Swing, Sashay, Shimmy Away E-Book

Willa van Gent

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 103

Beschreibung

People come together - intentionally, by coincidence, because of work, travelling, as neighbours, competitors, family, clients - and behave in the strangest ways. These snapshots of life's quirkiness seek to bring levity to any grey day. A short story collection to chase away the blues. One story a day keeps the gloom away. Enjoy!

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

FRESH BREAD, CLEAN DISHES, CLOSED CURTAINS...

BRITISH LIT

FROM WAR TO JUNGLE

WAR ibid.

DRESS CODE 1

DRESS CODE 2

HANDSOME FATHER AND SON CAFE

SPICE UP YOUR LIFE

SMART ELEVATORS

CANARY BIRD ADVICE

WAR MEMORIES

SISTERS REUNITED

ANITA’S DAUGHTER FRIEDI BREAKS FREE

ITALIAN ZING

WORK OR SEX

I DO NOT WANT TO DIE ALONE

NOTARY CUTHBERT

GONE SUDDENLY

BREAD CRUNCH

STUFFING ENVELOPES

SNIP SNIP

I AM

LOST SISTERS

CELL MEMORY

PACEMAKER 1

PACEMAKER 2

WOMAN AMAZON

MATHS PANIC

WET WITH SWEAT AND RAIN

RECEPTIONIST

DOG PARK SOCIAL

STOMACH TELLS THE TRUTH (INDIGESTION 1)

WONDERFUL MORNING

KILL THE COCKROACH!

2nd-HAND BRIDAL GOWN

SOUND MIND, BROKEN BODY

51 IS AN OLD FLAME

PAPER-THIN WALLS

MILANO CRUDO

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

AFFAIR OUT OF HAND

STOMACH TELLS THE TRUTH (INDIGESTION 2)

BLIND

GENDER POLITICS RUIN DINNER

CALLING ALL CATS

CALLING ALL GOATS

CHICA TERREMOTO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BIRTH CERTIFICATES

FRESH BREAD, CLEAN DISHES, CLOSED CURTAINS

First serious boyfriend, first time cooking and cleaning, keeping house for young couple. New city for her, not knowing where bakery or supermarket is, needs to provide fresh bread for breakfast. Improvise reheating day-old bread, dampening a bit with water and heating in oven. He exclaims, after first bite, ‘What is this?! This bread is not fresh!’ She stammers, attempts to cover the small trick of feigned freshness. ‘I always want fresh bread!’ he fumes.

A few days later, same situation, this time croissants can be reheated, they come out crispy and warm from oven, Boyfriend bites in and does not notice deception. As he eats away, stress and relief wash over her, she had been expecting another outraged outburst.

Next hurdle came during cleaning up and washing the dishes. She wanted to not use up all the dishwasher detergent, put a few drops only on the dirty plates. Gave them a quick scrub, placed them in the rack to drip-dry. He came into the kitchen, eyed her critically, picked up one of the clean plates, swiped it with his index finger, held the plate up, tilted it back and forth in the light. ‘This is not really clean, rinse it again, properly!’ he ordered. She rinsed the plate a second time, ‘But with more soap and very hot water!’ he commanded.

At night, the exterior blinds had to be lowered to the bottom, completely sealing the window, not a glimmer of light, sound or air to seep through. She felt as if she were suffocating, panic attack coming on in that dark, silent room. She was used to the window being open a crack, hearing birdsong in the morning, feeling a fresh breeze come in when all had cooled down outside. She begged him to leave the blind open if only few centimeters, just a tiny sliver, so she could see some light on the floor and imagine she was getting air. ‘If I wake up at 5 in the morning because of those loud birds chirping, I will wake you up and throw you out of bed so you close the blinds!’ he fumed. Yes yes, she agreed. Next morning at 6, she woke with a start, almost a heart attack, fearful, worried, would he hear the birds or see the first rays of sun?! Quickly she jumped out of bed and lowered the blinds to the floor, to leave the room completely dark again. She did not want to incite his impatience and anger, she wanted to do everything right by him.

Oh the fears of A New Love trying to please the other.

August 1991

BRITISH LIT

Last May when I went home to visit my parents, I heard that Miss Alducin had Alzheimer’s and was in a home. I could not believe it, my favourite high school literature teacher, she who had tried to make our unripe minds understand the complexities of Macbeth, Pygmalion and the Romantic poets. Like Miss Fonseca, who a few years earlier gave me “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” opening a whole new world of struggling young women, fighting against parents and pining for boyfriends, just like me.

‘If Miss Alducin is in a home now, who will spread the word of English Literature, who will encourage young students to write, to put pen to paper and order their thoughts into a coherent story?’ I thought despondently. Miss Alducin made us watch the 1939 version movie version of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ swooning over Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as protagonists. The movie was in black and white and we barely followed the dialogue, but the magic of seeing these two beautiful young hero and heroine, with their tragic love story, was unforgettable. We did not quite understand it, but Miss Alducin knew our minds would take something good out of it. Bless her knowing heart for that, thank you Miss Alducin!

December 2018

FROM WAR TO JUNGLE

When they diagnosed his cancer, too far along to be eradicated, he knew his months were counted. He saw with clarity the decades he had lived, the countries he visited, the houses where he lived, his two children. In that moment of fragility and fear, he realised he had to go back to her, his first love, his first wife, the mother of his kids, the one he had left for another woman. Foolish and weak, oh the flesh is weak, he sighed.

A man of the cloth, he met his future wife on a ferry crossing the English Channel, from England on the way to France, on his way home to Belize. He was mulato, Creole, dark-skinned with piercing blue eyes, a great beautiful man, clean and clear English, just graduated from Selwyn College in Cambridge. She, a young woman, had started a conversation with him on the ferry. The boat trip passed quickly and once on land in France, they did not want to part company. After that, Daisy never left his side, endured her parents cutting her out of the will because she dared cohabitate with a man of colour. She moved to Belize with him, future archdeacon, tying their two children to the porch posts. Should they venture beyond the terrace, the jungle would swallow them and she would never again see her golden boy and girl.

1941

On another continent, Heinz lay on the grass in the field and thought today may be the day he died. He had written the letter to his wife, giving her the password for the bank account, he knew he had a 4-month old son whom he had only seen in a small black-and-white photograph. If it all ended today out on the edges of Russian fields, he had loved, he had given everything for his country, he hoped one day his wife would remarry and his son grow to be a strong, capable man. Heinz adjusted his glasses and took his machine gun to the front. It was a balmy August day, he was amongst comrades, those shreds of beauty and harmony would be in his thoughts, hoping to shut out the noise of war and death around him. Hopefully in his next life there would be peace, no more war, this could not be the answer, he thought.

1982

From these two men of completely different backgrounds and upbringings sprang a daughter and a son whose paths would cross four decades later, in Mexico City. She was the love child from that British-Belizean union, he was the love child from a double-German idealistic union. She overcame racism because of skin colour, he overcame shaming for his war-rooted background. Would the parents ever have imagined their children growing up on the New Continent, far from Old World prejudices? The scars from the parents’ choices were borne by their children.

Daisy’s daughter, engaged in her early 20s to a young man from a good Mexican family and fortune, saw her dream of a love match disappear when both sets of parents met for the engagement dinner and his parents saw her mulatto father. ‘She is half-black!’ his parents whispered in horror. ‘Our prodigal son, attractive, university-educated, soon to inherit the family fortune, cannot marry a half-caste!’ The engagement was cancelled and Susy never married.

The stigma of darker skin, of races mixing, of love between white and dark skin, was felt by both mother and daughter, decades apart. Daisy’s family disowned her, struck her inheritance off the books, punishing her for loving a mulato. Her daughter Susy was punished for the same reason, tragic to see humans have not learned that skin colour is irrelevant and the only important emotion is love. Love, tolerance, patience, acceptance of diversity, celebration of diversity.

Susy recovered from that failed marriage engagement. She went on to celebrate herself, wore bright red lipstick, large clip earrings, smoked, her voice booming across rooms. Susy was brash, forward, opinionated. Her character was perfect for meetings and note-taking, her weekly social column in the local English-language newspaper was read by all. If your name was mentioned in Susy’s column, you had arrived, you had landed amongst the crème de la crème.

Heinz’s son put down a meteoric career in hotelry, going from receptionist all the way to general manager. He met queens, kings, presidents, singers, actors and actresses, all of them stayed in the 5-star hotels he managed.

*Footnote: Daisy’s daughter died a heroine, trying to save her friend’s life. Her downstairs neighbour had seen a strange man at Susy’s door, called her and let her know. When Susy arrived and they entered the apartment together, the man was caught red-handed, throwing valuables into large, black garbage bags. He lunged at Susy’s friend with a knife, Susy got between them, he killed her. He left the body, tied up, in the apartment. Police caught the man a few months later, he was the lover of Daisy’s house-boy, Alberto.

Alberto had served Daisy for years, after her death, he stayed in the apartment, serving Daisy’s daughter Susy. Alberto picked up this younger man as a lover, told him about the apartment where he worked, filled with British porcelain and silverware. One afternoon, Alberto brought his lover to the apartment. Dazzled by it all, Lover started packing a few items into a bag, horrifying Alberto. When Alberto expressed his disagreement, Lover killed him, bundled him up and threw the body into the bedroom closet. A few minutes later, Susy and friend were at the door. The robbery went tragically awry, ending in a double homicide. When the police arrived later, they found Susy’s body, and after further searching, servant Alberto in the wardrobe.

Susy’s brother had died a few months earlier, on a highway accident. With both of Daisy’s offspring dead, the brother’s widow drove to Mexico City with a van, emptied what was left after the robbery and trucked it up to Manzanillo, where her kids would one day inherit the few English valuables. In a roundabout way, all of Daisy’s cherished treasures ended up in the tropical jungle anyway.

November 2019

WAR IBID.

Ilse was 4 when WWII ended. Doctor injected her scalded right foot with an infected needle, as revenge that her mother had called him a ‘Nazi’ a few weeks earlier. Ilse’s foot got infected, there were no medicines, she limped around. The other town doctor said the foot had to be amputated at the ankle. Ilse and her mother travelled to the next town with a hospital, were not taken because soldiers had filled it up. The mother decided this was a sign and she herself would attempt to heal her daughter’s foot.