Let Me Tell You Where I've Been by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610752336
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

This way she murmurs and whispers and tells and retells stories that her God has already heard. Now she stops and collects her prayer stone and rosary, wraps them in the kerchief and wraps the kerchief in the square cashmere cloth and puts the bundle on the table. She takes the white prayer veil off and folds it in four, but she doesn’t put on the black veil yet; she leaves it in the corner of the room in its dark folds, watching it for a second, noticing that it’s throbbing faintly, as if a ghost breathes underneath.

There is a wooden box she keeps under her bed; she carries it to the living room and sets it next to the prayer bundle. She unlocks the box with a small golden key and opens it gently as if there are ashes of burned memories there and they’ll blow off with a faint breeze. But inside the box there are smaller boxes, something of the past hiding in them. The smallest of all is a tiny tin box containing three little teeth. The teeth belonged to her son, when he was six, and lost them to grow the new ones. The slightly bigger box contains her daughter’s hair. When she was fourteen she cut her long hair for the first time to become fashionable. Now lifeless and dry, the dark braid coils like the fossil of a boa in the box. The third box contains her late husband’s wedding band, cufflinks and tiepin. The large gold band still shines, but the silver cufflinks and the pin are tarnished. In the larger box there are a few letters. Her son sent them from prison, twice a year maybe, whenever they allowed him to write. She doesn’t want to open them and read them again. The phrases are dry formulas, obvious lies about how well he is and how the jail food is good. He kept sending these letters just to say that he was alive, until the day that there was no letter and she knew that they had put him against the wall.

Underneath these boxes dry petals of jasmine, rosebuds, gladiolas and all the flowers of her son’s funeral give out a sharp scent. She stares at all these boxes, rearranges the contents and closes their lids and the lid of the big one. She leaves a brief note for her sister next to the prayer bundle and the wooden box, picks up the folded black veil, steps outside and locks the door.

On the porch, with the folded veil over her left arm, she stands facing the late summer evening. The air is light and thin and she breathes it in deeply, keeping it in her lungs as if wanting to hold it there forever. Now she smells the wood smoke of the vendors, who grill ears of corn in the nearby market, and she remembers that she has not eaten all day. She decides not to eat tonight and sits on the stone step looking at the darkening flowerbed and the orange persimmons hanging like lanterns.

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