A Mix of Everything Really

Gwendolyn & Mrs. Shirley

”Mama don’t really care what I do, as long as I finish school. Maybe I can do what you do and see the world?”
“If I was as smart as you I would have went to school.”
“I’m gonna finish. I guess I have to. Mama’s put everything into my schoolin but still, I’d like to see the world. I’d like to get outta here. Mama wouldn’t let me go to school outta state.”
“It’s not so bad here.”
“Mrs. Shirley, I would like to see how you feel about this town, if you want to call it that, after two summers.”
“If you could go anywhere, where would you wanna go?”
“Hmm. That’s a good one. Now, I have thought about this. I’ve thought about it a lot. Of course, I wanna go to New York. Maybe California. Maybe I could meet a movie star out there!”
“You look like a movie star.”
“Mrs. Shirley you’re so silly. Me? I’m alright I guess, but no movie star. No one at the school ever notices me, but that’s cos of my color I guess. But, me lookin like a movie star. I think you’re teasin me Mrs. Shirley.”
“I’m serious! I would never tease you or mislead you about something like that. You’re really very pretty Gwendolyn.”
“Really? Do you really think so? I always wanted to look like mama but, but she say I take after my daddy. Oh no she doesn’t mean it like that, like in a bad way. She said he was really handsome. He, he died in a fire in what they call the old house. All the pictures of him gone too. Say, in all your travels you picked apples before?”
“I’ve picked just about everything. I’m sorry to hear about your daddy. That musta been real hard for your mother.”
“Yeah, it was. Aunt Chloe said mama used to be more, more, well she used to be more fun. More lively, I guess that’s the word she used. You lost your husband too? Didn’t you?”
“I lost him a long, long time ago.”
“Do you miss him? You never got married again… was it because, was it because he’s the only one for you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Oh I don’t mean to pry. Mama says I’m too, too, sometimes I get too familiar with people that’s what she says. What she warns me about when we have boarders, says some people just come to work. Well that’s what she used to say, when we used to have em. Before. Now she have em throughout the year when I’m away at school, at my great aunt’s. Say, how did you find out about this job?”
“A friend of a friend told me about it.”
“Who? Who was the, the friend of the friend that told you? I’m sorry? I always gotta know everything.”
“You’re alright. Well, I came here because I had a contact. Emma Lee Bartman.”
“Oh… Really? You have, I mean, she yo ‘contact’ here? How you know her, if I can ask that?”
“You can ask me anything you like. We don’t have anything else to do while we’re out here but talk do we? But Ms. Emma Lee Bartman and I have a friend in common.”
“Who would that be? Anyone I know? Anyone from here? Cos… well… she don’t have many friends. In fact I’m surprised someone like you…”
“Doesn’t everyone deserve our respect? That’s one thing that never changes no matter where you go. In all the places I travelled to, people decide who’s, who’s in and who’s not, and there’s not much thought that goes into it really. ‘Oh so and so does this’, or ‘Did you hear that wsh wsh wsh wsh wsh wsh wsh’, have you ever spoken to Ms. Bartman? Have you ever had a conversation with her?”
“Oh goodness no! I couldn’t do that. We see her at the market or at church but no one really has anything to do with her. She hang around what aunt Chloe call an ‘unsavoury crowd’. I can’t be seen talkin to her. Does mama know she the one, Ms. Bartman, she the one that told you bout lookin for work here?”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell your mother anything.”
“Yeah that sound like mama. She prolly look you over, ask you if you a Christian, ask you if you hard working, tell you the rules then give you the job.”
“Something like that.”
“So you, uh, you just travel? That’s all you do? You move around doin jobs like these?”
“Yes, I guess you could say that that’s what I do. I decide where I want to go and I find work there. It’s worked so far. For most of my life.”
“You never wanted to marry again, have kids, a family?”
“Is that what you want School Girl?”
“Ha ha ha. School Girl! I don’t know what I want. I mean sure, I want a husband and I think I wanna have twins. A boy and a girl, two girls, two boys, it don’t really matter. I promised mama I would finish school first. She want, she want me to be independent. To have a skill that I can use. It make sense to me. It do, cause mama got the farm even if the Dudley’s tryna take it every chance they get. She always gone have income.”
“Who are the Dudleys?”
“Oh you’ll see. I don’t really like talkin about em but… just, just be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
“I shouldn’t really… just, just forget about it. Everything gone be alright. Mama would be mad, please, please just forget it. It doesn’t, it won’t be any problems for you.”
“I admire your mama. Well all of you really. Running this place by yourselves.”
“You know, I don’t think I’m ever gonna get use to the way you talk! It just don’t sound real. Aunt Chloe say you know it is real cos even when you tired you still sound like, like that. You say it come from all over, but you didn’t say where.”
“It’s a mix of different places and also different languages. I didn’t grow up just speaking English at home with my parents.”
“Hm. Me, I only speak English. I’m taking a French course. Everybody say it sound so pretty, but to me, and don’t tell mama, and definitely don’t tell Aunt Chloe, but it sound like baby talk!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“Mrs. Shirley! What… what did I say? What did I say that’s so funny?”
“Aha! Aha! Oh… it’s nothing, well it’s hard to explain. I just wish, I wish I could have told one of my teachers that when I was going to school.”
“You had French in school?”
“All of our classes were taught in French, and our teacher, she, she always insisted that French was such a beautiful language. A ‘civilised language’ as she called it. She tried to beat our language out of us… the language that we spoke before they arrived. Ha! I wish I could have told her that she sounded like a baby. She would not have been pleased, but I would’ve enjoyed it.”
“So you do speak it? You speak French?”
“When there’s a gun to my head, I do.”
“I reckon you maybe hate it as much as I do.”
“Hate’s a strong word, but maybe it’s appropriate.”
“Mrs. Shirley. Can I, can I ask you something else?”
“...yes…”
“Well… you never married again? What about love? You ever been in love. After your husband. I mean after you, you lost him?”
“You’re assuming I was in love with him to begin with”
“Excuse me Mrs. Shirley? What did you say? I didn’t hear you?”
“Hhhhhh. Yes Gwendolyn. I’ve been in love.”
“Love!”
“One day you’ll, you’ll meet someone but being in love, it’s not everything It’s not a goal or an aspiration. It’s just something that happens or it doesn’t. I't’s best not to build your whole life around falling in love.”
“Being in love isn’t everything? Why, love is the most important thing! Isn’t it? It has to be.”
“Being loved… being loved is important but being ‘in love’... I can take it or leave it, if I’m honest.”
“Mrs. Shirley, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you before.”
“Well I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Oh Mrs. Shirley it is. It is a compliment, it’s just, no one around here talks like you talk. No one ever even told me that I could just, I could travel around the world, I mean aren’t you scared? Isn’t it dangerous? I just don't know how you do it! But it sounds like the greatest thing in the world, next to having a family. If you can’t do that, then mm, maybe what you doin, maybe that’s a, another way. But it sho isnt’ a way people around here talk about. Mama and Aunt Chloe the only ones not from here, but mama been here so long, she certainly ‘of here’ though she not from here. And you said, you said, I was pretty, but you, you shouldn’t be out here picking apples and cleanin up chicken mess, and doin odd jobs. You coulda lived in some, some mansion maybe, lookin like you do.”
“How do you no I, I didn’t already live that life? How do you know I didn’t have that and decide that it wasn’t for me? What if, what if I had it before Mr. Shirley came along and I told you that, that it has its own, its own shadows, storms, and… sketchy characters? Would you believe me Gwendolyn?”


Miss Chloe & Mrs. Shirley

“She talks a lot doesn’t she?”
“She’s good company, and she’s a hard worker.”
“Well, as long as she’s doing the work and not talkin you to the death. You don’t have to help me in the kitchen after working all day, besides, I’m almost finished. Did she go meet her mama at the market to help her pack up?”
“Yes, and she took Major Moses.”
“He’s too old for her to be ridin him all the way into town. She’s gonna die on top of him some day.”
“I hope not.”
“Say? Do you think you could teach me how to make something from where you’re from?”
“Ha!”
“What? It’s hard? You think it’s gonna be too hard for me, or we don’t have what you need? Is that it?”
“No. No. And… no.”
“Ha ha. Well what is it then?”
“I don’t know how to prepare the dishes from ‘where I’m from’. I can cook anything that you find in a kitchen here, because that’s what I learned to cook, except you all season and spice your food and it has more flavour than the food I cook for… what do you call them again? Burras?”
“Ahhh. Buckruhs. Buckruhs!”
“Buckruhs.”
“Well that’s a shame. I would have liked to, to learn something from your culture.”
“Do you dance Miss Chloe?”
“Ha ha ha. Me, dance?”
“Yes? Is that really such a strange question?”
“My dancin days are over.”
“Hm. I’m not so sure about that, the way I see you move around the kitchen. Even the way you sweep the floors and mop them… there’s rhythm there!”
“There’s rhythm in the way I sweep and mop? Mrs. Shirley?!”
“It’s true. Next time, if you don’t believe me, just be aware of your, your own movements while you’re working.”
“Be aware of the way I move? All I’m doing is cooking and housework.”
“If your dancing days, if they’re over, as you said, that means that you did in fact have dancing days.”
“Eeeee, yeah, I did. I had my days. But those days are long gone. There’s not a lot of reasons or occasions for me to dance. But why do you ask Mrs. Shirley?”
“I ask because you want me to teach you something from ‘my culture’ as you put it. I could teach you some dances. If you like.”
“You? You wanna teach me some dances? Well, sure why not? I… I don’t think I’ll be a very good student but…”
“Don’t worry, it never goes away. If you have it, you have it. And… I’ve seen you, you have no trouble moving whatsoever. I… I imagine you’re quite limber. I bet you can touch your toes.”
“Ha ha ha. Touch my toes? I don’t know about that.”
“Well, have you tried? When was the last time you tried?”
“I, I don’t know. I don’t even remember the last time I, I danced. It musta been at, I think it was on the beach. That’s right! That’s where it was. Oh but it was a long time ago. We, me and Margaret, she was my best friend back home, we had this itch to go swimmin. Night swimmin. We use to meet sometimes and walk around late at night, and the last time I remember dancing was, it was one night when we were walkin and we decided to just do it! We ran to the beach and we danced and we sang, and we went swimmin, but that was, that was before I married Johnny and had my two sets of twins.”
“So that’s where she got it from?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“Well what about you? Are you a good dancer?”
“Dancing is my one true love.”
“Oh alright now. Well then you’ll have to teach me these traditional dances, I guess one day.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
“Aha! Well, Chloe you gon learn to dance some African dances. Maybe it’ll wake somethin up in me. How are you settling in here? Do you like the Shiloh? I know, I know my sister’s hard, but, but she’s fair and she, um, she’s not as serious as she looks. She uh, she got a lot on her plate, runnin this place. That’s all.”
“Miss Rosa has only been professional and polite, and to be honest, that’s what’s most important to me. Anything else is a bonus I suppose. I don’t often get the chance to work for other women, unless I’m working for some… well you know, and I try to avoid doing that kind of work and all that comes with it. No, I’m content with the work that I’m doing here. I’m, I’m even enjoying it.”
“Mrs. Shirley you don’t have to go that far. No one expects you to like the work that we do around here. I mean, you’re cleaning chicken shit most of the time for goodness sake!”
“I am telling you the truth. I do like it. I like working. I like working when I, when I know what I’m supposed to do. When I work and it’s hard but it’s fair. It’s the same everyday, or at least the same set of tasks.”
“Isn’t it awfully boring to you though? All the things you musta seen?”
“You know how when something is routine, you just, you follow that routine? You know what you’re doing and you don’t have to really think about it. Now, I’m not saying that you don’t have to pay attention to the work, that’s not what I mean, I mean, I mean that the body and the mind are in synch and they just know what to do. It’s also like dancing.”
“All I can say Mrs. Shirley is that there aren’t a lot of people like you comin through here. But why here? Why are you out here? You could probably be anywhere.”
“You’ll laugh if I tell you.”
“If it’s funny, I’ll laugh because it’s funny but not cos I’m laughing at you or what you have to say. So you tell me please? Why did you come here?”
“I came because, because someone I love lived here, was brought up here, and, and they always talked about the sky here…”
“The sky?”
“They always said that the sky was a blue here that it wasn’t anywhere else. They had also been to a lot of different places, and looked up at a lot of different skies, but they always said that the sky just wasn’t the same blue that it was here, in summer. So I chased it. I chased that impression and I, I wanted to be under that blue sky so I could tell them if I ever see them again that I had seen the sky here.”
“No one I’ve ever met, would do such a thing or would even remember something like that. I’ve never heard anyone speak like that! I guess it wasn’t your husband, because you said you might see him again?”
“Sorry?”
“Was he the one that told you? Your husband? You know, about the sky here?”
“No. No. No it wasn’t, it wasn’t him.”
“Oh… well, I never really noticed the sky here. There’s not much time to look up, and if you’re looking up you’re lookin for something, you’re lookin to see about what time it is, you’re looking to see if it’s gonna rain, you’re looking for something but you don’t just look at the sky for the sake of lookin at the sky.”
“For hu… for me, coming here was about seeing the sky and to see something different. Just look at it. Look!”
“I’m lookin. I’m lookin. It just looks like it always does.
“There must be something that you look at Miss Chloe, something that you see that you can’t unsee, or forget. There has to be something that catches your attention and, and makes you stand still.”
“My children. I get like that with my children. When I look at them, even now when I see them, even in my mind. Also church. When we’re all singing together. It’s the, the part where I feel the closest to the creator. Don’t get me wrong, the sermon, it has to be the most important part, but when we sing, that’s when I feel something. I don’t know if that’s, if that’s what you mean. If that’s my sky? My children and, and singing in the church.”
“Where are your children now?”
“My children are all grown and living here and there but we’re all, we’re all so spread out. When my sister asked me to come here, it made sense. Get a fresh start. Live with the person who knows me the best. It was the chance to make myself useful again. No one needed me anymore but she did. What about you? What about your family?”
“My parents are dead and my brothers, there are three of them, well, we don’t really speak anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. About your parents and your brothers. Maybe one day there will be some sort of resolution, I guess.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“What kind of life is it, just movin from place to place? Don’t you wanna settle down? Find your tribe, find your place, a place where you can lay your roots?”
“What if the whole world is that place?”
“The whole world is too big for you to do all that.”
“Perhaps you’re right Miss Chloe but I’ve found people, people who have regarded me as being a part of their family. I’ve found mothers and fathers, and so many sisters. I’ve even, I’ve met children for the first time in the round bellies of their mothers and, and I’ve watched them lose teeth, grow new ones, and stumble out their baby fat, or add a lot more to what they already had. Some of them, I even saw some of them give birth to their own babies.”
“I’ve just never met a woman, a woman like me that’s done that. In fact I feel like everything everyone’s ever said has taught us against thinking, even thinking we could do something like, like what you’re doing. What about, what about companionship? How do you, how do you… are you lonely?”
“Life goes hand in hand with loneliness. To be alive is to be lonely, some time, some place, somewhere. You can even be lonely in the sanctuary can’t you?”
“You can, but then there’s always someone to lean on, if you, if you need it I suppose.”
“That is one thing I do miss.”
“What do you miss Mrs. Shirley?”
“It’s probably a sin. Sometimes I feel like everything… I can’t finish this sentence. I’ll lose my job.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh please tell me. Please tell me Miss Shirley. How often do you think someone like me gets to have a conversation like this?”
“I believe in always trying, trying to chose my words carefully… I’m not sure how to say it, but I, I have the impression that so many of the things that I want for my life are sinful.”

Mrs. Shirley & Miss Rosa

“May I join you?”
“I won’t be out here long. Take a seat.”
“Thank you. Your sister’s an incredible cook.”
“She’s the only reason I eat.”
“Ha ha. What does that mean?”
“It… it means, that I could do without eating if it wasn’t for my sister. I think she’s secretly a rootworker. Food shouldn’t taste as good as she make it.”
“I look forward to our dinners together.”
“I told Gwendolyn about talkin your ear off the way she do. She don’t know no better, but if she’s meddlin you, you let me know okay?”
“She’s alright Miss Rosa. I don’t mind. I like her, her boldness. Her curiosity”
“Boldness…curiosity... is that what she is?”
“What would you call it?”
“I calls it nosiness, but she, it’s not really that. She’s always been a curious girl I guess. She always asked, really, just too many questions.”
“I bet that makes her a good student, and she’s very good company.”
“Well, least there’s that then.”
“That’s what she is. And she’s a great supervisor. During the day I think to myself quite often that I’m very fortunate to have this job. Thank you for, for giving me this opportunity.”
“Opportunity? Nah, it’s me who should be thankin you. Maybe not too much. I wouldn’t want it to go to your head, but I, we appreciate havin you around here. Just don’t go givin my daughter any ideas. You know what I mean.”
“Miss Rosa, I wouldn’t…”
“So we understand each other?”
“Yes, I believe we do Miss Rosa.”
“Your room okay? Is it comfortable? The bed?”
“It’s a lovely little room. It has everything that I need, and yes, I’m very comfortable.”
“Good. You can always change your room. If you’re not comfortable or happy with it.”
“Believe me Miss Rosa, most of the beds that I sleep in doing work like, like what I’m doing here, are not even close to being as comfortable as your… as the bed in my room. Sometimes I even share a bed… but because I have to, sometimes because there’s no other choice.”
“Well you have choices here.”
“Thank you Miss Rosa.”
“We call you Mrs. Shirley and I been wonderin if, if maybe we should call you Miss…”
“Mrs. Shirley, Mrs. Shirley is always good. My name is, my real name is difficult for your lot to pronounce and I must confess, I hate it when people mispronounce it, so even when I, when I’m allowed to be less formal, it always just Mrs. Shirley. Anyway, uh, I’m not keeping you awake am I?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, uh, earlier you said that you weren’t staying long. I understand you’ve had a long day. A very long day. We could go inside, or, or you could go upstairs if, if you need to.”
“Mrs. Shirley?”
“Yes? Yes Miss Rosa?”
“Could I offer you a drink? Just a little something to mix in with Chloe’s lavender lemonade? Something that’ll help us, help us get fast asleep?”
“That sounds lovely. Shall we go inside?”
“Yes, but quietly. I don’t want to wake them.”
“Okay.”
“Do you drink whiskey?”
“I’ve been known to. Why don’t I get the lemonade.”
“Thank you Mrs. Shirley.”
“Here.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I think this is the first time we’ve really talked. Just the two of us. I know there’s not much time for it. For talking.”
“The only talking I do most days is related to my business, to runin this place. I’m not very good at talkin. Gwendolyn gets that from her father. I suppose, I get my silence from mine.”
“I’ve always been in the middle. I’ve never really been shy, but I’ve also never been that loud either. It’s always been right smack in the middle.”
“I don’t trust people who always got somethin to say. Sometimes you need to be quiet. You need to listen.”
“Well what if we’re, thank you…”
“You’re welcome”
“What if we’re both really quiet?”
“Then… that’s the way it is. We can decide if we want to be quiet together, if we’re good company sayin nothin. That’s the test right there.”
“This is really good! I can’t even taste the, the, the… well I’m certainly feeling it. Ha Ha Ha.”
“”Ha ha. I’m glad you like it. It’s a treat I allow myself every now and again.”
“I can see why. I wouldn’t want to get accustomed to this, as some sort of, some sort of ritual.”
“You’re shivering a little bit. It gets cold here sometimes at night, even in the summer. Let me get you a blanket.”
“I’m okay, really! Oh but… well thank you Miss Rosa.”
“H… here, let me…”
“Thank you. Uh, you can sit here. You don’t have to sit so far away. I feel like we’re whispering but we could just, we could sit here, the two of us.”
“Oh? Okay.”
“Does it snow here? In the winter?”
“Are you kidding Mrs. Shirley, we get covered in snow! By the time Gwendolyn comes home from school, home from her great Aunt Joy’s, everything is covered. Everything is white.”
“Where do you think you’ll go, after the summers over?”
“I guess I’ll go north. I don’t really have a plan. Not a fixed one at least. I’ll go north and then in January I’ll go overseas again. Have you ever left the country?”
“No. I had Gwendolyn didn’t I?”
“You could’ve taken her with you, but I, guess you also had the land too.”
“I listen to you tell your stories at the table and I admire them, and I admire you too Mrs. Shirley but the way you live, I don’t know if I could ever do that. I listen to you, I do. I hear your stories and, you, you  got a way of telling them that takes us with you, but then as I’m tappin my knee under the table and lookin around, lookin at Gwendolyn, and at Chloe… here is the only place that I can be. But there’s somethin about your stories that remind me of the way the ole folks told stories back home, back where me and Chloe are really from. You see, it’s almost like we came from another country already, just to get here. This our country too, but the ole folks tell tales of other places, that were told them, these tales, and what they speak about was handed down to them, and when we speak, we speak in another language that no one here understands. When I brought my baby here, I brought her to another world. She never been to our, to the ole world. Didn’t teach her the language neither, cos didn’t want her to have the trouble we had sometimes. I travelled the distance here and I still have miles to go, I just have to do them in circles and stay put, so I can pass this on, all of this on to Gwendolyn.”
“When I tell my stories, the ones I tell, I’m never trying to persuade anyone. I don’t tell them to tell other people that they are simple, or that they are trapped or not really living. I know it, I suppose it can sound like that. Like I’m telling tall tales, but I only tell them because people ask so many questions. ‘How does she do it’, they think. I can hear them thinking it before I see it on their face. It’s not what it maybe sounds like. I’ve been on my own since I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen?!”
“Yes fifteen.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Everyone’s always asking me why I never got married again. You’re one of the only people who hasn’t asked me. Do people ask you?”
“No. No they don’t. Most people around here, at least the ones my age or older, they wouldn’t ask. This land, this land was left to me by my father. Chloe and I have different daddy’s. My father, my father, he was a white man. Yes you, you can see it. He left this land to me, and not his white children. I think sometimes he left it to me, to make my life harder. Everything he ever gave to me, just made things more complicated. His children want it, but they couldn’t get it. They tried everything and when nothin worked, they, they… they killed my husband. Of course no one here cares that a nigger was killed in his own home. Of course rich white people never saw a day in court. The police said it was an accident, and I told that child the same thing because I couldn't tell her how they killed her daddy. They do such good work, these things that they do, how they fix it so that the story that they tell becomes the story, and you, you witnessed it, but you feel, you… you ask yourself, if it didn’t happen the way they said it did because no one lost anything for this, this crime except for you. And he… he took it all with him because I don’t really remember that night. His spirit, he caught it all, and didn’t leave anything behind for me. I imagine the screams, his screams, but I can’t hear them anymore. I know I saw them dressed in white sheets, but I cannot recall where they stood on this property, and where they made their exit. He took it with him, all those memories but not the empty space, and he, he didn’t even have the decency to haunt us.”
“Miss…”
“It’s, it not me talking. It’s the tiredness. It’s the whiskey. I don’t normally go into all this. I haven’t talked about it for years.”
“We don’t ha....”
“When you leave here, forget about it.”
“My parents didn’t die. I tell everyone that’s what happened, but it’s not true. You could say that they, they betrayed me, and I left. I left and I never looked back. I tell people that they’re dead because they’re dead to me. My brothers, they tried to protect me, but they couldn’t. I left, l left without telling them anything because I didn’t want anyone to find me. I wanted to disappear but the world wouldn’t let me. It kept saying, don’t you want see what’s just over that hill? What’s just across the water, and I surprised myself every time, because I always did. I went everywhere that I could go and the only time I stood still… that was when I met him. I saw it coming, but I thought I could live my own life, I thought it could be a return to that, that security, that false sense of being safe that I thought I had as a little naive girl. I didn’t want him. I didn’t want any ma…”
”I knew it when you turned up. That’s why I gave you the job. I could tell just by lookin at you. When I met others, after thinking I was the only one, one of them told me, you can see it on a woman if you look.”
“Did you want the, the family part of it?”
“Yes, I think that was a part of it. I wanted children. I was pregnant when it happened. When they took him. I was pregnant with twins. He was from the island too. He wanted to leave too. He was, he was a good person, and I knew he would be a good head of household. When he asked me, I said yes. Like I said, I thought I was the only one. I didn’t think anyone else on the island felt the way that I did. And so we came to claim this land, and I brought him here and brought him to his death.”
“You couldn’t have known that.”
“I don’t feel any less guilty.”
“Hmm?”
“What?”
“You. That’s what.”
“What about me?”
“You said you recognised, you recognised me. I didn’t see it in you at all. I just saw your sadness. That’s what I recognised, but I think if you let me, I can be a great comfort to you while I’m here. Just until the autumn.”
“I believe you could be Mrs. Shirley.”

Written by Isaiah Lopaz, Anthology / Appendix 2021