Chapter Text
The sun already sat high and burned away all the humidity of a Mississippi summer morning by the time she made her way into town. A slow beginning to a no doubt unproductive day, if you ask her. Normally she’d be out of her cabin by dawn, rising with the finches and wrens to go into town to sell her paintings and pottery, but seeing as it was a Monday with the heat easily exceeding anybody’s preference, a little restocking and an early turn-in just might do her some good.
A twinkle above the doorway and a gust of hot air announced her arrival.
“Afternoon, miss. Y’here to grab your normal?”
“No, thank you, Miss Grace,” she answered kindly. “I’d actually like to grab some o’ your oil medium and pick your brain about grindin’ my own pigments.”
The young woman, not much older than yourself, but with a husband and child to attest, smiled. “Of course! Let me grab Lisa to cover the shop and I’ll see what I can tell ya.” Mrs. Chow wandered to the back of her shop and hollered at the youngest Chow to head on up front.
“Hello, Miss Lisa,” the woman waved at the young teen. Lisa nodded in response and stood behind the register.
Mrs. Chow rolled her eyes lovingly. “Kid’s about as respectful as any other teen, I swear. You’d think with the amount of switchin’ she gets she’d learn to behave.”
With a chuckle and a shake of her head, the woman followed Mrs. Chow’s beckoning to an aisle full of odd bobbles and knickknacks where the women would spend the next hour gossiping and giggling as if they were the teens and Lisa was the woman of the shop. Finally, Mrs. Grace Chow offered her tools and advice for a small fee and wished the woman luck as she left with another twinkle and began her journey home.
The young woman, with her skirt shuffling against her toned calves, hummed a merry tune for the two miles it took to get back to her wooded cabin abode. The kids and nanny goat on her property called out before she stepped into the clearing, announcing their pleasure at seeing her return. The chickens were less pleased and scattered, this of course, made the woman laugh sweetly. Upon stepping through her doorway, she promptly began unbagging her newly purchased mortar and pestle, oil medium, and a couple stretched canvases and set about her duties as a creative in the middle of the sticks.
For the next two hours, she wandered the paths of wildlife through the woods searching for flora that she could dry and begin the process of turning them into paints for her creations. She thought to herself how nostalgic this was, to wander her childhood home where she could almost hear the strums of her father’s guitar and the soft, gravelly tones of her mother singing in a language that rang with sadness and, yet, hope. A pang of loneliness and guilt hit her heart and left her stiff in her tracks, a hand placed against her bosom, massaging the ache.
They both had died within months of each other, as if her mother’s heart had simply given up upon her husband’s untimely death. They had both been only just nearing their sixties when tuberculosis took the young woman’s father. Of course, she wouldn’t have known that if it weren’t for her mother’s passing resulting in a letter of bereavement and their wills being sent to her address in Chicago. She had left at twenty with a wish for a brighter future and a cruelness in her tone when her father claimed her a fool. If not for their death, and this is what grabs her like a dog gnawing on an old bone, she never would have returned to her hometown of Clarksdale.
Now, standing in a small field of lantanas, the woman sighed, gripped her near overflowing basket tighter, and turned stiffly to return to her home. She couldn’t bear to reminisce about the ‘what ifs’ on such a beautiful day, that was nearing its end. She had florals to dry, dinner to cook, and a book on her bedside table calling her name.
Dinner that night had been a quiet affair, as most nights were. Her plate was already washed and put away by the time the kettle whistled, alerting her to the readiness of the water for her bath. Dressed only in a ragged, maroon robe, she made her way from the kitchen to the washroom where a large basin was sat half-filled with cool water. She always hummed as she worked and this was no different. As she poured the kettle directly into the bath, the gentle, melancholic lullaby of Bye, Bye Blackbird filled the empty one-story cabin.
Washing up was a regular affair, as well, with the only variety being the book of the week. She found herself nodding off and finished up quickly. Donning a sheer nightgown to combat the heat of a summer evening, she laid herself to rest above the bedcovers and sleep found her quickly.
No dreams were remembered that night, only the sound of her mother’s weeping latched onto the woman upon waking and it would soon be forgotten in exchange for the ending of her life as she knew it.