Short story writing and creative fiction, essays and non-fiction stories.

At a diamond in South Oxford, what we called Chaffee Field, even though it lacked an official name, I watched my mother at bat in a lady’s softball game. She was in her forties, and I’d never seen her play any sport. She worked full-time, raised six children, and had not, until that year, ever had enough time for distractions beyond church, and PTA.

She hit a double that reached the fence, and it struck me as odd to see her breathing so hard as she thundered to second base and stood there, ribcage heaving up and down, hands on her hips, struggling to enjoy cheers from the bench and bleachers. No one it seemed had ever cheered for my mother. I cheered as loudly as I could. All of us did. It was as if I was seeing her for the first time as a woman, a girl, one of the saucy females on the block, too, I supposed.

I remembered her telling me she never had time to play sports or to go to school as a girl because she was poor and had to work. She’d quit school early, but now and then she’d get into a football game on the streets of Jamaica Plain in Boston. A girl had to be tough to play in street pick-up games in her neighborhood. I remembered her telling me how she chewed little balls of asphalt, all the girls did on hot summer days because asphalt was easy to find and none of them could afford chewing gum.

Clouds were rolling in. The afternoon sky looked inky. I hurried away from the bleachers and climbed to the roof of a storage building beyond the fence in left field. From there, I enjoyed a bird’s-eye-view. I felt the air as it cooled me, and it smelled like algae. The sky got darker. I watched the leaves of high oaks that edged the field. They turned white, sharpened as winds lifted them and the sky continued to darken and roil. A summer shower was coming on fast. I watched the women run off the field. Mothers shouted for their children. Car headlights came on, thunder cracked, and rain with a whoosh drenched everything.

All was about to change. It started raining friends. It started raining mothers. As I watched them fall from the sky, I realized I had more of them than I had thought.

Only one of them was enough and she for so long had been a stranger.

I hadn’t loved anything, or anyone. Ever.

Basil Rosa is the pen name of John Flynn. Read more of his work at basilrosa.com.

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His whisper — “This is strange.” — is so ardent that I believe him, and hers —

“Yes.”

— is the same.

“We just grew apart.” — Cliché, but the only explanation available to him —

She nods.

— or her. Neither, though, realizes their error. Their exchange proves otherwise. But for their intimacy, they could never let each other go as if nothing —

“It’s the only way I can…”

— and yet everything —

“…be happy?”

— depended upon it. Their last sentence falls like a butterfly fading on wind, fluttering once more before it falls and fractures, its pieces tumbling across the earth, finding their own ends.

Amidst what would otherwise be tragedy, the couple exudes the ess, the artist’s curved line and point where motion changes direction, redefines itself, traps the eye. It is in the way they step about one another and choose their words, always mindful.

The judge calls them forward — “Do you swear to tell the truth…” — with me, and I express their wishes. The judge asks questions he’s asked of so many before, but he pauses, looks over his glasses as if I could’ve saved them, spared him. He signs the documents, declares them divorced.

The next pair is called.

We exit.

Before the doors behind me have even closed they’ve each shaken my hand and walked away.

She drinks from the fountain nearby.

He’s out the revolving door.

Air wafts up from behind me, moves around and past, and the new silence tells me the door is now closed. Tomorrow I think I’ll drive that meandering road, find a spot along the river near the barn with the falling spine where, fly rod in hand, I will wade out to cast about in quiet waters and try to understand this Venus, this David.

Natalie McNabb lives and writes in Washington State where her dog, Skookum, and cat, Mo, can usually be found beneath the trees of her Eden with a squirrel tail, an exhumed mole or an up-flung mouse. She loves red—red dragonflies resting on bamboo stakes, red wine in her glass, red flip-flops on her red-toe-nailed feet—and words that caress, tickle, irritate or beat against her soul. Please visit her at nataliemcnabb.com.

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I read the email through five times before I clicked send. I found myself checking for grammar just to be sure I sounded the superior party. Petty, but true. Should I end with ‘sincerely’, a nasty little spike to the addressee’s heart? Oh, yes, I’m SO sincere in spitting on your twisted little face. I hate you. YOURS SINCERELY… Perhaps not. I should at least try for politeness, for civility, right? I don’t know what last shred of manners held me back. Social convention, maybe. I don’t believe in that normally.

Two women, one man, the old story. And I won. I was low enough to send my victory, farewell missive by email, not even in person. I didn’t care, after everything she had put me through, I was happy to do it. So many women would hate me, hell, so many men would hate me. Everyone would judge me who didn’t know the situation if I just stated it, but I don’t care. I know what happened.

I remember the looks she gave me when she realised he preferred me. He would speak to me with a smile and she would snipe at him, as she had done for years, now, her ugly face twisted up with hate and patronising spite. Before, he would wince and apologise to her and hang his head; she would smirk in victory over the weakling man. After he started paying his attention to me, he brushed her off. I could make his face light up. I knew it, and that made me happy. He deserved it; he had nothing but pain from her.

When he said he was moving out of their house, moving in with me, she screamed and hired lawyers and private detectives and burned his clothes, but he was too glad to be free. He said, calmly, he’d pay her whatever settlement she wanted and that detectives meant nothing. They petered out after that. She emailed me evil poison-letters and threatened to track down our new house and set fire to it. I told her if she carried on like that, I’d report her to the police. She fell more silent after that, at least.

I care for him and love him like she could not. I look after him and cook our favourite meals. I can do what she was meant to do so much better than she ever could. We shop together and everyone smiles, to see a happy pair as us out and about. Those who know her give us sympathetic smiles; those who don’t just think we’re a normal pair in such a situation, out in the sunshine. I like that. I feel more normal that way. I hated feeling like a freak for the way I felt about her, for taking him away, and at such a young age, too. Only 16. People say I’m mature for my age – I think this has made me so. I have him to support me. Most people need more, but I think I’m OK.

I hold his wrinkled hands and ignore the faint white patch on his ring finger where the gold had once sat. It’s gone now – I made him sell it; we need all the money we can get, even though he has a reasonable job. I want to go to college, but I think I can work as well. Maybe I can get a grant. Paying the rent isn’t easy, but it’s worth every penny. We watch silly television together and he’s happy to let me go out with my friends as long as we don’t go anywhere she might be. As if I would. She never knew where I went socially anyway. She never cared who I was before I had him.

It’s a short email, but final. I have had enough of the contact – the begging, the fake apologies, the threats. I tell her to send the last of our property that might remain and leave us alone. He isn’t her property, and neither am I.

“Goodbye, mother,” I say, and finally hit Send.

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I hated my funeral. Everyone was all sad and quiet. Dad was like a statue. Mom was the opposite. She wouldn’t stop moving and there were tissues everywhere. She had on a dress with no sleeves so she couldn’t stick Kleenex up her sleeves like she usually does. And it was hot. I’m dead and even I was sweaty.

Sarah didn’t look up the whole time. But that was normal for her. It was either that or her giant brown eyes staring at me all evil-like. That’s the only way she looked at me when I was alive. I kind of deserved it though. I liked to pick on her a lot. One time I threw all her stuffed animals out the window. She walked in after I threw the last one down.
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“Mommy, look at his big head!”

Nothing was held sacred, not even the head of a chief judge on a Sunday morning. The judge was going bald; sprinkles of white salted his temples dotting their way round to the tips where the hair stopped just short of his crown.

“I like your head, it’s shiny at the top” the child retorted to the judge’s stare.

“It wasn’t always like this.” the judge managed out in between fits of laughter. “Age and wear have taken their share I’m afraid” he said, looking at her mother. The mother smiled sheepishly, too embarrassed to speak. She sought someone who would accompany her to the back of the church and help shoot the girl. She would have sufficed to smack the girl’s head clear of her posits – the child had given one too many in awkward places – but everyone would frown at that sort of thing in church. She settled for watching the girl closely. Her eye had begun to shift again; no doubt looking for something else to violate.

“Mommy I want sweet!”

Her hand rose to strike. But in the interest of peace she grabbed the girl’s wrist and marched out of the church, ignoring the judge who had produced a sweet from his jacket pocket. The judge had grandchildren and, understanding perfectly their eccentricities, always had a sweet ready.

In the rest room, the mother began to undo her wrapper. It had taken a good twenty minutes to get it right in the morning. Loose enough to move around freely and tight enough to look chic. This had now been ruined.

There would be one way to end it all. The girl would have to go back the way she came. Sure her head had been smaller a year and half ago but if she could get it out then, with a little effort she could get it back in.

She matted down the little girl’s hair disregarding her innocent stare. Lying down she parted her legs as far they would go and began to force the girl back into her womb. She had half expected it to be like the first time; with a lot of slime and screaming, instead it turned out quite seamless. There had only been a little jar when it got to the girl’s shoulders that made her grimace and scuff her heels violently on the toilet floor.

After about five minutes it was over, she now had no child and all the peace she wanted. She patted her trim tummy and stepped out to join the service.

Chukwudum Okwudarue is a 29 year old writer living in Lagos, Nigeria. He has a collection of stories on Amazon.com called ‘Homecoming’ by Justina and Chukwudum Okwudarue.

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