Under the Pink

The following is a short story (well it may seem long here as you scroll down but it really is a short story) I was inspired to write about Tori Amos seminal second album: UNDER THE PINK.

Hope you enjoy as much as I did writing it.

 

 

UNDER THE PINK

　

“All I ask is for the Lord to let me die a happy man and grant me my wish of having a son of my own.” Reverend Amos Graham, after the fourth unfortunate miscarriage suffered by his wife Cecilia.

#

There’s a single tear with no seeming purpose deposited in the valley of my hand and as I stare at it, a strand of golden hair threatens to cut my eye if I blink too fast, sending me into a panic until I realize that it is a ray of early sunshine breaking in through the cracks.

It’s not just any kind of sunshine.

It’s the kind that will stir millions from stillness; the kind that will rescue many a mind from the trapdoors of dreamscapes; the kind that will open up eyes to their fate. For me, it is the kind of sunshine that sends me into bouts of despair for it means to harm; it means to erase this place forever.

“Cold weather warms my heart,” she said to me the first time I saw her, and her smile, as the wind swept by sending chills up and down our spines, made me smile back and I discovered then, I felt the same.

There are remnants of our encounters littered all over this place, in every room, frozen in time, moving slowly in the heavy hands of space and sparkling with glacial beauty. These images, these memories are all I have left, surrounded by pockets of air that burst at the softest of touch with enough winter chill to keep me safe from sunshine.

How long can I remain like this? How did it all come down to this?

Two more strands of sunshine break through and I retreat into the dark corners of the room and close my eyes, letting my mind drift as I yearn for her to come to me but it’s too late now; I too will disappear.

“What’s your name?” she asked, that smile still burning brightly while her emerald-green eyes sparkled with vibrant electricity. She was like a living, breathing invitation to a world I never knew existed and from which I knew I would never return.

“Taos,” I replied, and she reached for my hand as the wind swept by again engulfing us in a tunnel of snowflakes as her fiery-red hair flew all around her face. “Nice to meet you Taos,” she said with coquettish shyness before continuing, “I feel as though I already know you from somewhere.”

“That’s strange,” I said, unable to stop smiling at her, and how could I? “I feel as though I know you too.”

“Do you know my name then?” she asked, tightening her grip on my hand.

“Yes, Anastasia.”

We spent the whole afternoon together wandering away through the forest and snow hills, making snow angels, catching snowflakes with our tongues. “Clouds,” she called them.

We had a pretty good day until we came back into town.

I stopped for a couple of seconds at the edge of the village, looking up at all the little buildings as if I’ve never seen them before. I knew the feeling, it had been tucked away in the back of my mind, so far back, I’ve forgotten all about it by the sheer familiarity of things and growing accustomed to this environment. But now everything appeared to have taken on a strange sense of disconnect and unspoken hostility. This place wasn’t my home; it didn’t want me any more that I wanted to be part of it.

I took a few steps forward but she held me back and shook her head.

“I’ll meet you here tomorrow?”

“But why? It’ll be just a minute, I want you to meet mother.”

“Not today,” she said, her voice dropping in decibels and the light in her eyes slowly dimming down. Something was wrong; maybe she could sense the village’s passive hostility.

“I dreamt of you.”

“And I dreamt of you too,” I quickly said, slowly pulling her hand, silently asking her to come but she resisted me.

“I will dream of you again tonight and I will wait for you here tomorrow.” With those words, her hand slipped out of mine and she left.

I walked silently up the street to my house—not my house but the house I lived in, keeping my head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone coming the opposite direction or staring out of any window.

“Where have you been all day?” mother asked as I closed the door behind me.

“Just out,” I replied, and she made a few comments about my health and the weather and wasting time instead of doing productive things, but all I could think about was Anastasia and whatever had dampened her mood so suddenly.

“There’s something wrong with this town,” I murmured to myself. “What was that?” mother asked; I hadn’t even noticed her standing next to me.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, flashing her a frail smile before making my way up to the bathroom to wash my face and hands for supper.

I stayed relatively quiet during supper, prompting mother to ask—twice, if I was feeling all right. I reassured her I was fine and even let her take a good look at me under the good light by the kitchen, but I knew she wasn’t fully convinced that I was all right, especially after I retired to my room earlier than usual. I would feign vigor another day. That night, I wanted to be alone in my room and give myself away to sleep.

I didn’t dream of Anastasia that night, and if I did, the events of those dreams didn’t follow me into the morning light. I had no memory of having dreamt a single dream no matter how hard I concentrated on extracting the images out of my subconscious. Resigning myself to the lost, I took a quick bath, made my way downstairs and had breakfast with mother. Once done, I promised mother I would stop by Mr. Fletcher the baker to see if he was in need of any help. Mr. Fletcher was a good friend of ours, always checking in on us to make sure we were all right ever since father’s passing.

Grabbing my coat, I left the house and hastily made my way to Mr. Fletcher’s.

“Hello there Taos,” Mr. Fletcher said as I opened the door and bells above announced my arrival.

“Good morning Mr. Fletcher,” I said, approaching the counter. “Would you be needing any help today?”

“There hasn’t been much business ever since the snow started falling so I don’t suppose I’ll see many faces in the store today… but I wouldn’t mind an extra pair of hands to help me set up though,” he said amiably, and I immediately took off my coat, hung it, and then pointed to the trays of cookies and assorted treats on top of the counter. “If you don’t mind,” he said, and I set to work.

As we worked, Mr. Fletcher asked me the usual questions here and there: if we were okay, if we had enough wood for the fireplace, etc. For my part, I kept an eye on the windows by the front of the store, trying to see if I could catch a glimpse of Anastasia waiting by the frozen fountain at the edge of town.

“Waiting for someone?” Mr. Fletcher asked, after apparently catching me looking out the window for the twentieth time. I thought I had been discreet about it.

“Not really,” I replied, and felt slightly glad he didn’t press the subject.

“Well we are just about done here,” he announced, “I thank you so much for stopping by and offering a helping hand. Go ahead and take these with you,” he said, placing a few banana-nut muffins on a paper bag.

“Not a problem Mr. Fletcher; you know I’m glad to be of help whenever I’m needed,” I said, “thank you so much for these,” I finished, taking the bag from him.

“Make sure you share them,” he said with a playful grin, though I refused to confirm his suspicion that I was meeting someone, no matter how right he was. I simply turned around, grabbed my coat and walked out of the store and made my way down to the fountain, where as if on cue, Anastasia appeared, coming around the other side of it to greet me.

“Hi,” I said. “Hi,” she said back.

“I brought you something,” I continued, holding the bag out for her to see.

“Baker, baker,” she whispered, and looked up at me. I must have had a look that said “how do you know?” because she immediately told me she could smell the contents of the bag and she’d seen me walked out of Mr. Fletcher’s.

“I hope you like them, though you give out a vibe of being more of a cornflake kind of girl.”

“Nope. I never was a cornflake girl and I don’t think I’ll ever be. The muffins are just fine.”

“Good. I have always like muffins better too,” I said back smiling.

“I dreamt of you.”

“I’m sad to say that I didn’t or at least I don’t recall.”

“You did, you just have to remember.”

“I tried to but nothing happened.”

“You will. You just have to find that which will bring the memory back. Come on.”

She led me back to the forest again, but instead of just walking around randomly like the day before, she was taking me somewhere specific, and the anticipation mounting in me led me to pick up the pace, eager to reach whatever place we were heading to at once.

“We’ll be there soon,” she said, taking hold of my hand.

So through frozen meadows, and crystalline valleys, and secret pine-cone passages we made our way to the place. I didn’t know how but I could feel its proximity, it was like a magnetic pull and I started feeling dizzy. My feet took off the ground and I was walking on air, on clouds made of snowflakes and I felt happily drunk with euphoria at the anticipation of reaching this place. Its pull was overwhelming now, we were there, in five, four, three, two…

“Winter.”

The word escaped my lips like a bud slowly opening to reveal its flower to the world; I was in complete awe. The place seemed to have been etched onto the face of the mountain and yet it was not exactly part of it, like a three-dimensional illusion. Its façade bursting with pastel color shades that weren’t painted on but reflected onto the surface by light. Anastasia smiled warmly and took me inside.

Time itself stopped the moment we stepped inside. There were no lights—no conventional lights inside the place. From the inside, you could see how the frost had grown and covered all windows on the outside, protecting the place from sunshine, and yet, everything was illuminated. There were chandelier-like icicle structures growing up from the ground, down from the ceiling, and spread in every direction of every corner.

“Frostbite,” I whispered and Anastasia laughed, every note of her laugh echoing around and rattling the icicles, bringing about formations of delicate snowflakes and tiny crystallize bubbles of air floating all over the place until they burst, releasing spectrums of colors. I felt high on the beauty of it all. Anastasia had been right once again; I did dream of her and me being together outside this place, and the memory put a smile on my face.

“This is our place. I will bring you here anytime you want, all winter if you wish,” she said softly, caressing my hand. As she led me into the different rooms I suddenly realized that for such a cold place, I felt strangely warm.

“Remember, cold weather warms my heart and yours as well for we are the same,” she said reading my mind, and she was right.

For the next few months as winter continued, she kept taking me back to the place at my request and our hearts kept warm. Every day, it became harder and harder for me to go back into town, walked up that old brick street, and return to mother’s house past the mission; so much so, that I couldn’t sleep anymore as I waited impatiently for the morning to come. I wanted to stay at the place with Anastasia forever.

“I feel so much different when I’m here with you,” I said to her. “I feel like a completely new person—no, I feel like I’ve finally found who I am and it’s all because of you. I never want us to be apart.”

“You feel like we have become part of each other, like you can read my mind; like we are one.”

“Yes, exactly. Why is that?”

“We have fallen under the spell of winter, lost in spectra,” she said caressing my face with one hand and placing her other hand on my heart. “We are under the pink.”

Her voice was velvet and her words poetry. I moved closer and kissed her, willingly losing myself under the pink.

#

“Mother, I’m home!” I called out as soon as I closed the door behind me. It was the night before Christmas and I have made it a point to be home early. Though I could hear her moving about in the kitchen, mother didn’t respond, so I made my way up to the bathroom to wash my hands and face. When I returned back down, I busied myself with setting up the table. Mother announced that Mr. Fletcher would be joining us so I set an extra set on the table and then waited.

Minutes after Mr. Fletcher arrived, mother called us to the table and we all took our seats. Mother said grace and then we ate.

“So I hear that you’ve made a new friend who you’ve been hanging out with this last few weeks,” mother said out loud as I finished supper.

“That’s right,” I replied.

“How come you never mentioned her to me?”

“She’s just someone I met by the fountain one afternoon, we got along well so we hang out every now and then.”

“That’s not exactly how I’ve heard it?” she said as her eyes turned to Mr. Fletcher, giving away her source of information and making clear the reason why he had come to join us for dinner. “As I’ve been told, you and this girl hang out every day. You leave town with her, going into the forest all day long and coming back almost at dusk.”

“We go for walks, we talk.”

“I don’t like you being away from town, who knows what could happen to you and I wouldn’t know until it was too late,” she said, and her displeasure was quite audible.

“There’s nothing to do around here and we only go for walks. We never go very far from town anyway.”

“I don’t like it. As a matter of fact I don’t like you hanging out with this girl; I’m going to have to ask you to stop seeing her from this moment on.”

“But mother why? That’s ridiculous!” I protested.

“Don’t you raise your voice at me,” she said firmly.

“I barely have any friends as it is and now you want me to stop seeing the only one I truly have?”

“I don’t like her. She is not from this town, not one of us; she’s an outsider, probably from one of those faithless families that are not welcome here, and I don’t want you with her. She can corrupt you—”

“She can corrupt me? What is this? Why are you talking like that, like she’s some sort of demon?”

“Taos, please! Think of God, think of how I feel, think of your father. How do you think he would be feeling right now if he were here listening to you talking back to me, acting all rebellious? He wouldn’t approve of your association with this girl. You are all he ever wanted, remember that! He would be very disappointed in you and I’m not going to allow that. We must respect his memory.”

“Father never wanted me!” I shouted.

“Taos!” mother shouted back, hitting the table with her left fist. “How dare you said that?” she asked, her eyes welling up as tears were already rolling down my cheeks. “Up to your room now. You are not to leave this house tomorrow or the next day, or the next one after.”

“I hope you are happy,” I said angrily at Mr. Fletcher, “your work here is done.”

“Up to your room now!” mother yelled, and I left the table, wiping my tears off with my hands all the way up to my room.

Seven weeks went by in which I remained a prisoner in my own room; seven miserable weeks during which I cried and yearned desperately for Anastasia’s company.

Thinking that the place—our place was missing something, I got bells for her for Christmas and I never got a chance to give them to her. I exhausted my nights trying to will myself into dreaming of her but for the longest time nothing happened until it finally did.

I could see her kneeling down over a dozen blankets by the frozen fireplace in our place, holding a crystal vial and crying for me. “Taos,” she said, “it’s almost over, and I’ve started to feel it. Winter is leaving us, the warm is coming and my heart is growing cold.” I tried to reach to her but I couldn’t touch her. “We are part of each other remember? I can’t leave without you,” she said, as tears fell of her face and landed inside the vial.

I woke up reaching for her and immediately left the bed and got dressed. I was determined to go to her side and never come back to this house, to this town that treated me as if I was something abnormal they had to tolerate but not embrace.

The noise coming from my room woke mother up and she immediately came in to see what was going on.

“Taos, what are you doing? Where do you think you are going in the middle of the night?”

“I can’t stay here anymore! She needs me and I’m going to her!” I announced firmly as I tied up my boots’ laces.

“Are you mad? Look out the window! There’s a snowstorm raging out there as we speak!”

“I don’t care!” I cried, “I don’t care! I’m not staying here anymore! All my life I felt as if there was something wrong with me and I felt alone and miserable and then I met Anastasia and all that went away until you locked me in here!”

“I was just trying to protect you!” mother cried.

“Protect me from whom? You were protecting yourself and the memory of a man I never knew and who didn’t want me!”

“Your father loved you even without meeting you, and had he not died on his way to the hospital where I was giving birth to you, he would have loved you even more once he had laid his eyes on you!”

“I’m going.” I said indifferently.

“You can’t do this! You will die in the storm!” she cried, rushing to my side and wrapping her arms around me but I wasn’t listening anymore. I pulled myself away from her and ran out of the room. Mother followed after me, screaming my name and begging me to stop but I didn’t. Opening the front door, I dashed into the whiteout, the echoing of her voice screaming my name and the vision of her standing by the open door as the wind roared were the last thing I heard and saw of mother.

I reached the place shortly before dawn but Anastasia was gone. I spent the next two days sitting by the frozen fireplace, lamenting her disappearance; holding the vial with her tears that she left behind for me.

The whiteout came to an end hours before dawn on the third day.

I yearn for her to come back but it’s much too late. The sunshine outside had begun to melt the snow, the frost.

Our time has come and gone. It arrived in the hands of the cold wind and now is being washed away in the melting snow. Tiny strands of golden sunshine keep breaking in and soon this place and our memories will too disappear.

There was a single tear left in the vial and now it’s in the valley of my hand; its purpose is to unite me with her, to keep me cold and warm my heart. As I bring my hand up to my mouth and swallow her tear, I hear her voice in my head and all around me, echoing through out the place, every wall and every room, taking me away as I melt down and disappear with the winter; forever lost under the pink.

#

“‘All I ask is for the Lord to let me die a happy man and grant me my wish of having a son of my own.’ Those were your father’s words,” Cecilia Graham said out loud as she sat alone, breast-feeding her baby girl in her hospital room, tears streaming down her face. “He had even picked out a name for you, so it’s only fitting to honor his wish and use it now that he’s gone. My little angel, my Taos.”

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