Angie Kinghorn

Düsseldorf

It was a rainy night in Düsseldorf.  My ladies wanted to leave this Rhineland for the dry heat of home, but while they bundled up against the evening chill, the air and rain off the river left me refreshed, like a brittle plant finally watered and coming into bloom.

Düsseldorf tasted like fresh bread and freedom, all the more so because my time there was limited.  My Düsseldorf was a vivid dreamland: Frank Gehry designed buildings in the skyline, the all-consuming mania of fashion week, the luxury of shopping on the Konigsallee with my face unveiled.

My father had been clear on the rules of my exile to Germany.  I was not, under any circumstances, to return to any of our residences without his permission.  Not until I’d learned German and satisfied my tutor’s standards for what constituted a thorough understanding of the people and the culture.  Ironically, this included a thorough understanding of Western dress and customs, though once I was called back home I would be forbidden these things once more.

My arguments that it would help my education if I were allowed to go to school or out to bars or restaurants with these Germans were rebuked so fiercely that I dared not broach the topic again.

To provoke my father was madness.

And who was I, a mere woman, to question a sultan?  I supposed I should be grateful for this respite from the desert, this chance for freedom, even if it was fleeting.  My brothers were granted this privilege, but not my older sisters.  They were all married with several children by the time they were my age.

Still, I was due to return to the desert, to veils and hot air and submission, in a little less than a month.  I had a passport and the not inconsiderable sum my father had set aside in a local bank for my comforts.

Obviously, I would have to leave Düsseldorf.  Where could I go?  Would they find me?

I could also find someone here and marry.  Either of my tutors would a decent candidate.  He could never come home with me, and if I were to return without my father’s permission as a married woman … well, I might as well be dead.  But if I were to stay here with a husband, this life, this simple happiness found by the river, in the old and new of the city together, in tripping on cobblestones, in sipping Altbier (whatever that may taste like), might be mine.

Sleep eluded me and I sat up most of the night in the window seat, the glass cracked to let in the breeze.  When I finally dozed off I was awakened by the drunken singing of a rugby squad leaving the bar across the street.  A quick peek out the window showed them using something akin to a scrum to hold each other up as they sang bawdy verses insulting the masculinity of the entire city of Cologne.

I laughed.

And in that moment, I knew what my decision would be.

*** This is a fiction post for the online writer’s group Write on Edge.  The prompt: “I challenge you with this opening line.  ‘It was a rainy night in Düsseldorf.’  You have 500 words.”

Red letters

I was always meant to be Joseph’s.  What better sign than being born with his name tattooed onto my leathery skin?  From boyhood, I was his constant companion, sitting on shelf after shelf until we arrived here at our permanent home, this cabin on the lake.  Here he brought his wife, and inside my pages, joined her name to his.  With each baby, with each marriage, with each death, I was inked again.  Bearing witness.
When he took me to the porch each morning, I absorbed the oils from his fingers and the salt of his sorrows, and in return he took peace from my pages.  From his lap I watched his lips move over my stories; his calloused hands carefully turning pages that crinkled like flakes of croissants.  He paused to sip his coffee, staring out at the early morning fog on the lake.  And he talked to God, and to me, like we were old friends.
We put the children to bed together every night with a story.  Tiny Elizabeth, all dimpled cheeks and giggles, and her older brother David, literal to a fault, asking his father why the family hadn’t given away their money since Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven?  Why were they living here at the lake when God called them to feed his sheep?  There weren’t even any sheep at the lake.  And why did they pray for the troops when Jesus said to love your enemies and bless those who curse you?  David went on like this every night until Joseph finally said “Enough, now.  Goodnight.”
David came to me often, restless, looking for answers in the place his father found his.  But I had none for him.  I watched from the table on the porch as he tried to find peace in pill bottles and vodka, and Joseph’s tears and raspy voice told me what I already knew about the rest of David’s life.
And then one day Joseph inscribed the details of David’s marriage along with the rest.
When David came to visit, to record the birth of his son in his own hand, his touch was foreign on my pages.  And though they were soft, those hands were not gentle.  He prayed over my pages and shocked me with his transgressions.  Married just a year, but lost as ever.
When I couldn’t yield the answers he wanted, the rationalization for his decisions, the forgiveness for his sin, he slammed me down and ripped out a page of Matthew.
And then I heard him, down at the woodpile, and realized what page he had taken.
“And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.  It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”
Screams.
Sirens.
Then silence.
So together, David, Joseph, and I were all ripped into pieces.
But Joseph has come back to me.  We are broken, torn; but we are together, even as the fresh ink scars both of us, and his tears run down my pages as if they are my own. 

***This piece is for the online writers’ group Write on Edge (formerly the Red Dress Club).  
The prompt  was for memoir, but I ended up writing fiction.  I welcome all constructive criticism. 

The prompt: Do objects have a memory? Does a rocking chair hold the essence of the snuggles it has witnessed? Does a pottery mug remember the comforting warmth it offered a struggling soul? The dictionary defines personification as “the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.” Tell a piece of your story from the point of view of an object who bore witness in 400 words or less.

As we really are

In the middle of my grandmother’s 100th birthday party, somewhere after the bread pudding but before the champagne toast, the photographer came to our end of the table.  

We have endless photos for our children of the two of us, smiling into the camera.  The laptop is packed with family shots where someone is tired, cranky, not smiling, or sticking a tongue out for posterity.  Even if everyone is smiling, it tends to look like we’re candidates for a police lineup. 

I wanted to capture a image of just the two of us; a slice of the evening that will one day let our children see that the relationship between their mother and father is richer and deeper than they imagined when they saw us only as purveyors of food, toys, and hugs.  

I told Mark what I had in mind, and he thought it was sappy.  “Why would you want to snuggle my face in a picture?” he asked.

“Just trust me,” I said, leaning into him, letting my face settle next to his, loving the familiarity of our planes and curves fitting together.  I wanted this photo so our kids could see us one day as we are together, as we are when no one is watching.

He sighed, leaned into me, and we both exhaled and relaxed into each other.

The shutter must have clicked, but I don’t remember hearing it.
  

**This is a memoir piece for Write on Edge, an online writers’ workshop.  The prompt: This week, I’m asking you to take us into the moment your favorite photograph of yourself was taken, to show us who you were then and what the photograph means–in 300 words.

Threads of a memory

The tulle was finely woven, fluid as silk stockings.  Intricate flowers of lace twined around the whole border, an alencon halo.  Alencon.  I whispered the word, tasting its strange French flavor.  My breath caught with the creamy threads as they snagged on the dry skin of my hand.
When I eased the comb into my hair, it tugged at my roots, whispering that the 32 years of marriage it represented were solid, substantial.  I slid in pins to anchor it, then it trailed me down the aisle. 


Something old.  Borrowed.  A thing of fragile beauty, crafted to endure.

** This is a memoir piece written for Write on Edge (formerly The Red Dress Club), an online community for writers.  It’s short, because we were given a limit of 100 words.  (Mine clocked in at 98.)  
The prompt: This week I want you to conjure something. An object, a person, a feeling, a color, a season- whatever you like.  But don’t tell me what it is, conjure it.