“A place for everything and everything in its place,” our mother would tell us girls. During her daily inspections, she would enter our rooms smelling of disinfectant, a paddle in her hand to punish the sloppy offender.
“Where do these crayons belong, Arlene?”
“But I was just using them.”
Whack! Whack! One for the crayons out of place and one for talking back.
My stomach would twist, bile rising in my throat, as I heard her approach my door. She never knocked.
“Why would you need privacy unless you’re hiding something?” she’d say. Whack!
But no matter how hard I tried, there wasn’t a place for everything and so stuff piled in I-don’t-know-to-do-with-it and I’ll-deal-with-it-later stacks on every surface. Cartons of things I couldn’t remember ordering, books I never read, mail unopened, newspapers and magazines climbing to the ceiling, clothes in heaps on the floor. All the while, the rooms wrapping around me like a warm embrace.
The sisters arrive promptly at 9:00 a.m., a truck with workers pulling to the curb behind them. This time the building manager had called. A fire hazard, he’d said.
I sit in obedient silence as, bit-by-bit, my fortress is disassembled, the room growing more cavernous with each banished item as I grow smaller, smaller. The smell of disinfectant floods the room and I tense, waiting for the sting of the paddle, though Mother has been gone for years.
This would be my last chance, the sisters say. And then they, too, are gone.
…
Biography
Jayne Martin lives in Santa Barbara, California, where she rides horses and drinks copious amounts of fine wines, though not at the same time. She is a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfictions nominee, and a recipient of Vestal Review’s VERA award. Her debut collection of microfiction, “Tender Cuts,” from Vine Leaves Press, is available now. Visit her website at: jaynemartin-writer.com.
Image: unsplash.com
