101 Words

“May I help you, ladies?”

“No!” I snapped. “We’re fine. Leave us alone.” The clerk backed away.

“What was that about?” my friend asked.

“She’s been following me around the store for Shopping While Black. I’m sick of that shit.”

“No, she hasn’t. She was on the other side folding shirts. She came to see if we needed help.”

“How would you know? You’ve never been profiled, Snow White.”

“At least I’m not paranoid.”

“Paranoid? Here’s your paranoid.”

As security escorted us from the store, I smirked in triumph. “What did I tell you?”

My former friend looked down and sighed.

I get up to check on her again. She rarely sleeps anymore. Shallow breath and tired eyes that stare at me.

I carry couch pillows out and arrange them on the patio floor. Then I pick her up, her diminishing weight a constant shock to my arms.

“What’s happened?” my husband demands, alarmed, when I wake him.

“Come,” I say. “We’re making one more memory.”

So we huddle under a large comforter. The three of us: his hand on my shoulder, my fingers curled around her paw. Around us the moment stretches, endless as the ink-blue sky before the coming day.

The exhibit cases line an entire wall of her room.

“Lepidoptera,” she informs me.

“Are nets employed?”

“Usually. Certain specimens drop into the killing jar unaided, though.”

“How’s that?”

“Something draws them, I suppose.”

She edges closer, chin lifting, and my pristine mouthpart pierces the aperture of her lips. I drain her nectar before darting downstairs.

Fleeing the house by an open window, I cross the garden, archaic forces aroused within me, and avoiding the treacherous allure of lampposts aglow like moons in the deserted street, I flit off, both lightsome and beguiled, into the vast, benignant refuge of the night.

Smoke, crushed metal, and screams. Objects and bodies strewn on the railway tracks. I’m bleeding and unable to move. My consciousness has a gaping hole through which memories surge in.

Twenty years ago when living in the Mumbai slums close to the railway tracks, a deafening crash had ruptured my sleep. That night Father had come home with the shiny promise of gold jewelry hiding within his clothes.

Now, someone moves me away from the wreckage. My eyesight is a blur but I can feel gentle hands carefully removing my gold chain and rings. I smile in spite of my condition.

“Damn red lights. Think of all the wasted time. Wasted potential.”

Teddy’s face was red. His hands strangled the steering wheel.

“Chill out, man,” I said. “That’s why we have toilets. To reclaim time.”

“Unlike your nasty ass,” Teddy said, “I don’t read on the john.”

“Correction: You don’t read at all.”

John Lennon serenaded us from the radio.

“Plus,” I offered, “it’s not like we’re going anywhere important. You’re laid off.”

Thirty seconds later, we were pulled over.

“Dammit!” I spat. “You really couldn’t wait?”

“Wasted potential!” Teddy shouted.

Wasted potential, I thought, watching Teddy think of what to say.

No matter where I go, I can never be alone. Even in my room, there are faces nodding at me, winking at me, smiling, staring with no expression. I can’t ever escape from eyes on me. I can’t face myself without someone watching.

One day, I can’t take it anymore.

“I’ve had enough of you!” I scream as I rip them from the walls. Pages flutter all around and land with images face down. I can finally hear myself loud and clear. And I realize that the pictures and the people around me have been meant to protect me all along.