Catastrophes by C. Bellettini

Eloise took little bites from the rind of a lemon wedge, spit the bitter yellow pulp into her palm and held it up.  “Amma, amma, mamma.”  

“Where did you get this? Not good for digestion.” The long apron swung into the room, dusted the lemon pieces from her hand into the bin. She unlocked Eloise’s wheelchair with a tap of her foot.  

Eloise held onto the arm of the chair still tasting the lemon Italian ice. She was riding the Ferris wheel at the Adams County Fair, swinging up high into the blue and down low into the golden fields of shattered stalk again and again. The other passengers; white heads nodded towards chests, arms dangling by sides faced a flashing screen.  I’m sorry; please remind me of your names.  She started to cry. 

The long apron patted her shoulder.  Eloise tilted her head up with effort, looking into the wide brown eyes which blinked slowly at her, tracing the remainder of an unfamiliar face that disappeared into the blankness of a white paper mask.  Eloise was cold and wanted someone she knew to hold her.  Where was she?  How long had she been here?  In a voice she did not recognize, she asked no one, “Where have they all gone?”

Rosa stopped short. The surprise of the woman’s voice, rhythmic like running water, shattered her.

Rosa waited for Eloise to say something more, anything.  That morning as she folded the boiling water into her café sin leche, before she climbed the ladder of buses into work, she tried to remember a lost dream about the old woman. 

  But now looking into the ghosts that inhabited Eloise’s blue eyes, all she could think about was Mama.  How she kept asking the same question after they came for her father-her uncle-her brother?  Where have they all gone?

Her voice cracked when she asked Eloise “¿Who, mi amor, who?”

Eloise stared up at a dancing cobweb hanging from the ceiling. Now she was with Grandpère who waited for her with a funnel of brightly colored pink fluff. Or was it Johnson, the one with the missing tooth who was holding her hand, her skirt a bright bell of white? Or was it the boy-child who brought her handfuls of floppy yellow dandelions and went away dressed in green gray coat with brass buttons like tiny suns? 

Rosa rubbed her arm where the rolling tea table had bumped her.  The young man behind the cart took his phone out to check the time, punching the screen, then scrolled through his messages while he stood by, waiting. 

Rosa took a deep breath and sighed. It was time to strip the wet beds, and cart the heavy baskets down the stairs to the laundry.  But today, she wished she could to stay with soft Eloise, the TV light flickering on their faces as they held hands, and perhaps the old woman would talk to her again.  She made the sign of the cross over Eloise’s unblinking stare before she left.

Rosa pressed the numbers into the pad of the locked unit, peeled her gloves off into the waste and washed her hands carefully at the front sink.  She looked up at the clock. She had enough time to say goodbye.

Eloise was sleeping, her rosy mouth open, and her white hair framing her powdery face.  In a burst of color by the door, an arrangement of tropical flowers demanded Rosa’s attention.

Rosa traced her hands along the length of the deep green stems, stopping to touch the fiery red blooms, no longer standing in the disinfected and white but transported to the verdant and fecund.  Her mother’s loro, a large emerald bird named Carlos, squawked.  She could smell the sickly sweet of overripe mangos collecting under the thick tree canopy outside the house in Cala Esperancia that no longer stood.  She closed her eyes, breathing in those spaces open from another time, breathing out the loss that lived in each of them.   The jungle of memory threatened to overtake her, seduce her, but holes no longer mouthed terror from clay walls, only silence remained.  The intercom crackled a Bingo invitation into the room.

Eloise sat up in bed, glancing past her towards the flowers.  The white and blue vase was large and awkward to move.  Rosa hugged it around the middle, like the toddler once strapped to her chest.  She landed it with a thump on a table by the bed.  An orange and blue tipped bird of paradise came loose and pointed in Eloise’s direction.  Rosa shifted the arrangement again, plucking at stems trying to reclaim order, moving it only further from balance. There was nothing more she could do.  The women watched the final movement of the flowers shimmy into stillness.  Eloise’s question seemed to rise from their silence, also waiting. Where have they all gone?   

As Rosa said goodbye, she pressed her nose into Eloise’s freshly washed hair; she smelled rain singing on tin topped roofs.  She felt her mother’s embrace, her daughter’s small palm. She tucked her fingers under Eloise’s chin, and saw her own reflection in the cloudy blue skies there. 

And it was then Rosa understood what Eloise needed to know.  It was then she knew for herself.  In the old woman’s empty cabinet of cannot remember, and in her haunting of cannot forget; the two women were one.  

Rosa’s rested her right hand on her heart over the apron smock, and reminded herself, “They are here waiting for me.”  

Eloise blinked. 

Then she placed her hand on the old woman’s bony chest, and tapped again “They have never left.  They are here, waiting for you too.” tapping twice, one two, like a heart beat.

C. Bellettini earned their MFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2002. They are a writer/researcher living in Los Angeles with their partner and child. The characters in this story are inspired by the juncture of memory and loss, an interest formed during the pandemic.

15 December 2023