Length: 1400 words
Tense: past
POV: 1st
This one's got a lot of explaining to do up here, which probably isn't a good thing. This is what happens when I start the story at ten. And warning, there are spoilers here, but at the same time I don't know if it's possible to follow the story without them…
Well, in one of my classes we discussed trauma narrative. We talked about how traumatised characters struggle to tell their story.
This is very obscure. It's probably the most incomprehensible thing I've written so far. I think it needs a lengthier preface.
It's based on this note in class, that memory is like a series of still pictures, taken away from causality and time. Normally narrative is constructed by reliving the events of memory, and adding back in the causality. When there is pain, it becomes a barrier.
Yes, that's all we do in class: we talk about narrators and pain. Anyway, you were warned. Good luck.
But Anna stands beneath the large and leafy trees. They are sycamores, broad-leaved and yellowing in autumn’s onset. The bark was smooth brittle and flaked off when touched.
But the sky is blue. The birds are singing. In the distance there is a white, puffy cloud. It was tiny, only a wisp. It looked like the smallest wind might blow it away.
But Anna was dining on the front patio when Jack came up and was like, hey, Anna, so of course Anna was like, yeah, and so he started like look, about the TV. It wasn’t my fault. Ben, Mr. Douglas’s kid, he was over and he had a baseball and I was like, Ben, not in here, but he was like, stop me, and I’m seeing with Mr. Douglas and you know how he is only— but then Anna was like forget it, and Jack was like, no, really, Anna, I’m sorry. About the TV, about everything, but the grass is green, and Anna doesn’t know the names of the birds that hop down from the telephone wires and peck at the base of her azaleas. She would learn them.
But Jack wasn’t a boyfriend. Just a friend. Good. Because Anna wasn’t like that. He thought at first, lesbian, but she was all like lord, no! Just I don’t do relationships. And so then he was like, why not, but it was pointless because Anna never did relationships. She had no friends, only acquaintances. Jack was an acquaintance from Burger King. Anna had worked there for a month – it had been March. Shannon was an acquaintance from the neighborhood. Bev was an acquaintance from school. Anne was an acquaintance who went to school. The unnamed man who came to her front door some nights in the darkness – he was an acquaintance too.
But the grass by the stone is soft. It is high summer, and the grass is mowed neatly. Beyond the plane trees it spreads wild. Anna sets her eyes toward the mountains. Gold hills and fields of poppies stretched out like a yellow sea. Behind her was a blue sea – Anna cannot see it, but she knows it’s there. How she’d like a swim! She had taken swimming lessons when she was little. Now Anna didn’t want to go to the water. No, Anne, we can’t go for a swim. Go bug Shannon. Out of all Anna’s acquaintances, Shannon is the most valuable.
But Jack was like, how do you feel? And Anna felt good and bad and wrong and nothing and didn’t much care. She said she felt fine. Fine enough. Go away, Jack. But he stood there, like, I know it must be hard, like he knew. Yes, you can only imagine, I liked that TV very much and cannot live without it. It was my life. The pictures that emanated from the plasma screen enlivened me. They infused my senses with a light this world has lost. They elevate me to a transcendental thought-being who with omniscience gazes out and sees life played before her and judges the wicked and anoints the saintly and with a benevolent hand turns the axis of this world!
But he hadn’t broken her TV yet. He doesn’t do that until September.
But right now the sun shone warm. Black cloth fluttered in the air like a veil. A wedding veil, maybe. Anna remembers Jack’s wedding. The bride is almost jumping up the aisle. Jack is stoic. She’s from New York or something. They have plans to head out east, and live in the city. Jack had to convince his bride to even come to California for the wedding. But he insisted. Most of the bride’s family is in town, and they fill up the hotels, and all around give good business. Then Jack leaves. No one thought he would actually leave, but he does. He goes and he doesn’t come back, and Anna will never see or hear from him again.
But the sun casts peculiar shadows on the ground. The dappled light comes through and glows off green grass and gray stone. Long shadows, under a cool winter sun. to the east the valley is green and alive. Distant hills rise, and specks of cars crawl up them.
But why is Shannon here? Is she – maybe it’s the trick of the winter light. Anna doesn’t want to get skin cancer. She ducks into the cool shade, under a bush. If you stay in the sun, you get skin cancer. Anna knows that Dr. Jacobs had skin cancer. It’s cool under the bush but its prickly. The branches tear at her skin. Anna is shaking. Shannon is outside, but she won’t make a sound. It will be sudden.
But the wind was cool on Anna’s back. Shannon doesn’t even turn. She doesn’t hear a thing.
But the wind was cool and sharp. The winter sun shone into Anna’s eyes. Anna ran.
But now the blossoms are in bloom. Flowers have fallen across the lawn, landing on slabs of rock. Anna toys with a rose, twirling it in her fingers. A thorn pricked her. She dropped it, and started. She kicks it from where it landed.
But Jack came up and Anna said his name and he said hers and she was like, why are you here and he said something about wishes and flowers. Anna never liked flowers. It’s funny. Jack’s a florist. It’s about the most womanly job Anna can imagine, but it’s his. He’s rich enough. And it’s not that he’s a womanly guy – not at all. It’s just, he likes flowers. Anna was a florist in October. She didn’t like it much, and quit. Anna didn’t need a job. She had enough money, anyway, with the inheritance.
But the sun is behind clouds now. It shimmers with a soft halo of gold. Sycamore leaves blow over it, obscuring and revealing the tinniest of rainbows.
But back in 1996 Jack had been all suddenly like he died and she had been like something not exactly but like, did he, well fine, and Jack was all like, do you mean that, but she did, really. It wasn’t relief. He had been in the hospital two months. She had been out of the house two months.
But Jack brought her outside. He showed her the sycamore trees. Here.
But she was like, I don’t want to, and he was like, why, and that was when Anna saw the greenness of the grass. It was brilliant, like emeralds had descended from heaven, and she couldn’t look away. As a baby Anna had been to Ireland, and after that Anna had forgotten real green. But this was deeper, fuller, more alive. Even in the golden summer the green settled in her heart. She turns to the sky, to the blue, blue sky, and she cries and she’s shouting to the wind all like I’m alive, I’m alive! That was 1996.
But today, how green the leaves on the bushes shine. Birds peck at their branches. They are yellow birds, blue ones, little brown fellows. They are unafraid of the landscape of rippling grass and unmoving stones.
But Anne was all like mommy, why can’t we go to the beach instead of here? We always go here. Anne likes to imagine. She doesn’t have a mother. Anna doesn’t know where she is from. Or how she got her name. She is a small kid, unhealthily small. She has hair as red as Anna’s and eyes as blue. She has a pesky voice that sometimes makes Anna want to hit things and sometimes cry.
But the wind blows gently. The wavering branches die down, pick up, die down. The sun sets and rises.
But Anna was like, Anne, go and learn the names of the birds.
But you made me already.
But then tell me.
But I told you already. And Anne was like, I wanna go. My back hurts.
But Jack is in the flower shop. Anna hears him humming.
But it might be Autumn. Surely, the leaves are getting red. They are sycamore trees, the two of them. Broad and it is chilly beneath their umbrella, where the deeper green touches the yellowing of the plush grass. The gray stone is cool and alive.
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