Smoke in Eden

She doubted this crisp air would ever fully warm. Her fingers tingled and newly shaved legs stung as the goose bumps spread up them. Not a human voice could be heard, and the birds were using this quiet to practice their song, each taking turns at the morning eulogy. She watched as the teenage neighbor, Jason, emerged in back of his house, how old was he now? Close to driving age. He reached for something behind the wood stacks and Jannie’s core tensed at once. An axe. He began cutting starter wood, and then returned inside. She almost laughed. Every person seemed a secret threat to her today, even the little boy she’d babysat in her teens. Within moments, the biting cold air was strung with the smell of smoke.

She closed her eyes and breathed the comforting scent in until her soul was on fire, and her nose was burning from the cold air. She refused to open her eyes. The cars, busily rushing to work on the hidden highway sounded like an ocean. She listened to the waves crashing as the tide came in. She could see her mom and dad lounging in beach chairs in the distance, her little brother Robert helping her build a mote for the sandcastle. The sand rubbed against her ankles and between her toes. They’d reminisced a lot lately about that family vacation; they’d spent a week together in Lincoln City, playing in the ocean and flying that little green kite.

She’d stay here all day, drinking her hot cup of coffee, forgetting the world, hidden in her mother’s secret garden. She didn’t need to think about the “details,” Robert said he’d take care of them all. The smoke in the air at once warmed her, brought her back by the fire, reading a book or watching a film with her parents. Her hair still wet from a nightly bath, her red flannel pajamas on. Then the smoke was ashy, cremating her past. Her nose stung, and her eyes blurred. The garden around her looked unkempt, and she realized her tears were the first good watering the flowers had received all year.

When she’d rung Suzanne yesterday, she’d been told to take the week off. “I’ll call the other girls and we’ll take turns filling in. Don’t worry, just take the time you need.” Yet, work sounded filling, and Lord she needed something, something more than an old garden and creaking porch swing, than birds squealing and an imaginary ocean. She needed her mother. Her mother who could make any mess a garden.

When they’d moved here she was only 6, starting second grade at a new school. Her mother had adopted the field of weeds and slowly created an Eden. Eden. Her mother always belonged in a garden, it’s where she knew to love. It’s where she’d held Jannie and promised her she’d make new friends. It’s where her mother told her the news. Her mother wasn’t here to hold her now. The smoke lifted from the chimney and reminded Jannie she’d better call Robert, let him know she was okay, and ask when the will was to be read.


[This is a piece of flash fiction I wrote last week for my Creative Story Writing course. I turned it in today...]