, but we were used to it. I shoved myself into her arms to keep myself from shivering.
"When," she asked, her voice low and husky against my ear, "does your uncle arrive?"
I shuddered suddenly. "A week."
When I lifted my head, I expected her to be pensive, her lips flat and gray against her face. Instead, I saw a smile, as she rubbed at an aged scar with her index finger.
"More than enough time to enjoy Eden," she said, "before the flaming sword blocks our way back in."
The gash she had caressed had been from a propelled Bible, aimed for her brow. The mark of its binding had never left her visage, and I knew that since then, the Word had been printed on her permanently. It was all she could do to ignore it, as I had learned to do for so many years of my life. To comfort her, I kissed the scars from time to time. I had a feeling that, occasionally, they still stung. Unfortunately, I could do nothing about her crooked leg. It had been broken in three places. God's wrath had been their excuse.
When the morning chill had become too overbearing, we went back inside, and I let my sight graze the black and white photos on the walls. In them, my uncle held me squirming in his bulging arms, his teeth partially bared in an exasperated laugh. In one picture, my thumb was shoved into the corner of my mouth, my eyes dark and sharply veined - I had been crying, I assumed. In another picture, my mother propped me on her knee, her bangs brushed to one side of her enormous forehead. An elbow caught in the corner of the frame was enough to signify how much of a presence that my father had had in my life.
My uncle, for so long, had been my guardian. He had taught me to swim, to fish, to hunt. He had shown me how to split wood with the rusted ax we kept in the tool shed. And when night fell on the property, he and I slipped outside the cabin with pockets bursting with trail mix and spare marshmallows left behind from our s'more spree, chewing on dried raisins and excess sugar as he pointed out whichever constellations could be seen in the impending fog and drizzle.
The mighty stature of Orion, by now, never seemed so far away, as did my uncle's once loving silhouette. And when my love was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, I turned around the frames so that the pictures faced the wall.
***
The last time we were here, the rain fell on the roof like a waterfall. The blossoms were still descending, but they were soggy, heavy with angelic tears. In the puddles, I could see the reflection of my inner demons. And the stones, when swimming in the damp soil, looked like God's calligraphy.
It was a calligraphy I had learned to copy, one I was practicing when I had first brought her here, as a friend. We had shared the back room, with two beds, and when my uncle and mother were fast asleep, we pushed the cots together to make one. When I was done scribbling and doodling, I read her the books when found on the shelves. In the morning, when my uncle and mother left for church, we played records.
It had been here that we had first enjoyed paradise. Now, like the doomed Adam and Eve, we were being chased away for our presumed temptation. I knew that even as we sat by the fire, arm in arm - her smoking another cigar, me drinking my uncle's leftover brandy from an awkward snifter - we would be dragged into a far larger storm. In a week, we would say goodbye to this separate world, jump in her truck, and drive to the next coastal city.
Soon, it would rain again. But before that, there was the concert of crickets. Before that, there were the looms of cosmos spreading their strings across a cloud-soaked sky. And, if I looked hard enough through the window, I could see the porch light casting yellow ribbons against the grass, patchwork bushes and stumps littering Eden in a mosaic of freedom.
When she was finished with her cigar, she put the stump out in a ceramic bowl and began to stroke her Bible scar again. When she was done, she wiped her finger against my cheek. Only now, unlike me, she was not tracing a tear, but wiping an offending one away.
This week's prompt was provided by Kyle Oathout.
"The last time we were here," she intoned, "the rain fell on the roof like a waterfall. The blossoms were still descending, but they were soggy, heavy with angelic tears. In the puddles, I could see the reflection of my inner demons. And the stones, when swimming in the damp soil, looked like God's calligraphy."
I approached her and reached for the crook of her arm. No other desire pulsed in my mind save for the desire to cling to her, watching the moon force its way through the clouds. Here, the sun barely shone. Gold, in lumps or in warm rays, was always hard to come by.
She allowed me to hold her, to press my hip deep into the curve of her thigh. I was much shorter than she was, and I knew that, if she wanted to, she could bury her lips deep into the crazed tufts of my hair, kissing the raw and white scalp beneath. When I traced the shape of a tear against her cheek, she did not flinch. I was the struggling artist, attempting to rub fate away from her troubled face.
"The last time we were here," I finally managed to say, "I never wanted to leave."
We lit a fire beneath the brick mantel, and when we were fully settled in, she concentrated on a kettle of mint tea. I looked around the room and saw that not much had changed - the wallpaper was beginning to curl near the corners, but the picture frames were still straight, the table surprisingly lacking a coat of dust. I had breathed an immense sigh of relief when the rusted bronze key had properly turned in the door. I had feared, secretly, that my uncle had changed the locks on the property, never wanting me or her to ever set foot onto God's alleged promised land again.
The smell of peppermint soothed my burning nostrils, and I sank deeper into the plush couch. Outside, the crickets were beginning their rehearsal. Later in the night, they would perform an entire percussive symphony. She brought me a steaming cup and sat in the chair across from me, retrieving a thin cigar from her shirt pocket.
"You can have one," she murmured. "It goes well with the tea."
I shook my head. "Maybe later."
She lit up, and I bathed my senses in the ensuing smoke.
***
My uncle's property had been ravaged by Mother Nature's dexterous fingers. The tapestry she had woven while we were away was wild, but beautiful. When I stepped out of the cabin early in the morning, I could catch the amber dew glistening on a patch of tall grass clustering beneath the nearest windowsill. To my right, flowers that I could not identify grew in romantic swaths. To my left, the youthful rise of a new sequoia, too juvenile to bear cones just yet.
I found my way to a mound of untouched earth and let my sandals indent it. I, being the so-called destructive human I was destined to be, was more than willing to let my feet temporarily mold the mellow dirt beneath me. When she stepped out of the cabin after me, I could see her limp toward me like she were traversing a long, treacherous bridge. When she crossed the imaginary peril, however, I could see a different glow in her eyes than I had noticed the evening before, when we had first managed to arrive here. And when she kissed me, it was warmer than it had been for many months.
"I slept well," she told me when my eyes gave away my curiosity. "I always sleep better when I don't feel like there are shadows judging me from the other room."
She told my hand and led me to the creek, which was swollen from this year's rainfall. It was a far different sight than I was accustomed to, the deluge a stark contrast to the drought of my hometown. Here, cacti was replaced with sprigs of green weeds and blackberry bushes. Near me, the shrubs were nearly flattened into the soil, so heavy they were with ripened fruit.
Seeing my lips curl at the sight of fresh berries, she left my side and plucked a good handful of them from the thorns. She offered half of them to me, the largest ones, and I ate them greedily. Then she impulsively sucked the remaining juices from my stained fingers, absorbing my laughter like one would slurp soup from a spoon.
Outside, we were free. The wind whistled in the misty air like the reeds of oboes. The sun barely shone, but we were used to it. I shoved myself into her arms to keep myself from shivering.
"When," she asked, her voice low and husky against my ear, "does your uncle arrive?"
I shuddered suddenly. "A week."
When I lifted my head, I expected her to be pensive, her lips flat and gray against her face. Instead, I saw a smile, as she rubbed at an aged scar with her index finger.
"More than enough time to enjoy Eden," she said, "before the flaming sword blocks our way back in."
The gash she had caressed had been from a propelled Bible, aimed for her brow. The mark of its binding had never left her visage, and I knew that since then, the Word had been printed on her permanently. It was all she could do to ignore it, as I had learned to do for so many years of my life. To comfort her, I kissed the scars from time to time. I had a feeling that, occasionally, they still stung. Unfortunately, I could do nothing about her crooked leg. It had been broken in three places. God's wrath had been their excuse.
When the morning chill had become too overbearing, we went back inside, and I let my sight graze the black and white photos on the walls. In them, my uncle held me squirming in his bulging arms, his teeth partially bared in an exasperated laugh. In one picture, my thumb was shoved into the corner of my mouth, my eyes dark and sharply veined - I had been crying, I assumed. In another picture, my mother propped me on her knee, her bangs brushed to one side of her enormous forehead. An elbow caught in the corner of the frame was enough to signify how much of a presence that my father had had in my life.
My uncle, for so long, had been my guardian. He had taught me to swim, to fish, to hunt. He had shown me how to split wood with the rusted ax we kept in the tool shed. And when night fell on the property, he and I slipped outside the cabin with pockets bursting with trail mix and spare marshmallows left behind from our s'more spree, chewing on dried raisins and excess sugar as he pointed out whichever constellations could be seen in the impending fog and drizzle.
The mighty stature of Orion, by now, never seemed so far away, as did my uncle's once loving silhouette. And when my love was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, I turned around the frames so that the pictures faced the wall.
***
The last time we were here, the rain fell on the roof like a waterfall. The blossoms were still descending, but they were soggy, heavy with angelic tears. In the puddles, I could see the reflection of my inner demons. And the stones, when swimming in the damp soil, looked like God's calligraphy.
It was a calligraphy I had learned to copy, one I was practicing when I had first brought her here, as a friend. We had shared the back room, with two beds, and when my uncle and mother were fast asleep, we pushed the cots together to make one. When I was done scribbling and doodling, I read her the books when found on the shelves. In the morning, when my uncle and mother left for church, we played records.
It had been here that we had first enjoyed paradise. Now, like the doomed Adam and Eve, we were being chased away for our presumed temptation. I knew that even as we sat by the fire, arm in arm - her smoking another cigar, me drinking my uncle's leftover brandy from an awkward snifter - we would be dragged into a far larger storm. In a week, we would say goodbye to this separate world, jump in her truck, and drive to the next coastal city.
Soon, it would rain again. But before that, there was the concert of crickets. Before that, there were the looms of cosmos spreading their strings across a cloud-soaked sky. And, if I looked hard enough through the window, I could see the porch light casting yellow ribbons against the grass, patchwork bushes and stumps littering Eden in a mosaic of freedom.
When she was finished with her cigar, she put the stump out in a ceramic bowl and began to stroke her Bible scar again. When she was done, she wiped her finger against my cheek. Only now, unlike me, she was not tracing a tear, but wiping an offending one away.
This week's prompt was provided by Kyle Oathout.
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