Open Writing

I remembered them from a long time ago. They were beautiful. They had long black shiny braids bouncing on their shoulders, pink cheeks and bright eyes, and curvy grown up figures. Nice rounded breasts that I particularly admired, since I aspired to a similar pair myself when I became a teenager.

Agnes and Ann. They no longer went to the village school. Now they were working on the estate, earning their living, and being very popular with the boys. They giggled and flirted on their way to and from work, and they seemed to enjoy every moment of their lives. I thought they were so lucky.

The years went by. They both married and settled down to the routine of village life, while I went abroad, and lost touch.

And then I came back for a visit. I met Agnes again. She was now a widow in her late sixties, time having taken its toll on her beauty. Her glossy black hair had turned a dull grey, she squinted behind heavy horn-rimmed glasses that kept slipping down her nose, and her shapely figure had disappeared into a shapeless torso. Her voice had lost its liveliness, and she limped about painfully, arthritis having settled into her joints.

We talked about our lives. She had many children who had emigrated to England, and the United States, and she was now living by herself. But she had done well and was comfortably well off.

'You were so lucky,' she told me. 'You were able to finish school. Me, I had to go to work and get married so young.'

'But I wanted to be like you,' I told her. 'You and Ann were so glamorous. So popular. Nobody noticed the skinny kid that I was, lugging a bunch of books to school.'

I asked her about Ann.

'She is still there, but she’s lost her sight,' Agnes informed me. 'Would you like to go and see her?'

'Sure,' I gratefully replied.

The next afternoon, Agnes and I crawled up the steep village road leading to Ann’s house. We stopped by the river and talked about the times when we used to do our laundry in its cool waters. How we used to swim in the deep pools.

'Now, everybody got running water in their houses,' Agnes explained. 'Nobody bothers with the river anymore.'

When we reached Ann’s house, we could see her rounded figure huddled on a chair in the second storey verandah overlooking the road. We had to go through a walkway into the back of the house to get up the stairs that led to the verandah. Ann did not seem to hear us come in, and I wondered whether she was also deaf.

My heart sank when I took in the details of her appearance. She seemed barely alive, her head bowed, her drooling mouth half opened, her eyes vacant, her dirty grey hair hanging limply from her head like so many rat tails. Draped over her thick shoulders was a fraying pink cardigan held together by a large safety pin. The rest of her body was covered with a faded print skirt, her gnarled feet and clawlike toes sticking out from beneath her. There was no trace of the Ann I used to know in that inert body.

Agnes went up to her and tapped her firmly on the shoulder.

'Ann,' she hollered. 'Do you know who come to see you?'

Ann did not move or respond. And then, Agnes went right up to her sister's face, and in a cheekingly provoking voice announced, 'Its your pain in the arse little sister, Agnes.'

As if jolted by a bolt of lightning, Ann's arms flew out and grabbed her sister, and from deep down within her came a garbled crackling sound that grew into a full-throated peal of laughter filling the verandah and sending her body rocking in spasms of delight. Again and again she laughed, with Agnes joining in with willful abandon. I could not believe the transformation.

The two sisters, locked in each other's arms, seemed to bridge the span of time.

© Lytrice Adams