Mary Cresswell
Two Stories
At Home With Bluebeard
The locks were the last to rattle out of the box, an addling adjunct to the chains, cuffs and keys. They laid the keys on the windowsill facing the mangroves, and the rank air crept in and corroded them all, turning their black iron into white doves. The keys fluttered helplessly in the mortise, making clear in advance that there was no way through. By great good luck, the storybook was open at the proper page, so she knew what to do. She put the manacles out on the front step in hopes of finding a man. That was exactly what happened next.
There were so many she found it hard to choose, but choose she did. The corrosion fell off, the locks grew black, and the windows again decreased to their proper size, thus excluding the excessive air and view which had once been obtainable. The key itself? That ended up on a board by the door, hanging from a nail. It was of course labelled, as indeed was she.
So all was well, and the river remembered to flow towards the sea.
It's Me Again
I am going to visit my grandmother I said, and I took my basket from the hook and filled it with food. When I got to the hospital the nurse looked through it. She can’t have grapes said the nurse. Why bloody not said I. Because, said the nurse. Her eyes are bigger than her stomach what big eyes she has your grandmother but not enough to eat grapes with my dear. Pshaw, I said, and gave her an old-fashioned look. Tsk tsk, she said, right back at me, sharp like a syringe she was, that one.
I took my basket and went down the hall. On and on I walked, and the woods got deeper and deeper. The only light came from the TV monitors. My grandmother was lying in her bed with a ruffled cap on her head and her teeth in a glass on the table beside her. I put the basket on the blanket next to her. Her eyes were shut and there were big stiff hairs growing all over her face. Oh no, I cried, weeping desperately.
Suddenly a great hairy shape came out of the forest, an axe over his shoulder and a length of tubing in his hand. With a deft whack, he cut my grandmother’s head off and tipped her body out of the bed with one wrench of his mighty arms. In a trice, he tossed me on the bed again and again. He rose up finally, jaws dripping, and smiled a big toothy smile.
Then he left the room. I woke up the next morning with a ruffled cap on my head and my teeth in a glass on the table beside me. I was hungry for grapes but they never gave me any. Visitors bring those said the nurse and what a big stomach you have my dear. It will never be filled, not in this place. Never in a thousand years.
Mary Cresswell is a retired science editor from Los Angeles and has lived in New Zealand for many years. Her third book, Trace Fossils, is being published in March 2011. For more details, see www.bookcouncil.org.nz/Writers/Profiles/Cresswell,%20Mary.
