Gnarly wood with knots and holes, divots and rings in shades
of pale sand to roasted walnuts ran smoothly under Stay’s finger tips. Her
porcelain finger caught in a deeper groove before jumping back on track with
the rest of her hand lazily tracing the ancient lines. The wood table appeared
roughly made; wide, uneven patches of wood set together with pegs, the grains
not matching as her eyes jumped from one panel to another. Stay could only
assume her mother, or possibly the father she never knew, had made it before
she was born. Sitting strong in the center of the kitchen, the table had always
held what was post important: a place to fold cranes, to build cakes and skin
rabbits. She had bled onto the table, coffee rings almost created a pattern
like a dream catcher created filigree along the edges. Gouges in the wood from
an angry knife stabbed deep while shallower points were created to hold the
blade in thought.
Stay imagined the wood holding onto her memories. With no mother, father or people to remember
or create memories with her, the table was the only one she could imagine
capable. Once a living thing, growing strong and tall, reaching for the sky in
an endless craving for life, it understood.
Reminiscent and in need of a friend, Stay brought out her
old friends. The porcupine bones were still tied together with string being
held together like puppets ready to dance and run with her. Stay admired the
contrast as she set the bones on the wood table. Smooth creamy bones against
rough woods. The combination screamed time and life at her, life gone and time always
going. The tree had grown into the earth, sinking roots into the ground while branches
spread into the sky. Bones of the porcupine held the life and structure of the
animal while the beast remained unaware of its skeleton, the only part of the
creature left. The wood and the bones would continue to live on in death, time
deepening what they once were. Everything was backwards. The tree and porcupine
they were dead but in death remained alive forever, they held age as time went
on. Both so beautiful and so different.
Stay craved immortality in bones.
She imagined her body lying on the long kitchen table. Her form
slowly decomposing and the wood soaking up what it could of her body, allowing
her soul and essence to become part of the world until years drift by and it
would only be her bones left on the table. Creamy, slender and elegant cradled
by the table, her small bony fingers settling in the grooves of the wood, her
skull pitched back to rest along a worn knot in ecstasy.
Stay rubbed the back of her head, feeling the gentle curve
of her skull bend in toward her spine, the delicate balance of her entire being
resting at that pivotal point. She couldn’t help wonder at how easy it
would be.
Standing up and pushing away from the table, Stay shoves
those thoughts away. Thinking of life and death and the potential immortality
of death is dangerous. Though she never knew what happened to her mother for
certain, she felt it in the center of her heart; her mother was dead.
Stay’s mother had problems. One of the comforting things
Stay read in her many books was every single person had a multitude of
problems. They could have problems that were solved but created new problems,
problems that followed them through life and problems they never even know they
had. That was the kind of problem Stay’s mother had. The kind of problem that
ate away at her happiness and told her she wasn’t ok the way she was until she didn’t
know how to feel. She thought the only way she could feel normal again was through
pain. Stay had seen the scars forming on her mother’s arms and peeking under the
hem of her shorts on her thighs.
The life left her eyes until she looked at Stay with nothing
buy greyness. There were moments when Stay thought she was ok again, when her
mother would fold cranes and line them on the sill in the kitchen, she would
bake a strawberry tart and dust it with powdered sugar, blowing it like a cloud
over the table and smiling through the cloud at Stay. The times of momentary
rightness were quickly shadowed by hours, sometimes days, of stagnation. Her
mother would sit in the living room staring out the window, barely moving. No
more cuts, only staring into the woods as if waiting for something. Was she
waiting for Stay’s father to return? Was she waiting for a reason to live?
Her mother had a problem she didn’t know she had and she
couldn’t fix it. Pills might have helped her. There was a pharmacy in town and
an old, kind doctor Stay saw once as a child when she had a fever. But, her
mother didn’t go. She went to the market and bought food and other necessities
as if she could bake it all away.
Now Stay glared at the table that held the confections of
her mother’s love. The table that taunted her with life and death, making a mockery
out of all Stay knew. The table soaked in their life and love and acted like its
support was enough to give in return. Did it keep her mother alive? Did the
hard-hearted table stop Stay’s mother from hurting herself? Did it offer
support when Stay cut her finger off? Perhaps 18 years with this table was
enough, maybe it was time for her to move on from the problems of her mother
and make this home her own.
Stay wanted to stay
alive. The table sucked the life out of her. It would stand like an unmoving
stone as a constant reminder of the pain her mother held, making it her own. It
would cut at her heart making her wonder at her father and hold resentment
toward her mother.
The house had an unused landline she could dust off to call
information and get a technician to install internet. Then buy an old laptop
from the resale shop and purchase a new table online. Stay wouldn't have to
leave the house often. She could remake the home she had into anything she
wanted, a Parisian coffee shop or a Buddhist temple.
With the decision made, Stay took her porcupine pals and
hung them from a hook above the kitchen window. Opening the window allowed a
breeze to pulsate through, the bones becoming chimes as they gently knocked on
one another like laughter.
The table would have to go.
© Ash Huntley
No comments:
Post a Comment