by Meghan Edge
Symbolic of how I've changed. I know what I have to do.
I box it up, hat and buttons and all, and I put her address on it. I drop it off at the post office. I don't know what she'll do with it or what will happen when she touches it, but I need her to know she holds my heart in her hands. As I walk back up the driveway to my house, the day warming with a sea breeze blowing, I notice the person sitting on my porch.
She's not a person I recognize but I know her. And I'm smiling.
“I told you I got you a souvenir.”
Amelia & Photography
“That's two of us now,” Waverly says. She's laying on the porch swing. I find something beautiful in the way her feet, covered by dirty chucks, rest on the time-worn wood, so I decide to take a picture with my phone. She looks lovely.
“I was worried for him,” I admit. Our brother, Marcus, found his love through the Internet. He joined Waverly in emotional freedom, and they were both disgustingly happy. Secretly, I enjoyed them this way. My fears that they would never be happy were fading. How could this love not be happy?
“I know you were. But you don't have to be. We're doing what the curse dictates,” she says. She takes out a phone and answers a waiting text. From my perch on the porch steps, I look out towards the ocean.
“It's called a curse, though. Curses don't usually make you happy,” I tell her. She laughs.
“Right. Until you break them. Then you have all the happiness in the world.”
I wonder if she's going to move in with the girlfriend. I know she'll be looking into colleges soon. My littlest sister is growing up. I wonder if she'll stay close to home where I can see her, or if she'll look for adventure like her sister, Eileen, had. We don't talk about Gabriella anymore. It doesn't hurt as much, but it's still sore. I hear a click-shutter sound and I turn to see her pointing her cell phone at me. I blush, eyes wide.
“Did you take a picture of me?” I ask her, shocked. Rarely did anyone take a picture of me.
“Yeah, you look pretty in the light there,” she says. She snaps another one and sends me a text. I don't correct her. I don't feel pretty, but Eileen's words had struck me hard and I would never want to insult or discourage one of my siblings, so I keep my mouth shut.
The light in the picture is soft and orange from the sunset. My hair seems to shine, the plain brown color transformed into a lively fresh chocolate with light glinting off of it. The sun gives my skin a sort of glow, and I blush again, but for a different reason. I do almost look pretty.
That night, I take off all my clothes. I dim the lights in my bedroom. The key necklace rests between my breasts, where it always is, and I let my hair out. It falls around my shoulders. I take out my cell phone and snap a picture. I don't want a nude to send anywhere, but I want to know. I want to see what I look like to other people, even if it is a mirror reflection of what is real.
My soft stomach creates a tiny lip over my hips. I know that spot because I know I can't lay off the cookies or muffins. It's an addiction of mine, but in the shadows of my bedroom, reflected in my picture, I look sort of sweet myself. My hips are wide, but flat. My breasts don't appear out of proportion. I turn to look at my curved back, my round bottom, my soft thighs. It's like my hair and skin are holding onto that sunset-light because I'm seeing myself almost new. I'm not that bad. Would I ever be a super model? No, but I find... I'm not minding how I do look.
Which is good because I'm so sick of being sad. I'm sick of feeling ungrateful that I'm alive.
I pull on a soft robe. My wardrobe is filled with pitiful, maternal things but Waverly was right. Two of the babies were gone, and Eileen was safe at college, probably soon to find her own love. Maybe it was time to think of myself.
I knock on Waverly's door. She opens it, face flushed. I hear giggling behind her and I almost roll my eyes. That girl practically lives at our house now.
“I need some new clothes,” I tell her. “Want to go shopping with me tomorrow?”
She pulls a face and I know she's thinking of what shopping with me means. It's the discount section of a box department store. It's stuff our grandmothers would wear. It's cheap, practical. Boring. I shake my head, stopping her before she can answer.
“I'll let you pick the store. We'll go to the mall, or those boutiques on the boardwalk you like,” I say, trying to bribe her into coming with me. I couldn't trust myself to do this alone.
Waverly's little face breaks into a genuine smile. She knows that I need her. “Yeah. Of course, I'd love to go. Sister's day out.”
I smile back at her. “Great. Tomorrow.”
The Selkie and the Fox
or
Eileen's Story
I'm jealous of my brother and sisters. They had all found love in the years before me. They had learned to feel, to suffer, to enjoy. They had left behind this half-existence and I was the last one. I wonder if it's me. If I'm somehow not good enough to find love. It feels like I've been waiting forever, but maybe that's just because I'm waiting all alone.
I meet her in my English class at college. I'm not- I don't like women like that but I like her. My height, maybe a little taller, with a sweet dark pixie cut and smooth brown skin, light enough that she has a sprinkling of freckles over her nose. She sits next to me and chatters at me as I try to take notes. It's distracting but adorable and even though the professor scolds me, I find myself charmed. It takes a lot to hold my interest without my object, but by the end of the ninety minute period, she has it.
She walks me to lunch and talks to me. I don't have to say much, she seems pretty capable of entertaining herself. Her name is Brooklyn and she loves fashion. She murmurs critiques of other people's outfits that we pass in my ear. She is brutal and I find myself laughing and blushing at her sartorial wit. This sudden friendship is a much needed beam of sunlight in the dark curse that envelops my life. I wish I could tell her about Gabriella, the sister I'd been closest to as a child. Missing her was like having a phantom limb. Waverly and Marcus always had each other but without Gabriella and so far from Amelia I'd become lonelier than ever. This random conversation with a stranger was something I needed and didn't even know it.
When we part, I don't expect the same friendliness on our second encounter. But she asks for my number and that night she texts me.
[Want to go to a movie with me Saturday? :-) ]
Alone in my apartment, I'm smiling.
[Would love to. :-) ]
The next day, when she sits beside me in class, she gives me a secretive shy smile that doesn't match the person I met yesterday, but is still adorable. I find myself grinning back at her.
The movie is not what I would expect from someone who demands so much attention. Someone who makes herself the center of attention all the time. I would expect something loud, funny and brassy, and instead the movie is quiet and subtitled. It's a love story in a language I don't speak. She whispers translations to me, even though they're printed on the screen in neat block letters. When the credits roll, I find I've been holding my breath and my heart is thumping. The house lights come up and I look at my friend to find her looking right back at me.
“You enjoyed it,” she says sweetly. I nod.
“Everyone enjoys a love story,” I reply with a shrug. I'm chilly in the cool theater and I want to leave but I don't want this moment to end.
“And the company?” Brooklyn asks flirtatiously. I smile, but I feel sort of tense.
“Fabulous, as always,” I say.
I have a problem. I find her intoxicating. Her manner, her liveliness, it all draws me in and I find myself having to check my object, make sure the leather bracelet is in place. She changes her hair, wearing it in long dreads and they remind me of snakes, with colorful strings and beads sewn into the hair like scales, pops of color from the dark strands. I can never predict if she's going to wear sparkles or comfortable jeans or heels or sneakers or all of the above like a gorgeous muse. Her favorite hoodie has wings on it and I call her my a
ngel. I write stories about her in my journal and I know that she's a friend I'll never forget.
“Honey, that has got to go!” Brooklyn scolds me, snatching my wrist from across the lunch table. She's set her stylish sights on my rugged bracelet, several years out of fashion. I pull my arm back, eyes wide, heart thumping.
“No!” I shout, and her own eyes become wide. “No, no. Sorry, it's just um, special. My sister gave it to me.” That's a lie. “She's dead.” That's not.
Brooklyn's eyes soften and she nods seriously. I wonder what she must be thinking, but all she says is, “We've got to keep the things that love brought us, don't we?”
It's my turn to nod. She doesn't touch it again, and it thrums around my arm, feeling more like hot iron than smooth leather. My object doesn't like threats.
She gives me my first kiss and I'm in shock. We've gone to see another movie, this time a more conventional comedy. It's after, and the stars twinkle up in the clear spring night sky. Her hands, large for a woman, grip my upper arms and she kisses me. She hesitates, too, like she's not sure or perhaps she was giving me the option to pull away, but I don't. She kisses me and I feel like my blood is singing opera, or that I'm flying, or maybe I've died and been reborn in that kiss. My nose heats up. I'm having a crisis. This gorgeous beautiful woman is kissing me, giving me my first kiss, but I don't know what this makes me, who this