by Allyson Bird
Hester lay in the grasses, her fingers entwined with her lover who could not be seen. The children looked past him, although one seemed to notice a subtle glint of something like stone or porcelain.
“I’m fine, my darlings. I was simply restless last night. How did you know this is where I would be?”
The oldest child shrugged.
“Father often talks about how he found you running through the fields. You know, before. He says we should stay far away from here.”
Hester sat up, her cheeks burning.
“Why is that?”
“He says it’s unseemly.”
Hester looked at her lover and he looked at her. She cupped each child’s chin in her hand in turn.
“It is not unseemly. It’s a place of beauty. Would you like to see?”
The children nodded and she took their hands in her own.
“Then come with me, my loves. See what draws me.”
Flowers. Red ones. Blue. Butterflies with painted wings. Tiny frogs and crickets and the sound of the wind laughing in the greenery.
Vines in their hair. Bluebells in their eyes. The taste of nature in their lips, between their teeth.
They laughed. Oh, heavens, her children laughed. They played and rolled and their glee was as sweet as bells to her, as cold mountain water on parched roots.
“They, too, are wild things,” she said to her lover, her king, and he kissed the tips of her fingers.
The sun finally swooned in the sky, and their bellies told them they had missed far too many meals that day. The walk home was one of sweetness. She had a child holding each hand. Her lover ghosted alongside them, humming something vaguely familiar but still altogether new.
Life was perfect. She was home.
And then, right before darkness fell, she really was home. Back to the stately house on the refined street, with her very dignified and righteously angry husband staring at her as though she were a filthy thing.
“Children. To your rooms.”
“Father, but we haven’t eaten supper and…”
“Go.”
They had dandelion fluff in their ringlets and fear in their eyes. Wise children, they fled.
William turned to Hester.
“What have you done?”
His voice was hard and cold. It matched his eyes, the shiny pate of his head.
“Nothing, my dear. We were only in the field today.”
“Never. Never again. You are never to take those children from this home.”
“But darling, I only—“
“Do you not understand what you have done? How soiled they are? Why, after looking at them for only one instant, I could see the dirt ground into their cloth, the tears in their clothes.”
“William, they are only children.”
His eyes hurt her. The way he stared hurt her.
“They are my children. My children, Hester. You have borne me no children. These belong to me.”
He said more, horrible things that would have shook her to her marrow had she heard, but she was incapable of that. She had lost all sense earlier, at what he had said about the children. Their children.
His children.
“And you are not to be near them, do you understand? You shan’t influence them in any way. I’ll see that the governess knows.”
She blinked at him.
“Surely you don’t….what did you say?”
He sighed and checked his watch.
“I believe I made myself perfectly clear.”
“But William—“
“Go to bed, Hester.”
He left. Turned sharply on his heel like a solider and walked into his study as if it were an armory. He shut the door. Locked it with a key.
Hester stood in the parlor, quite alone.
“I have the most magnificent of stories to tell you, my darling.”
Her lover was so gifted at stories, telling her about fancies and things that lived just beyond her dreaming. She so wished she could tell the children. They would find such amusement in it. She missed them bitterly. The governess shepherded them away from her at every opportunity. She hadn’t so much as spoken to them in several weeks.
“Yes?”
“This is a very special story. It is extraordinary.”
“Will you tell me?”
“I would. But there is something you must know.”
He spoke with gravity, and Hester turned to look at him. The smooth face of his mask betrayed nothing, and for the first time she was frightened.
“What must I know?”
His eyes, which nobody but Hester could see, were the clearest of blues, of greens, of browns, of yellows.
“It’s a grand story, my darling, but I can only whisper it during the night before the sunrise. And the person I whisper it to must be my wife.”
Hester’s white skin, bleached even whiter after she stayed indoors at William’s request, paled until the blood ran blue beneath it. Like paints. Like the colors she had given up in order to be an acceptable helpmate to her husband.
“But I cannot—“
He grabbed her arm then, the first time he had ever done so, and his lips moved oh-so quickly, oh-so passionately beneath the mask.
“I love you, my darling, do you understand that? I love you exactly as you are, as you were meant to be. I take nothing from you. Your freedom, your children, your desires. Can’t you see it?”
She wanted to wrench her arm away but something inside her couldn’t. If she was too rough, he would disappear. Or maybe part of her wanted to stay, to listen to what he was telling her. To ask him to say his words again more slowly, so she could close her eyes and let them cover her like the sea.
This made her pull her arm away quite firmly.
“I can’t,” she said, and the misery in her tone surprised her. She tried again, more regally.
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
He stood there, her only joy, in his ruffles and frills and silly mask. He stood there, with his strange stories and songs and declarations of love. He stood there, and her heart beat too hard, too fast, and then it felt like it suddenly stopped.
“I understand. Of course. Forgive me, my lady,” he said, and bowed.
Hester’s dear lover that nobody else could see disappeared. She gasped, and then cried.
She had become just like everyone else. She couldn’t see him, either.
“William! William!”
Hester raced into the spare room that had now become his. She pushed the door open and set her candle upon the table.
“William, I need to speak to you, urgently!”
He mumbled and snorted, then sat up in bed.
“Hester? What is it? Is it the children?”
She sat on the corner of his bed, pressing her hands tightly together as if in prayer.
“My dear William, I have done my very best for you all these years. You do know that, don’t you?”
His brows pulled together in that way that made her cringe inside, but she continued on.
“I wear these clothes. I hold those vapid parties. I stay in our home and even when you took my paints away, and my meadows away—“
“It’s the middle of the night.“
“Even when you took my children away, I said nothing. Nothing! I have tried my very best to hold my tongue and be the wife you want me to be. Now I need to know, my darling husband, and I need you to tell me truthfully. Do you have anything in your heart for me?”
“Hester.”
She grabbed at his hands, pulled them to her breast. She kissed his fingers fervently.
“Please, William. Please. If there is any feeling for me at all, even the tiniest bit, I need to know. I’m begging you.”
He looked at her. He really looked. He took in her hair and the tears that ran down her face without shame. He saw her eyes and the wounded animal expression in them. Her fingernails, shaped and shined so carefully. Her night dress, mended so delicately.
; “Of course, my love,” he said, and she fell into his arms in such a way that he was embarrassed at first, and then merely stunned.
“Then I need you to do something for me,” she whispered, and the tears made her voice sound hollow and strange. “Something to prove that I mean something to you. Do this one thing and I shall stay.”
“Whatever you wish,” he said, and held her fragile little bird bones tightly. “What is it that you need?”
She swallowed hard.
“Fetch me a flower from the fields. A red one. One that I can wear in my hair. Such a little thing, but it is so very important to me. Will you?”
“You want a flower?”
“A wildflower from the fields.”
“And this will sate you?”
“Please.”
William smiled at her, and she found herself smiling back. Hope is such a silly little thing.
“I shall fetch it tomorrow morning, my dear.”
Hester nodded and slipped from the room, but she could not sleep. She found herself in the sunroom where she had put her paints and canvases away.
Her tidy little homes. Her squalid little landscapes. Her choked little seashores.
She threw the horrid paintings to the floor, one by one. Pastels and grays and sedate, starched things without any soul. She rifled through her paints until she found what she was looking for.
Reds.
Yellows.
Greens and blues and all of the colors of her lost lover’s eyes.
She dipped the brush into the paints, but soon it was too little. Too small. Insignificant. She smeared the colors onto her hands, and gasped at their opulence. Jewels! Treasures! She swooped her hands across the walls, creating rainbows and day dreams and stories most magnificent. She stood on her tiptoes, climbed onto the stool, jumped as high and hard as she could to reach the ceiling. It was a dance. It was a military drill. She arched and stretched and crumpled and soon the walls and Hester and the room was one delirious kaleidoscope of everything that was right and beautiful and far too precious to exist in this world.
She spread out on the floor, staring at the art that spun around her like the universe on its kindest of days. She closed her eyes. She slumbered.
Light woke her. She blinked and rubbed her eyes with crimson and cobalt hands. Her mouth tasted of yellow.
William, she thought, and struggled to her feet. She hurried down the stairs and out the front door.
He was just returning home. His eyebrows rose when he saw her.
“Hester! What on earth?”
“Did you get it?” she asked, and pressed into him. He pulled away and examined his suit carefully.
She paid that no mind.
“Did you fetch my flower, dear husband? The red one for my hair?”
He took her in, her breathlessness, her outstretched, painted hands, and was filled with benevolence. Such a child beneath all of her womanly ways! Such a young thing with endearing enthusiasm!
“I have it, my child,” he said. “Now close your eyes.”
Hester did as he bid, biting her lip with anticipation. She felt something alight in her hair. A tear slid out from under her lashes, but she didn’t bother to wipe the treacherous thing away.
“There,” William said. “Now you look beautiful.”
She opened her eyes. Reached up into her hair.
Felt something stiff and cold and sharp.
She pulled it out with trembling fingers.
“Just the thing for you,” her husband said, beaming. “Quite expensive. The pearls are the largest I have seen, but it’s such a lovely pin, and you wanted something for your hair. I’m sure it pleases you, my dear. I’ve seen few things finer.”
She stared at the pin in her hand. She stared at her husband’s pleased face. She put the pin in his hand and walked slowly into the house.
“Children,” she said, and they pushed into her arms like warm puppies, like baby rabbits, like squirmy little wild things made of feathers and bones and fur.
“We’ve missed you, Mother,” they sang.
“And I have missed you. Darlings, I would like you to meet someone. He is somebody very special. Will you say hello?”
“Hello, sir,” they chorused, and her lover smiled.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said, and when he bowed, they giggled.
“He has the most magnificent story,” Hester said, and her although her voice sounded a little different through the mask, the children could still understand her clearly. “It’s a very special story for very special children. Would you like to hear it?”
“Oh, yes,” the children squealed. One looked carefully at Hester’s eyes, pinwheeling behind the cut-out holes in the porcelain, spinning like a color wheel of madness, but then the story began and the child was transfixed.
“This story,” said the man, “is a fine story indeed.”
“What is it called?” asked the youngest child.
“It is called ‘The King in Yellow.’ Your mother enjoyed this story, didn’t you, my little bird?”
“Yes,” Hester agreed. “It changes everything. Absolutely everything.”
“Are you ready to hear it?”
The children nodded. Hester pulled them close around herself and kissed them through her mask.
“We’re ready,” she told him.
Her lover slowly removed his mask and began to speak.
IN THE QUAD OF PROJECT 327
BY CHESYA BURKE
The steady stream of three day old rain water trickled close enough for her to reach out and touch it, but she didn’t for fear of catching something and needing another lockjaw shot. Although it hadn’t rained in almost a week, she was in the basement of the three story schoolhouse and Shaka figured that was approximately how long it took the remnants of the previous storm to make its way from the hole in the rooftop, through the building and into that tiny little class room in the cellar. She absentmindedly touched the sight of the previous tetanus shot she’d gotten the year before when she’d cut opened her forearm on a rusty nail desperately holding together a long-past its prime wooden school desk. Danielle sat in the desk now, leaning to the side, just a bit, so as not to get caught by the nail that had been hammered downward by the janitor hoping to keep it from sticking anyone else. Sammy was cut on it last month.
In the front the new kid slid into his seat, no doubt hoping that the teacher wouldn’t notice that he was late since his back was turned. The boy was tall, unusually so, but then Shaka herself was shorter than average, so most people were tall to her. Being just under five feet, the ninth grader didn’t think she’d ever have the growth spurt that her mother had promised her that was sure to come. Instead, she’d resigned herself to looking up to people all her life—and them looking down on her. That was not a pleasant thought, but she accepted it like so many others in her life.
As the teacher turned to face the class, he didn’t show any indication that he’d noticed the new kid had just arrived. That was good, Shaka thought. The new kid had confided in her that he had never been good in school and that he always seemed to get the teachers that were the least likely to work with him. Shaka had snorted at the thought. Was there any other kind of teacher? Mr. Jefferson—like the president, the man was quick to remind everyone—was worse than others, however. Most teachers there in Booker T. Washington High School were pretty apathetic (apathetic, that means that they just didn’t care about the students). But Mr. Jefferson, he was different; he seemed to get off on making people feel bad about themselves. He was an ass. And Shaka didn’t mind calling him an asshole either, because that’s just how he acted most of the time, like a horse’s ass. Teachers were like that. Sometimes they just wanted to be in control over children. They liked being the boss over them, liked ruling them as if the kids didn’t matter.
Children to Gods, is how her brother, Richard, had always put it. Because, he had explained, that children were to teachers, as adults were to God. Insigni
ficant. Meat and potatoes—end of the subject. Richard was okay, sometimes. Sometimes.
As Mr. Jefferson spoke to the class, the new kid—what was his name, again?—was slumped in his desk, naturally hoping that the short little man with the big mouth didn’t call on him. It wouldn’t work, Shaka reasoned. It never worked with Mr. Jefferson. Sometimes, sometimes apathy was better.
“Mr. White!” That was it, now she remembered, his name was Payden White. The white man smirked, laughing at the irony of the boy’s name, Shaka was sure. “I see you’re late. Can you afford that? You see, I’ve taken the liberty to look at your transfer papers, and I must say, that if you presume to take my class as seriously as you’ve taken your previous classes,” he’d paused, smiled a bit, “then may I suggest something.”
Payden didn’t bother answering. What was the point?
“A respirator. Because, I’m as serious as a heart attack.”
“Cute! Real funny,” the boy had mumbled it, but evidently not well enough because the man had rushed toward him with such deliberate steps Shaka has wanted to jump out of her seat and run to protect the boy. She didn’t though; she didn’t want to get into trouble herself. She was a coward that way.
The man stood over Payden within seconds, breathing down his neck. “Something that this class isn’t, is cute, Mr. White. Now if you were referring to my cute little trick for breaking down thermonuclear physics, then I can agree. But since, having read your transcript, I doubt you can comprehend that far, I’m going to assume that perhaps you’re simply referring to my cute little ass”—he winked—“and then we may have something to talk about.” Payden looked around, making eye contact with Shaka, no doubt unbelieving what was happening. None of the other students said anything, but they all sympathized with him. They had all been him. Jefferson probably didn’t know anything about thermonuclear physics (whatever that was), this was an American History class, but, hey, it made him sound smarter than the rest of them. Made him feel superior.
The teacher stood there for a moment, just staring at the boy, “Yes, Mr. White, and were you talking about my ass?”
He shook his head.
“I can’t hear you!” He shouted as if he were a soldier.