Saturday, June 3, 2017

Hello Mary

Early in the morning, gray-filtered into the valley, light showed up later, about when Mary made morning coffee. With no rush to hurry her about her day, Mary looked past the trees to the fluffy white clouds in the sky lost in thought until she smelled the coffee.
Coffee, chocolate, bread, Mary thought she must have always liked those, but wondered; that’s all she does is wonder.
She felt as if she’d been dropped into a stranger’s life; nothing felt familiar. People spoke to her as if in the middle of a conversation, but she didn’t know them or what they were talking about, it frightened her.
“You’re high. You’ve been drinking. You’ll be fine in the morning. It was a great party. Goodnight, Mary.”
And with that, there was Mary, alone in the night with no memory of a moment before. She sat on the porch staring at Orion’s Belt, saw a shooting star, and then coqui-coqui, coqui-coqui caught her attention until she found a tiny frog that made the sound. It’s odd how faced with something monumental a person will focus on something inconsequential.
Utterly confused, Mary wandered into the living room and down the hall to a bedroom where she dropped onto a bed and sobbed herself to sleep
Nobody needed to tell Mary to go to the bathroom in the morning, but she started at the mirror. “Who is this woman?” She stared at the face not knowing who stared back. “I need help,” she mumbled.
“Who am I? What am I doing here?”
Mary raced out the door to find out. A couple of dogs greeted her warmly. A rich texture of green overwhelmed her eyes.
“Oh, my, it’s beautiful, “ she thought as she looked across the valley.
Just then she saw an older lady walking on the road. Mary scrambled down the driveway determined to find out what was going on.
“Hello,” she called.
The woman walked into a yard across the street; the gate swung closed and locked behind her. She turned to Mary.
“Buen dia. Como esta? Todo bien? Todo bien.” She said, smiled and walked into her house; the door closed.
Mary stopped at the bottom of the driveway. “Huh?”
“What was that? Where am I?”
“God help me.”
She searched the dense green foliage and found colorful houses peeking out; a couple of dogs barked. Cows on a hillside munched and a car went down a road. Mary retreated to the bedroom, where she tried to calm down enough to think; mercifully she fell asleep, only waking after dark.
A dome of sparkling lights set in dark blue ink reflected the twinkling lights of in the bowl of a valley. Tired of the terror, the befuddlement of her situation, Mary sat forbidding herself to think. She stared at clusters of stars when one shot across the sky. “Like me,” she thought and began wondering again.
The next morning the phone rang, caller ID read: Miranda.
“Hello,” Mary answered.
“Hey, Colt’s having a party tomorrow night, wanted you to come. Stop by my house. We’ll walk over together. Bye.”
Mary stood looking at the phone in her hand; what just happened? Miranda sounded friendly perhaps she could help, but then Mary got lost in the pictures on the walls, each one seemed to tell a different tale and one picture looked like the woman in the mirror, not her.
The woman looked happy in the picture, so did the man with her, even the dog with them looked happy. 
Who was looking for her?
Mary examined the cell phone, surprised at how easily she navigated from contact list to the internet and the treasure trove of information, messaging.
With a little information, she calmed out of bonkers insanity, moving into sweaty fingers scared where she spends part of each day despite feeling that she landed in someone’s nice little life.  


No comments:

Post a Comment