Doubt

very short story

    It was 1953, a few days before my sixth birthday and I was leaving the house with my Grandmother.  

 Wearing a bright red, wool coat, it was new, a big deal for me. The snow was coming down very heavy

and it blew back into my face when the car door was opened. My memory doesn’t really kick in until I

hear a bell ring, it is above the door of the shop we have just entered. My boots have big cakes of snow

balancing on top. I start banging my toes on the floor to be rid of the mounds when my grandmother

taps the back of my head. It means stop it. In my life “kids were to be seen and not heard”. I was a shy

girl, not into looking at strangers faces but curious enough to note their shoes.

     It was a small shop, poorly lit with a black potbelly stove in the middle of the room. So tight were the

quarters the customers couldn’t help but touch each other.  I was drawn to the heat off the stove and

leaned into it as heavy coats kept brushing over my head, momentarily taking my hair with them. I don’t

think they knew I was there and found comfort in that. They continued to work in a small circle around

me, picking things up and laying them down. There wasn’t much to see at my eye level, some peacock

feathers stuffed in a brass urn, but the walls had shelves to the ceiling. My eyes followed the line of

men’s hats, some were fat others looked squashed. Teapots and colored bottles in all different sizes,

clothing hung from hangers off jutting knobs. The counter tops were covered in white crocheted

doilies draped to leave a scalloped edge.  Big bodies kept blocking my vision, so I started to move around

the stove. Right across from me was this big glass jar with something floating in it. What is that I

wondered, looking hard I could see the puffy eyes and the little fingers and awkward legs. I knew it was

a baby of sorts. Kind of pink. What was a baby doing in there, there was a lid on the jar? Suddenly my

Grandmother was next to me and yanked me by the arm, pushing me ahead of her towards the door.

The bell rang again, and my Grandmother said, “look what you’ve done, you have burned your coat, it’s

ruined, the whole back is black. You don’t deserve anything good.

     All of this memory influenced me, sixty-five years later I can still see the embryo, I see it bobbing.

How could a six- year old understand what she was seeing? I see me leaning against the black potbelly

stove and the black spot on my new red coat.  Am I even remembering it correctly? Trust has always

been an issue with me.