Hushed

Pauline at four paints daisies on the shower stall wall with bubble paints from her grandmother. She etches begonia bulbs in the neighbors’ new cement works. Once she sculpted mountain tops in Mr. Murphy’s newly seeded grass bed, using as her medium the manure.

“You would make a lovely death mask,” she spoke to Murphy’s ashen face, “except that necessary subtle shades of green are missing.”

Pauline takes walks and is no longer a novelty alone on the street. She chats reasonably with the neighbors, though not with their children, unless they permit their mud pies to become tortes with pussy willow filling, their chalk walks mosaics. The day Pauline advised Mrs. Plant that her garden had too many trees on the left and too few on the right was the day Pauline’s mother first met with Mrs. Plant, and the last. Mr. Murphy had been much more understanding, and Pauline’s father much preferred Murphy’s grass to Plant’s trees.

Pauline plays castanets with pebbles. G-D-A-E sounds on the stairwell rails. Her voice “Hellos” crisply high and sometimes breaks the orange juice glasses together with her mother’s kind resolve.

“Pauline. Pauline. A little lower, please. Your father needs his nourishment.”

Pauline saw that her mother always smiled when the sun was up and sighed when the sun was down. Her mother described the sun. “It is very bright,” and advised her not to look at it. But Pauline thought she would see for herself. When she had seen that she could not see, she did not look again. Instead, for a while, she watched the moving colored circles that took the place of Mrs. Williams’s house across the way. Those green and yellow, blue and orange circles moved first away and then approached and then rolled back again, sometimes taking her head with them so that her body dipped at random and finally laid itself upon the grass.

Mosaics on the moon are carved with chalk by Pauline, now faceless green and light. Euphonic notes cascade upon her stone, melodies lyred on rain rows, tympanied on mountain clouds.

“Pauline. Pauline. A little lower please.”

(We Are Many - Is It Up or Down From Here?)

Copyright © 2015 by Renee Foss