Circles of Gala
Dark furniture in cherry wood with floors to match; walls with shades of pink flowers and green ferns. This is the landscape of the mind's hotel. The setting for the gala event.
The event Cheryl Lynn's mother has talked about for a year. The purpose Cheryl Lynn no longer remembers. Mother does; mother always knows these things.
Mother waits in the lounge where the wings of penguins cover the wall. The birds never get to fly.
The skirt Cheryl Lynn wears is black taffeta that comes to mid-calf; it bounces and flutters as she says, "Mother, I'm ready."
The penguins dive down in the water on the wall, their bodies black blobs. They don't come up for air.
Mother says, "The event's come and passed. You missed it with your searches."
"Searches for what?" Cheryl Lynn starts to ask, but looks down at herself and sees the bare feet, the tattered nylons, the purse that won't close. She sees the reflection of her hair in the mirror on the wall: the hair pinned up on one side with a rhinestone and faux-emerald clip, the hair half-braided on the other side; the dangling hoop earring in one ear, the empty hole of the other ear.
This dream, she knows. She's in it. Still she says to her mother, "Just a second I'll find the shoes, the stockings, the purse strap, the earrings." The only thing she doesn't say is the absent hotel room. If she knew the number of the hotel room she slept in last night, the searches would be pointless.
But she tries to find these things, the perfect-looking daughter she wants to be, she so wants to be. Up and down the stairs of the hotel she goes. In another time, the pitter patter of her feet made her laugh with the glee of a child. A girl playing on a parquet floor at a gala, one where mother praised her, that is, before she spilled the strawberry red punch on her pink dress because she wanted it to have polka dots. Mother called her a slob and no amount of saying, "Look at the dots, Mother; the dress is even more beautiful with a little extra color," could sway the opinion that Cheryl Lynn is not a lady in training, not a lady, definitely not a lady. Mother said that so many times that day, but all Cheryl Lynn saw were the polka dots that smelled like strawberries.
The lights flashed—how she remembered them. Mother couldn't take the grin off Cheryl Lynn's face and left her sitting in the dark to think about how ladies act.
"Yes, mother. Yes, mother."
Cheryl Lynn the adult stumbles on the stairs. She smiles a little at the stubbed toe and the trail of red dots it makes on the wood floor as she hobbles along from room to room.
In 17A she finds a backpack with her lace jacket, which matches the tank top she's wearing. She puts it on, but questions where the matching black suitcase is as she moves down the staircase, anxious to show mother how the lace matches. It matches, it matches she says in her head and aloud to mother, who sees only the bloodied toe and shouts at her please Cheryl Lynn make yourself presentable.
Back up the stairs, Cheryl Lynn goes in search of her suitcase, the one with the bandages and a clean pair of nylons, but the room numbers have disappeared from the walls and the stairs slope and bend. She wanders into the rooms feeling woozy, searching for other people's things, no longer believing she can find her own room or her own self.
Cheryl Lynn opens a floral-patterned suitcase. Inside is a cape with cartoon faces of fruits; the bananas look so happy and so do the purple grapes. She pulls the cape over her shoulders.
"Yes, I'm Super Grape Woman," she says as she descends the staircase. "I can fly."
Copyright 2006 by Julie Ann Shapiro
