The Blue Suitcase

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

I’ve got nothing to add to the discourse about the election that hasn’t already been said or written. I do find

Heather Cox Richardson

and

Andy Borowitz

to be of help in terms of offering a historical perspective. Oh, and my terrible date that I wrote about in my last post was right, so that’s annoying.

And now for something else…

The Blue Suitcase

The mother packed the small slate blue suitcase for her because she was too young to know what she would need. She loved this suitcase, and its matching bigger counterpart that her mother used when they flew across the sky to California. The lining of the suitcase set was made out of a silky light blue fabric that reminded the girl of the sexy underwear she sometimes stared at in the JCPenny Christmas catalogue. The top of the inside of each suitcase had a fabric compartment with a bunched up top like a curtain.

“That’s where you put your hairbrush and your toothbrush,” the mother instructed while she folded the girl’s underwear into squares next to the night gowns and pajamas.

The girl loved the small metal latches on the suitcase, and the way they had to be slotted into the hole just right in order to close. “Are you coming too?” the girl asked the mother. She envisioned their mother/daughter suitcases sitting at the bottom of the staircase, waiting to be taken to the car. The suitcases were their mirrors—they belonged together, big and little, rounder and plank-like, tall and short.

“We will take you there and get you settled, but I have to come back to take care of your brother and go to work.” The mother said this with a certainty that made the girl’s eyes water. “You’ll be okay,” the mother lied.

When her mother left, the girl emptied the suitcase onto the floor of her closet, and crawled under her bed to hide. If she scooted all the way to the wall, no one could get her unless they moved the bed. In her young logic, she believed no one would find her in time, the trip would pass, and she’d not be made to go.

Under the bed, she stared at the gray linty mattress cover, and the things the cat had stolen and dragged here. Hair ribbons, a few paper clips, and two pencils. Remembering a TV show about spiders, made her spine tingle, but she didn’t move. What seemed like a few hours passed, and her feet went numb. Later in the day, this usually happened. Weird twitches and falls, and inexplicable movements that made everyone around her nervous.

The cat came and licked her nose.

And then her brother, always trying to get closer to the mother than she could. He did it by tattling and insisting on special cuddling, and the girl hated him in those moments. She also loved him with his soft hay hair and blue teary eyes.

“She’s here! Mama, under the bed!” The cat bolted at the sound of her brother’s voice. They were natural enemies. The girl pulled her knees up to her chest, so that no one could grab her by the ankles. There were witches in one of her books that yanked naughty children by the ankles and feet when they walked at night by rivers. Jennies, is that what they were called.

The mother sat on the bed and the mattress sank a little closer in on the girl. How she wished she could crawl into her mother’s arms, never to be let go again, never to be sent away, never to be without a mother in a strange place where there would never be any other mothers.

“Honey, you have to go. We have to find out what’s wrong with you.”

Enjoy the typos!

xo

Carley