This month's
Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by
Hilary Melton-Butcher and is hosted at
Elephant's Child over here. This week's prompts are:
almanac, vegetables, smoke, rocky, pursuit and/or tides, data, pearly, block, hedge.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Fiction: The almanac of motherly advicesIn the almanac of motherly advices given to her by her grandmother, June Apples searches for the answer to her dilemma. She runs a finger down the index under F for
fights but there is none so she flips back a few pages and searches the A's for
arguments and turns toward the particular page.
If your husband or partner hits you and blames you for doing something wrong when you didn't, strike back. She has been correct. Looking down at her unconscious husband on the floor, she smiles. The set of frying pans Paul got for her 30th birthday has been useful after all. Now, should she eat dinner first or take Paul to the hospital?
As she washes the vegetables, she ponders why she regrets marrying Paul. He, not only demands his meals ready for him every day, he also expects her to keep their apartment clean with barely enough money to purchase a bottle of bleach or even an orange. On weekends, she has to help entertain the brothers' friends who eats and drinks freely and never pays either brothers anything. A housekeeper would have done the same things but she would probably get paid while June can't even get a dollar for a band-aid.
The almanac says marriage makes people happy but June doesn't seem to be one of them. She wonders if her pursuit of happiness should have involved marriage. As she eats the chicken and vegetable casserole, she tries not to breathe in the scent of Paul's cigars which he smokes once a day.
When she is finished clearing away the dishes, the doorbell rings. June hesitates in answering. The clock on the livingroom wall says five minutes after nine - the time when Paul's older brother comes for his weekly visits.
Junes walks over toward Paul lying on the couch with a blanket over him. She holds a finger under his nose. Faint air. Still alive. She pulls the blanket over his head. He doesn't like sleeping with the lights on.
She suddenly recalls watching the tides while sitting alone on the sand on the beach. The water had looked like pearly gems, sparkling under the bright sunlight. But then the clouds came and blocked the lights and made everything dull and lifeless. That day was June's tenth birthday and her family's promise to spend a day with her on the beach was forgotten because the light breeze was too much for June's nine-year-old brother, James, even though a wind machine couldn't have budged James' oversized body. June refused to leave so they just left her. It was the eighth time they left her alone on her birthday. She didn't know why she kept hoping they would change but that day, she stopped waiting.
June dismisses the memory and picks up the largest frying pan and proceeds to open the door. Rocky, with his wide eyes on the verge of popping out, stalks inside. June closes the door.
"How are you doing, sister?" he says. His sneer makes her want to slap him. He moves closer to her and opens his arms wide. "How about some sisterly love for your brother?"
"Sure," she says and strikes him on the head with the frying pan. He falls to the floor, unconscious. Her fingers weakens and the pan slips from her hands and lands on the wooden floor with a loud bang. Did she give him too much sisterly love? She checks his pulse. Nope. Just right.
Paul has always hedged on the issue of Rocky molesting her. He keeps saying Rocky is just being brotherly. June had let it go thinking when Paul gets promoted, they can afford to move to their own house and away from Rocky's charity as it is his apartment building they are living in but it has been four years and Paul has yet to get that promotion.
After a few moments of frozen fear, June walks back to the table where she has left the almanac. With a shaking hand, she flips the pages until she finds the answer.
When you're in trouble and you doubt what to do, go on vacation. Yes, the almanac is right. She needs a vacation. Perhaps Hawaii or some small island where people still uses real phones and mail takes a few weeks to get anywhere.
Without hesitation, she takes a spoon from the kitchen and enters the bathroom. Kneeling on the floor, she pries the tile up by the toilet and lifts out from the hole the plastic-wrapped bundle of cash and puts the tile back in place with bits of toothpaste to make it stick. Back out in the livingroom, she takes Rocky's keys from his jacket pocket and marches out of the apartment and next door to Rocky's where she does the same thing. The brothers often share the same habits as taught by their father.
Back at the apartment, June finishes with her packing and drags the suitcase toward the door but pauses to glance at Paul and Rocky. Has she become a statistic? There was a show she had seen about spousal behaviors and the data revealed most violent crimes are committed by a spouse against another spouse. Statistic or not, she's not a killer. She takes out Paul's phone from his pants pocket and calls for an ambulance. In the future, she will never marry again. No marriage is worth going through hell.
