“Memory is the worst editor.”
But we couldn’t take notes and only wanted to listen.
***
She sat on a window seat overlooking the tarmac. There was little else to be done; in the weeks prior her mother had passed away. And although she loved her dearly, Marie now felt that the restart button was lit.
With 50 years of living in the same place, Marie could now think about leaving the small town.
Despite her age, Marie looked younger. Her face had no wrinkles and it reminded you of a polished ivory pitcher with an engraved chamomile flower.
“I never had kids, that’s how come I look so young,” she would say with a quiet smile when anyone remarked about her youthful glow.
And when one saw Marie, one also saw all the others that came before her. The remains of a French and Native Indian love affair that coursed through her veins. Her hair was thick and full as a horse’s tail with no visible grays.
There was a slow and deliberate style in her speech. When she did venture to say anything, it sounded like a faucet dripping silver.
“We’re chasing the sun, that’s how come you see those brown streaks in the sky,” she said about the sunset’s effect on the horizon as the plane traveled West.
Marie sat erect to take in the small view offered by the window seat. Despite the small chairs, Marie’s full body would easily fit without interfering with the next passenger. This was a modern miracle because Marie reminded you of a hibernating bear.
The temperature was cold inside the flight, but she wore a T-Shirt; it didn’t matter since one just wanted to be near her, like a blazing fireplace making the place cozy by proxy.
The only inkling that something was different about Marie was her skin. As opposed to her face being a virgin canvas, her left side of her body was covered in ink. She was a painted totem pole of Japanese goddesses, lotus flowers mixed with skulls and roses.
“It’s something that can never be taken away from me,” Marie would say about her tattoos. “My dad never saw them.”
Now Marie wanted to find a job out West in a tattoo parlor. She had made some friends in San Diego and they extended an invitation to finish her colored armor out there.
Now she worked as a receptionist in the only town’s tattoo parlor.
But her mother’s home and town no longer offered much for Marie. She now dated her high school sweetheart after a bad love affair with the town’s bad boy.
Although Marie had no children, she was fond of birds. This was no easy love to keep in a small New England town that received more than 70 inches of snow a year.
“I kept it warm for them, always 77 degrees,” she spoke like a proud mom.
Marie had over 100 birds inside her house. She bred them for a living, but she had some that were just for her.
“One day I came in and they were gone, all of them,” she said without a pause and without emotion. “He did it. He killed them.”
So Marie left that day.
“First I’m visiting cousins but then I’m going to San Diego. It will be nice there,” she said as the plane landed.
Copyrighted Jumahchaguan.com
jumahchaguan 