Chaste (a Short Story)



  Chaste

  A short story by

  Kimberly Russell

 

  Copyright © 2012 by Kimberly Russell

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Are Reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

 

  Also by Kimberly Russell

  Between Balloons

  The Truth about Lilly Barnes

  The Adoration of Emma Wylde (coming soon)

 

 

  Thank you, Deborah Bracken for working on the cover. You never disappoint.

  Thank you, Crystal Ibarra for reading and editing.

  Thank you to anyone who is reading this. I wouldn’t be here without you.

 

 

  Chaste

  There is the feeling of hurried hands shaking her awake. Colbie wakes with a start, thinking that maybe this time something is wrong. This time Alice forgot to blow out her candles and their house caught fire. It’s nothing though. It never is. Everything is fine, unless you think that a mother, standing in front of her daughter, only clothed in bikini bottoms is wrong. In her life though, this is not a cause for concern. In fact, this is the preferred dress code.

  Alice has been playing this game with Colbie for as long as she can remember. When the sun starts to warm the air around them, and humidity goes into effect, she puts Colbie in the car and they drive until they hit the crest of water. She drives until they hit sand.

  So when Alice wakes Colbie up in the middle of the night to start their journey, you can say that she is less than thrilled. Even more so when she realizes that it is Tuesday, a school night. Colbie protests and in usual fashion, she gets made fun of.

  “Come on, Grandma. Let’s get this show on the road.” Grandma. That is what her mother calls her.

  The first time Alice called her Grandma was on a night like tonight. She was six years old and refused to get out of bed. She, of course, lost the battle after being thrown over her mother’s shoulder and into the car. She never understood Alice’s sudden impulses or schemes. She detested being a part of them. If it wasn’t the beach it could be riding a trolley in San Francisco (they live in Texas), calling a fortune teller on a 1-800 number in the middle of the night, or selling their car to pay for a trampoline. Whatever it was, Alice dragged Colbie with her like a ragdoll. Luckily, this time it was the beach, which wasn’t Colbie’s favorite place, but probably wasn’t Alice’s worst idea either (for the record, being without a car really sucked).

  Colbie liked the feel of sand squishing in between her toes, but other than that, the whole experience was lost on her. The ocean scares Colbie, but not in the way you might think. She is fully capable in her swimming abilities. She is not scared of ocean life that is lurking below. It is the waves that she does not trust. She understands that the wind causes waves. She gets that the wind transfers some of its energy to the water, through friction between the air molecules and the water molecules. She comprehends the scientific reasoning behind waves. What gets her is how uncontrollable it all is. It frightens her how the waves just keep lapping over a person’s feet, never stopping or giving pause. Even if you wanted them to stop, they wouldn’t. You could put a large object in the ocean and it would hardly register distress in the waves; they would keep lapping all around. Don’t even get her started on hurricanes. You can’t catch her near this place during hurricane season.

  She couldn’t be any more tired if she tried. Colbie is silent during the car ride, drifting in and out of sleep. It is best that way; she doesn’t have the energy to listen to Alice’s stories or theories and she most certainly doesn’t have the energy to come up with a rebuttal.

  When they arrive at the beach, Alice begins to disrobe immediately, throwing her shirt on the hood of the car, her shorts in the beginnings of the sand, and kicking off her shoes where the sand is wet. Colbie gradually makes her way to the ocean picking up Alice’s belongings as Alice slides her way to the water. Their roles have always been reversed. Always. She shouldn’t be picking up after her mother.

  She finds a large piece of wood that has drifted onto the sand and parks on top of it.

  “The water feels great, Colbie. Come get in.”

  That was more of a command than an invitation. She considers it for a moment until she remembers she didn’t even pack a bathing suit. She is wearing yoga pants and a blue hoodie she picked up at the mall when the months were colder.

  Colbie doesn’t answer her because, really, Alice doesn’t need one. Alice doesn’t really need Colbie in particular; she just hates to be alone.

  The sky is still dark; the sun won’t be up for several more hours. The sky is a clear black with stars smattered across it. The moon hangs heavy, shining across the water, leaving a path of light that leads to Alice. She tries to enjoy the moment and not think about how she is possibly getting behind at school.

  Colbie has scheduled five of these days into her schedule. She calls them “Alice Days”. Days like today when her mother, Alice, decides she has to see the ocean. Days when Alice decides she simply can’t get out of bed and doesn’t want to be left alone. Days when Alice decides that Colbie’s eyes are the perfect shade of blue and she must paint them. She has scheduled five of these days for the year but she is still in the first semester and this makes day number three already.

  Alice does seem particularly disturbed as of late. Colbie can tell that she hasn’t been eating very well and is rarely sleeping. She would like to think it is because she is graduating and leaving in six months, but if we are being honest she knows that she doesn’t mean that much to her.

  When Colbie was a child she was very confused about Alice’s role. She was confused about why she was there, or even why she was in a house with this woman. She later started to get a grasp on the parent – child relationship through her best friend, Maria. She saw that Maria had a woman that always took care of her. Colbie saw this woman feeding Maria and helping her with homework. She would hug and kiss her and pick her up from school every day.

  The woman that lived with Colbie didn’t really take care of her.

  They never hugged.

  Alice always had fruits and vegetables in the cold box in the kitchen and Colbie would eat them on a plate, but Alice said she didn’t run a restaurant; whatever that was. She didn’t pick her up from school, she took the bus. Colbie started to hear Maria and the other kids in school call these women ‘mom’ or sometimes ‘mommy’. Colbie tried calling Alice mommy one day, but Alice quickly corrected her saying that, she was “no one’s mommy, that notion would stifle her soul”, whatever that was.

  When Colbie got older, Alice wanted to be called Aleetheea, but she would not oblige. If she couldn’t call her mom, she certainly wasn’t going to call her some fancy version of her real name.

  Colbie once heard Alice say that she hates their last name, Steward. Colbie didn’t see anything wrong with it, it sounded simple but strong to her, but Alice probably would rather it be Rain or Darkness or some bullshit like that. But, that is the way Alice is, and there was nothing Colbie could do to change it.

  Colbie hated Alice Days. There wasn’t a more clear way for Colbie to be shown that she didn’t matter. Not to Alice at least. Colbie should have been something that happened to Alice not the other way aro
und.