Fiction
"The Only Flowers in El Komei Part One"
By Celine Callow
By Celine Callow
It was a place without rivers and streams. Without movement. Where each bead of dirt was welded to another, trampled under the feet of the same kinds of people since humans first inhabited the earth. There were no vibrant-colored flowers, no blossoming fruit. There were only the purple weeds that sprouted in patches and had roots enough to weather wind or shine. They were the only flowers that could grow in the dry dirt. Flowers being a generous term. More thorn than petal, more dust than perfume. Nevertheless, Soraya collected swathes of them and pierced their stems with her thumbnail, linking them together in a fairy-chain. These small rituals set in time the mechanics of her life with her sisters in the desert. The necessary busying of hands. She was a child who loved beauty, and where she couldn’t find it, she imagined it.
The sun beat down on the back of her neck as she headed home along the dust path. Since her childhood, she had made many tracks in the yellow-orange dust under her hand-me-down shoes. Once one was well established, she moved on to another. She crossed over several ghostly tracks on her way back home. Imagined the old versions of herself, playing alone, translucent as a spirit. The trailers emerged up out of the horizon, white beetles clamped onto the earth. El Komei trailer park was a community of strangers. People who arrived one dawn and set down roots, went about their lives in the quiet, relieved to be alone with people. You didn’t ask questions in El Komei. You minded your business, and if someone came sniffing around, you said nothing, knew your neighbour would do the same for you.
#
Soraya only faintly remembered life before El Komei. A yellow house, canary-colored with dark wooden beams. Soraya knew she’d been sad to leave the yellow house; there’d been a wood across the path from it like something out of a fairytale. Her window looked down on a host of conifers, green arrows pointing up at a blue sky. She remembered going with her sisters to cut down a Christmas tree. Her older sisters took turns with the axe -- they were sweat-soaked despite the chill and the denseness of their hand-knitted scarves. It took all of their eight hands on the broad tree trunk to guide it to the ground. Soraya felt proud to be included, and useful. It felt like the four of them were powerful together. They brought that broad, bark-wrapped giant to its knees.
Her sister, Jan, told her she’d got it all wrong; the yellow house was the one next door. Nevertheless, Soraya thought often of the yellow house. When her sisters were wistful and quiet, lost in thoughts of their old lives, Soraya thought of the house and the cragged edges of its dark beams. It was something sentimental that bound her to the past, to all of them. The yellow house was the medium through which she joined in their communion of longing. Though she wondered about her parents, she’d been too young to mourn their loss. To her, they were legends and not people. And besides, she never felt like she’d missed out on much, having grown up with three mothers of a kind. Soraya was sometimes ashamed of thinking this.
#
Soraya found herself longing for those trees now. She imagined tugging at their lush needles, sharp against her fingertips. She imagined the magic of light diffused through their branches, moss to cushion her steps.
Her sister, India, sat at the open mouth of the trailer, rocking onto the back legs of a plastic garden chair. She held a beer between her legs, clamped between strong thighs, tanned from desert sun. She was braless in a white vest; sweat pooled in the valley between her breasts and left crescent shaped smudges on the fabric beneath them. Her curly black hair was in a ponytail. India’s body held a mystery for Soraya. India’s body had had sex.
#
In the pitch dark of earliest morning, Soraya woke up to the sound of something scraping around in the dirt under her window. She pulled back the curtain from the bedroom window to see what it was. Soraya could make out the dim shape of two bodies intertwined. Moonlight picked up the white joints of their fingers, knees, and shoulders as they moved in the dark. India’s eyes swiveled up to the bedroom window, and the two sisters watched each other for a moment before Soraya tugged the curtain closed and went back to sleep. It didn’t make any sense to Soraya. Boys were forbidden, girls who had sex with them were sluts. Her sister knew this.
#
Now, India’s every look seemed to Soraya to be tinged with fear, with anxiety. Soraya wasn’t in the business of telling other people’s secrets, but India didn’t trust her. She sipped her beer and watched her. A steady look in India’s dark eyes, her round face studded with freckles.
“What’s for din?” Soraya asked her.
India shrugged. “Same as always.”
Soraya had hoped that keeping India’s secret would bring them closer together, but now they were little more than strangers with the same last name. Secrets were powerful things, this was clear to her.
“Another one?” India raised an eyebrow at the chain of purple weeds in Soraya’s grasp. “There’s so many of them just lying around wilting in there. They give off this stench when they die.” India threw her empty beer can onto the ground.
Soraya said nothing.
#
She found her two eldest sisters at the kitchenette. Tanya’s hair was wrapped with a kerchief; she used a wooden spoon to guide cream into a pan of potatoes, softened in a boil. A sugar container waited by the side. Janet sat on a kitchen chair at the table with a stack of papers and receipts. Her overgrown nails tapped against the calculator as she tapped on buttons and paused in-between to make notes in pencil on a yellow memo pad.
Jan looked up and smiled. “You’re back,” she said.
In the setting light she looked just like their father. Soraya didn’t remember his face, but there was a picture of him stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. He had ashy brown hair, just like Janet, a heart-shaped face with round cheeks, straight eyebrows. The man in the picture had his arm around a woman, but her face had been scratched off with a pin or a coin. Soraya thought this was more aggressive than simply cutting her out with scissors. She thought her mom must have done something very bad to make someone scratch her face out, but no one would tell her what it was.
Soraya deposited the chain of weeds onto the table, and Jan picked it up, wrapped it around her ponytail.
“How do I look?” she asked Tanya, who glanced up from her steaming pot of potatoes and offered a watery smile.
Soraya sat down at the table. “Sugar-mash for dins again?”
Tanya started to mash the potatoes in silence.
“You don’t think we could have something different, sometime?” asked Soraya.
Janet ran her hand down the column of numbers she was writing. “When you make money and pay bills, then you can decide what we have for dins, okay honey-pie?”
Janet had a way of speaking that made Soraya feel stupid whenever she asked a question and despite this, she was glad to have Janet as a big sister. She wasn’t dreamy and distant like Tanya or brooding like India. Janet was a person with energy, a great well of power in her stomach, latent strength in her sinewy arms.
“You like sugar-mash,” said Tanya, her voice a whisper. “Sugar-mash and chicken dinosaurs, I got them special from the store.”
Soraya didn’t want to upset her eldest sister, who was fragile looking in her kerchief. Her wheat-colored eyebrows and eyelashes added to the feeling that the life was low in her, more water in her blood. Soraya never heard Tanya raise her voice. She didn’t know what her sister thought about things, what she liked or didn’t like, except that she sometimes stayed up late drinking from a hidden bottle of whiskey. She made things out of the empty whiskey bottles after; candle-holders, vases, kept M&M’s in them and no one ever asked her where she got them from.
“I’m seventeen on Friday,” said Soraya.
“I haven’t forgotten, buttercup,” said Janet.
“Seventeen’s almost an adult,” said Soraya.
“So it is.”
“So, you said when I got older you’d tell me why we left home, and…and how mom and dad died.” There was a tremor in Soraya’s voice as she spoke, she was frightened and didn’t know why.
Tanya stopped mashing potatoes and stared out of the tiny kitchenette window, her brow furrowed.
Janet dropped her pencil onto the memo pad and sighed. “I already told you Raya; it was cancer,” she said.
“But if it was cancer then why did we have to leave the yellow house?”
Janet smacked the table with her palm. “Damn it, Soraya! There was no yellow house.” The chair swung backwards onto the floor as she stood up. “How many times do I have to tell you? The yellow house was the one next-door.”
“I’m sorry,” said Soraya. “Don’t be angry please, Jan.”
Janet shook her head and stooped to pull the chair upright. “One more year,” she said. “When you’re eighteen I’ll tell you.”
She’d said the same thing last year, but Soraya didn’t mention this.
End of Part One
The sun beat down on the back of her neck as she headed home along the dust path. Since her childhood, she had made many tracks in the yellow-orange dust under her hand-me-down shoes. Once one was well established, she moved on to another. She crossed over several ghostly tracks on her way back home. Imagined the old versions of herself, playing alone, translucent as a spirit. The trailers emerged up out of the horizon, white beetles clamped onto the earth. El Komei trailer park was a community of strangers. People who arrived one dawn and set down roots, went about their lives in the quiet, relieved to be alone with people. You didn’t ask questions in El Komei. You minded your business, and if someone came sniffing around, you said nothing, knew your neighbour would do the same for you.
#
Soraya only faintly remembered life before El Komei. A yellow house, canary-colored with dark wooden beams. Soraya knew she’d been sad to leave the yellow house; there’d been a wood across the path from it like something out of a fairytale. Her window looked down on a host of conifers, green arrows pointing up at a blue sky. She remembered going with her sisters to cut down a Christmas tree. Her older sisters took turns with the axe -- they were sweat-soaked despite the chill and the denseness of their hand-knitted scarves. It took all of their eight hands on the broad tree trunk to guide it to the ground. Soraya felt proud to be included, and useful. It felt like the four of them were powerful together. They brought that broad, bark-wrapped giant to its knees.
Her sister, Jan, told her she’d got it all wrong; the yellow house was the one next door. Nevertheless, Soraya thought often of the yellow house. When her sisters were wistful and quiet, lost in thoughts of their old lives, Soraya thought of the house and the cragged edges of its dark beams. It was something sentimental that bound her to the past, to all of them. The yellow house was the medium through which she joined in their communion of longing. Though she wondered about her parents, she’d been too young to mourn their loss. To her, they were legends and not people. And besides, she never felt like she’d missed out on much, having grown up with three mothers of a kind. Soraya was sometimes ashamed of thinking this.
#
Soraya found herself longing for those trees now. She imagined tugging at their lush needles, sharp against her fingertips. She imagined the magic of light diffused through their branches, moss to cushion her steps.
Her sister, India, sat at the open mouth of the trailer, rocking onto the back legs of a plastic garden chair. She held a beer between her legs, clamped between strong thighs, tanned from desert sun. She was braless in a white vest; sweat pooled in the valley between her breasts and left crescent shaped smudges on the fabric beneath them. Her curly black hair was in a ponytail. India’s body held a mystery for Soraya. India’s body had had sex.
#
In the pitch dark of earliest morning, Soraya woke up to the sound of something scraping around in the dirt under her window. She pulled back the curtain from the bedroom window to see what it was. Soraya could make out the dim shape of two bodies intertwined. Moonlight picked up the white joints of their fingers, knees, and shoulders as they moved in the dark. India’s eyes swiveled up to the bedroom window, and the two sisters watched each other for a moment before Soraya tugged the curtain closed and went back to sleep. It didn’t make any sense to Soraya. Boys were forbidden, girls who had sex with them were sluts. Her sister knew this.
#
Now, India’s every look seemed to Soraya to be tinged with fear, with anxiety. Soraya wasn’t in the business of telling other people’s secrets, but India didn’t trust her. She sipped her beer and watched her. A steady look in India’s dark eyes, her round face studded with freckles.
“What’s for din?” Soraya asked her.
India shrugged. “Same as always.”
Soraya had hoped that keeping India’s secret would bring them closer together, but now they were little more than strangers with the same last name. Secrets were powerful things, this was clear to her.
“Another one?” India raised an eyebrow at the chain of purple weeds in Soraya’s grasp. “There’s so many of them just lying around wilting in there. They give off this stench when they die.” India threw her empty beer can onto the ground.
Soraya said nothing.
#
She found her two eldest sisters at the kitchenette. Tanya’s hair was wrapped with a kerchief; she used a wooden spoon to guide cream into a pan of potatoes, softened in a boil. A sugar container waited by the side. Janet sat on a kitchen chair at the table with a stack of papers and receipts. Her overgrown nails tapped against the calculator as she tapped on buttons and paused in-between to make notes in pencil on a yellow memo pad.
Jan looked up and smiled. “You’re back,” she said.
In the setting light she looked just like their father. Soraya didn’t remember his face, but there was a picture of him stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. He had ashy brown hair, just like Janet, a heart-shaped face with round cheeks, straight eyebrows. The man in the picture had his arm around a woman, but her face had been scratched off with a pin or a coin. Soraya thought this was more aggressive than simply cutting her out with scissors. She thought her mom must have done something very bad to make someone scratch her face out, but no one would tell her what it was.
Soraya deposited the chain of weeds onto the table, and Jan picked it up, wrapped it around her ponytail.
“How do I look?” she asked Tanya, who glanced up from her steaming pot of potatoes and offered a watery smile.
Soraya sat down at the table. “Sugar-mash for dins again?”
Tanya started to mash the potatoes in silence.
“You don’t think we could have something different, sometime?” asked Soraya.
Janet ran her hand down the column of numbers she was writing. “When you make money and pay bills, then you can decide what we have for dins, okay honey-pie?”
Janet had a way of speaking that made Soraya feel stupid whenever she asked a question and despite this, she was glad to have Janet as a big sister. She wasn’t dreamy and distant like Tanya or brooding like India. Janet was a person with energy, a great well of power in her stomach, latent strength in her sinewy arms.
“You like sugar-mash,” said Tanya, her voice a whisper. “Sugar-mash and chicken dinosaurs, I got them special from the store.”
Soraya didn’t want to upset her eldest sister, who was fragile looking in her kerchief. Her wheat-colored eyebrows and eyelashes added to the feeling that the life was low in her, more water in her blood. Soraya never heard Tanya raise her voice. She didn’t know what her sister thought about things, what she liked or didn’t like, except that she sometimes stayed up late drinking from a hidden bottle of whiskey. She made things out of the empty whiskey bottles after; candle-holders, vases, kept M&M’s in them and no one ever asked her where she got them from.
“I’m seventeen on Friday,” said Soraya.
“I haven’t forgotten, buttercup,” said Janet.
“Seventeen’s almost an adult,” said Soraya.
“So it is.”
“So, you said when I got older you’d tell me why we left home, and…and how mom and dad died.” There was a tremor in Soraya’s voice as she spoke, she was frightened and didn’t know why.
Tanya stopped mashing potatoes and stared out of the tiny kitchenette window, her brow furrowed.
Janet dropped her pencil onto the memo pad and sighed. “I already told you Raya; it was cancer,” she said.
“But if it was cancer then why did we have to leave the yellow house?”
Janet smacked the table with her palm. “Damn it, Soraya! There was no yellow house.” The chair swung backwards onto the floor as she stood up. “How many times do I have to tell you? The yellow house was the one next-door.”
“I’m sorry,” said Soraya. “Don’t be angry please, Jan.”
Janet shook her head and stooped to pull the chair upright. “One more year,” she said. “When you’re eighteen I’ll tell you.”
She’d said the same thing last year, but Soraya didn’t mention this.
End of Part One
