📘Short Story: The Mobile

The mobile I made from scraps of magazines.

I cut out smiling faces.
                              Kind eyes.
                                      Warmth.

Men.
      Women.
            Children.

Black.
        White.
              Brown.

Young.

     Old.

Very young.

          Very old.

I pasted them onto the undersides of paper shapes that hung by strings from a slow-turning hanger.

The mobile played Clair de Lune softly above my daughter and filled the room.

“Where did you get the idea from?”

An errant, inner question. 

It was a question I had been asked many times before about my artwork.

The bizarre animals.
The strange flowers.
The gardens.
The butterflies.
The birds.
The people.

Always smiling.

The mobile turned slowly above my daughters crib in the late afternoon light, people’s kind faces shifting gently in the draft from the ceiling fan.

Not moons.
Not rabbits.
Not stars.

People.

Faces clipped carefully from magazines and advertisements.

A waitress laughing with her head thrown back.
An old man with soft eyes beneath a fishing cap.
A woman holding a cup of coffee in both hands.
A teenage boy grinning beside a bicycle.
A nurse leaning down toward someone outside the frame.

Kind faces.

Unknowns.

People I had never met, yet I knew by the feeling they inspired.

Friendly.
        Kind.
          Warm.

Safe.

Safe people. 

Where did you get the idea from? I didn’t know usually.  I felt things. I saw things. 

As I drifted to sleep myself, I started to let myself remember. 

The Grocery Store 

Sandals. My little harachi white sandals that pinched a toe.

A dress. Pinchy. Scrunched top.I was growing too fast.
Summer. Georgia.
Hot. Too hot. 

I was sticky. My legs were tired. 

The grocery store was a vast, bright world.  Ice cold. Piggly Wiggly.— grandma’s store. I was told. When? I don’t know. She wasn’t there. I never met her. 

Grandma was woven into that place somehow.

But the heat and the lights and ,,,, ugh.

It may not have been chicken soup, but in the gallery of my little child mind, it is always golden broth spreading across the linoleum.

A man came quickly.

He had a mop.
He had kindness.
Everything was fine.

My mother’s face was tight with apologies. Her voice higher , more rapid, breathless and unlike I'd heard before. I was bracing. Irritation. Anger.

But the man stayed soft.

“No, don’t worry about it,” he murmured, over and over. ‘No worries. No worries”

That is what stayed. 

“No worries.”

A man with a mop and a smile and kindness.

More than the shelves or the signs.

The gentleness of him.

Softer than anyone I had met..

Safe person.

I was so small then.
Four.
Or younger.

A child of few lispy stuttering words. I didn’t hear the difference in tree and three. No difference in S Z M W B 8.  They were all the same. Just tilt your head. 3 is M is W is Z is S is 8.  They are all the same.  

But him, He was different. I didn’t have to tilt my head to see it. 

 I remember.

the warmth..

A face just like one on the mobile.

The Commissary

At the commissary, I followed the wrong figure.

Commissaries are big. Bland. High ceilings with beams. And more food than anywhere else in the world. 

I new. Long brown hair, red shirt, That was mom. Stay with mom.  I think it was red?

I trailed her toward the meat section, and when she turned, the world broke. She was a stranger.

Terror. Ice. Fear.

Not a scream.

I was a silent child. I ran.

Even then, speech was a locked door.

I couldn’t say:

“I can’t find my mom.”

I couldn’t ask:

“Can you help me?” 

She has brown hair like yours and maybe a red shirt on. So simple, right? Just say the words?  Can? You? Help? Me?  So simple.  I don’t know? Can YOU?

I couldn't understand the words others said.

 All gone! I knew. Bye bye!  Over and over. The cow jumped over the moon. I knew those words. 

But a stranger with a different voice. I understood nothing.

My words were caught behind my teeth, like sour bread dough,, while the fluorescent lights grew loud and the aisles stretched into infinity.

Do you know how large the ceiling of a store is to a small child? Infinite. Overwhelmingly infinite. 

I N  F I N I T E  

INFINITE

♾️

Then the bag boy appeared. Not in front of me. Under me. 

He had swung me onto his shoulders.

I remember the height. I was up so high and I wasn't scared. I remember his warm neck, his grip on my legs, my arms around his brown hair. Apron. Men wore aprons? .

The humming lights.
The scent of brown paper.
Laughter.

I laughed, too. Laughter was inside me.

fear vanished 

Then I saw her. Her face, tight.  Her lips were apologizing again. The higher than normal voice. 

And I wept.

Hard.
Instantly.

I cried before I could find the reason. Like I'd been struck.

He set me down and vanished.

I wanted to stay up high. I wanted him. I didn’t want my mother. 

I was scolded for wandering while I was afraid to move in the white vinyl seat that burned my legs. 

I hadn’t wandered.

I had simply lost a thread of safety.

And found it again, perched on a stranger’s shoulders.

And then it was cut.

The Specials Teacher

School was flashes of people and things. Alphabet People. Mr. Teeth. Love! Math. Hate. Hate Hate. Double Hate. Recess. Sort of love. Sitting in my desk. Pinned to my spot. Misery. 

And then one day a pain in my ear started at school.  

Ear ache.  

It was too much. 

But my mother couldn't be reached, so the Specials teacher gathered me into her lap.

She was the one teaching me how to find my way through letters and lines and to say things correctly and write things correctly. I was lost at school. She was making words appear.

I remember the soft pressure of her hand against my ear, a shield against the throb. The warmth. That warmth. That safety.

Her chest, a pillow for my cheek.
Her voice, a low hum.
Her stillness.

She was soft. She was warm. She was different.

She let me stay in her lap. She held me.

I wanted that moment to be forever.

Only later did I realize I was already reaching too hard for kindness.

My father learned of the Specials class.

Anger.

Tests.
Meetings.
Shame, settling over the house like a cold fog.

I had failed somehow.

I didn't know what the mistake was.

Only that the adults around me were upset.  

Specials teacher was gone. Those were for stupid kids. Was I stupid?

I had to stay in class with the other kids. Normal kids.

A thread of safety, snipped.

My Glasses

I assumed the world was soft because it was meant to be soft and blurry. Didn’t everyone see with the same eyes? Blue is blue. Sky is sky. Cat is spelled… S A D.

Trouble followed every wrong answer.

Summer school.
Again.
And again.

Doesn’t everyone get signed up for summer school? Better than being home. Sometimes.

Then, the discovery. I couldn't see clearly.   The board was a blur.
Faces were only clear when they were close enough to touch.

They mistook slowness and my blurred vision for a lack of attention. For laziness. Slowness. Shame. 

Not the lessons.
Not the mouths.
Not the truth of an expression.

My world had always been smudged at the edges. And honestly I preferred it. My mothers face was so tight with worry. My dad was irritated. My mom was irritated. My dad could become rage. 

I got my glasses. 

Ew. Those? Really Dawn? 

They aren’t as much as the other ones I wanted.

 I feel stupid for picking them out. I feel stupid all the time. 

And then Shelly at school at recess walked away.

 “I can’t be friends with four eyes.”  

She left with Jennifer, Jessica, Breezy, and Cathrine.

My mother said:

“You don’t need friends like that anyway.”

 I know mom.

A child needs kindness like a plant needs sun.

I sat in the quiet of my room, surrounded by old toys.  

An invisible mobile made of cut strings hung crooked above me.  I could hear it turn sometimes if the wind was right.

What were words good for?  What were glasses good for? What were friends good for? 

I sometimes refused to wear my glasses. I’d rather be stupid.

You look stupid.

I know.

I can’t believe we were ever friends.

I know.

The Kitten

Then, a kitten let me pet her. She wanted me to touch her. She wanted me.

A brief restoration.

A small, pulsing heat that chose me.

Trust. I named her squirrel because of her fur. It reminded me of a squirrel.

Really Dawn? Squirrel?

Then she ran away. Vanished.

My cousin spoke of the well, of a collar, of a life strangled out. In my driveway he told me.

He was smiling.

My aunt smiled, too, while she corrected him. “You’re not supposed to tell her that” “It’s the truth. You said don’t lie.”  She laughed. How clever. He was so smart wasn’t he. 

Yes. Smart.

I felt … vacant. I refused to cry for him. He liked it when I cried. He had gotten scratched and ran to tell them I did it.  Spank her! 

My throat burned. It was so tight. 

The kitten had died and no one had told me. And now somehow I can see it wet, dripping hanging by its flea collar on the hook at the well. It was raining.  All the details. My body, so cold all over.The kitten, rigid.  

I was cold. I was dizzy. 

So I retreated to my room.

I curled up on my bed. 

I was laying under a mobile.

The man with the mop at the store. No worries.
The boy with the bags.Laughing. Up high. Up high I said.
The teacher with the warm lap and warm hands.

No names.

Faces, blurred.

But there they are hanging from a mobile that is above my head.  Impressionistic paintings of warm faces.

Throughout my life, I’ve curled up under it. And  I heard it turn and the faces blurred, rocked slowly back and forth, above me. 

Where did you get the idea for that?  

That? I got it from there.  And point to my invisible mobile of kind moments from strangers. That is where I got it from.