Flame red - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 26: Stories for Today
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Sydney Smith
DEAR LANCE,
It has been several weeks since I last wrote to you. Aunty Ivy has been staying in on her day off because there was a death in the family of the people she goes to visit. Her voice cracks when she says ‘death' and it jumps nervously when she says ‘funeral'. I say to her, ‘Wouldn't you like to comfort them?' She says, ‘No, I would not.' I ask her, ‘What do you do when you go to their place?' I ask this because Cherie wants to have me over to her house for dinner one night and I need some clues as to what to do and say. Aunty Ivy says, ‘We play euchre.' She sees me getting ready to ask another question and snaps, ‘Don't you have any work to do?' I scuttle away.
While Aunty Ivy was hanging around on her day off, Bartlett took me down into the cellar to look at the grey barrels of beer. It was cool and the air smelled deliciously of brick and hops. We ate lunch there and when we had finished he let me touch his moustache. It's dark brown and spreads over his lips like a Victorian lady's petticoats. He took my hand and pressed my fingers to it all the way along, brushing it down and smoothing the fibres. He lets me touch it whenever I want, anywhere in the pub, as long as Ivy isn't watching. The regulars see us and nod wisely. One of them comes in wearing a droopy tutu, with her boyfriend who dresses all in green, and she wiggles her eyebrows significantly.
Now I am released from the pub for the afternoon. Aunty Ivy's friends are over their grief and she has gone back to visiting them. Bartlett hides a satisfied smile under his moustache.
DEAR LANCE,
Cherie asked me to go with her to the hairdresser. She said she wanted someone to help her decide how to have her hair. I told her I knew nothing about these things and showed her my coarse braid. She looked annoyed, so I said, ‘Aunty Ivy won't let me.' ‘I'll deal with Ivy,' she said, and marched away. A minute later, she came back and told me we were going out.
While we waited in the salon, sitting in canvas-and-chrome chairs and sipping espresso, she told me things about herself. She told me she wanted to have children but her husband had asked her to wait; he said babies would change the shape of her breasts and she had to make the most of them while they were still plump. She said Ivy made her leave her wedding ring off for work. I asked her how she could talk to the customers as if she was clothed. She said, ‘I'm always clothed in my mind. When I'm behind the bar I'm wearing a ball gown the colour of starlight. Chiffon,' she said, ‘acres of it,' smoothing her hand over those twinkling skirts. She nodded with satisfaction. ‘That's the secret of my success.'
I told her about you and me. She misunderstood and thought I'd had a romance with you and that's why my parents sent me down here. I couldn't make her understand how it had really been. I said I wrote you letters and didn't post them. She said, ‘Why don't you post them? How can he know how you feel if you don't tell him?' I was afraid to tell her the truth, in case she despised me, so I told her how my parents run the post office. I said, ‘They'll be expecting me to write to him and they'll examine every letter with hawk eyes.' She patted my hand sympathetically. Then the man with pearl earrings came and escorted her to the washbasins.
I watched her sit in front of the mirror, with the sea-blue cape covering her, and chat to the man. They laughed and talked like old friends. The man cut her hair as if he was creating a sculpture. It was beautiful to watch. When he had dried it and tidied up a few ends he escorted Cherie to the cash register and beckoned to me. I thought he meant the woman who had come in and was sitting next to me, flicking through a magazine full of hairstyles. He walked over and bent his arm as if he was going to lead me to the ball. Cherie said, ‘Go with him. I booked for you, too.' He sat me down. I took off my glasses to keep from seeing my reflection in the mirror. He unbraided my hair and passed his fingers through it again and again, like a sculptor testing raw material. He asked me, ‘When was the last time you had it cut?' I couldn't remember. Mother didn't like me to cut it – she said it would only make me think about myself. All the time, I avoided looking at my reflection. He took me away to wash my hair and when he brought me back, he took up the scissors and began to cut. ‘Oh!' I went, and ‘Oh!' with each slice, as if he was cutting off pieces of my body. Only it didn't hurt, Lance – it was just surprising. Cherie came and sat with me and talked about hairstyles and lengths and things like that. Now and then she touched my hair, and when she did her sleeve or the back of her hand kissed my cheek and my skin tingled. When he had finished cutting he pointed at the floor. I put on my glasses and there was a heap of tresses lying all around my chair, long, long ropes of hair cut to pieces. It looked like all my hair was lying there. Panic came over me. I glanced in the mirror. There was still plenty of hair left, as he had cut it off at the shoulder blades. But I didn't pay much attention to that. I was looking at the young woman in the glass with a feeling of wonder. I looked at that young woman with her pale face and her glasses big like the eyes of a dragonfly, and I asked, ‘Who is that? Who can that be?'
Cherie drove me back to the pub and showed me off to Bartlett and the regulars in the main bar. She said, ‘Look at her. Doesn't she look beautiful?' The regulars smiled and said, ‘You look beautiful, Laurel.' They raised their glasses and drank a toast in my honour.
Ivy looked at me with glittering eyes and said, ‘You can't hide anymore. You have to come out in the open now.' She said it as if she was laying a curse on me. The woman in the tutu winked and the curse slid off before it could do any harm.
DEAR LANCE,
Something has happened. Ivy now pays me fifty dollars a week on top of my free bed and free meals. Bartlett had a word with her in the kitchen. I watched them through the serving hatch. I think he must have threatened her because she shrank into a little old woman.
I went to the bank during my lunch hour and opened an account, and now when Ivy takes fifty dollars from the till and slaps it on the bar, daring me to pick it up, I slip it into my pocket and take it down to the bank and put it in my account.
And that's another thing: I have a lunch hour. I said to Ivy one day, ‘I'm going out for lunch, I'll be an hour.' I said this with some nervousness. As soon as the words were out I thought she would jump on me and tie me to a chair. I was set to run if she tried. She didn't look happy but she just went ‘Hmph!' and didn't stop me. I go out most days for my lunch hour and walk around the streets. Wherever I go I hear people who visit the pub call out, ‘Hello, Laurel!'
Ivy said to me the other day, ‘Where do you go when you go out?' It's the first time she's ever asked me a personal question. I told her and she went, ‘Hmph!'
Now I must confess to you, Lance. I serve drinks topless. Cherie bought me nice red underpants and a red suspender belt with white rosettes. When I put them on, my skin shrivelled inside them. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. Cherie said, ‘What would you like to wear over these more than anything in the world?' I said, ‘Leaves and flowers. Flame-red flowers. Lots of them.' She put a kiss on my cheek and said, ‘Your wish has been granted.'
I was scared as can be, Lance. I crept into the bar hoping nobody would notice me. They did notice me and it was horrible at first, like nothing covered me, not even my skin. But as I served beer, my arms turned into branches and my fingers became twigs. Leaves grew out of them, glossy dark-green ovals that smelled of fresh rain and sap and young life. My breasts turned to scarlet flowers. Flowers grew where my new underpants had been, and spilled down my legs, mingling with the leaves, forming skirts as dense as any thicket. I rustled with every movement I made, and the sound was pure. ♦