Hareendran Kallinkeel - Serpents, Jasmine, Cursed - (Short Story) for Literary Potpourri)

Tessa slung her satchel into the corner of the kitchen and headed straight for the pantry. She pulled a loaf of soft white bread from the breadbox, slavered it thickly with butter, and headed for the hallway, calling to her horse softly under her breath.

"Whisper! Whisper, come on boy!" Tessa kept her horse in the space below the stairs, among the musty folds of winter coats and spidery-Wellington boots. The horse emerged from between the chiffon scarves, handbags and raincoats and stood impatiently pawing the carpet. As Tessa bent down to adjust his girth, she blanched. The horse had chewed at her father's jacket. Neat strips of gray worsted dotted the carpet. She bent down and stuffed them in her cardigan pocket. She hoped he wouldn't notice. There'd be hell to pay.

She heard the flush of the upstairs toilet. Odd, she thought. Mother wasn't due home for at least an hour. Seconds hung as she waited. She heard the sound of running water, and then the door groaned open, framing her father. He smiled his thin grin as he loped down the stairs.

"Your Dad got a half day! Ted got pissed at lunchtime, so they shut up early."

Whisper backed silently toward the closet door. He never let himself be seen by the others. How was school, Princess?"

Mindful of the damaged jacket, Tessa chewed at her bottom lip, playing the toe of her shoe into the carpet.

"Cat got your tongue?" He laughed and reached out his hand, a hand hard from years of fixing lawnmowers and tractors. His fingers, grimed and callused, snaked around her neck, played lightly with her braided mousy hair. He hunkered down, so their eyes were level. "You not talking to your old Dad today?"

She forced a smile. "Of course, Daddy. Everything's good. I just want to go out and play. Can I? Please?"

He turned his head to one side. "Well, I did want your help with something, but it can wait. Go on, go play before I change my mind."

Humming, her father ambled through to the kitchen in search of a beer and the remote control. She listened to him banging around in the fridge and then heard the TV, a muffled horse race from Doncaster. Whisper emerged from the duffel coats and nuzzled her arm. Quickly, she led him through the front door and down the polished steps. Looping the reins through the forsythia at the end of the pathway, she checked his bridle. The day, still eye-slantingly bright, reached out forever.

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and flicked the reins, urging Whisper into a canter. Over the shimmering tarmac, they hit the grass at full pelt. Tessa held Whisper back as they rounded the rose bushes. He had a tendency to get in front of himself, and she needed him to make it all the way to the bakery and back. They raced through the church grounds, shot over toppled gravestones, Whisper's hooves spraying marble shards. She allowed Whisper his full head as they passed the pub and screamed to a halt outside the telephone kiosk next door to the Bakery. No one was making a call, so she stabled Whisper inside the box. Brushing down her dress, she walked into the thick warmth of the baker's. Mrs. Creasey stood behind the counter, a thick cotton apron straining to control her ample bosom, brass curls plastered wetly to her forehead. She wedged a crusty cob loaf into a white paper bag, looked up and signaled that she wouldn't be long. Tessa scanned the bakery window. Loaves of bread, poppy seeded, glazed and still steaming, were stacked orderly on glass shelves. Wasps throbbed ecstatic on iced buns, feet clad in sugar. A Cabbage White, wedged between a display of cream-filled choux and the windowpane, beat her ragged wings.

"So, dear? What will it be today?

"Just a pound of biscuits, Mrs. Creasey. The broken ones, please."

"You and your biscuits!"

Mrs. Creasey reached down and retrieved a battered old tin. She tilted it into the measuring scales, and a stream of biscuits poured into the dish: crumbling Custard Creams, flattened Garibaldis and bottomless Jammy Dodgers. Mrs. Creasey emptied the biscuits into a bag and handed them to Tessa who thanked her and left the shop. The doorbell chimed behind her and looking back, she could see Mrs. Creasey hang the "Closed" sign in the window. No one had occupied the phone kiosk. Whisper brayed noisily and bared his teeth, as she adjusted his bridle. Tessa decided to walk him home, the heat of the pavement throbbing through the soles of her tennis shoes.

The walk didn't calm him down. He balked at returning to the space beneath the stairs, pawed the carpet with his hooves and nibbled the ribs of her mother's umbrella with his neat yellow teeth. Tessa decided it would be safer to stable him upstairs for the night and led him up to her room. She tied his reins to the hook on the back of the door and placed the bag of biscuits at the back of her wardrobe.

She knelt on the pillows at the head of her bed and gazed out across the back garden. The beds were neatly tended, gardening being one of the things her father enjoyed. He liked things just so. No weed dared to linger long within his flowerbeds. If they did, he would poison them, dig them out by the roots and toss them onto the compost heap to dry and die. Some hid deep in the beds of Nasturtiums and Snapdragons, but eventually he found them. He was a meticulous and thorough man. Tessa hated the garden. It was the reason he hadn't let her keep the puppy she found last year. He told her that puppies and gardens didn't go together.

She still yearned for a pet, something she could look after and protect. Whisper helped, but Tessa wasn't sure how long he would be around. The horse was becoming more and more unruly, less vulnerable. She tried to control him, but he was so strong. He'd taken to crapping in her mother's wicker shopping basket and chewing her chiffon scarves into tiny pieces. Lately, she'd found it hard to rein him in. She knew if she gave him his head, he'd just pound on down through the village, onto the dual carriageway, toss her off and he'd never find his way home again. Shredding the sleeve of her father's jacket was the last straw, and she knew that Whisper would have to move on soon.

Tessa watched dark birds gather on the telegraph lines, strung out like beads on a wire above the trees. Back and forth, they flew, calling out to each other like raucous kids in a playground. She watched the way the late sun lit the symmetry of their smooth bodies, the way their effortless flight was punctuated by a scramble of wings as they sought out the low thermals. The cleanness of their life appealed to her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a key in the front door and then her mother moving about in the kitchen below. Twenty minutes later, the microwave pinged, and Tessa headed for the dining room.

"Where's Dad?" she asked over a pale imitation of Hawaiian Chicken.

From behind the TV guide, her mother mumbled, "Where he always is. Up the bloody pub." She put the magazine down beside her plate and asked, "School OK?"

"Fine, I s'pose." Tessa replied, rooting about on her plate for pineapple.

Her mother picked up the guide again. "What's your plan for this evening then?"

"I was going to go out later, down to the woods, if that's OK?"

"Fine," her mother replied, as she fumbled with the remote control, tuning out Tessa and tuning in the Australian soap.

Tessa slipped down from the table and carried her plate into the kitchen. Quietly, so as not to disturb her mother's soap opera, she eased open the pantry door, took out a sieve and pulled a chunk of bread from the loaf in the breadbox. She slipped out the back door and ran lightly down past the shed. She pushed open the squealing gate at the bottom of the garden and waded through the long whippy grass until she reached the woods beyond.

She sat down behind the large oak tree and removed a length of string from her pocket. After searching around, she found a sturdy stick with a fork at one end. Squinting in the low sun, Tessa tied the string to the straight end of the piece of wood. She moved away from the shade of the tree into the dusty, used heat of early evening and positioned the stick on the grass with its forked end skyward. She balanced the rim of the sieve on the stick. Having crumbled the bread into a pile beneath the trap, she slowly walked back towards the shade of the oak, careful not to pull the string and thus topple the sieve to the grass.

Back behind the tree, she lay down to wait. The early evening sun beat down hot on her head and the heavy, leathery leaves of the oak tree crackled and pattered in the breeze. Face down on the dry grass, she traced question marks with a twig in the packed earth around the oak's roots. The heat made her drowsy and slowly, she dropped into a warm half-doze. Tessa watched the world shining red on the inside of her eyelids, her shorts and shirt hot against her skin.

The hum of whirring wings interrupted her reverie. She opened her eyes and peered out from behind the trunk. Beneath the propped sieve, a glossy, plump blackbird pecked indifferently at the breadcrumbs. The bird wasn't black, but iridescent blue-black. His beak shone gold against his feathers, and between every peck, he checked around with wary, watching eyes. Tessa made sure she had tight hold of the string and, in the time it takes to tell a lie, jerked her hand back. In a flurry of feathers, squawks and breadcrumbs, the stick whipped away, toppling the sieve and imprisoning the bird.

She watched the bird. It ran blindly in tight, sieve-sized circles, tried with frantic wings to lift the metal meshed cage. She tried to calm the bird, talking to it in her quiet little girl's voice until the bird ran out of power and slumped in the grass. Gently, with shaking fingers, Tessa lifted the sieve an inch and curled her damp hand around the bird, holding it firm. She was immediately aware of its fine bones, hard and thin beneath its chest feathers. Lifting the black bird to her face, she looked into its eyes. It breathed in ragged, hot little bursts, its heart jack hammering against her palm. Its eyes darted from side to side, then closed, its quaking bird-body trembling in her hand. Tessa recognized that closed-eyes resignation. She buried her nose in its dusty feathers and inhaled. She smelt its fear, could taste it, smoky on her tongue. Smoky like Daddy's mouth-taste when he got into her bed and kissed her and when he whispered be good, and don't cry and don't tell Mummy.

She raised her clasped hands over her head and with a triumphant yell, threw the bird up into the sky. As it wheeled and soared higher and higher into the air, Tessa took the yell and hid it deep in her heart. The bird looped back to the telegraph wire and was lost in the roosting string. The early evening was giving way to dusk and Tessa walked slowly back, past the oak, up the garden path, past her father's shed, through the back door and up the stairs to her bedroom. It was Friday night, and there were biscuits to eat before Daddy came home.

BROKEN BISCUITS

by

Bunny Goodjohn