19.12.18

Vancouver Writing: Evelyn Lau

HOW IT BEGAN

NOTHING HAPPENED

This was the house on the corner, the one
I passed to and from school each day.
He would have seen me twice
a day, from an upstairs window
or bent over his weeds in the garden—
an ugly girl, clad in scratchy plaid,
moping past. One fist dug deep
into my satchel, searching for day-old
shortbread hidden in a greased bag.
Sweaty bangs, furtive eyes behind
lenses as thick as goggles—
some adults said I was shy.
She’s sly, my mother declared, up to no good.
She won’t look me in the eye, a teacher complained,
and my father whipped round in his seat
at the parent-teacher conference:
What’s wrong with you?
What are you trying to hide?

One afternoon, the man asked me in—
past the stone lions, pots of lavender,
into the tiled foyer. The tiles were painted
with lemons, oranges, clusters of olives.
Nothing happened. Or something did—
the threat of something, creeping in the air
between us. It thickened my throat,
stuffed my sinuses like pollen.
He fetched his violin, the old man
with his nut-brown bald head,
played it for me like a suitor
in a sunny square, slicing note
after note into the air. His hand on my knee
a shy spider. (Am I making this up now,
digging diligently as an archaeologist,
searching for where it all went wrong?)

But nothing happened. Dust in the corners,
a brass umbrella stand, the bulky Nikes
belonging to his teenage grandsons.
The bow sawing the violin,
horsehair fraying.
The air so thick it seemed fibrous,
knotting around me like a mesh net,
like pantyhose yanked over the face.
His dark thoughts pouring into me
like motor oil. Maybe I wanted something
to happen, anything at all—
a way out, even this way.

But then he opened the front door. 

- Evelyn Lau: as published in Geist