A Glimpse of Scarlet by Robinson Roxana;

Author:Robinson, Roxana; [Robinson, Roxana;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-03-28T22:00:00+00:00

DAUGHTER

I wake up. I am a coward, so I pretend that this has not happened, and I do not move. I lie with my eyes shut, listening to my husband getting dressed, down the hall. He returns, after a while, dressed. He kisses me good-bye. I feign somnolence. He strokes me, and I move sleepily, hoping this will produce more stroking, but he is armed against the day: shaved, brushed, and neat, a timetable in his briefcase, he is proof against my groggy charms. He kisses me again and leaves; I hear the car going down the driveway.

It is now seven-fifteen, and I should wake up my daughter. If I do not wake her soon, we will have to race in order to make the school bus at eight o’clock. My daughter hates this. So do I. I also hate to wake her up. She has lavender shadows under her eyes; she has not been getting enough sleep. She is almost six, and needs at least eleven hours. These first few weeks of school have been difficult; I cannot seem to get her to bed early enough, bathed, read to, body clean and mind calm by seven-thirty. This is, of course, my fault, which makes me irritable and defensive.

I lie in bed now, hoping that she will wake up by herself. Soon she does. I hear her bare feet padding across the floor. She comes into my room like a sleepwalker, her eyes heavy, face rumpled, mouth working like a nursing infant’s. She climbs into bed and burrows into me, her eyes closed in bliss. “I love you,” she says, “You’re so warm.”

It is true, I am warm. I am sheathed in warmth, in the cocoon woven by my husband and me, by our bodies as we slept. I wrap myself around her. For this while, the two of us entwined and breathing, I supply my daughter effortlessly with all she needs. It is miraculous. I smooth her soft back beneath the covers: what I am now is just exactly what she wants.

It is now seven-thirty, reluctant as I am to acknowledge this. I nudge my daughter; she resists. It is hard to dismantle the scene. Looking again at the clock, I become alarmed, urgent. I get up, pull on my blue jeans, turtleneck sweater. I take her into her room to get dressed. I am sharp and insistent now. I am afraid of missing the bus, an event I treat as I would the eruption of Vesuvius. I wait impatiently as she stands at her closet door, considering her clothes. Seconds go by. She is immobile. I complain. She pulls out a dress that she knows is much too big for her, a present from an older cousin. She glances defiantly at me as she holds it up: my sharpness has elicited a response. We are not identical, my daughter and I, but we echo each other’s shapes. I am the material from which she was cut; we twist

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