"Swinging by Spring" by Rhea Dhanbhoora
I have to tilt my head just right for her tree and my tree to look like the same tree.
I almost do not notice her because I am looking at the woman poking at her crevices with a soft-bristle brush, the woman my husband is looking at, my husband who I can tell knows this woman who is bent over a Lladro figurine in the store-window we are impolitely peering into on a hot summer evening, though only one of us is ogling.
I let him leer so I can look longer at the Lladro, arrested by the labyrinth of roses coiled around the seat of a swing, and by the Spanish porcelain sculpture serenely seated on it.
I try to recall when I began to be so conscious of the way my body has aged.
Whenever we walk by, my husband tilts his head to follow the sway of the store-owner’s breasts. When I tilt mine I can see the Wisteria tree in my backyard in place of the rose-tree the porcelain figurine swings from. All summer, when I look at my tree, I see roses in place of the blue blossoms that adorn it in spring.
I am almost hit by a car mid-season, stepping off a pavement backwards to escape an image of my husband holding a soft-bristle brush over my crevices. After I am put in a cast, a specialist asks if I am stressed. The Seroquel does not ease the pain in my broken leg, but I am no longer threatened by soft-bristle brushes.
By autumn I can walk, but I move so slowly even dry leaves do not reveal me when I sneak over to stare at the porcelain lady. Often, I press my feet down to extract a crunch, but I am still invisible. Sometimes I watch till sundown, noting the way her head rests against her arm, how her eyes are fixed on the bare foot peeking out of her eggshell gown.
As I shop for Thanksgiving decorations we will not put up this year, the woman and I struggle for space in a tub of turquoise, soap suds staining our Greek gowns. Before I sink, I am escorted out of the mall. The Lladro lady mocks me, her carefully crafted hair a caramel hue I once saw in the mirror.
Once every week, my husband wines and dines me. He has always enjoyed this, even though a decade after our first date, meals as well as conversations are often repeated. This year, he no longer compliments the way my breasts curve up over my deep neckline.
Even when it starts to snow, I walk over to study her, arms raised, delicate porcelain elbows bent as she grips the rope of the swing she seems now to be sliding off. Aldro, my husband calls the Lladro lady, who I find sitting on my nightstand this winter.
In a nightmare, the branches of my tree are not as strong as hers and my porcelain twin is laughing at my oversight. Just a dream, she assures me and I know her voice is not part of the fantasy because I am awake to hear a rustle of sheets and clanking of curtain hooks.
A gift, my husband calls her. Evidence, I tell my Jack Russel terrier who is also my therapist, and he barks angrily but doesn’t harm her. He can tell there is a part of me moulded into this porcelain lady I want to but cannot destroy.
Her sharp features seem suddenly soft, sorrowful. She is still recovering from the high temperatures her porcelain was plunged into as she was carved into her fate on this swing. I wonder at what temperature I will be carved into mine.
I lose my job at the end of winter because I cannot type annual reports while sewing my ghost-white Grecian gown. Unlike hers, its slate-blue sash will not stay frozen in time, but I am hopeful it is long enough to wave up and kiss the branches. “Unemployment is bad for the brain,” my husband speculates the source of the sewing, and I am proud a decade of intimacy has not torn through my veil. I wonder if he notices the breasts sculpted into the Lladro’s glossy porcelain bodice.
Close to spring, I search for rope for my own tree, strong enough for my head to rest against my arm just right, without being weighed down by my body. One night she shows me how to coil the cord to hold my limp frame just high enough for the periwinkle hem of my dress to skirt playfully over the blue blossoms on the trunk. I don’t need shoes to match, she says. My bloodless feet will compliment the cool tones.
My husband stops wining and dining me as the seasons change.
I spend most days in the backyard, waiting for my tree to blossom. Sometimes, my Jack Russel terrier, my therapist, follows, whimpering till he has coerced me indoors. The day my tree blossoms, he is not a good enough therapist to resist chewing on the fresh flowers, too distracted by a spring fever to notice as I practice a series of dependable knots on the strongest branch.
#
In a store-window, besides a Lladro lady surrounded by roses, my body settles against but never sits on a swing suspended from the overhanging branch of a blue Wisteria tree. Draped folds in my ghost-white gown hide age-slackened skin, a slate-blue sash pulls fabric back to highlight the contours of my once interesting breasts. Like the porcelain figure next to me, my eyes are fixed on a cool, pale foot peeking out of my dress.
I no longer have to tilt my head for her tree and my tree to look the same.
Rhea lives and writes in Upstate NY. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in various publications including Chronogram, Artsy, Broccoli Mag, and JMWW. She's currently on the Board for literary organization, Quiet Lightning, and is working on several projects, among which is a linked collection about women, based in the underrepresented Parsi Zoroastrian diaspora.