Bell ‘Occhio

Micah watched as his sister Violet
painted a tiny tea cup balanced on the tip of her finger. 
Her blue eyes focused on the flower she created—a tiny violet—
while her gray hair fell in wisps from her loose bun.
“A bell ‘occhio,” he thought,
 “always seeing the beauty . . . creating the beauty.” 
As a young woman, Violet had had a passion for picnics
and straw hats with silk flowers. Her mind was
a restless bumblebee full of puns and jokes;
her hands forever nimble and clever, always in motion
even now in her old age.  He looked around the sun-washed room
filled with a village of fully furnished, diminutive, cedar-shingled houses,
inhabited by multicolored porcelain-faced dolls
with plump cloth bodies dressed in velvet and satin.
Violet sat surrounded by the miniatures she sold to collectors,
and since his illness, her village had become his village, too.

At 4:00, Violet brought to his easy chair a small pitcher of lemonade
made from the lemons of the tree she pulled
inside in the fall and put outside in the spring.
Micah noticed the precious nectar was the color of her hair
yellowed by the evening light. She also brought
a bouquet of pink dahlias each the size of a dinner plate,
lolling their heads atop their blue vase.
They spoke of various books and movies
and of the latest house Violet built for a woman overseas.   

As the sunlight slanted a dark ocher stain across the room,
they fell silent, listening to a dog barking in the distance.
“Once,” he said, “when I was nine, just before you were born,
I was chased from the park by a couple of rowdy dogs.
Oh, I ran fast; I was so sure they would eat me.
As I grew out of breath an odd thing happened,
the colors around me became brighter

—the green grass, red tulips, white magnolias—I saw them . . .
actually felt them with my whole body.  They seemed to hold me up as I ran,
but eventually the colors began to run together like raindrops on a window,
and they finally blurred to black when I passed out safely
at mother’s doorstep.” Micah laughed for a moment, but his eyes glistened
in the waning light. “I feel like that now;
I’m out of breath and the colors are blurring. . .
but I can’t find a place to rest.”
                   
Violet nodded slowly. “Do you remember when we scraped cherries
on the white-washed walls of the garden?” she asked.
“Yes,” Micah looked up surprised and chuckled. “If only we hadn’t
written our names, we might have gotten away with it.”
“Somehow Micah, that memory sustains me. 
We were both young; mother was with us. . .
whenever I think of the colors white and red, it isn’t the colors
in my paint box I see, it’s the colors from that day
on my fingers and on the wall.  I like to imagine
our names are still there and mother is still laughing at our foolishness.”
“Mother,” he murmured with a ragged breath. “I remember
every inch of the house and garden.  It was so warm and lovely . . . like yours.”
Violet reached out to touch his shoulder. “I know she will be there with you.”
“Of course,” he murmured letting out a deep breath. “She will be there
. . .waiting for me. . . offering a place to rest.”

 He took her hand and gazed up at her face for a long moment.
“Sometimes, I feel like I’ve seen you only in pieces—
like fragments from a church stained-glass window
. . . a hand, an eye . . . a wing.”
“Only one wing?” she asked.
“Oh,” he said softly, “I have always known both wings are there.”
Violet looked away from his face and studied his hand in hers.
Then, to hide her tears, she produced a nail clipper from her pocket
and trimmed his uneven fingernails. They fell in tiny half circles,
like all the new moons of his childhood, into the dark blue of her skirt.

                                                                    —Mary Beth Kwasek

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