The girl squatted beside her, amidst the gladioli. Her aunt groaned and stood up, brushed the dirt off her knees and ran her hands through the water from the hose.
The girl squinted in the sun and felt loneliness deep and wide. She followed her aunt inside. She panicked when she couldn’t see anything.
“Just give your eyes time to adjust,” her aunt said as if the girl should have known. The girl’s mother was all soft corners and she missed her.
She made the girl an egg and butter sandwich. She set it on a cracked plate of Robin’s egg blue in front of her, made an impatient movement with her hand. When finished, she fed her a teaspoon of honey, something her mother might do. The girl held it in her mouth without swallowing.
The house was quiet as church. A votive flickered in front of a sorrowful Madonna, made of plaster of Paris, which the aunt murmured words to.
She rocked herself back and forth on dry, cracked heels and hummed notes low and steady. She glanced at the sober-faced clock and watched the girl; circles of violet under doleful eyes.
When the afternoon wore on, the aunt stood at the back door looking out at the garden. She rubbed at gooseflesh on her arms.
The girl lay exhausted in sleep on a sheet on the floor. The ceiling fan disturbed the air. Small drops dotted her face, which could have been tears or sweat or both.
The phone trilled like an alarm.
She had few words: “Yes.” Then: “Well done.”
She went out into the garden and cut some flowers, closer to the root than she should have. She patted the dirt around those just beginning to grow.
When the girl woke, the aunt ran a rough, cold washcloth across her face. She handed her a small bouquet, the stems wrapped in tinfoil. She said “You are not the only one anymore.”
They walked to the hospital hand in hand.
The mewling of a baby stopped the girl at the threshold of the room. She held onto the flowers that had slumped in the heat. Her aunt grabbed her other hand and pulled her in.
When her mother reached out for her, called her ‘sweetheart,’ the girl began to cry.
This did not surprise the mother. She drew the girl, who shivered in the cold hospital air, close to her swollen breasts. The tears puzzled the aunt who stood up to find a something to place the flowers in and passed the baby in its bassinette.
“What will we call it?” she called to her sister, in the bed with the girl, smiling now. She left with the girl just as it began to rain. She promised they’d return in the morning.
About the author:
Michelle Reale is an academic librarian working in a university in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in Verbsap, Dogzplot, Word Riot, elimae, JMWW, Blood Orange Review, Monkeybicyle, Apt, Pequin, Freight Train, Dogmaticka, Laura Hird and others.
The aunt is bursting with sadness, perhaps with no children of her own? No understanding of what children need? A very well-written character study.
I like the documentary feel of this story. So many writers think they have to hype a story up to make it work, but flash fiction works best documenting the every day even if it deals with the big events of every day life. What I’m saying is not a contradiction. You’ve done it here.