Congratulations to Laurel Rogers, who won this month and also won in April last year! She says, “April must be my magic ticket to Sledgehammer success. It was nice to be back after a few months away while I was teaching. We had a big group this month–spilled over to a second table even–but there was no change in the excellent quality of everyone’s writing. Thanks for another fun round.” Thank you, Laurel!
Prompts:
Character: A tailor
Action: Spring cleaning
Setting: A Catholic church
Phrase: Bippity, boppety, boo
***
Earthquakes
by Laurel Rogers
She was drunk.
At least that’s what she told herself, even if anyone watching her would, at worst, call her a wee bit tipsy.
But after years—decades really—of being the village teetotaler, and having done the unthinkable and snitching a sip of the vodka Father Jacob kept in a communion wine bottle on the middle shelf of the mahogany bookcase in his office, Sister Frances figured she was surely drunk. Only that could explain why, after stealing AND imbibing all in the same swallow, she shelved her better self and took another sip. And then a proper swallow.
Maybe even…a gulp.
She looked at the calendar on the wall, which apparently hadn’t been changed since October 2015. She admired the watercolor print of a basket full of shiny red apples and imagined herself reaching and plucking one from its basket.
Forbidden fruit.
She could almost taste it, despite the subtle tingle on her tongue from Father Jacob’s vodka.
Sister Frances sighed with a weight only years of rote certainty could place upon a soul. The calendar lied. There were no bushels of apples—in fact, the tree outside Father Jacob’s office hadn’t so much as budded yet this spring. What little sun peered through the veil of clouds that hung over the village filtered past the heavy velvet curtains and pooled on a threadbare rug.
It wouldn’t do to indulge in such extravagances as new wool rugs, especially in Father Jacob’s retreat so far in the back of the old Catholic church no one visited. Even the Father seemed reticent to journey so far from the loftier heights of the sanctuary.
Sister Frances wondered, in fact, how long since someone had ventured into the musty space. She wrinkled her nose at the dusty bookshelf as she replaced the vodka—ahem, the wine, wink wink—bottle on the shelf. She wondered if she could sing a little tune out the window and then, bam and bippity boppity boo, her fairy godmother would rescue her from the task ahead.
The task assigned by her not-so-fairy-nor-god-but-she-seemed-to-think-she-was Mother Anna. “Spring cleaning,” the Reverend Mother announced over their standard breakfast of sourdough toast, a spread of processed cheese-like fat, orange juice and coffee. Because naturally orange juice and coffee tasted so good together, Sister Frances fumed. Almost as good as toothpaste and coffee.
She was wasting time, procrastinating the spring cleaning she had been assigned by Mother Anna. Might be the last spring Mother Anna was making such assignments. If the tittering of the mousy church ladies was any indication, next year Sister Frances might well be the Mother. The Big Mother on Campus. Like a boss, she thought to herself.
She blushed a little. How in the world had she learned that phrase?
Oh how the world was changing, before her very eyes. And, no, it wasn’t just the astigmatism that came up worse at every eye exam. Age was a bitch, she thought, then she cringed again at her choice of words.
In His house no less, she chided herself.
But most of her wasn’t even listening. Most of her somehow stopped listening a long time ago.
***
Continents drift apart a little each and every day. Imperceptibly. Oh sure, cataclysms of quake and inferno may create visual schisms more expediently, but the geology of change is the slow, steady, relentless separation of masses that once shared everything in common.
And so Sister Frances woke one morning to realize she didn’t know where she was.
Oh, she wasn’t demented or even muddled—this was long before she took a nip from Father’s stash. She knew she was in the convent adjacent the church, where she had done the Lord’s good and holy work every day since she took her novice vows at age 17.
She had walked through the ethereal curtains of stained-glass sunlight, along the center aisle of that same church, her cherubic face scrubbed and rosy behind a white veil. The only wedding dress she would ever wear fell softly from her youthful breasts, spilled over her gently curved hips, perfectly shaped for her and her alone by the village tailor who shook his head sadly every spring as worked on the next set of novice gowns.
She had walked forward to a groom she would never hold.
Who would never let her down.
Who grew more distant through the years, as grooms are wont to do.
Until one day she woke up and didn’t recognize her own life. She had walked a script written by someone else, always sure of its honesty, its goodness, its correctness, until she couldn’t read it any more. She was left wondering in what language it was even written.
***
The future is a funny thing. It can be full of plans and purposes and intentions, yet it’s all just a fiction. Sister Frances never believed that, until she could see so clearly that the story could end in so many different ways.
In fact, the possibilities were so overwhelming, she had half a mind to return to Father Jacob’s bottle. Better be careful not to end up at the Monday night AA meetings, she reminded herself.
She chuckled aloud. Imagine Mother Anna’s face when she served coffee to the group at precisely 7 p.m. and saw Sister Frances waiting for her turn to say, “Hi, my name is….”
A small rumble in this village.
Maybe she could ask to take a trip. Go on a mission to somewhere exotic. Find a way to sneak away from her godly duties with orphans or the sick or the poor and swim naked under a full moon in a phosphorescent sea.
But no one would know. That didn’t seem enough.
She needed something to feel like she was the author of her own existence.
Sister Frances took the bottle off the shelf one more time. A sip. An idea. They hit her brain together.
There would be an earthquake. She would cause it, and it would be known. A relatively small one to be sure, but an earthquake nonetheless. A shaking. A sign that the plates were no longer one.
Sister Frances wondered if that was enough.
© 2017 Laurel Rogers
***
Laurel Rogers is a professional juggler of client deadlines, Uber driver to her three home-schooled kids, kayaking partner to her husband and sounding board to her fascinating friends. She enjoys using short fiction to explore the very nonfictional ways people relate to themselves and each other.
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