The Taste of Olives
I watched Mom from across the room, my stomach in knots. Memories of her criticizing my college major and my tiny apartment with its cold concrete floors remained.
She hovered near the appetizers at my brother's birthday party. I walked over and froze. Mom popped an olive into her mouth and smiled.
"Mom?"
She looked up. "Yes, Stacy?"
"You just… ate an olive."
She scarfed down another. "Delicious, aren't they?"
I shook my head. Her hatred of olives had been seared into my childhood.
“Mom, you hate olives.”
Her hand stopped midair. “Do I?” she asked, voice shaky.
Silence thickened.
Her bottom lip quivered.
I stood beside her, twisting my napkin. "Mom, are you okay?"
Child-like fright washed over her, the same look I'd worn years ago. "I don't know," she whispered.
I stepped forward to comfort her, then bristled remembering every criticism she'd delivered.
“It’s okay. We’ll figure this out together.” Her look of confusion melted into relief. She squeezed my hand, something she hadn’t done in years.
Over the next two weeks I worried more. She misplaced her phone several times, called my brother our late father's name, and repeated the same story twice in one dinner.
At the clinic, the neurologist confirmed my growing dread: early-stage dementia.
Tears slid down my cheeks.
Stunned and afraid, I informed my siblings, and we made a plan.
I taped a whiteboard to her kitchen wall. I wrote everyone’s names, and started assigning pieces of her life—doctor’s appointments to my brother, groceries to my sister, daily check-ins and bills to me—because caring for her had become too much for only one of us.
My brother sighed when I asked him to take over her doctor appointments.
“I can’t always leave work,” he said.
"Neither can I," I snapped. "But somebody has to. If you schedule them, we can rotate taking her.”
My sister stared at the ground before finally agreeing to get her groceries.
Outside, the neighbor's dog began to bark, filling the awkward silence.
Even after delegating tasks, my phone still rang first when something went wrong. How was I the one left carrying the load?
The following week, Mom stood in the kitchen, staring at her pill organizer.
"Tuesday?"
“It’s Thursday,” I said gently, pointing to the oversized calendar.
She frowned, "Good thing you're here to babysit me."
At Sunday dinner, my brother scheduled her upcoming appointments onto her phone, while my sister promised to go grocery shopping for her.
Mom looked at us. “I don’t know what I’d do without you all.”
I shifted uncomfortably. Gratitude hadn't been Mom's strong suit.
She reached for another olive. “Can you believe I spent years hating these?”
“You spent years making the rest of us hate them too,” I said.
My siblings chuckled, but Mom didn't laugh. She kept staring at the small, dark fruit in her hand.
I remembered the woman who'd found fault with all my choices.
As Mom turned the olive between her fingers, searching for a memory that wasn't there, I realized I'd give anything to argue with that woman one more time.
Barb DeMoney is a writer whose work spans romance, horror, comedy, thriller, and mystery. Her stories have appeared in Micromance Magazine, Flash Phantoms, Lunch Ticket, Rat Bag Lit, and Sudden Flash among others. When not writing, Barb enjoys hiking, yoga, reading, concerts, and spending time with her family and dogs.
Anna
The River Oder forms a natural border between Poland and Germany as it travels north towards the Baltic Sea. If you follow the river south, however, you will eventually reach the town of Borzirac, where I found myself in the late summer of 2015. I had been hired to teach English at a private school and it was there that I met Anna. She was in her late sixties, and through her smile she gave the impression of someone who had a lot of secrets. Over the course of our lessons together, she revealed to me that her mother had died recently and she had never known her father. During what was to be our last meeting, she started telling me about the village where her mother grew up during the Second World War.
“Everybody was afraid of them,” Anna said.
The next thing I know, I'm standing in a forest surrounded by soldiers.
“Don't worry,” a muffled voice says – I'm not sure if it's Anna's. “Nobody can see you.”
One man points his rifle in my direction, as if sensing my presence. Another soldier says something in Russian and the men, all in green uniforms, creep towards the edge of the forest. I follow them out into a clearing where I see a small house with a steep sloping roof.
“My grandmother's house,” says the voice. “Quickly!”
The front door is ajar. Inside, the light from an open fire fills the room. A girl is sitting at a table and weeping.
“What's the matter?” says a woman approaching.
“I don't want to wear these clothes,” the girl says. She is dressed like an old woman, even though she looks about twelve years old.
“If you don't wear these clothes, the soldiers will hurt you.”
There is fear and anger in the woman's voice. She pulls a red silk scarf over the girl's head, then fetches a walking stick from the other side of the room.
“Now, walk like I showed you.”
The girl, stooping slightly, takes hold of the walking stick and shuffles forward on the creaking floorboards.
“Good, but remember to keep your head down so that the soldiers cannot see your face.”
“Enough,” said Anna.
I was back in the classroom, feeling as though I had awoken from a dream.
“What just happened?” I asked, but Anna was already at the door. As she turned to say goodbye, I noticed something red in her hand. A scarf.
That evening, walking home along the bank of the river, I stopped at the Russian Army monument, discreetly placed behind some trees. It was impossible to tell the heroes from the villains among all the names of soldiers killed in the Upper Silesian offensive of 1945. The only thing I was certain of at that moment was the mighty rush of water beside me.
A native of north-west England, John has been writing poetry and prose for a good few years now. He also teaches English as a foreign language.
Hanged by a Hair or A Murder Mystery Minimised
This story was originally published in 1916.
The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it.
It was therefore time to call in the great detective.
He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope.
"Ha! ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the dead man's coat. "The mystery is now solved."
He held up the hair.
"Listen," he said, "we have only to find the man who lost this hair and the criminal is in our hands."
The inexorable chain of logic was complete.
The detective set himself to the search.
For four days and nights he moved, unobserved, through the streets of New York scanning closely every face he passed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.
On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached below his ears. The man was about to go on board the Gloritania.
The detective followed him on board.
"Arrest him!" he said, and then drawing himself to his full height, he brandished aloft the hair.
"This is his," said the great detective. "It proves his guilt."
"Remove his hat," said the ship's captain sternly.
They did so.
The man was entirely bald.
"Ha!" said the great detective without a moment of hesitation. "He has committed not one murder but about a million."
Stephen Leacock (30 December 1869 – 28 March 1944) was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humourist. From 1915 to 1925, he was the best-known English-speaking humourist in the world. (Biography borrowed from Wikipedia)
Death Omens in Unwashed Feathers
A single black feather falls into a muddy puddle as I walk down the sidewalk. I tell my babushka-clad grandmother when I get to her place. She’s trained me to see omens in everything. Homeschool for the superstitious.
“You’ll die in a flood,” she squawks from the couch.
I laugh and pat her head. She flicks me off with a gnarled finger. To get her back, when I go, I leave the TV on the good news, and I leave the remote on the other side of the room.
On the way home, dark pimples of clouds fester on the horizon. I roll sunglass-covered eyes at a crow perched on a swinging traffic light. Death omens be damned, it’s nice out.
Still, my heartbeat drums as rain begins to pound the windshield. Hands shaking, wipers flapping, I pull into a parking lot to be safe. I’m still laughing at my silliness when the deluge comes roaring around the strip mall. The engine stalls when the water hits. Panic rips through me as I scrabble for the door.
I picture my grandmother sitting on her couch. She’s going to tell me I told you so.
Julia Rajagopalan is a writer of speculative and literary fiction who lives just outside of Detroit. She's a member of the SFWA and the HWA. To read more of her stories, check out her website: http://JuliaRajagopalan.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)