[Fiction] Roots

Read the second-place entry for our week of February 9, 2025 prompt, Roots

Roots
by Sarah Balmond

Bea still can’t believe it happened. The kiss. She turns the memory. The land of his hand on her waist, she is something found. His words: when can I see you again. She stiffens, pulls the duvet up over her head. Tells herself it doesn’t count.

Ha!

A voice booms out from the dark: best pay attention now, young one.

Curl of a fat lip, a single eyebrow served up like a fight.

This. Is. Something

Great Grandma Rose paces the deck, eyes fixed on Bea. She takes a gulp of whisky, swallows an ice cube and holds it on her tongue until it starts to melt.

My, My, she mutters, squinting to get a better view.

The others gather. Great Aunt Maisie: She’ll blow it up. Great Cousin Leah: Let’s help her.

Rose strides over to the rocker, plonks herself down and stretches out her legs, gumming a cigar.

No, she says, leaning forward.

She feels it- this shimmer, hot like an open oven door, the static of Him on her.

Ha! See how she is now. Lit up!

Skiff of energy across the void, a tether Rose can hold onto at last.

Bea deletes the messages as she goes. She stands in front of the bedroom mirror, marvels at her body now shared. She swallows, the urge to confess a stone sitting high in her throat. Instead she picks up the phone: Hello, baby.

It runs in the bones.

For doesn’t Rose remember too. The summer their daughter died, her husband’s silence a thing she could not meet. I must speak of her. Jacob was there. He listened, held her stories in his palm like a delicate bird. The first time they made love, Rose moved with a power and strength she thought long gone and afterwards had wept in the dark crevice of his neck.

You are a marvel, he had said.

But come winter, he was gone. And didn’t she try to hold onto it, this feeling that splintered her into rainbow light. On frosty nights, probing between her legs, she would part the folds, search for that which was now lost.

These moments follow you into eternity too.

The others leave. What can we do? they say, melting into the ether. But Rose stays, puffing out smoke rings against a bone coloured sky, scanning the land.

It will work out, and even when it doesn’t, it does.

She tosses her wisdom to the wind.

Bea looks out the window, a hum rising up. Tell me what to do, she whispers.

About Sarah Balmond

Sarah Balmond lives in London.

This piece was written in response to the prompt Roots.