by Esther Cann
The sun is in the grass and the thatch and it goes prick, prick, at the skin of Girl With Thick Arms. It has her. The twined trees behind the hut give no shade, they are lost in their own curves. Girl sits, itching, patience stretched thin like the wisped clouds snagged on the palm-tops. Black pigs root near Girls’ feet without a clap or a tsk, snouts getting where they shouldn’t. Girl doesn’t care. The blue of the sky is in her head, memories tangling her thoughts. Girl sees herself moving through the grove, red hibiscus tucked behind her left ear, like all unmarried girls. Here, she’ll reach for mangoes, there, she’ll crouch scrubbing taro by the stream. Today’s flower wilts but she can’t move to pick another. Not until he says. He might not say, not for a long time. Girl watches him hazily, dipping and stirring his brush into the many pots of colour. She tilts her pelvis. The meeting of Girl’s legs itches like the feast of a thousand biting things. It never used to. Until he came and made Girl not a girl. The wilted hibiscus sits behind her right ear now. Dip, stir, stroke, goes the brush. Pot, to pot, to canvas. I will leave, thinks Maeata, after the itching stops. And if the itching doesn’t stop? asks a voice like a friend in her mind. If the itching doesn’t stop, she tells it. Then I will snap his brush.
Esther Cann lives in Suffolk and works in the charity sector on human rights and community projects. Her work has been published by MIR Online and Open Pen, shortlisted for the Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction, twice shortlisted for the Bridport prize, and longlisted for the Mslexia Short Story Competition and 2022 Yeovil Literary Prize. She has received support from Arts Council England and Jerwood Arts.
Emerge Literary Journal 