This isn't about Dillard

short fiction

I’m good at watching because I can only sit here. Can’t strut like 25, can’t wander like 47, can’t step lightly like 94. Something about 95. Been about three months and every day I grab hold the wall longer, lean heavier into my walker. And I watch. My eyes work and I watch this family that my daughter married into. Their large mouths talking.

Dillard, my son in law. Well, his mother’s a skank. She waltzes the room, her arms wobbling around like long silk strings, inviting everyone. The slut. She’ll turn 95 one day and she’ll see. At 91, she has no idea what the loss of your working legs can do to you. She’s just using her feet to walk around and she’s eating those little oranges from Dillard’s fruit basket in Dillard’s big white kitchen. So white in there, that dumb modern kitchen.

And I see the boys. The ones that married into the family. The ones that married the girls, those cousins. Dillard’s. Those boys they stand around and probably talk about that marijuana smoke. They’ll probably disappear soon. All for that marijuana smoke.

Then there’s the dog behind the fence with its mouth open to the sky like some idiot. Looking for heaven? You won’t find it.

Oh! And the foreign man. I always forget about him. Who is he married to. Not sure I’ve ever known. Probably kissing up on Dillard’s brother over there. Yeah, probably that’s what’s going on.

But what can I do. I can only see what I can catch from my sitting spot here. From this chair with the cushion that they stuffed me in. Over here by the fire pit. Dillard’s dumb, modern fire pit. Dillard.

Dillard.

Milla, my daughter, she met him at the expensive grocery store downtown. She says he complimented her earrings. Of course. Couldn’t see the green in her eyes, but he could see the silver on her ears. Dillard did.

Well, Dillard and his small body, he slipped into some pink swim trunks and he lured my daughter onto his yacht. He did. And just three years later they married and bought that open-mouthed dog.

Because it’s all about Heaven. They’re all searching for it. But I’ll tell them, it ain’t in the sky and it ain’t in that white kitchen. And it has nothing to do with Milla’s silver.

Cus if they looked closer and saw the green in her eyes, they’d see there’s no floating angels pulping juice from a perfect orange.

Ah, well. What can I do. Keep watching, I’d guess.

Oh! See there, some man they call my husband. 96, no walker, shoes shined. Smile wide, white. All white. All of this seems to be too white. Can’t they see that the fire blazes by my side.