Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

Katherine produces a penny from her purse, her head still bowed in supplication under the swoop of the sheet above her. Stephen grabs Katherine’s purse and begins banging the table in front of him, babbling and singing. Maureen quickly lifts the crystal ball, her ball of the sea, to save it from falling and breaking. The frenzied sea fish have dispersed; the crystal ball is empty.

“I don’t want a penny.” Maureen’s annoyance still pulses.

“Ah, love, what is it? Is it Richard Marr?” Katherine realizes that she has arrived too quickly at the nub of the problem and consequently has given herself away.

“Nooo. .” Maureen says the word slowly enough to let Katherine know that, in fact, it is Richard Marr.

“Mama look. Awh gon.” Stephen’s two arms are now outstretched; his eyes are wide. He has dropped the purse at Katherine’s feet. It has magically disappeared.

Katherine bends down to retrieve the purse.

“Take the purse out to Li-li, out to Li-li. Mummy will come in a minute.”

“Li-li,” repeats Stephen and, firmly gripping Katherine’s purse, toddles purposefully out through the silky pink door of the tent to find Elizabeth, biting and licking it as it slides smoothly over his face.

“I’m sorry. Did you mind him coming in to get his fortune told?” Katherine is treading carefully.

“I don’t see anything in the ball,” mumbles Maureen.

“Oh, have another look. Will I travel to faraway places? Will I build a spaceship in the back garden to take me to the moon?” Katherine, keenly aware of just how juvenile she might be sounding, is determined and tender. “It was only for fun, pet; don’t take it all so seriously. Anyway, I think Richard Marr was delighted; he’s always wanted a dog.”

“He told you what I said!” Maureen’s voice is urgent.

“Well. .” Katherine is hesitating. “I asked him and he was too polite not to tell.”

Silence. Maureen’s fingers, still clutching the crystal ball, have white-hot edges to them. She raises her eyes to look at her mother. She is turning the crystal ball slowly in her hands, mulling something over and over in her head. Then after a gentle intake of breath, she says to Katherine, “Mummy. . what does love feel like?”

“Love?” Katherine echoes gently. A single silver-gilded fish darts back into the crystal ball of the sea.

“I mean. . how do you know? How do you know when you’re in love?”

“Well. .” Katherine had not expected this. Maureen’s directness takes Katherine by surprise. “Well. .”

“Is it supposed to make you feel rotten?” continues Maureen.

“Rotten? Not particularly, no, pet. Rotten in what way?”

“Rotten about yourself.”

Katherine looks tenderly at Maureen, trying to decipher exactly what her daughter’s emotions are. Her own emotions are beginning to race.

“You just know,” Katherine continues softly.

“But how do you know?” Maureen’s tone is anxious.

“Because. . you feel. . you feel yourself floating and burning at the same time.”

Katherine hears herself explaining it as if it is fact. As if she knows exactly what love is. Can decode it, clarify it, quantify it.

Floating and burning.

Maureen looks cautiously at her mother.

“And it makes you feel different from before.” Katherine smiles at Maureen, the corners of her mouth turning down with compassion.

Floating and burning and different from before. So these are the codes of love, glimpsed and now shared. And Katherine has explained it to her daughter as though she has understood it herself. As though she has understood how the experience of love preoccupies and claims its space. As though she has understood how the experience of love has preoccupied and claimed her.

Stephen comes toddling back into the tent, the silky pink scarf sliding over him slickly in one rapid movement, revealing him suddenly as if he were part of an illusionist’s magic trick. The lack of space curtails him immediately.

“Li-li ky-ing,” he shouts excitedly. “Ky-ing.” He presses his two hands into Katherine’s lap, looking up at her intently.

“What’s wrong with Elizabeth?” Katherine is distracted a moment from her conversation with Maureen.

“Awh gon.” Stephen turns and heads out of the tent again, assuming that his mother is right behind him.

“Don’t worry, my love.” Katherine strokes Maureen’s face. Then shifting slightly on the wooden toolbox, she continues: “I should go out and see what’s going on with Elizabeth.”

Maureen sighs deeply, then straightens her body. She looks at her mother. There is a brief pause.

“I’m going to change out of these clothes.” Maureen says.

“Good idea, pet.” Katherine still talks quietly and tenderly. “Let’s see what’s happening outside.”

“Oh, wait a minute.” Maureen looks down into her crystal ball “A friend is going to visit you very soon and bring you something.” Maureen looks at her mother and seems a little less upset.

“Oh, thank you, love — something nice, I hope.” Katherine smiles at her daughter, placing her penny on the table. “Come on, let’s go outside.”

Maureen puts the crystal ball down. There are now two black pennies on the tabletop, two dark eyes staring at her. She pulls the scarf briskly from her head and makes her way out of the tent to follow her mother, stooping gracelessly through the exit and leaving the vapors of confession behind. Outside, the sunlight blasts them both.

In the dusky raspberry light of the fortune-telling tent, the crystal ball lies on the table, like a glass heart in which the sun has set. The two dark eyes look into it. And shards of tiny silvery fish have now returned. They swim and dart in the mellow hues. Among the fish now there are words floating, drifting. And as the words turn and twist, they catch the muted rays of light and flicker as though they are burning.

Floating and burning.

The words among the silvery fish: “What. . does. . love. . feel. . like.”

Katherine finds Elizabeth crying. Stephen, as instructed by his mother, had given the purse to Elizabeth. But Elizabeth, too busy orchestrating blindfolds and buckets and hoops and prizes, had hurriedly put the purse down in the longer grass by the edge of the swing and then could not find it. Katherine now wipes Elizabeth’s eyes with a cotton handkerchief and reassures her that they will find the purse. And they do. They find it on the white elephant stall beside the bottle of 4711 eau de cologne — as easily as that. Someone had spotted it in the grass and had placed it there for safekeeping.

The sun continues shining, warming the heads and backs and arms of everyone at the fair. Katherine is chatting to Mrs. Carter. Isabel is showing Peter Barnsley that she can climb a tree in hot pants and is settling herself on a slender branch of the apple tree to prove it, looking like a glinting golden fruit. Maureen, now out of her Madam Maureen costume, is helping Elsa sell off the last bits and pieces on the tables. Elizabeth is sitting on the grass, making a long, long daisy chain for Stephen, who is clapping his hands in delight. And Richard Marr, who had been the one who had pinned the tail closest to the donkey’s rear, is sitting on the garden wall with a small glass of white lemonade, looking at Maureen.

Surprisingly, no one has managed to hit the upturned buckets beside the apple tree. A small bag of toffees sits in the grass in the summer sun, growing soft.

It is evening and the girls are getting ready for bed. As they brush their teeth, they take turns singing hymns through the gentle white foam in their mouths. In the bathroom, crowded around the washhand basin, they elbow one another as they sing. Their spittals of praise make them giggle and swallow too quickly and choke and giggle all the more. They brush the holy words around their mouths until their teeth are as clean as their souls ought to be. They sputter into the washhand basin and watch their venial sins, their cross words, their white lies, their small unkindnesses, all the little bits and pieces of themselves that make them them, swirl down the plughole. They are sanctified in a skittish kind of way and their tongues are sweet and minty.