flash fiction friday #86
flash fiction friday #86 trigger: write a piece inspired by another artwork and decide whether to reveal inspiration to reader before or after.
rules of engagement:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusions, structural/thematic challenges, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.09a.m. friday, trinbago time; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago time.*
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, song or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to this/my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment here).
you may join in at any time prior to deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on this/my trigger-post or fasbook note or instastory or whaever, once we can all read it; please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends online).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago time.*
[in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about these deadlines 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...if nobody fffs i leave the same trigger up until at least 1person other than myself writes a piece]*
write fresh!
walk good.
posted by sweet trini @ 12:17 pm
7 comments
7 Comments:
my fff#86@ https://urbanfolktales.blogspot.com/2020/06/fff86.html
walk good.
This comment has been removed by the author.
“Who she? That one ain’t never even been to Tobago self”
This was my mother’s response when I asked her about my aunt who could, and would, never miss the opportunity to tell you a story about when she used to be a Radio City Rockette in her young days.
“That must be a story she make up after reading something in a book or in the newspaper when we were children and out of many this one like it stick.”
Meanwhile, while mummy and me talkin in the kitchen is only antics and dramatics in the living room. My Aunt is there in the middle of the living room, after making us clear a space of course, doing her one party trick, the same at every family gathering.
“ A 5,6,7,8 knee knee, spin bevel, side side, head. Shoulders back, long arch. Deep bevel, toes front heels together, elbow chin, shoulder smile, dancing her heart out calling each move out loud as she popped her head and smiled with bright eyes. Like a hokey drill sergeant. After which she’d slowly lower herself into her chair near the window and yell out as she sat “aaaah boy, choreo in yuh ass yuh know”, before lighting a cigarette and staring outside, tapping her feet and reliving her glory days.
The adults around, my other aunts and uncles, my dad would shake their heads while the children would crack all the way up because truthfully as a team of one this display really just left her looking for want of a better word crazy.
By the time we were teens it was obvious that my parents could no longer care for my aunt who had continued to slip further into whatever her ailment was. And well you know Caribbean parents so they never actually told us if she had been tested for something and if so what she had been diagnosed with. All we knew is that she was being moved into a home where she could have constant supervision and care. We would visit her every other week and then for my two sisters and I that turned into once a month and by the time it was time for me to leave for college I think I’d probably seen her once for the year.
My first year of college passed with a blur. I had the best time ever. I did not come home that first Christmas or even the next summer but like the girl on the radio really say, “Trini Christmas is the best”. and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I had to go home. My girlfriend at the time invited me to come with her to be a part of her family’s Christmas tradition of going to see the Radio City Rockettes. I wasn’t too interested in going to be honest but she made such a big deal about it that I agreed. Lucky too, that things worked out because it happened to fall on the last day of my finals which still gave me the next day to pack all my things before heading home to Trinidad. Now the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular is a big deal with people coming from all around the world to witness it live. I mean it really was spectacular from the time we walked through the door. I mean The decorations, the lights and costumes and of course the dancing was amazing. By the end of the fifth or so dance I found that I kept tearing up and If you know me at all, then you know that weepy is just not my style.
I excused myself and went to the restroom to splash some water on my face hoping to get a grip on my emotions. On the way back in I was held at the door until the scene finished and there was applause and then rushed back to my seat just as they went into the last dance of the first half. People screamed and clapped wildly when the dancers appeared onstage in a red, white and gold regiment costume. It was the toy soldier routine; apparently a favorite. Well chupidy me there again with teary eyes in the people place and not being able to understand why. SO I decide let me just concentrate on the dancer dead center the lineup. And just like that I could see in mih mind my good good aunt in the middle of my living room doing the exact same dance she always did for us every year but somehow her every move the moves that I’d been seeing all my life were spot on with what I was seeing here happening on the stage. I mean move for move. By a couple minutes in I could call out the moves as they were happening as I’d heard my aunt do time and time again in my home when we were children.
“But what shit is this?”
It was all I could do not to call out “choreo in yuh ass!” as they took their bow.
I couldn’t believe or understand. I’d definitely have to ask my mother again when I got home.
Well with the excitement of seeing everyone that I hadn’t seen for eighteen months, I clean forget the dancing and too busy beating mih body all over the place.
Just before it was time for me to go back to school mummy tell me that I should probably go with them to see mih aunt because she was going down and probably wouldn’t be around by the time I got back.
So, we go up thereand I’m shocked because this not the huge energy that I remember from my teens. There is an old woman in her place. A little old woman in a dressing gown that’s open over some loose trousers sitting looking out the window.
“Hey Lady!”
My mother calls out when we are all in the room. My aunt turns and looks at us and thankfully she immediately breaks into a smile. I release the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“Sit down, sit down allyuh in mih light!” She smiled.
I smiled. There she came. And as she warmed she was witty and coherent and even remembered our names. When it came my turn to be interrogated I told her that I was in the middle of school in New York City. Well she didn’t need any more gas than that! No sir she was ready to go. She jumped out of her chair lit a cigarette and started to tell us all about how she used to be a Radio City Rockette back in her days of living in New York. Before we knew it we had cleared a spot in her room and she struck a mean tableau; 5,6,5,6,7,8 and there she was doing her best rendition of the moves that she’d done for us so many times before. A little slower and without as much reach and charge but it was all there. She sat and lit another cigarette.
“Choreo in yuh ass yes! Choreo in yuh whole ass!”
We all laughed. It was a great time. By the time we were ready to leave she was out the window again tapping her foot lost in her memories from her time as a Radio City Rockette. When we got home I started to pack and my my mind fell on the time we had just had.
“Mummy come and see this!” I showed her clips of the Rockettes dancing, some from shows and some rehearsals. I showed how all these years my aunt had been dead on with her dancing even the way she named each move during their rehearsals.
“Well boy I don’t know nah.” Mummy shook her head slowly. “ Truth stranger than fiction.”
“Truth stranger than fiction? That’s all you have?”
“Well what you really want me to say? We had no cable, we had no internet in my day. They didn’t come here on tour. She never leave Trinidad much less live in New York so it’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. Ask God when you see him.”
I left Trinidad the next day and got back to school. Just when I had finished unpacking and getting my room settled my room phone rang.
“Well boy yuh hadda turn and come right back because yuh Aunt gone. See if you could write something nice to read in the funeral.” It was the last thing my mother said to me before she rang off.
Can’t say I was shocked but it hurt a little more than I thought it would. I sat in the darkness of the plane making notes on my phone trying to capture my thoughts about my aunt as I’d last seen her a few days ago.
“We think we know it all but really we have no idea, no real grasp about the way life works.” I wrote, “Some of us are here right now simply biding time on the way from somewhere or on the way to somewhere else without being fettered to space or time. Maybe that’s part of the way that mental illness works. It’s the way I think it worked for my Aunt. Safe flight Aunty. Thanks for the laughs. Where ever your next stop is I hope you get to dance. You deserve it.”
I smiled and put down my phone; then I picked it back up.
“GIh dem choreo in they ass!”
inspired by a random clip of the Rockettes in rehearsal for their Christmas spectacular 2018
@winter, very sweet, this one...
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