A Single Tear

Upon returning from an ordinary shopping trip to the nearest other small town, I turned to my friend who was driving her car with great composure, we saw each other, yet spoke no word, an unusual pause for us. Words retreated to the shade of our throats; to rest awhile as our eyes focused on the hidden years of forgotten joy washed away by inevitable flash floods of tears.

I found myself slipping into a light blue mood somewhere between grey sky and green lawns. Her absent voice resonating in the hollow heart of the small vehicle, the space filled with a blanket of forgiveness that permeated our common area; we were daughters, we were mothers, women of trust and tedium.

‘Twelve years’, she said’ and not a single tear, then last week’ she confided her impulse to spontaneously allow herself to grieve a flow of what she hesitated to feel as forgiveness;. a strange quietude filling her profile as she drove with hands on the wheel and mind in the past; oddly present, mostly whole.

A rare calm brushed over the day, I knew that the moment would hang about us, unspoken between calls to needs and chores of a tidy life, separate, disparate, yet held aloft by silk threads of a strong yet gentler nature. Trials and trauma swept aside for the passage of our present necessities, we walked in diverse aisles of commercial must; obeying the do, the don’t of shopping lists, and as we resurfaced, we saw in each other the wounded animal, the tender child we had been, and we knew that we had come to the traverse where the road forks away from pain.

Away from years we drag, tears we dry before they swell. Gutted from the spent drama, we fell softly into the routine of cathartic consumption, the food of our days, the taste of common delights affordable to the means of ordinary women in an extraordinary mood. We ditched our worn out truths with a fork, and poked fun at the small miseries of a miserable age in times of televised troubles and never ending wars; we were free.

Free from the need to forgive, free to give the past permission to exit at the nearest overpass. We shook our heads in sympathy for worn out emotions and basked in empathetic acceptance. She reached out to the memory of her own mother, within the depth of her gaze. I silently laid mine to rest across the ocean, inhaling the vapors of one single tear on the car window toward my present world.

Losing Your Tongue

Losing Your Tongue

Ici je raconte la soif des livres cracquelés, je pronounce les silences riches d’émotions contenues dans chaque cellule désséchée. C’est ainsi que je retrace les voyages internisés sous ciel torride.

This is how we lose our mother tongue; that first language to tease our seat of knowledge. I lost my own bearings in the sand, one word at a time, and with it, the cultural difference it carried. The mental map folded and creased by cold letters from ‘home’. The names of objects which I found in new surroundings replaced accurate adjectives which I no longer used. This is how devolution of elocution came upon me, rapidly dropping onto the arid soil of the new places. So I spoke faster to mask the sense of loss. I learned every word in the context of found books and discarded papers. I avidly read every word of advertisement, front to back and again. The winds blew all perception as I grieved a part of self whom I had ill known.

If language is the vehicle of cultural identity, I became a split personality the day I decided to leave my birthplace. Romantic notions aside, I divested myself of a heavy mantle of propriety and gradually took on an assumed personae who spoke the words of miners and vagrants that inhabited the western desert. With every name of a rock and each tool of the trade, I discarded years of experience in both rural and urban way of French life, like sand dropped from my pockets, and disseminated in dunes forevermore.

In retrospect, a youth spent between a rigid city education during school, and hard labor at vacation time in my ancestral village, had previously prepared me for dual adaptation; as if I had been plugged into different circuits all along. I had already suffered the innate clan mentality which ostracizes others and excludes them from pleasant conversation. Family stared and sneered at me each time I used correct language in daily speech. Little ‘City girl me’ spoke Latin and whatever other “things” she learned there. On the other side of the cultural divide; upon my return to the renaissance hilltop of ancient knowledge ‘Country me’ was severely chastised for using spontaneous expressions in the Patois dialect of my ancestors. Every holiday was an exercise in Cartesian discipline, as much as I favored the satisfaction of learning, I felt a strange attachment for the simpler expression of my country folk. No time to use fancy phrases between chores. Three little words and turn around. I thrived there, for awhile.

The thirst for expanded knowledge would always stir, anywhere, and with it, the hunt for communication. Books were my primary source of American English; they were left as gifts, offered by temporary anonymous residents in the abandoned shacks which pepper the far landscape of the Great Basin. All I had to do was to find material before the pack-

rats did. From partially chewed newsprint to pristine Vonnegut, I ended up talking like an old Reader’s Digest magazine, and had the sense of humor of a third grader. It was easy to make me laugh, everything seemed somewhat funny to me.

“You’ll never be one of us” said the miner to me. Neither budging nor twitching, I felt a tear welling at the tip of my lashes, so I turned silently and felt the man’s hand hovering close to my shoulder. He hesitated and bent his head whispering “I don’t mean it like that”. I knew what he meant, but that was the last act of separation for the isolated woman I had become. The desert had become its own dimension between past and present. That unassuming man had given some food to our little family, he had provided water and blankets; probably because somewhere, he had children and a wife who would not live on the desert floor. His gestures, as those of other miners spoke of the division. “That is not bad – really - you don’t want to become like us out here” he added twisting his rough hands, I consoled him with a dismissive “I understand”. (No, I did not!) I was bent on chameleonizing my adoptive environment. Not to fit in, but to live in.

When the children were of school age, I was summoned to the office and severely admonished for speaking our language to them. I was told that I was confusing the children, and they were confusing the class therefore I should immediately stop. That was another snip of the cultural scissor, a surgical strike precisely delivered to my insecure seat of emotions. The fear of deportation looming as I feared they (whoever they were) would find out that we had no utilities, a public sin far worse than difference of language. I had been told that my children and I would be cleaved asunder if the authorities found that cold water and candles were inadequate situations to raise little Americans.

I reluctantly taught mostly flat English and kept the French for bonding chores only; ‘va te laver les mains - fait la vaisselle - et tes chaussures’ the daily commands of a quasi normal life. So we carried our water in jugs for miles and cooked on makeshift grills over deadwood embers. Life tasted good in any language. And the kids could generally read, write and count before teachers got ‘a’hold of their brains too. Sand is the ideal write –erase board, and twigs abound in nature. What is love for?

It was in Tecopa California that I realized that I had gained some track on the runaway train of language. I met a lady at the local Post Office who invited me to her local home extension of the Inyo-Kern library. For the next few months I read much of the little shelf full of donated serious literature and even perused saccharine romance before dutifully returning each and moving on. I no longer groped for new words whenever I encountered rare prospectors or geology students along our daily food foraging in Death Valley, but when I arrived at whatever hovel or cave I called home, the walls closed in on the fact that I was alone (with three small children) and my mind spoke no French. Even my dreams resisted the old language; they were now silent movies, gesticulating on an ethereal theater within. No color, no odor, I was dead to the old world for several years.

Societal scissors had severed the cords. I had chosen not to mend the wounds; perhaps to protect the family unit, or was it to forget the pains carried by my first language, my first life.

In the Face of Time:

A tiny fissure suddenly appeared above my lip, safely tucked in a shy smile. The toothbrush hid it, then revealed it between alternate gestures. Like a sin come to roost upon my ego, it highlighted vanity in one surreptitious glance.

Zero weather by day and minus by night had carved this latest assault on my good side. A pitiless blow to fair complexion or natural consequence to reckless behavior?. Time passed over me with neither pause nor respect. The mirror was to deliver blotchy news of seasonal excess in the beloved outdoors.

My loss of grip upon eternity had loosened a string which held features to ossature; as if the puppet master had abdicated his role upon such a rebellious visage. I saw the tendons hinging jaws with mannequin precision. I chewed and spewed and swirled the foam of shame in furious toothbrushing routine.

The crimp of skin now visible under light, a vertical line, a tiny scar of a harsh life risible in sun and snow. I examined patterns of ancestry. Mother had suffered the rigors of expectation in a skin obsessed culture, she had lived with a chain smoker and used her fair share of beauty products on a lifelong basis--to no avail.
Grand-Mother had never considered skincare an essential part of womanhood and yet had fared quite well in the hereditary past. I have also lived with chain smokers, first father then husband. I have left the temperate verdant South of France to run wild with my children in the American deserts..

Wherever I was to park my small mirror, a slow tan was to obfuscate any flaws in my freckled face. I did not attempt to manage sun damage. Neither mine nor tailing mounds of alkaline insult could ruin my determination to survive the elements between water wells or rare salt ponds.

Nor did I slather creams and lotions, much to mother's frustration after reminders and strict orders in letters. I remembered a youth of avoidance and terror. No way to escape the lotion wielding matriarch, bent on cornering me with her dreaded tubes of the newest gunk. Her intent being of producing a thoroughly marriageable damsel to some future suitor of largest means ( and I mean rich)

The deep trenches in her face reminded me of the futility of her expense. I often ran off to school balancing my leather satchel on one hand and a wash-mitten in the other sloughing off the odious goo from cheeks, hair and eyes till I could see the road ahead to flee from the scent and the assault..

Hello wrinkle mine, earned in time through gravel and dirt, through sand storm and wind chill.

a short story: A Willow or Two.

this story was written during my desert years and eventually published in issue number two of the excellent literary magazine " Up The Staircase Quarterly" when i first dare venture into the submission mode.

A Willow or Two
by Nadine Sellers

The willow is trembling outside the window like a nervous peeping tom. An opaque pink haze has settled upon the night in town. Head resting on pillows, I hold a book open in my palm and count what would be my blessings - dinner dishes done ' no broken bones and more squash in the fridge. Then why do I feel so, so unsettled?

Sirens screech by on main street every hour and I keep thinking it' s Joe. I know these phone calls are from him; no one talks, but I stare at the phone with doubt every time this happens. I look at the phone now, it is about to ring, I will it. The noise reverberates through the apartment, so very loud that I cringe. I extend my arm slowly, I pick it up resolutely. Hello? Hello? No one answers; The breath is that of a woman, that woman. I sense her presence, in cell phone void from satellite space, where she feels safe to reach out and bother someone.

Air swells through the veils, playing shadow games upon twilight. The telephone is a dead animal, limp in my hand. An automated voice urges me to make a call or set the thing back on its base. I hang up obediently, absently. It is only a cheap outdated model. After Joe smashed the last three, I saved myself some expense and bought bottom of the line items; no fuss, no frills. You learn to live with bare minimum when possessions come to a premature ending. Most items are of disposable consequence; detach, detach!

Twenty six saucers ago I would have winced at the perennial losses, now I count the individual breakage as material recycling. Object-d'art accumulate faster than space to keep them in. Cumulus becomes burden. I can find yard sale tables and chairs faster than they were originally manufactured. I can drag home my friends' discarded rugs and curtains faster than Joe can stain them with dark wines, stale beers or greasy leftovers. Blessings or commination? At any other time I would reason this axiology; now, I breathe a shallow intake and expel dire thoughts in puny breaths. Too much has happened for too long, I have no resource but to lay there and save myself for the day I am free of fear, free of self.

Freedom is but a word, it used to be an ideology, an honorable illusion of youth. At first I had fancied myself free of parental bondage. Then I had jumped into premature marriage; many a woman can attest to the erroneous expectation of that theory. Of course, I liked many aspects of a concrete relationship, where can a girl get steady love and someone to lavish excess tenderness on? The dog pound would be a good place to start, but? Men don't shed so much hair, and the bond is of a different dimension.

Indoctrinated in the fine art of matrimony by a stern society, I love to love. I believe in deep binding, the ties that squeeze till they hurt. I derive joy from the lesser pain after the rain of tears. Need for closeness has brought severe hardship, and yet, I look at the phone, hoping Joe is there, contained in the safety of the object, close to my ear as I call the image of his sensitive face within my closed eyelids.

He will tell me he has learned so much. So much to suffer, so much to coerce through cluttered viscera. I should rescue a cat or cruise the anonymous mall in search of societal oblivion. I would frighten the meek, scare the weak who need me to entertain them, to perform a sad social dance for them. I am in mourning for a chunk of life spoiled, my life, my loss.

There are bookshelves full of how to for the enabler, the co-dependent and the forlorn. I am free to choose among prime debaucheries to prompt an avalanche of ill feelings. Boredom and sagging minds present fair excuses. Too easy to circulate in the halls of doubt. Too unfair to assign culpability for the decay of sweet and sour co-existence. Yes, yes, love was and still is a marvel of parapsychology, a revelatory animal chemistry. The forgotten novel weights upon my hand as I reach for the covers. A tear insists on teasing me all the way to my chin, damn it, I am solid and I refuse to cry!

By now, birds nestle quietly. From the darkness of the bedroom, I scan the shape of the tree swaying to the town pulse. It must be midnight on this sundry weekday. I should sleep. Work comes early to the dutiful. Leaves brush against one another rustling lightly. The scent of artemesia streams in the tender breeze . Cold punishes my bones with denial; dry pleasure, the ascetic response. My jaw aches with stoicism. I am a native in the plain, nature, my maternal foster spirit, I faint within.

Gravel crunch, obscene lights, a car door slams and I sit up. Not again, you fool! I sneer lazily at rushing anticipation. If I am free and I am well, why do I insist on hoping ? solace of same, same sadness, same anguish? Familiarity elicits replication at the cost of disgust. Stuck in a morose leitmotiv, I wallow in the pathos of melancholy. My body knows the sheets and the blanket settles, heavy as his hand, upon my hip on a rare night. I whine and whisper my way to sleep again.

Daylight brings me to shower, brush, comb, in blind robotic automation. Then on to eat with ritualistic Zen attention; the toast feels light and scabrous to the hand, elbows bend, butter melts. A sense of otherliness overcomes the spare conscience to find comfort in minutiae, consolation in detachment. Alone with spoon in hand, apple crunching loudly under tooth. No one to hear the mechanical tempo, no one to see the spoon drop on the tablecloth. I could sing if I wanted to, I could dance around the room to some innate cadence.

Amid myriad choices, my hand refuses to push the button, to turn the knob, to play the song. Silence is mine. I am stillness. I am silence'?

©Nadine Sellers

JUST A GIRL'S BIRTHDAY..

A desert short story ...

    Katie sits on her rock, west of town, watching a long gray dust trail winding its way to the bottom of the valley. She picks at a hangnail on her dirty little finger, I'm gonna be ten years old today, she tells the sand beneath her feet. Her chest swells under the tight yellow dress. A dusty trail rises out of the desert floor: it's payday and miners are racing to cash their checks and wet their tongues at the Water Hole.

    At the two-room school, today, the teacher brought pink punch and cookies and the kids wished Katie a "happy birthday", she liked that, just as she liked the other kids' special days. Now she is looking for her daddy. She has waited for two whole weeks. She taps her almost new shoes against the rock, wrings a lock of clean blond hair, confused. Happy thoughts collide with waves of fear.

    "It's payday and Mama said that she'd make a special dinner as soon as she had some money for groceries," Katie tells the wind. " I'll bet she'll make me a cake too, it's supposed to be a surprise!" she frowns "But what if Daddy doesn't come down from the mine, and what if he disappears again?" She tilts her head to shake away her anxiety, as if to convince herself. "No. I guess not: I heard Mama tell him it would be my birthday! I just can't wait!" her jaw set hard against the sun, she nods.

    The little girl suddenly realizes that she is squealing with anticipated delight, she looks around furtively and blushes. There is no one on the paved road yet: during the heat of the afternoon the miner's wives nap groggily or play cards in the trailers and old shacks of the small town. Cheap wine and dry whiskey make life more bearable for most of them.

    Katie had watched her mom struggle with headaches, time after time. On school-day mornings, the familiar throaty voice would groan from the backroom, with a few curses added and a clang for good effect. Katie would know it was time to get dressed and look for food in the cluttered cupboards (cold leftovers or dry cereal, if anything) her mother's snores would become loud again. That's about the only time she could feel safe.

    At three o'clock Katie would return from school. The trailer' d usually be empty and reek of a mix of stale beer and sour wine, beds not made, cigarette butts, bottles and cans strewn about carelessly as in a purposeful movie set.

    Katie had never liked that. Before she could sit at the foldout table to finish her homework, she'd clean the mess quickly and ever so efficiently. Soon, laughter would rise out of one or another of the trailers. Sometimes, cursing and yelling would resonate in the crowded park and she'd resign herself to another party and another lonely evening.

    But today was different! Today was her day. Ten years old, she was a big girl now. The trailer would be tidied up, Mama was supposed to have had her hair curled by a neighbor; she'd be all pretty and clean - yep! Today was pretty special!

    The voices of men could be heard over engine roars, and a few jeeps and old pickup trucks appeared at the Death Valley junction in a cloud of alkali dust. A couple of old diggers saw the little girl in her yellow dress and waved as they passed by the entrance to the trailer park. When she spotted her father among the can-holding bunch in the second jeep, she began to run after it.

    By the time she breathlessly arrived at the general store, she saw him, arm-in-arm with his buddies, heading for the bar across the street; so she slowed down and hid behind a mesquite bush to catch her breath. "It's no use..." she thought, "...no use, he forgot!" (big tears slowly streaked the dust on her cheeks. She angrily wiped them with her arm, smudging a muddy mess around her red eyes. She kicked a rock with her good shoes, half hoping to ruin them. Chin set hard and jaw clenched she muttered to herself "Everything's rotten anyway . . . so?"

    Darkness had come and it was a little cooler by then. Katie sneaked across the road and to the back window of the bar; she'd spent many a night there, watching the men get drunk and play pool. Too wise for her years, she had quietly observed life in the small towns and mining camps of the southwestern desert. Here in Death Valley the aggression was more concentrated than in many mining areas.

    Every other Friday the shopkeeper and the bartender got ready for the five o'clock invasion: the miners were coming down from the talc mines in the arid mountains. After two weeks underground the rowdy, thirsty horde was ripe for diversion, but what they called relaxation was strictly a matter of opinion.

    Tension was ever high in the subterranean tunnels and chambers. There was danger from explosions caused by careless powdermen, cave-ins from weak timbers, hard rocks loosened by the vibrations of the huge Wagners that carry the ore out of the mines. There were no women or children to absorb or release tense days and nights of work underground: they were considered distractions. Some said that women bring bad luck and weaken men; kids are a nuisance, fall in shafts and rile a good man.

    Katie knew the code of the mines; she lived by the miner's ethics and stayed out of the way. She didn't judge or question her father's way of life (those who were too curious or unhappy always ended up in a bad way.) She'd seen the wives leave their men, the children being sent to a grandmother or, worse yet, to foster homes in bigger towns.

    Katie just could not bear being away from Mama, and who would watch after Daddy when he was sick? Who would make the coffee to sober up her Mama? Her half-brothers were grown and long gone to the city. One was in jail. Someone had said the other had gone to Alaska to make big money and would never come back. They didn't write - they didn't care!

    The slender girl climbed on crates behind the bar and took up her secret position: from there she could observe all without being seen. Hands cupped like blinders she peeked in through the partially obscured glass and saw her father downing his usual shot of cheap rum at the rail. A pain cinched her stomach as she remembered his last promise: she had unwittingly witnessed the scene in the tiny hall; he had knelt before Mama and had tenderly vowed that, after that last ulcer attack, he wouldn't drink ever again.

    "Baby, honey bunch, I promise you I'll never touch a drop of hard liquor in this life"

    He had cooked a whole meal that weekend, Katie had found them giggling behind the open refrigerator door, she'd seen his hand slide under mama's dress too. For awhile Daddy had followed the doctor's orders. Mama's face had been sweet, almost pretty and the whole trailer had been filled with lightness for a time.

    Now Katie could hear men brag about the events of the week. There were stories to startle the meek and curses to shock the pure, but she'd heard them all; her favorites were the rattlesnake myths. She'd miss a few words while the jukebox blared its cry-in-your-beer country tunes, but she already knew them all by heart through constant repetition, the songs and the tall tales.

    One of the diggers famous for his snake stories was named after the reptile; old Rattlesnake Pete. He always told the scariest tales, which even the youngest of children didn't always believe when they heard them. Pete lurched clumsily out of the back door of the bar, hand to his fly. Katie ducked beneath some cardboard. Suddenly the wiry little miner stumbled against the corner of a wooden beer-case, and before Katie had time to climb down from her perch he had toppled the whole stack, cursing heaven and hell for it and kicking bits of splintered wood right and left.

    Katie flapped her thin arms to scramble out of the boxes but could not regain her balance. Pete fussed with his pants where a long wet stain worked its way to his cowboy boots. Big Swede and Katie's father had come out to see what all the racket was about. The girl sat there amid the debris, eyes wide and mouth open, fearful and perplexed.

    "What in th' hell'r you doin' in there? That ol' bitch sent you to spy on me, din't she? You no good for nothing brat!" Her father was yelling as he awkwardly lunged after her, flinging trash out of his way. Katie's head swung from side to side as he hit her, hard.

    "No Daddy! No!" her elbow up above her forehead, she cowered.

    "You're no good, just like your mother - never been any damn good! Always wants money - is that what you here for, my money?"

    Katie sobbed miserably, "Nooo . . ." blond curls clung to tears.

    Her Daddy reached out to shake her, but Swede had regained his composure, and he and Pete yanked him up, Pete held him against the back door of the bar and danced around to avoid his pointy boots.

    "Go on, go on home." Swede turned his big head and softly urged the girl. "We'll bring him back soon as he's sobered up a bit - go on! Quick!" He, at least, was never mean. She suspected he was the father of some little girl, somewhere and that he missed that child very much. She'd heard many a gyppo tramp talk about an ex wife and a batch of kids who didn't take to the desolate life on the desert floor. By the third drink the photos came out of shredded wallets and bad wives became worse in the memories of the lonely.

    Katie climbed out of the wreckage and backed away into the darkness. She hesitated awhile and then dashed for the trailer park, fearing to look back.

    When she reached the gravel driveway Katie immediately sensed that something was wrong; there was more light than usual in the seedy rows of trailers. The tamarisks cast long shadows and the breeze brought clear bursts of loud voices speaking in urgent tones. The sheriff's car was parked in her family's row. All the women from the park were there and a couple of old miners stood around under the light from the pole lamp at the end of the dirt road. As she approached the crowd she realized they were all in front of her trailer. Yea, the green one, that's my home... "what are they doing?" she murmured to herself

    Katie slowed down. An ambulance drove by slowly and she closed her eyes when its headlights unkindly hit her face. Suddenly, she froze. Knees locked in rigid stance, she couldn't go on.

    There were kids out there, running in and out of the crowd; some hiding behind their mother's legs, there were women talking fast and the sheriff looked like a giant as he tried to quiet the curious. His big arms raised above heads, he silenced the odd group. People looked around as if searching for someone.

    Katie couldn't face all these people: they had always been strangers! They misunderstood her; to them she'd just been a weird kid. How could she look at them, now? How could she listen to them? They didn't like her looks or her ways. She peered down at her soiled yellow dress, she slapped dust from the pinafore and wiped the blood that congealed in angry stripes on her legs.

    She whispered "what a mess."

    It is early morning when she arises from the sheltering tamarisk. No one is around. The sky shines silent pink; a thrush makes a gargling sound nearby, nature is awakening as usual.

    Katie stumbles onto the dirt road toward the faded, decrepit trailer she calls home. In an involuntary gesture, she smooths her matted hair and removes the crinkled bow she had so proudly tied for the occasion. She takes the key out of an ore sample crucible by the steps, slowly turns it to open the battered door. Her face betrays no emotion as she gazes over the rumpled pillows on the saggy couch. She slowly passes her little hand over the still wet stains on the blue shag rug.

    Sadness a pale mask on her face, the girl strokes the wrinkles on her yellow dress. She automatically grabs a sponge and begins to clean the floor, the walls, the bits of dried matter in the fake fur throw; it isn't the first time she's had to do it, but now it is different somehow. She isn't angry or tired this time.

    She speaks softly, "Mama . . .oh, Mama . . ." and slumps on the one kitchen chair, elbows propped on the counter, she stares out of the window for a long time until the sun is aglow and scorching the lone olive tree out back.

    A strange car pulls in quietly, and Katie's father steps out of it, solemn. His eyes are puffy and moist.

    "Katie ..." he blurts out abruptly, "mama died last night." He swallows hard and smiles weakly. "Look, you know how it is, baby - she couldn't drink like that no more and besides she smoked way too much. She just went and choked herself to death, that's just what she done!"

    "I know, Daddy" says the ten year old. "I know."
They hold each other tightly for awhile, then pulling away she asks, her voice flat,

    "Daddy? You're not going to do that too, are you?"

    Her father kneels in front of her and announces tearfully, "Baby, honey bunch, I promise I'll never touch a drop of hard liquor as long as I live."

    Katie strokes her father's dusty hair and flattens her cheek against it to hide the stubborn wetness invading her eyes.

The Lady of Café de la Gare.

With long hand folded as a broken wing, she brushes a gray strand from her forehead, an aging beauty from the silent screen. Elegant in her tidy apron, Simone glides across decades in classic gesture.

Cloth moistened, the lady of the café de la Gare wipes each marble tabletop, with neither haste nor sloth, intent on comfort and cleanliness - eye to the door, ready to welcome her regulars. Those who have spent the better part of their youth and most of their retirement in her establishment.

A northern pride keeps her chin well lifted and her long limbs gracefully answer each task as she nearly waltzes through the long tables of the bar, her voice, strong and sharp, sings of the unforgotten Paris of Henry Miller stories and Garbo movies.

With respect in eye and courtesy to lips, her blue gaze sees to every anticipated need of her daily clients, her friends in quotidian routine.

As long as she serves stout red wine with the same smile as she pours bitters, she will be surrounded by the imperturbable mystery that binds the servile to the served; a courtship of kind in the untouchable, unchangeable environment of rural French cafés.

The indomitable lady of the establishment, owner of her destiny in the face of faster trains and full buses, she draws the menu with chalk in hand and keeps the card games honest. With neither reproach nor unkind word, she sorts out the daily gossip to be served with the spirits. She has heard every complaint about every politician installed in more decades than the clientéle can count. Shakes her head, gives a knowing nod and refrains from joining the popular frenzy.

When talk turns too personal, the lady pours a slow wine in the glass of the loudest, and tones calm down as if the ritual gesture brought sense into the room. She knows how to encourage the positive and alleviate the pains. With a hand raised to the routines of the evening, she can relieve tensions with a simple question,

“ and you Edgard? Did you prefer the trout or the veal this supper?” it's all in the timing and the tone; never a judgment be told.

Simone glides upon the ancient tiles and serves her people well. She is the lady who waits for the train and the bus everyday, neither sad nor anxious, as she has done for years. Her silent companion stirs the soupe du jour, a stout and sweet woman, seldom seen out of the kitchen which is full of warm ovens and old utensils.

Today, quiche and salade aux champignons rosés, to remember Raoul, the homeless man who came after supper, daily, to partake of leftovers and a glass of piquette, the sour house wine. The train could not brake in time, says the headline.

Women' s Month Ongoing.

  In order to commemorate half the world of humanity, i shall post poem or prose a day.

The feminine side of all in all its aspects. An exercise in blogging and topic maintenance.

This humble beginning was published on Durable Goods, a micro mag which is printed and edited by Aleathia Dremmer--a Wonderful Woman. mother and friend, with a keen eye for the written word.

Two women

one solemn one silly

sat at a wooden table

and read each other' s work

they laughed they cried

written words to surface

to show to share

kitchen wisdom

in great rifts of passion

dressed in light fare

some solemn some silly

one classic one rustic

borrowing burying

sorrows in serious lines

writings of toil

memories of soil

never far from tears

never faint from fears

they laughed at the script

some solemn some silly

nadine sellers written in Colton CA on a steamy day...years ago.