From a mysterious, fading, historical tapestry to a fish that speaks to a confused, grief-stricken boy, author Christy Burkley offers wickedly comical tales of eccentrics who collide with the limits of reality in The Faded Tapestry: A Collection of Short Stories. In "The Escape" an old woman must find a way out of her miserable existence. At first she thought that living with her forty-seven-year-old daughter Virginia in St. Louis, Missouri, would be better than a nursing home, but the brick apartment building where she now resides is no better than a prison cell. Her only wish is that she be buried in Tennessee, a wish that her daughter deems too expensive. "Mexican Invasion" tells the story of May Sanderson, a loyal cleaning lady for the well-to-do, charitable Mrs. Taylor. May begins to have doubts when Mrs. Taylor brings a Mexican family on board to help revive the farm. When something bad happens to one of the children, May isn't sure how to react. A compilation of eight fictional tales, The Faded Tapestry: A Collection of Short Stories presents casts of characters who come alive through their words and actions.
The Faded Tapestry
A Collection of Short StoriesBy Christy BurkleyiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Christy Burkley
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-4601-0Contents
The Escape................................1The Talking Fish..........................17Mexican Invasion..........................37One Thousand Trains.......................69The Poem..................................83The Jackpot...............................89The Belated Awakening.....................107The Faded Tapestry........................117
Chapter One
The Escape
The old woman did not want her daughter's hand touching her forehead; there was something miserable and at the same time suffocating in those wild eyes beyond her trembling hand.
"I already done told you I don't have no fever," the old woman said with undisguised disgust. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, I'm fine."
"Well, I gotta go." She repeated the phrase to the old woman six or seven times a day, but Virginia never left. She puttered, fidgeted, straightened things that were already straight, dusted things with a big pink feather duster that were not dusty, moved things to one spot and then moved them back to the original spot, but she never left. The old woman sat in her worn rocking recliner, which had once been sky blue but was now steel gray, and watched her through narrowed eyes.
"Go then!" the old woman said a little louder than she meant to. Nothing would have pleased her more.
Virginia had stopped smoking a month ago, cold turkey, and she was always on edge. Her hands shook badly, and she cracked her knuckles every few minutes. It sounded like rapid fire from a cap gun. Crack! Snap! Crack! Snap! Crack!
"You keep crackin' your knuckles like that and they'll be as big as Lulabelle Oats's. She used to do that and she wound up with rheumatoid arthritis in both her hands. One minute you're fillin' your lungs with poisonous gas and the next you're ruinin' your hands," the old woman said.
Virginia went into the kitchen, which was only a few feet away from the living room, and started slamming cabinet doors open and shut. She flew to the edge of the living room.
"I don't know what to make of you, Mom. I do everything I can for you, and you seem to hate me more and more every day." Virginia thought she was "young," and forty-seven years old did sound young to the old woman, but she secretly thought Virginia looked ten years older than her age. Virginia was the spitting image of the old woman's third husband, a dago cheater. She had black hair, olive skin, and high cheekbones, and she was deceptive, just like her father.
"I know you're mad at me."
"Damn right I'm mad at you!" the old woman barked back, making Virginia wince. The old woman was old—facts had to be faced. There was only one thing she wanted, and her daughter wouldn't give it to her. She knew what the problem was, but she wouldn't talk about it, and she knew Virginia wouldn't either. The problem was that the old woman had given birth to two daughters—Virginia and Sara Jane. Sara Jane had always been her favorite, and the old woman had never been one to hide her feelings. The old woman always thought it would be Sara Jane that would take care of her in her old age, but Sara Jane was gone.
The old woman had been surprised when Virginia offered to take her to her apartment in St. Louis. Virginia had never shown her any kindness. It wasn't long before the old woman realized that it had been a trick. Virginia always had ulterior motives. In this case, she was trying to impress her new friends in her smoking cessation class. She wanted to tell the women at her support group that she was taking care of her mother so she could gain their sympathy.
At first, the old woman thought living with Virginia would be better than going to a nursing home, but she had been very wrong. All the old woman wanted was to go home, but Virginia and her useless husband kept her locked up in their small, airless apartment like a prisoner of war.
"I heard what you said to Larry the other night when y'all thought I was sleepin'." The walls were very thin in the tiny apartment.
Virginia had already moved back into the kitchen and was slamming shut cabinets and banging pots onto countertops. She liked to release her anger on inanimate objects. The old woman knew her habits well. The old woman believed in cursing. It was healthier and cheaper.
"I've only askt you for one thing, and you've denied me—seemed happy 'bout denyin' me as a matter of fact, but I stand firm that I will be buried in Tennessee. If you're not a takin' me back there, that's one thing, but I swear by all the heavens above, if you don't bury my corpse there, I'll haunt you for the rest of your life."
The pots and cabinets and scraping noises came to a sudden halt. Virginia was a very spiritual woman. If there was one thing that could get to her, it was the subject of ghosts and the afterlife.
The old woman had overheard the couple's bedroom conversation the night before. She had distinctly heard Virginia tell her husband, Larry, that she thought it would be too expensive to send her mother's body back to Tennessee and bury it in a coffin. Her idea was to have her cremated in St. Louis and throw her ashes in the river. That way the river could carry her down to Tennessee. Her husband had agreed with her and said that sounded like a good idea. He said, "The old woman will never know the difference." But the old woman had heard, and she was not about to be incinerated in the state of Missouri.
The old woman knew what was really going on. Virginia was getting her revenge. The old woman had spoiled her sister, and now Virginia was getting her payback. "Would you rather I go check you in a nursing home?" she stood at the edge of the living room where the old woman sat in a recliner. "You wouldn't get the kind of food you get here. You wouldn't get the view."
The old woman replied quickly, "I wish to hell you would put me in a nursing home, but it better be one in Tennessee!"
Virginia shook her head. "There's no use talking to you when you're like this."
The old woman had never felt so confined in all her days, and she had told her daughter that at least once a day. The window she sat by had bars on it, bars—just like a prison. And the "view" was of the arch—the world's largest croquet wicket—and could not be seen from that window. In order to see that "view" she had to climb twelve flights of steps and walk up a shaky ladder to the rooftop. Her "great view" from her barred window was barbed wire and trash in the alley—barbed wire just like the kind the Nazis had used in concentration camps. There was something fundamentally wrong with this lack of nature, something that seemed to open up a kind of void in her heart, twist the energy from her body, suck up the desire to get out of bed in the morning.
The food wasn't good. Virginia's excuse was that she never had time to cook or the money to buy good ingredients. She was a beautician and had to stand on her feet all day, and all she was able to do at the end of the day was toss things in a pot of hot water and fall down on the sofa with her bare feet stuck up in the air. Then she would jump up and take the food off the heat too soon. The old woman told her that she wasn't cooking it long enough, and Virginia replied, "I may not have much money, but at least I don't boil...
