Flash Fiction Prompt from BDCWB
Week #2
No zombies, aliens, apocalypses allowed.
I ‘m helping Mom take down the towels from the laundry lines on a windy, overcast afternoon. We have a fully working gas dryer, but ever since my grandma passed, I think Mom hangs onto her by doing all the things Grandma used to do. Last week, I found her weeping in the bathroom, back hunched over, her thin shoulders shuddering under her white cotton tee. There was potting soil and the remnants of a brown limp ivy in the trashcan. My grandma always had a green-thumb; her house full of ivy’s and paper whites, her yard full of hollyhocks, peonies, and fragrant citrus trees.
Mom?
Too much water. Too little water. It’s all the same.
That day was supposed to be a good one.
The rumbling started.
Hurry up, rain’s coming, she says.
I reach up and yank on a faded gray bath towel, hurling it into my basket. I watch her warily, and wonder what she’s muttering to herself. Ever since she’d started on her meds, I’d seen her get even more and more depressed. I’d found her curled up behind the doorway of her bedroom three times this week. I can’t understand why she’d think they were doing her any good. I sigh and remind myself to sneak some towels in the dryer later, when she’s asleep. I can’t stand the cardboard stiffness of them dried in the white sunlight.
When I'm done I trudge inside, letting the screen door slam behind me. I glare at those towels, all faded but dark in their own way: grey, slate blue, taupe.
They look angry in that basket, shaped into angels that towels shouldn’t make. Reaching up in places where they should be curling, hard where they should be soft and full.
In that moment, I see myself in them. Like she’s shrinking me into another version of myself, one that isn’t so loud. One that requires less space. One that that can be hung out on the line and ignored for a good couple of hours.
I hear the phone ring in the kitchen, and stumble towards it. The jangled sounds coming from the old phone are jarring in a silent house. I clutch it to my ear and hold my breath.
I’m on way. I’ll pick you up by the mesquite tree off the road.
My breath escapes like someone has uncorked me.
I hang up the phone and call out through the screen door. I’m going to Allison’s house to study. Be back later.
She ignores me, her face tilted upwards to the sky, watching the clouds gather and then rush off into the distance.
Later, we drive through the farm roads in his rusty pickup and then off onto a path in a field of corn. We grin at each other and press on. The thunder rumbles in the distance, but we ignore it.
And the day seemed endless, tomorrow just a thought.
