101 Words

Seven weeks in and the scale hasn’t budged. I hold back a sigh and the tears that want to flow. The guardian of the scale averts her eyes, glancing at her manual of helpful tips.

She finds something, I guess; her head lifts and she says, “You’ve come now for seven weeks and that shows perseverance. Not to mention maturity and determination. It will happen.”

I breathe deeply, I want to believe her, I want to lose weight. Maturity? I feel like a child without Christmas. Determination? I’m doubtful. But she’s right; I’m still attending. Still looking for the lighter me.

The fire looked quite harmless. In fact, it was simply a thing of beauty. Delicate orange, dominated by the expanding blue flames that rolled around the edges of the yellow cardboard. Drifting grey smoke added to the depth and definition.

Upstairs, little Tom dreamed on in peaceful bliss. Mum gave her beautiful boy one last glance and gently closed the bedroom door. His bedside light continued to turn slowly around and around. Calming orange and yellow patterns flickered across the windows and over the ceiling.

Within fifty minutes those orange lights were swamped by flashing blues penetrating from the street below.

He had been thinking hard about the nurse’s question when the alarm on his mobile phone reminded him that it was time to take one of the five pills he ingested daily to keep himself alive. She had asked him what day it was, using his first name in that condescending manner that only nurses have. A question he could not answer even though he knew that failure may condemn him to life in a care home. He took the test tube of pills from his trouser pocket, noticing the small ‘w’ on the lid. “It’s Wednesday,” he said smiling inwardly.

For several long months we couldn’t tell if Grandma was coming or going. I don’t think she knew either, but she knew what she didn’t want: an iron maiden of oxygen machines, hooks, and tubes, a landscape of walls with a crooked Jesus.

Together, Dad and I learned lip-reading and eye-telling, shaping stories for her Midwestern accent, slowed over eighty-three years and shuttered by broken vertebrae.

Finally, she had strength enough to whisper.

On a burning July hillside—drooping nosegays, plastic American flags, dirt—we heard her voice again and felt relief and some regret, but no longer fear of silence.

Jay and I are identical.

As kids, we wore matching outfits; learnt to read and count and swim together; were protected from bedtime monsters by our shared four-legged friend.

But as we grew, things changed. I was taught lessons Jay never needed to know. Like when to fake a phone call, and how to carry keys between my fingers, and remember: wear flat shoes when walking at night, in case you have to run.

I didn’t understand at first, but now I get it. My monsters still lurk in the darkness. Jay and I are identical, but we’re not the same.

She had discovered it in a second-hand shop one day, the kind of place that was impossible to find a second time. She’d already spent an hour browsing through racks of vintage garments, inhaling that aroma unique to pre-worn clothing, before coming across the glass-topped cabinet.

Inside, a cameo brooch, glitzy costume earrings, and a gold necklace, its pendant shaped like a bullet. She’d bought it on a whim and only later realised that the top could be unscrewed. With tweezers she’d carefully extracted the tiny roll of paper hidden within. Even now its message continued to haunt her.

‘Help Me.’