On Life as a Sarcastic Fringehead

I decided on a 500-word maximum. So this is more of an exercise, but I truly hope, at 456 words, it's still a story. Thoughts and comments welcome.

blue girl

The weirdest dreams I’ve been having lately. When I’m in the dreams, I know I’m in a dream and, in the dream, I’m okay with that. Lots of boxes. Fabric stretched over box-shaped frames. I’m standing in the middle of them, looking around. People are coming in and people are going out. Nobody is really noticing me and this is not a concern of mine, being noticed.

I wake up from one of these dreams and walk to the refrigerator in my pajamas. Cotton pajamas. I have to buy those for myself. When I get pajamas as gifts, they are the silky polyester blend pajamas and I’m not into those for sleeping. Cotton pajama pants and a little t-shirt, those are for sleeping. I’m at the refrigerator and I pour a glass of orange juice. Leaning my head against the cool metal door, I’m in the moment relieved.

I think about my father a great deal when I am unable to sleep. It is the thought of him, charismatic and handsome, that wakes me. He was, in my strongest memories, unable to keep his hands off any woman who passed him by. His favorite joke, talking about me, about how “we’re not sure who the mother is” caused uncomfortable laughter each time he told it with his insider’s wink, but I always thought it was funny. He would hold me at night, kissing my cheeks and smelling of the most wonderful blend of French wine, homemade bread and cigarettes, whispering that it was him and me against the world while a honey-of-the-moment slept in the next room.

My father named me Ali after the great fighting Ali, and he used to say I was just as pretty and just as strong. When strangers call me Alley at the sight of my name on paper, a seismic shift in tone occurs when I correct them to Ah-LEE. It’s a fight in perception, and I am always ready for that. When I was young, people were most curious at the discovery of a redheaded white girl named for a converted Cassius Clay. Today, the perception is all about religion, and no one gives a thought to boxing.

Back to sleep, the dreams begin again. My father, this time with me among the boxes, cannot stop moving. His fingers frantic and light against the fabric then the frames then to my face and lips. He looks confused and afraid just like he did when he knew he was dying, and I don’t know how to help. So I can’t. So I don’t. He kisses me goodnight, he kisses me goodbye, but I feel nothing against my skin, memory of his face to mine fading long ago. Not a person notices us before he falls away.