You know, some people never do any pre-mapping at all, and many times people work it into their schedule. I dream about the day when I will never need to pre-plan, thought the brunette to herself. There was so much that she had yet to learn about when it came to pass that she did not understand. Her Chaldean grandmother was not quite subtle enough to understand why she enjoyed the art of writing as much as she did. Her grandmother, who lacked this profound knowledge, dropped a thick, dense package that felt like the Earth, scattering a pen across the table and causing Relviole to grimace.
“Here. Put it on!” The barked orders were a command from Germany’s militia and reverberated through the Nazi flanks like a Chaldean-looking police dog that flew through the strong army. Never was history in Relviole’s mind so interesting. She should have taught APUSH, or better yet, her foreign grandmother. Her eyes traveling slightly as she sighed, Relviole donned the cloak. “It’s very pretty. Thank you.”
“Haaah,” was her answer, punctuated like a fine, red, stinging wine at the end.
“I said it’s very pretty,” the girl said a bit louder. She might have slipped a disk, so slow was her grandmother to catch her response. This took so much energy that it was bone shattering, seemingly, how much her feelings were misrepresented when the woman spoke. The busty, heavy driller before her almost seeped with,
“What?” She cocked her ear into her hand. “Speak louder.”
“I said I really like the cape!” she nearly yelled out, forcing an endearing nod, at long last.
“Yes,” she told the girl approvingly. Relviole wanted to pull her hair. Earth shattering, storming through camps of war . . . Relviole had her entire career as a writer mapped out right about now. She stared at the woman with a rather large frame and sighed. How could she always misunderstand Relviole so intentionally? Her words, and their consequent, infallibly predictable demise, for all of the parties involved, always caused bone-shattering failure in her communication abilities. At least in this realm. Rather saddened by this thought, she slowly picked up her pen and her paper tablet from the carpet, her cup of Arabian tea, and retreated to the outdoor step. Wrapping her brown, wool shawl around herself in the chilly air, she blew on her tea as the frigid wind took away the rest of the steam, misting at the top. Although her grandmother did not of course know what she was creating, she inspired Relviole each time she spoke to her. A dreamy look taking over her eyes, she licked the end of her pen and, in an endearing, rather impish form, made a small curtsey to whatever deities were watching, before flexing her finger, stretching them for what she was preparing to emulate onto the tablet.
And, when it grew darker outside, Relviole re-entered the house.
“Rev-iolee.” Her grandmother never could say the name quite right, could she? “Come and sit down. What is this you are writing?” The brunette just shrugged while her eyes fell on the ornate lamp-shade to the right of her. “I don’t know.” Her voice here was rather sing-song. “I never know what I write about. Ahh . . . something about camels and their transportation methods in Iraq,” she invented quickly. Her grandmother’s grown eyes lightened.
“Really? And—you argh goeing to let me see it, right?” Arrrgh went that “r” sound. Her grandmother nodded encouragingly.
“Oh—oh yes, of course!” Relviole nodded vigorously in return. Her own eyes lit up with fire. Mischievous. This was part of the puzzle. It always took the young lady a terribly long time to determine what would make her grandmother let off full steam and, sure enough, she was soon gesticulating fiercely in a hot-blooded discussion about the old days in Iraq. The passion was always what the lady relied upon. Relviole elegantly crossed one leg over the other one and quietly waited for her grandmother’s discussion with her friends to die down, which of course milked out a few solid moments. Finally those dark eyes found her, forcing from her breast a lovely inner smile.
“Er—what can you tell me about Iraq, Grandmother? What was it like when you last visited? Tell me about your trip,” She said, rather slyly.
“Ohhh . . . well.” And all the Chaldean women began talking animatedly again.
It was about this time that Relviole reached the epiphany for which she was waiting. There was a rather tall house across the street—oh, tall in the sense that it was two story, with a picturesque stairway, tall in the sense of grand, pretty, sparkly. The girl was a genius. A mere, light tapping sound from behind her alerted her to the young child’s presence. She turned around to look at tiny Avril. She bent and whispered in the dark-haired girl’s ear,
“It’s time. Go.” She nodded in the direction of the house. Avril smiled brightly at her, before running joyfully in the direction indicated. She stopped only for an instant to glance up at the high parapet at the top, then rested one foot on the lowest rung of the ladder. Avril scaled the side of the building more quickly than Relviole could have imagined, yet discretely. This was when she realized abruptly that the child did not have the buckets of paint that were absolutely necessary to do what needed to be done!
“Avril,” she hissed, beckoning over to her. Before glancing to the left and right both ways, she fled like a shadow into the dark, over to the rising tower that she had dubbed “the blue palace.” “Paint! Paint!” The girl glanced down at her with a mouth forming a small “oh” of surprise. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s all right,” she told her quickly, yet with a slight frown while she put her arms up to try shielding herself from the cold wind. “I hid them by the side. Here!” she gasped in a strangled tone.
“I’m sorry,” Avril repeated. Relviole wanted to tear her hair in that moment.
“It’s all right. Honestly.” A shivering sound escaped her that verbally alerted Avril. Relviole put a finger to her lips. “It’s extremely cold out. Just do it.” With an emphatic nod, Avril nodded in return. To think that she had never empathized with her grandmother, just because she had grown into the ideal, the typical one that people understood it as, American writer, couldn’t be more ridiculous! She had always wanted to see Iraq more than any solitary place in the world. And so, why not prove it?
Prove it she did. Several weeks after a small Chaldean girl painted a beautiful camel-desert-hill image of a Middle Eastern, fully traditional setting, Relviole watched an interview roll before her in a darkened room that surprisingly had been dimmed, and beautifully quieted by her normally loud grandmother.
“Hush,” she would say every time Avril answered a question about the camel that had at some point mysteriously appeared on the side of a blue house one morning. Avril, with her remarkable strength of the stroking paint brush, drew imaginary circles in the air with a dry one as she talked with the reporter. Relviole bit her tongue as she listened, praying that the girl would do as she asked, and help her to become the writer she had always hoped her fresh ideas and zeal for the art would someday make her.
“Come on,” she whispered to herself, ignoring the pleasantly subdued chatter of her circle of apparently newfound friends, for she now spent so much time in her grandmother’s circle—“say something about me, Avril. Tell them that it was my idea.” One night, a crazy scheme of a notion, wrought by what could have been child’s fancy! What would make her think that artwork knew the approval of a woman who had traveled Iraq, even if it was about Iraq? No, that had a bit of a gap . . . it wasn’t even really a plan. She had just been horsing around when her original mind had skyrocketed on some tangent, so now, here she was, watching as a girl revealed the talent of her brush to a world enchanted by not only her skill, but blissfully precious, childlike manners. Her bright eyes stole her grandmother’s attentions, and poor Relviole retreated quietly outside, where she sat with her chin down in her hand, without purpose, staring at the setting sun.
“Hey.” She looked up. A dark-haired man with a swirling twist in his hair sat down beside her. His lean body swayed like the caterpillar hanging from a tree beside her left ear, and an earring stud hung off his ear, framing a face that was devilishly handsome beside the crisp star that dazzled at his side. He proffered a hand, which she took, though she desperately wanted to reach for her notebook. He was truly inspiring!
“My name’s Silvero. Mind if I sit?” She shook her head. They sat in silence for a few moments. Then time stopped. He leaned toward her confidentially. “You know, I live in that house.” He gestured across the street to her niece’s beautiful handiwork. “And I know you were in on it.” She gasped at him, but his face had a serene quality to it. “It has finesse. But—why did you do it?” He had an air of one who was rather baffled. Well, he should be. She only shrugged, though. “I don’t know. Well, yes I do, but it’s extremely childish and unaccountably stupid. I was trying to make a point to my grandmother.” He frowned at this.
“You mean—by painting the house.” She chuckled lightly.
“No, not exactly. I don’t really know how to describe the idea. It’s a bit confusing even to me. My bossy grandmother has all of these biased, completely untrue ideas about me. I had hoped she would wake up to this one morning, stare out of her bedroom window, and see how much I truly do appreciate her culture.” He whistled and leaned back.
“Well, I don’t see why she wouldn’t.” Then he chuckled underneath his breath. A slight, musty smell wafted over to her. “That was extremely bold and—a rather nutty thing to do. But so perfect!”
She smiled now fully at him. “Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
Caught up in the sweetest moment that she could never fully express in her dialect, or her pen, there was still much that she did not understand. But she knew that in the midst of all of these different feelings and emotions, she might understand this sweet thing. Inadvertently moving closer, she said in a low voice,
“I always wanted to be a writer. And—” No, her voice shouldn’t be cracking. “I just wanted to prove that I was worthy of going to Iraq. My grandmother goes to her hometown on accustomed trips, you see.”
“I don’t, no.” This small inflection surprisingly caused her to see him shake his head, as though to shake off the sprinkled humor she had given him through this. A wry grin tugged at her lips.
“I can’t say that I believe you. Looking at this objectively, strictly, it is rather funny.”
He was enchanted by the way her eyes sparkled . . .
“What?” she asked, almost on the brink of being scandalized.
“Oh, I’m sorry—really, I’m sorry—I just didn’t realize I had spoken that last part aloud.” His face colored, projecting the idea that he was perhaps mortified. He splayed his fingers.
“It’s all right,” she said hastily. Why the haste? “Your eyes are—” she swallowed. A moment. What was in it, no one knew. “Pretty,” she bit out at last. She turned away, but nimble fingers caught her chin, held it still. Unwillingly, it revolved back to him, displaying a dull, red flush. How embarrassing! But she met a smile.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked.
A year later, she had toured the entirety of Iraq and its marvelous wonders. But there still lingered a shred of uncertainty when her experiences trilled in the singing way that only a fiction book with its magic carried, upon the camel’s back whose name was Sally, the main character. But when Silvero read through it, he told her it was the work of a stellar author, and that she should let it go. She did let go of those lush experiences that composed her first widely read work. Everything had gone according to plan, after all. In the end, her little niece had become well-known around the area for her paintings, she was an author with a hefty contract, and, in spite of all of this . . . something was missing in her own story, forcing her hesitant, grimacing way back into the circle of her grandmother’s close parties.
“Here. Wear this. It’s a real diamond.”
“Truly?” she asked. A strange smile played with her lips.
“Yah.”
“Great. I will.” A pause grew and then solidified. “Grandmother, did you read my book? Can I go to Iraq with you next summer?” she thrust her words out in a hurry. Too much of one. Inwardly, she cringed. Her eyes meandered to the little girl beneath Grandmother’s charms of social grace, wearing darling trinkets of expensive gold rings and lockets, now a neighborhood prodigy.
“Yes, Relviole. You arh writer. As Avril is an artist.” The brunette’s eyes sparkled until the end of time.
It was those sunny deserts. It had to be those that made her do such crazy things, but, for now, simple approval by this strong, bone-crushing woman who could break Relviole’s feelings like one tears a piece of work she hates to pieces, was just what she needed. The tower of this magnitude could always be, after all, the basis for a new story.
“Crazy Relviole. Just don’t put on my wall whatever it is you’re thinking. Or rather, that of my parents.” She ducked her head and said, “It never does do to be easy to read. I like being original.”
That was something that no one should worry about!
. . .
No indeed.
