Monday One Jamstress

As the nocturnal horrors wither and another beautiful winter’s day dawns, I finally sit down for breakfast after a night of dread and disappointments and apparently an early morning lunar eclipse.

It’s no good getting old, Grandfather says, sitting in his white rocking chair, there is nothing quite as devastatingly lonely or isolating than being the transparent old man whom no one cares to know better.

I try to comfort him but they were fresh out of figs at the market, so is impossible to make jam right now.

Hillonkeittäjänä harjoittelen tarmokkaasti hiipimistä ympäri taloa, koska ne sanoivat että hiipimiseni näyttää naurettavalta eikä ole kovinkaan salaperäistä. Ne sanoivat myös että nauran kammottavasti ja että näytän mieheltä kumartuessani sitomaan kengännauhoja. Mitäpä siitä, ajattelen hiipiessäni huomaamattomasti seinän viertä nerokkaimmalla tietämälläni hiivinnällä, harjoitellen luontevaa naurua joka olisi vähiten kammottava, sitoen kaikkia talosta löytyviä nuoria ja naruja naisellisimmalla mahdollisella tavalla. Olen kuusitoista ja näytän vielä niille.

One day you will realize how incredibly silly all of this is, Grandfather says. It all will be balanced out. The insults, the snickers behind your back, the inane badmouthing. Look at how lovely you are. And look at how well you did here, those mustard seeds you used in the spell were extremely effective, your grandmother will be proud. We are all The Beekeeper’s children, even the bullies, and I promise you it will all be balanced out in the end. Look at yourself. Can you not see you?

But I don’t really believe him, and carry my special apple seeds in my pocket just in case. I can see you, I want to tell him, I can see you clearly in the corner where you sit in your rocking chair, walking home from the market, and beneath the birch tree by the rose bushes, but he is gone now and I am forty, and now I am the sneakiest. I have become so good at it I sometimes catch myself in the mirror and scare myself. I carry my special apple seeds in my pocket and I don’t really care if I look like a man or laugh or have reveries of Adèle and wake up with my heart pounding.

But I don’t make jam anymore.