Tell Me A Story

Two hours to write a prompt-based short story about an article of clothing that helped someone assume a persona...this is what came out of my television-deadened brain.

Just looking at me would have made you burst into tears. I was short. I walked pigeon-toed and hunched forward like a diver, neck extended as thought it were my head rather than my legs which propelled my body forward. Eyes lackluster and starless, mouth small and curled in upon itself like a suicide bomber, as if by self-annihilation it could promise me a life without speaking.

At the time, I was working as a secretary in a crooked corporate-law firm and earning enough to pay my rent, launder my sensible blouses and skirts, and re-sole the uncomfortable shoes with which I walked with the three miles to and from work each day. What I did in those long office hours--what notes I typed or messages I saved or dictations I took--I'm not really sure, but I do remember that on cool February afternoons and warm spring days I would take my lunch outside and sit, back erect as an un-romantic ballerina's, on a bench in the park. Balancing my tray tersely on my nervous, knobby knees, I stared at the gelatinous soups and cakes glowing with shinny that the office provided me, and then--with a nearly imperceptible sigh--at the squirrels.

When the New England winter began stealing away--when all that was left of it were pitiful lumps of snow clinging to the grass like sloppy, sobbing ghosts--the squirrels would emerge from the dripping rees and begin digging in the softening ground. It was a process that never ceased to fascinate me; how after months of cowering from the blizzards that blew a hoary powder upon the ground thick as cream--after months of snow that muted memory into forgetfulness--the squirrels could remember where they had hidden the loot they'd buried when the trees tossed their proud heads of flame.

Of course, at the time I would have described myself as sitting up straight and proper in my gray skirt and white blouse, being careful not to spill the lunch I knew I wouldn't eat on my scuffed black pumps, and watching the squirrels search for the food they'd buried beneath the now-melting ice. Like I said, I was unromantic.

But maybe it was the fact that the cherry trees were blossoming early that year, at the start of April rather than closer to May. It was as if the criminal that was winter had stolen away and left only his shameful, fucshia-suffused face in his place for once, rather than his usual slobbering-ice apologies. Or perhaps it was the intoxication of finally seeing sunlight, whose power I'd forgotten in the short, gray days that gripped time from December to March. Whatever the reason, I chose to empty my untouched tray early, and buy a steaming cup of tea.

I don't remember what kind of tea it was, but it was probably peppermint. Peppermint tea always had the strangest effect on me, rousing the parts of my person that chose full-time hibernation and inhibition, like the falling-in-love part, or the dancing part, or the part that liked the salty, salubrious smell of the sea.

Clutching the hot paper cup in my cold fingers, I shuffled--still hunched--down the avenue until I spied something beautiful. Peeking from a dust-coated window was a scarf, and what a scarf it was! It looked as if it were spun from rainbows and interlaced with the antithesis of apathy. The mere act of it seemed to wipe off the dust of banal years that had accumulated in a cataract-like film over my eyes, to remind my feet and my smile of their youth, to incite an irrational desire to want it.

It wasn't so much the scarf I wanted, but the life it seemed to promise me. Not being able to create an identity for myself, I wanted one pre-made and fashionable--dazzling, brilliant, shameless. I wanted it so much that I straightened my back, marched into the dim shop, snatched the scarf up in my long fingers and veritably demanded from the woman inside, "How much?"

My eyes widened at her whispered sum.

"For a scarf?" I cried, incredulous.

The sallow woman shook her head and brandished the beautiful piece of cloth at me. "For this scarf."

It cost me two weeks' pay. You might call me mad. I quit my job after buying it. Now you'll say I'm senile, although I was only 24 years old, an age hardly meant for sanity. That piece of cloth. It reminded me of things I'd forgotten, that my eyes had glossed over. I stopped gawking at squirrels in search of guidance about remembering things forgotten. I began to frequent cafes I'd always avoided. Where poets spoke rhythms in gentle, husky voices. Fingering the scarf, I imagined myself pulling words as stunning from my pursed lips, and, surprising myself more than any magician's feat ever could, I spoke--stuttering at first--until my imagination woke and stretched and slid from my mouth taking a shape more solid and moving than the cloth draped about my neck. I was soon speaking and then laughing, mouth gaping wide, chortling raucously as a fish against the moon. I turned from city squirrels to sinews of sunlight and a three-speed bicycle, following sunrise and saying to hell with winter's shadows.

I was crouching again, but this was a confident crouch, a crouch of purpose. I sped reawoken from Paterson to Frisco, from Williams to Ginsberg, scarf flowing behind me in the wind like the sweeping tail of a shooting star. Somehow, it reminded me that my fate was not controlled by the calculated contours of the universe, by the diamond-sharp glints of faraway stars scratching out their harlequin horoscope projections. It was a piece of something unimagined, something upon which no one had previously imprinted their persona. It made me taller than Lincoln's top hat and freer than a hippie's headband; it was more potent than a superhero's spandex and more poetic than the patched tweed suit of a poet.

I gathered the scarf up in my fingers like courage and bicycled to Wisconsin. It was quiet in the patch of woods I'd chosen, peaceful before I raised a hatchet and felled one tree after another, splitting them down the middle, fitting them together till I had a cabin with the strength to withstand winter. There was a tree down for taxes and a tree down for corruption, a tree down for silence and a tree down for ignorance. It was spring again, and the cicadas hummed when I was done. I strung my scarf up laughing, until it was only gossamer in the treetops. I knew I'd remembered everything there was to remember. You would have smiled if you'd been there, too.

--Fin--

Now it's time to read some Ray Bradbury and write something better.