Featured Writer: Lisa Marie Brodsky

Little Blue Crosses

"‘Oh thank you, oh thank you,’ this maiden replied

That's just what I've been waiting for-o.

For I've grown so weary of my maidenhead

As I wandered alone on the shore-o…’ "

---from "The Maid On the Shore", old Irish ballad



In day I dream like night. I dream at night so long it takes all day. I dream Scotland because there I belong. I once ran into the television room when I heard those bagpipes. There was a man with a syrupy accent talking cows, sheep, thick green grass where I imagined I could wiggle my toes. I thought about that TV show all night.

Mama drags me to church every week to sit in a splintered pew wearing my white eyelet lace dress and white tights with little blue crosses hand-embroidered all over that makes it hard to kneel and pray. I stand instead, not wanting to crush the crosses and Mama says


Kneel Miriam show some respect for once in your life


and pushes my shoulders down like a jack-in-the-box. I dream when I pray, I dream of blind birds crashing into the walls of our house. Mama whitewashes all day, her body bent in a Z, her knees pressing into the dirt deep.I dream the white splashed house, the black trees. I dream me away from the house by water, sheep, syrupy accents, not


Her bangs are so long Emma look how she stares down so twisting her toes in her black Mary Janes


Away from Helena Hardy’s crystal-vased house with newly polished floors.Her creamed cauliflower soup sinks in my stomach and so I shrink and shrink in the tall oak chair and don’t answer when


Miriam Miss Hardy asked you a question would you like to read next Sunday’s lesson


so I don’t answer and am sent through the echoing hallway to the parlor. There are couches that eat you if you sit in them and wallpaper that grows around you like a jungle.That night I dream of monkeys, but they are still in my Highlands overseas, full of cows and sheep and grass under a globed moon. Monkeys sway from branches and nurse their young.Mama has only one breast left.She likes to tell the story of how I preferred hard rubber and cold cow’s milk, but she really pried my lips off of her when I was a small thing, after Papa left and we laid him beneath the backyard grass.With a glass of scotch in hand, she said to Helena Hardy


I need some time


Mama picks me up from school in dresses printed with purple peacocks, calls me out of biology, out of social studies, calling my name with little black hammers.


Miriam we need to get you out of here coming from apes what is this school teaching you and you writing these thoughts in your papers revolutions in your head nonsense

We walk home leaving behind faces pressed against windows and talk about how the moon dizzies us, how daffodils placed in an old water jug can perk up a room. I listen to her name each house, each quiet broom leaning against each door, shoes on the stoop for company. Our feet lazy, we step inside the foyer - Mama even taking my coat, saying


Let’s wash up for dinner


We hold hands for grace, thank the Lord for this meal, this life, this faith. I feel Mama’s wrinkles settle into my skin like a slow earthquake.She doesn’t notice.A fork of meat loaf goes into her mouth.


Eat up girl you’re so skinny even Helena Hardy commented the other day how we can’t even see your growing form how you sag and slump in the pretty dresses I make you and that you look like Jesus on the cross himself can you imagine that Mimi -


she laughs

just like Jesus

She calls me Mimi.The clock from the hall chimes low.


So eat up and put some meat on you the least you can do


she swallows


is show your gratitude for the good food I make


I watch her twirl the noodles around her fork, her mouth chewing, moving, not calling me Mimi ever again.


I wake up from a dream about the Highlands, goat herders, and plaid wool socks.It was only a nap, but as I slept Mama came in and dressed me in my favorite pajamas so I wouldn’t catch cold from the winter chill.I wake to the scent of cinnamon, nutmeg, apples, fire. I go searching. Mama is in the front room, bent over a box on the floor.She pulls out wrapped bells of new wine glasses - a kind of paranoia in tissue paper.Unwrapped glasses stand in a clear row. Her arms look huge from behind them.She holds out her hand


Come here Miriam help me put out the Christmas decorations


and lays a box in my lap.So heavy, I struggle to carry it, hold it, find it hard to reach the third shelf where the brown smoking cones that smell like God go.The candles, the garland.I reach with tension and


Gracious Miriam ask for help instead of spilling everything all over the floor like a fool


she comes over and takes the box away


Go get the roses from that table over there


and I do, I go to the roses lying like dead lovers crisscrossing each other on the table and touch the stems.

Miriam


she shouts

Watch your fingers I may have left some thorns behind though I think I got most of them for


she smiles

I have a present for you Miriam do you want your present darling


Do I want my present? Last year, Mama slapped my arm when I handed her my Christmas wishes printed neatly on my pink lace-trimmed paper: jump rope, bumblebee pencil case, a Messy Mary doll.


Don’t be materialistic child Lord in heaven I thought I raised you better than that this is a Christmas where we can give to others and you ask for such frivolous nonsense I can just cry do you want to see me cry stop twisting your hands like that and stand up straight you’re not too little to be a lady


That year we sent money to Brother Ewell’s Save-A-Soul Program that Mama watched on TV every morning at 5:00, the flickering blue light and bellowing voice climbing upstairs, drifting through my head in my sleep.

Do I want my Christmas present? Smiling, excited Mama pulls me over to the tree with the roses in my arms.She pulls out of the side table drawer a box that she holds close to her like a china doll.


This is a very special present Miriam I made it myself and not only that but the mere idea was whispered to me from divinity


and she pulls out a crown of thorns from the box


It’s for you darling I made it myself Brother Ewell says that a child must be disciplined restrained and this will do that and help you get rid of those bothersome dreams if you wear it during the day of course I wouldn’t have you wear it at night


The shock of our silence, the melody of carols just down the street and Mama carries me up to sleep, tucks me in tight, my gift puncturing the feather pillows on the couch downstairs.


Perched at my window I stare outside in only a long black tee-shirt as Mama scrubs my confirmation dress downstairs in the basement tub, roughing my femininity out of the material. The air feels thin, smells of sour milk. Outside, a man walks near me in a brown tweed overcoat, a small scruffy dog on the other end of a leash. He smiles and enters our yard, stepping across the grass and into the bushes.

Oh mister, you better not stand there.

Why?Just some old roses. It’s winter now; I’d say it’s about time to cut them.

Oh no, mister, Mama keeps those bushes tip-top shape and uses the thorns at Christmas-time.

What does she do with the thorns?

Makes hats.

Hats?

Hats.For your head. Brother Ewell says little girls need discipline.In the head is where all mischief starts.Mama wants me to wear the hat around the house like Jesus.Says I get to be like Jesus for Christmas.

Well, aren’t you lucky.

Oh mister, not many girls get to be like Jesus.Mama says I’m special.

You must be, then.

Yes.Is that your dog?

Yes, this is my Scottish Terrier; he’s a good boy.You ever been to Scotland?

…No.

Oh, you ought to.

I dream Scotland very often.

Now how did I know that? What’s your name?

Mimi.

That your true name?

True name?What’s that?

A name we give ourselves.

What’s your true name, mister?

Wander.

That’s not a name.

Sure is.I wander around a lot so no name suits me better.

Oh. I like that.

What’s your name, then?

My name is Mimi, mister.

No.

Oh, then…Scots. I’d like my name to be Scots.With one ‘t’.‘T’s look

like little crosses.One’s just enough.

You got dreams, Scots, tell me about them.

I don’t think I’ll do that.

Why not?

They’re my dreams. I told Mama once. I told Mama I was going to Scotland.She laughed.The whole house fell down, the sky too.Then one day I dreamt I grew up real old and Mama was dead under the grass with Papa.She had grass for hair and dirt on her linen. I went for a walk and tried to get to Scotland. I looked for cows.

Did you try sheep?They have lots of sheep.

Oh yes, I looked for both cows and sheep and lots of green too. But I never got there. I heard her laughing in my head. I wasn’t even wearing her hat but she was there in my head. I never got to Scotland. Not even by rolling my ‘r’s, real syrup-like. I wouldn’t use ‘t’s for the longest time. They look like little crosses, you know.

I know.

So I never got there. I don’t usually cross streets by myself but I was so old, I thought I could do it even if I heard Mama laughing in my head.

What did you do then, Scots?

Then I walked back.

Back where?

Back home. This home. It took a while, but I’m back now. Back in my pretty white clean dress and white tights with the little blue crosses on them.

You don’t look like you’d fit in those; you’re a lady now.

Oh. I must be, yes.We’ve been here for a long time, haven’t we.

That we have. I’m afraid I’ve got to go now, Scots. The hills are calling.

No, wait! If I go to sleep, will you come back?Will you come back and take me with you?

“‘There was a fair maiden she lived all alone…’”

Wander?

“‘She lived all alone on the shore-o…’”

Stop singing!

“‘There’s nothing she can find to comfort her mind… but to wander alone on the shore shore shore…’”

Please.

“‘Wander alone on the shore.’”


On the morning of my birthday years ago, Mama walks in, parts the sun-spotted curtains, opens the window, says


Smell that summer air


She sets a cupcake with a candle on top of my bed stand.Settles herself beside me as I lay in deep slumber. Mama shakes me in dreams; I bob on water.Bagpipes in the distance, a small terrier barking. I can hear her calling, calling to blow out the candle - to come pick daisies - to try on my pretty new tights -


wake up Mimi and turn five


Lisa Marie Brodsky is an MFA Poetry student at University of Wisconsin-Madison and an intern at The University of Wisocnsin Press. She teaches undergraduate creative writing as well as children's creative writing. She has been published in "The North American Review," "Poetry Motel," "Atlanta Review," "Cadence," "Premiere Generation Ink," among others.

Email: Lisa Marie Brodsky

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