Welcome! If you have a passion for reading stories, witnessing moments, or embracing your own imagination, these short pieces of fiction are written for you. With each post, I hope to carry you into another place and I thank you for coming with me.
With Love,
Serena Holland Penn
“Mama, can I go to the pool?” I ask.
Without even looking up she says, “No, baby. I told you the pool at this hotel isn’t working.”
I know the pool isn’t full of water because it is the first question I ask whenever we are about to choose another hotel. Still, I say “I mean, can I go to the big empty hole in the ground? I’ll be careful.”
Mama is putting pieces of dirty clothing into a white plastic bag to be laundered, smelling each one and still folding it before stuffing it in. She’ll be finding things to do all day, things that would normally take her a few minutes to do, she will make last to keep her mind busy. I wonder if I’ll learn how to do that when I become a woman. Mama sits up and eyes me for a moment and I know she is wondering why I’m wearing my white bathing suit if I am not going swimming. I’d been wearing it since breakfast, I got dressed in it. She noticed then, somehow she was noticing for the first time again as if it could tell me something.
“Where’s Sam?” she asks.
“Helping Papa,” I say, she already knows where Sam is. Since my brother is helping my Papa, I suppose I should be offering to help her. But my brother is older than I am. “Pleeeaasse?” I ask reminding her I’m still a kid. I remind her whenever I can, whenever I remind myself.
“Fine, be safe,” she concedes and I’m out the door.
Since I’ve already scoped it out along with the vending machine, ice machine, and brochures, I know the pool is through the outside plaza and a ways behind the hotel. It’s not shaded, there is no canopy or trees. There is a rectangular chain link fence but with the exception of one maroon Mazda on the outside, the area is vacant. On a day like today, where just the walk from my room to the fence is making my scalp tingle with freshly hatched eggs made of sweat, this place should be full to the brim with squeals from kids and damp beach towels. The only thing I hear is the mute sizzle of the sun heating the concrete and the whisper scratches of my bare feet on it. It was criminal to have a non-working pool in summer time, no matter where you come from I decided.
I squeeze through the fence no one is watching and move straight to the stacked up lounge chairs and climb up on top like I’m the princess in “The Princess and the Pea” on a stack of mattresses. The plastic strips are burning my skin but I ignore it like I do my smoking feet. My friend Anna would make a fuss, would wear her shoes and wrap a skirt around her legs and tell me I’m nuts. But I feel brave when she says that.
I start singing Bob Marley. Mama was singing the same thing earlier, it must be in my mind. She sings all the time, doesn’t even know she does it. I want to be like her but I always know when I’m singing.
“Do I look worried?” a voice says. I drop a squeak into the empty pool, it echoes back along with my embarrassment. I see a boy with dark hair on his head, it curls around his ears. He is squatting over a crack in the ground, a stick is next to him like he’s been using it. Using it on what, I wonder?
“Huh?”
“You where telling me not to worry about a thing,” he says. His voice is deep but I can tell it just changed. When that happened to my brother, Mama cried for a week and Papa let him have a beer.
“Oh.” I don’t answer him. I swing my feet back and forth on my tower, trying not to look at him even though I want to stare.
“Come over,” he says. I do.
“What are you doing?” I ask. He is squatting but only his bare feet are touching the ground.
“Pool is empty,” he says.
“I know,” I say, bunching up my nose like I do when Sam teases me.
“Why are you in your swim suit?”
Because I love it, I want to say. The white makes me feel beautiful but the cut makes me feel comfortable since it is one piece and low in the back. There used to be writing on the front but it faded so much I can’t even remember what it said. But I don’t tell him that I would wear the swim suit everyday and at school if I could. Instead I joke, “I dunno. I was thinking that if I got dressed for a party, I might find some balloons.”
He laughed, looking at the crack. I move closer. Then I see it, the light helped me see the piece of gold metal like it winked at me. I want to pick the piece up but it’s right by him. Instead, I ask him if it’s his and he says yeah, he was trying to fix his watch and a piece of it fell off and into the crack. He picks up the stick again and pokes at the parched dirt like he’s grilling a hot dog over a campfire.
“That won’t help you, silly,” I say, “here.” I crouch over the spot, he makes room for me. My toes feel slimy. The backs of my knees start dripping right away from being pressed up on the backs of my calves but I don’t want to sit down no matter how nuts Anna might say that I am.
Its just a small gold disk and I can see it clearly and know its a snap to get out. He offered me the stick but I shook my head, it was too big anyway. It was going to be like trying to dig a coin out of the sides of the chairs in our Nissan. I could always get them, Sam’s fingers were too big and he gets too impatient wanting to beat me to them so this would be a cinch.
“It’s my grandfather’s watch. Or, it was my grandfathers. I never met him or anything. He just gave it to my Dad to give to me when I got old enough.” He didn’t say so, but I understand that he just became old enough. I feel a river break loose across my temple. It itches but I can’t feel it as much as I feel him watching me.
“Almost gotcha. You got any money? There’s two cream sodas left in the machine we could go get next. I know because I counted them.” I say proudly. Without even pausing for him to answer I ask, “How long are you staying here?”
“In the hotel?” I nod. “Uhm, not sure. I guess we’ll find a place to live after my Dad gets a new job and that will be soon. That’s what he says. How long you staying?”
“Not sure either,” I say but Mama says Papa will fix the car by tomorrow and we can leave then. “Bingo!” I say lifting out the piece. I shine it on my suit and give it back to him and he says thanks without looking at me.
I’m about to leave since he never said he wanted the sodas but he takes my hand and shakes it. He shakes it like he’s meeting me but I haven’t told him my name and he hasn’t told me his. And he shakes my left hand with his right. So I guess its something different than a handshake, something I don’t know about. Still he isn’t looking at me, still he doesn’t let go of my hand and I don’t argue any of it. I’m looking at the dark hairs on his arms. I didn’t know boys had dark hair on their arms.
“What room are you in?” he asks. I tell him. He nods and lets go of my hand and says thanks again before leaving. I sit by the pool for a long time after that, singing but not noticing what song. The whole time the skin on my legs feels smoother to my fingers and I also feel taller. My hair feels smoother too so I take the rubber band out of it.
When I get back to my room, Mama asks me where I’ve been as though she didn’t know. I shrug as if I never told her. The room isn’t much cooler but it’s better than outside and I soon fall asleep on my bed and only wake up when there is a knock at the door. Mama answers it, says something I can’t hear, then comes over and drops something on the bed. “Why don’t you get dressed, baby,” she says when she sees I’m awake. “You can help me find a place for dinner.”
As soon as I roll over, it rolls over too and hits my skin, a freezing kiss on my ankle and I gasp.
An ice cold can of cream soda.
Posted in connection
The birds weren’t a particularly recognizable species. Both type and size were undeterminable; they looked more like black pepper flecks spilled on a table cloth, moving across the sky from a warm breath. There were so many bird flecks that they became their own shadow cloud, causing anyone underneath to catch their breath at the sight.
Seeing such a large grouping take flight from the fields wasn’t abnormal to Kyle. There were always all sorts of things buzzing over his head in the sky. He might have only noticed because he was driving his 1998 Honda toward the foothills for a much needed few hours of peace and fresh air. Kyle made this drive four times a year, merely reminded it was time again by the change of the season. Lately, it had become more of a quest than a visit since his car was redundant with hinting that he wanted to retire from personal explorations.
Kyle imagined that each person had their own set of rules to achieve calm and afford themselves a punch on a reset button. His secret was to find the base of a mountain and befriend it. Bring a book, take a nap, but whatever it was, he must listen to nothing else but what was around him. Somehow, afterward he felt more capable of moving forward on the right path. Those who lived near a beach might find the same at the base of the waves, Kyle considered. He could see how the lapping tide was as clear an invitation to peace as a finger curl.
Though Kyle’s Honda hadn’t made it to the mountain yet, the vision of the birds across the sky, flying west along his progress initiated the tranquility within him. And before he could count to ten, they were elsewhere, leaving Kyle and his Honda behind.
Jules was moving slowly through her backyard, finding the chore of bagging up tumbleweeds and shoveling her dog Ringo’s remains just as tedious and uninspiring as she had anticipated it would be. Still, when Jules made up her mind that morning to finally get it done, she knew she wouldn’t back out on herself. She had Ringo to keep her company too, and he splashed around like a clown in the half disintegrated leafs as if to make up for his part of the mess.
“Having fun?” Jules asked Ringo, switching to another black plastic bag for a new load.
Growl, snarf was the reply.
“Doesn’t look like much fun to me, but you’re doing a good job advertising for it.” Ringo hacked indignantly, as if leaf splashing were a matter of opinion.
Jules noticed the birds as they made their way over her part of the sky. Even Ringo paused. There were so many of them they caused a pattern unlike any known dot or stripe; more like an ink sneeze from a broken pen. Jules took a deep breath at the sight, whispering to Ringo, “do you see that?” The plastic bag stilled in the wind, giving the impression that the world had paused to catch its breath as well.
And then the birds separated into two quilt patches; each still considerable in size. Jules thought it looked as if the road in the sky had suddenly forked, one group of birds was moving one direction while the other group moved completely in the opposite.
“You think the ones in the front are in charge?” Jules asked in a whisper, more to herself now than to Ringo. The birds shrank to freckles when she asked her next question, this one so intentionally for herself alone that she didn’t even ask it aloud. Or do their wings just follow the wind?
At first, Enid was too busy running to notice the sky and the progress of the birds above her head. It was a habit of any twelve year old, boy or girl, to leave the house at a run. Sometimes Enid imagined there was an invisible rotating door, caught in a fast spin that launched her outside. She was no more eager than normal to go play, which is also to say that she was the same amount of eager as always. Sometimes energy just boiled out of twelve year old, along with any other child able to walk, and they had to start shaking or jumping. Or, as was Enid’s case, running over the tall scratchy winter grass to the pile of sunflower seeds she intentionally made yesterday.
Enid was looking at her knees instead of the sky. After that, it was at the absent pile, which was only recognizable by the little soft mound of dirt she still carried the remains of under her fingernails. She smiled then, pink and shyly, even though no one was around to see it. Enid glanced around to make sure that was definitely the case, she didn’t want anyone to know her secret daily ritual of treating the unknown animals to salty bits. It was only then that the birds in the sky finally entranced Enid.
She counted with a straight finger in the air, pointing them out to herself. There were two, no, three groups. The second and third had just split. All three groups were heading in opposite directions, but they were all at the same height in the sky. One group had morphed into a letter that was somewhere in between a V and C, another group was fiddling around with shapes, unable to decide between a circle and a triangle. The final group was a straight line like the one Enid had to walk in to get to the lunchroom at school. All three were spread across the sky so that Enid had to turn in circles to keep observing them.
When the sky had darkened and the birds had at last bedded themselves in the horizon, the stars themselves were considering collecting themselves into one large group to heighten their appearance. Kyle shivered, politely requesting more heat from his Honda, unsure what else might be in charge of distributing the warmth. Jules was steaming her cold out in a shower, while Ringo snuggled on the bath mat and munched away on a sacrificed fuzzy bed slipper. As Enid hoarded away another handful of sunflower seeds in her pocket for the next day, she pulled on her favorite sweater that had recently become too short on the arms.
The stretch of distance the birds had achieved was immeasurable by kilometer or mile. For those who had stopped to take notice stayed outside longer than intended but figured the chill was an acceptable price when the time it takes to forget is measured in heartbeats.
Posted in Circumstance
What is it about a place? What defines it? Somewhere you feel that is a home? A refuge? Is it somewhere you have never experienced? A new feeling or a beautiful vision? Mostly, a place is thought of as a coffee shop more than a space inside the heart. But what is the difference? A place is not just where you are but where you take notice of where you are.
There is a place in particular among friends that if you were to look at it, it would be built with safely constructed trusses and be tricked out with those heated tile floors to keep your feet warm.
The door to Ila and Matt’s apartment gave a bump, the sound that comes from a shoulder trying to get the front door open when the keys cannot open the door fast enough on a cold night. The second attempt was more successful and they shuffled in, squealing and stomping their frost covered boots into the rug.
“Freezing!” and “Burrr!” were exclaimed, though neither could tell who exclaimed what. A minute more of shivering and various swishing of duffle coats and sniffing up runny noses, before Matt realized another need.
“First for the bathroom!”
Ila shouted an insult after him, pinching in her own familiar feeling. She ran instead to her room and pulled her clothes off, her naked body giving a noticeable “ahh, yes. Keep going,” after each layer, starting with the sweater all the way to the bra hooks. She dressed in an oversized shirt that technically belonged to Matt and pushed her hair up off her neck.
“Better,” she heaved, until she noticed her hands. They were cracked and bleeding from the cold. The first thing she thought to herself when she saw the bits of bright red on her knuckles were, this actually happens to people? Too late to go out for lotion, not that there was any excuse to not have any living in a country where anyone was likely only a mile away from a tube of not just generic but Dr. recommended brands, and for not much more than a dollar in the travel bins. Ila always was frugal; picking out meat straight from the clearance areas, her eyes drawn to the yellow tags and expiration dates at the grocery store, or choosing to go into a store only if she had an internet coupon or a buddy who could get her a twenty percent off discount. Only certain expenses were worth the cost in her mind like concerts from adored bands, investments in computer apps, a large frothy coffee in the morning when you aren’t sure you won’t walk into a wall instead of a doorway.
“Better,” Matt echoed, coming into Ila’s room. “Yikes! What have you done to yourself?”
“Sorry. Its a sight,” Illa said as if her hands carried a folded Hallmark card intended for the unfortunate looker. Matt chuckled.
“Want me to go out for lotion? You are obviously in need of it.”
“No, don’t. Its late and cold.” Ila didn’t mention the fact that Matt would probably refuse to take her money for it and buy her the largest and most expensive bottle of lotion on the shelves. But Matt didn’t need her to tell him, he understood.
“I’m going,” he said, grabbing his coat.
“No! Come on, I really don’t want to go anywhere and look -” Ila said pointing to her bare legs and wooly socks “-if you go, I’ll have to go.”
“Nice, Ila but that looks painful and it will only take me a second.” It was painful, embarrassingly so. After the initial realization, she also noticed that there was a cut on her finger that split open and ached like a splinter under a fingernail.
But the night was so bitter it tasted green, you could dab a martini glass in the air and pour yourself a smart cocktail.
“I’ll be right back,” Matt said over his shoulder. “Make me an omelet?”
Ila smiled. “With that smoked turkey you love!”
“And cheese!” He called getting on his coat.
“And mushrooms!” Ila finished before he jangled the keys and shut the door.
Ila went straight to the stereo and started her favorite late night music, Van Morrison. Swaying to Moondance, she grabbed a skillet and piled into it the butter, eggs, lunch meat and button mushrooms, then performed a magic trick by carrying the milk jug with her pinky finger. Humming to herself she started the stove and placed a pad of butter in the center. By the time it had melted into delicious bubbles, the turkey was chopped into thin little salty bits and the mushrooms sliced into folding cards. To punctuate her happiness, she lifted her hand upward over the hot skillet as she dropped the bits into it so that as the sizzle bounced off the kitchen tiles, her hand practically said, “ala-kazaam!”
Ila felt happy often here, this was her place. But it wasn’t just this aspect that made her so happy tonight.
Through the technique of scrimping, along with the painful thumbs down to that end of the day eight dollar beer, her hard work was paying off. It was the last day for registration for the advanced ceramic’s art class with one of her mentors, Dr. Caroline Hannighan who rarely taught classes, let alone a one-on-one tutorial to twelve students. The fact that she met the criteria to be allowed in at all was a daily affirmation to her resume; she told herself this as she was brushing her teeth or waiting for her coffee to brew. Ila got herself that last spot afforded by all of her cheese-sparing efforts. Matt bought the beers tonight, not that he could afford it himself, but when she would bring a finished vase or bowl home, he would nod like a grandfather pleased with the time on his pocket-watch.
Ila swore again, this time to herself, having forgetton to check the messages. Sure both Matt and Ila had cellphones, but this home phone was intended specifically for all the salesclerks and propaganda deals that required a phone number. They each had faux email addresses too.
“Beep,” said the machine whose play button was now smeared with buttery sheen.
The first message was from Ila’s sister, she’d met a guy and he was younger than her and she wanted to know what should she do and to call her “immediately”. Illa flipped the omelet over. The second message was from a salesperson, getting the syllables of her last name all wrong. Ila nodded congratulations to herself for this machine as she grated sea salt, her secret to a good egg dish. As soon as the third message started, she froze.
“Matty? Matt? Are you there, please be there!” Ila turned from the skillet and walked slowly toward the machine, panic and shock creeping over her. “It’s your father. Oh God, honey, he had a stroke. They’re putting him into surgery now. I don’t know, I don’t know what to do! He was just fine and then he said something crazy about how I needed to change the soil in my garden, and then…Oh God Matt, I don’t know. Call me back. Please, ok? Please.”
“Beep,” said the machine.
Ila looked over meditatively at the night light of her laptop. If she didn’t pay the tuition, she would be dropped from the class. Without anymore thought than that, she was typing and clicking away at websites crossing over time wasted for pages to load by researching details on her smart phone internet.
Ila hardly noticed when Matt came into the kitchen saying lovingly, “there you go, stupid. Oh are you kidding me?! You burned it?!” Matt sounded superficially destroyed. Illa had not even realized, she had completely forgotten about the omelet.
“Matt,” she said and he realized right away from her voice. He knew the walls of their place together well, the way she had said his name was like a new chair in their living room and he tripped over it.
“Here, your ticket to Boston. You need to go home right away.”
There were some expenses that were worth it to Ila; Matt knew he had a safe place he could always go to.
Posted in connection
The voice calls to each person. It can be in different dialects. It can be in different tones. It can even be a silent voice that speaks not in whispers but in blinks or in stillnesses. Some believe it comes from the different places but it is the same. Mostly the voice becomes stamped onto something like ink on paper; just waiting to imprint like metal slugs living inside a typewriter.
Today, the air was hot and fragrant but Caroline didn’t mind. She simmered along with the pavement, swaying her hips a bit more as she listened to Van Morrison on her MP3 player. The only complaint Caroline was occupied with was the strange cloudiness that happened to her sinuses when the weather was warm, being unlike those who get it at the regular winter season. She caught a sneeze the way people catch a cold. Her nose tickled incessantly but she was determined not to give in to its constant need for attention.
A man dressed in a black suit barked into his cellphone, barely scraping by Caroline as he passed her. The voice was waiting patiently for him, but he was not listening just now. Up ahead stood Joanna, dabbing at her upper lip with her wrists. When she noticed Caroline, she smiled and dramatically fanned her hand over her face, referencing the heat. Caroline took out her earbuds and placed her music inside her back jeans pocket.
“Sorry sorry!” Caroline called.
“Late again? I’m so surprised,” Joanna mocked.
“I’m not late! I’m just not early,” Caroline argued, even though she was just apologizing to her friend for that very thing. Joanna smiled, knowing how to resolve the bustling habits of her friend. Certain buttons were naturally pushed between the two, but somehow when pushed by a friend of sixteen years, it feels more like tickling the button down rather than pushing it.
“Uhg! It’s so hot! Can’t we just skip this thing and go straight for the air conditioning at Carl’s?” Joanna said.
“Let’s peek in at least,” Caroline answered.
“Uhg!” Joanna repeated.
The workshop Caroline had asked Joanna to attend with her was named “The Grass isn’t Always Greener“ about how to not sacrifice your desire for change at the cost of your commitment to something else. Since it only cost twenty dollars with the internet coupon and was mostly a great excuse to have beers afterwards, there wasn’t much convincing needed. But privately, Caroline had another alternative. She was eager for someone to convince her to stick in there, to stay with it and put in another few years of medial work at the office and certainly the promotion at the end of it would be worth while.
The friends eased their head around the corner to the conference room where the workshop was reserved. The speaker had a chopped and feathered haircut that was doused in thick bleached highlights. She wore a tan power suit and black pumps. But it was her pacing across the front of the room that made her look positively passionate about duty. She resembled a tiger in a cage more than a motivational teacher. Caroline wasn’t sure what she was expecting but this wasn’t it. It was like opening the cabinet door and seeing sweaters instead of crackers.
The tiger cleared her throat, indicating that she was about to start when the voice chimed in. It said, “Squeek!” and both Caroline and Joanna turned their heads toward it. The squeaking came from the top styrofoam cup being removed from the single tower sitting on the refreshment table. Next to the coffee lay a plate full of yellow pastries filled with little puddles of deep red strawberry jelly. Not being the sort of women to pass up a pastry, they mutually agreed to give the tiger a shot.
The tiger talked for forty minutes of the hour long workshop about how she had little patience for those who followed after their frivolities. Ten minutes were about of how she had helped countless others from throwing away their marriages and life savings. Fifteen minutes were spent bashing those who travel in search of something unexplainable. Another ten minutes on the ridiculousness on investing in something with an unforeseeable reward and a final five minutes about the sanity of sticking with what you know. Forty minutes total of listening to the tiger leaving only twenty minutes if time for questions and comments, both of which were directed toward the table full of paper surveys and short little pencils.
Stepping outside afterwards, as Joanna munched on another scammed pastry, muffling her words about how great those beers are sounding now and how she will never be dragged to another workshop again, Caroline let something else speak.
The voice had whipped around her with the fresh humid air, stirring and pulling her arms into goosebumps as if it were freezing. Caroline had been listening for it but she had been expecting it to talk to her like a parent. Instead it spoke to her like a newly made friend.
“I’m going back to school,” said Caroline’s voice.
Posted in Circumstance
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