When the thunder comes, I hide.
Sukey stays by the window and watches the sky turn gray and move close to the earth, the first drops wrung from the heavens like a sponge, as the people in the street start to run, holding onto their hats, flinging newspapers over their heads as they dart under awnings and cower in doorways.
All my life, loud noises have frightened me: thunder, dogs tearing at one another to gain possession of a bone, voices raised in anger. I fear what may come next, the blow, the descent into insensibility. When I was small, I was in a carriage that overturned. I don’t remember it, except for the noise, the deafening crunch of splintering wood, like the earth splitting in two, mingled with the screams of the passengers, as though from the bottom of a well, deep and echoing. I held my hands over my ears for days to block out the sounds, even when I was assured there was nothing to hear.
I climb under the bedclothes, cocooned in darkness, all outer sounds muffled, and I wait for the cacophony to end, my body stiff with expectation, the fine hair bristling on my arms and the back of my neck, my breath hot and shaky, and my heart pounding in my ears as I resist the urge to cry out.
Then I feel a hand on my shoulder through the protective quilt, and the soft murmur of Sukey’s voice as my head emerges into the bright calm that follows the storm.
“I’ve sent down for some oysters,” Sukey says, and I sit up.
When they arrive, we suck them off the shells with abandon, enjoying their cold, gelatinous slide down our throats, and the juice that runs down our chins.
^^^
Bridget Goldschmidt received her MFA in creative writing, with a concentration in fiction, from Brooklyn College in 1991. Her short fiction has been published by Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction and The RavensPerch. She works as a trade magazine editor and lives in New York by the ocean. She has previously written stories about Phoebe and Sukey for Oblivioni Magazine and Luminaura Magazine.
Composite Image created by Kalyee Srithnam