by Elizabeth Pierce Ritz

Created on: January 21, 2011

CH 6

Paris opened her eyes. It was Saturday but something was different. The sun streamed longer across the floor. Uncle Larry had taught her how to use a sundial inside and outside. It must have been near 10 a.m. She went to her window. Most of the stable hands were gone on weekends.

It was her birthday, but where was Mama? Every birthday Mama snuck upstairs long before eight and cuddled next to her and sang a happy birthday song. Paris would rouse slowly to this song of celebration. Vanessa would stroke her sleek, chestnut hair, and move her bangs off her forehead. Mama's breath would be soft in her ear and cheek. It tickled when she was young but now felt pleasant, and warmed her heart. Paris knew she would be the same way with her children.

What happened? Paris shivered with worry. She put a hand to her heart expecting a faster heartbeat or a pounding in her chest. It was normal. It was about the only thing that was normal for a birthday. No one on the farm, the farmhands, stable mucks, housekeepers, not even the veterinarians that happened to be here, ever forgot a birthday. No one in the farm, least of all Mama or Daddy, ever forgot her birthday.

She looked around her room. Memories of birthdays past came back. Her eyes went to the sparkling art egg on the shelf above her hope chest. Jewelry draped over the accordion lampshade and hung on the hooks to the drapery tiebacks. Her coonskin cowgirl hat she got when she turned sixteen rested on a hook above the closet. Memories were everywhere.

Uncle Larry's authentic antique gumball machine still stood inside her door, where she'd asked Mama to put, it so it would greet her whenever she entered her room. It weighed as much as a monster on its thick, brass stand. Colorful but aged gumballs still shined inside the thick, glass globe. Paris stepped next to it, letting her floor mirror reflect now the image of a woman standing tall next to it. She was as short as the gumball machine when Uncle Larry had given it to her one early birthday. She didn't remember which one. Paris remembered being mesmerized by the colors and somehow the colors were a promise to her of a better life when she grew up. Woman!

She was twenty-one today! Mama didn't have to stop because she was a woman now! Was that why she didn't come up? She grabbed her robe but then sat back on the bed, deciding on how to feel. Should she feel sad at the passage of a childhood tradition? Should she be alarmed about Mama? Did something happen to Daddy?

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