Jamie Holland: THIS IS WHO WE ARE • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Jamie Holland
THIS IS WHO WE ARE

Before we were ten, we served gin and tonics and poured Chablis into glass after glass, navigating the thick forest of dark suits and wide ties, color-blocked dresses and soft walls of perfume. We ticked off the hours until Mom shooed us into the kitchen with a frozen pizza, Hostess cupcakes and the portable TV where Julie the cruise director welcomed us onto the Love Boat. We tried to watch but could only hear Mom’s laugh from the other room, a tornado whirling up and falling on our shoulders like summer rain. We pictured her head tipped back, the crumpled v of her black velvet halter top, her hand on the sleeve of another man’s jacket and Dad, sucking on his cigarette and blowing the stream downward, toward the carpet, which was how he talked, low and muffled, as if nothing he said mattered, as if his whole life was a forgotten footnote, ripped from the pages of a tattered book no one bothered to read. At the sink, we washed and dried glasses and then we brought the used, dirty ones to our unkissed lips and we drank, pretending to be them.

Before we were ten, we rode our bikes with no hands, sucked on candy cigarettes and licked popsicles in the High’s parking lot. The sun was good for us then and the skies were forever blue. We ate porkchops for dinner and gulped glasses of milk. We played Fashion Show in the basement, sliding our legs into each other’s warm Danskin pants and smearing pink frosted lipstick over our mouths. We said we knew about periods, but we didn’t. We said we knew about the bases, but we didn’t. We practiced handstands until our palms smelled like onion grass. We scribbled secret thoughts in our diaries and locked them with tiny keys we hid in our jewelry boxes. Our older sisters sunbathed, so we did too, pouring coconut-smelling oil on our stomachs and arms, flipping over on our towels like half-done hamburgers. In the pool, we swam close to the bottom, watching each other’s hair sway like ocean plants. We were on the brink of something, we could feel it as we peered into our reflections, hoping to see our future selves.

And then we were real-life adults with wake-up times and jobs and husbands and kids, eight, nine, ten, and we carpooled and organized our kitchens with plastic containers filled with brown rice and gluten-free pasta and we made our own granola bars with honey and maple syrup and pumpkin seeds, and our few bottles of liquor were stored high up where no one could reach them. After dinner we played board games because the kids needed to learn strategy. Science. Math. Chinese. We lugged ziplocked bags of cut oranges and soccer cleats and lacrosse sticks, rushing home if they forgot their mouth guards. On weekends we dropped the kids at our parents’ houses where they dressed up in long skirts and pearls, straw hats. They had tea parties and ate red Jell-O with homemade whipped cream. We didn’t sleep when the kids were gone because fear of unlocked windows and kidnappers had crept into our brains. We didn’t think about the actual inevitabilities like our parents getting older or our kids leaving us one day but then we’d notice our dad’s fingers trembling when he opened a can of Planter’s peanuts or we’d notice our mom had told the same story about her hairdresser’s kids five minutes ago and soon enough we were driving them to doctor appointments and filling their pill dispensers. We wiped soup from their chins and gazed into their worn, glassy eyes and thought, How can this be happening already? We cleaned out their houses when they passed and we buried them, knowing we were next in line.

And now, our kids have their own children, six, seven, eight with tangled hair and wild eyes. They go to schools without desks and chairs; they learn through doing and touching. They knit, they purl. They do not take tests. They stare out the window, watching the clouds. At night they run barefoot across the dark grass, their young faces lit up by jars filled with fireflies. We watch as they slurp lemon water from mason jars and gorge on strips of dried seaweed instead of Hostess Twinkies. And us? We remain our nine-year-old selves, dreaming about jumping off the high dive while the sun fries our tender skin. Sipping the dregs from our parents’ parties and pretending to like it. Pedaling our banana seat bikes straight into the clear blue nothing.

Jamie Holland’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Antietam Review (Winner of the 1998 Literary Contest), Baltimore Review, Brain Child, Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women, Flash Fiction Magazine, Gargoyle, Literary Mama, The Palisades Review, Pithead Chapel, Potomac Review, Scoundrel Time, Under the Gum Tree, WestWord and others. She was nominated for a Pushcart. Her coming-of-age novel, The Lies We Tell, is available on Amazon. She lives with her husband in DC.