by Chiara Stark
I had a dream that my mother was hungry. The earth was covered in red skin, hiding the tender, glowing white inside. She peeled off the coat and parted the world into slices with her hands. She swallowed our moon whole, like a frozen red grape from the fruit basket, except this grape had craters. The solar system was her earthly banquet, planets floating above plates. The stars were her breakfast and she finished the comets off like desserts.
I woke up hungry. It must’ve been a day in August. She always made it feel like August. When I look back, I see morning dew kissing and embracing the leaves of our local marigolds. I remember flowers blooming and bathing in the singing sun. I may have gotten the dew confused with my sweat, and I hadn’t met the sun yet.
I think I was skipping along the empty summer streets, until I found a fish-eye traffic mirror, lifted up by a red and white striped pole. I would’ve looked so small. I was so small. My hair was still recovering from an impulsive pixie cut. My ears might have hurt, carrying not the hair, but my heavy sunglasses.
I initially left the house because I’d run out of groceries. Sitting outside the store, perhaps guarding it, was Ginger. I was glad to have left the bed, the room, the house that day, for the cat. Until we were formerly introduced, I called her Ginger, because she had white fur interrupted by a ginger tail and ears. I’m lucky that Stella is more creative with names. But on that August day I didn’t call her anything, because she was not yet mine to call.
When I came back outside, my mission complete, the cat was still sitting there. I snuck a blurry picture. She made eye contact. I stopped. She moved swiftly to the end of the car park, in the direction of what turned out to be a narrow path. I watched, until she turned her body halfway to face me. She raised her right paw - seemingly to point at the path – and, with it, raised her voice, in what felt like an imperative meow. I stood still. Again, after a few steps, she turned and looked at me. The car park was empty. There was not a soul in sight except the overworked cashier. Maybe it was a Sunday. Whether to humour the cat, or myself, I followed her.
I tried to catch up with her pace along the downhill path, but she was gliding over the burning concrete as if she were walking on water. We encountered some stairs, and she skipped a step with each jump. I imitated her. The stairs led to a crossroads, where we took a turn. I wanted to follow the shaded footpath, for the sake of the ice cream in my bag, but she insisted that we walk in the middle of the street. Her shining paws traced the broken white lines, occasionally letting the colours collide. I kept looking out for cars, which began to feel useless after a while. She kept looking back at me, which began to feel strange after a while.
Eventually she stopped and sat back down, facing me. This must be our destination. A bookshop. The copper sign read ‘Eden’. Its entrance was narrow enough to miss it, were it not for the bright yellow paint of the door. Some parts had chipped off, but the pigment was still highly saturated where it had survived. It must be cleaned frequently and thoroughly. Paradise may not have been hiding behind this yellow door, but the sun was. I was surprised to find that the door actually pushed open. Maybe it wasn’t a Sunday after all.
I entered with the cat now following behind. The walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with bursting bookshelves. The ceiling was high enough to require a ladder, rested against the shelves in the middle, parting the room into two aisles.
Although the door was a roaring yellow, the inside was coloured by rustic browns and dark greens. The wood of the floor and shelves and counter was from the trees, but so was the paper in the books. There was a forest growing from beyond the yellow door.
The bookstore was decorated with memorabilia from other worlds. Souvenirs from distant lands. Portraits of unknown people. Antiques from the past. The books fit right in. Many were a little worn out, touched by the hands of generations. Stories that told stories through the paper they were printed on, the covers they were clothed by, the annotations they were laid in.
I wasn’t sure what to look at. A typewriter that rested on a wide armchair to my right, covered in an olive green velvet blanket. Pearl and shell jewellery that accessorised the register. An inscription over the arch that hovered further along the left-hand aisle. ‘Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers, Lest They be Demons in Disguise’.
While I was exploring and discovering, the cat had advanced to a low window sill next to the entrance. She settled into a plaid pillow with little tassels on each corner. Her mission was complete.
A gentle voice rose from amidst the books. “Can I help you?” For a second I thought it was the books themselves. If my story had a voice, it would surely be hers.
In between two high towers of book piles, there was a girl, sat with a paperback sprawled across her lap, her knees bent for her body to rest on. A princess from the tower. She looked up at me with curiosity. There was another world opening up in her eyes, contained only by her round glasses. A forest dipped in gold and brown behind the glass. Behind the window. Those glasses sat on a long nose bridge that culminated in a stud on her left nostril. Her loose black hair fell onto a pair of yellow overalls. I always knew warmer colours stood out best against darker skin tones. I wondered whether she made the colour shine, or whether the colour made her shine. This girl in the forest behind the yellow door taught me new colours.
She repeated herself, “Is there any way I can help? I work here, so, if you need something, I’m the person to ask.” Her question felt genuine. When she spoke, the gleam of her white teeth glanced at me, like her mouth was blinking. I thought of the white cat again.
“Oh, thank you! I live nearby, but I’ve never seen this store before, so I just wanted to take a peak. I ended up following your cat and she led me here.”
“That’s where she went! Well, thank you for bringing her home safe.”
“Is she yours?”
“Yeah. My dad owns this shop, so the three of us work downstairs and live upstairs.”
“You get to see this every day? It’s so nicely decorated!”
“Thank you! My dad’s a hoarder, or, a collector, as he calls it, but here it all has some sort of use.”
My mother was a hoarder too.
“It all looks so cosy. Makes me feel at home too.”
“Well, you’re welcome to come back home anytime if you tell me your name.”
“Oh, right. Clara. Lovely to meet you”
“I’m Stella. Nice to-” Stella’s introduction was interrupted by a monstrous grumbling from my stomach. I must’ve gone red.
Her lips pressed into a playful smile. “I’ve got something you might like. Could you help me up?” Her hand was warm.
She approached the register and pulled out a pack of oranges from underneath it.
“Take one, I’ve got loads.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, please go ahead,” she handed me one. She was warm.
“Thank you,” I wanted to tell her that there was no need. I had just bought groceries. That’s when I remembered. My groceries. My ice cream. It must have melted after all this time in the sun. I searched desperately for a clock.
“Stella, do you know what time it is?”
“Oh yeah,” she checked her watch. The wristband was wooden, but I think there were a few red and orange accents. I got distracted and forgot to listen to her answer.
“I keep telling my dad we should put up some nice vintage clocks. They’re functional and they’d look nice too. He just says he doesn’t believe in clocks.”
“He doesn’t- Like- He rejects time?”
“I suppose, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else does. Anyway, I won’t take any more of yours. You should know we’re only open Sundays for the next few weeks. So I’ll expect you here next Sunday.” I guess it was in fact a Sunday.
I never found that picture of Ginger, but I did find out later that her name was Bianca. My guess had a fifty-fifty chance.
When I got back to the house, the ice cream had melted, and the orange been eaten.
I think it might’ve been September. I learned to wear sunglasses all year ‘round. The light is just too loud most days. Regardless, it felt like August.
On another day in August, Bianca was soaking in the sunlight from the window, in that same spot. That was her spot. I was resting against the register. My spot. Stella was leaning behind the wooden counter. Her spot.
“She kinda looks like you, you know,” Stella suggested.
“What, the cat?”
“Yeah. Ginger on top, white coat. Put a tail on you and even I couldn’t tell the difference.”
“Please don’t,” I pleaded. She gave a little chuckle. “I’m not sure if you’re joking.” Another chuckle.
“You’ve got her sharp fangs as well.”
“And you’ve got a sharp tongue,” I retaliated.
“It’s not a bad thing! You just resemble her. At least you’ve finally got an older sister.”
“Older? Isn’t Bianca like ten?”
“Ten and three quarters. She’s in her late fifties,” followed by a pause. “In cat years.”
We had both been focused on Bianca. Her left ear flinched when I said her name. Maybe she was dreaming. Memories of my own dreams suddenly flashed before me. I was hungry again. My eyes fluttered from Bianca to Stella, and immediately back to Bianca.
“I didn’t know my canines were that prominent.”
“Oh don’t worry,” she tried to reassure me, “I’m sure they’re not. Your mouth is just rarely shut when you’re here.”
“That’s not true at all! You talk much more than I do.”
“That’s right. But your mouth is usually at least slightly open. Like a child, gaping in wonder at the world. It’s like you never learned how to breathe out of your nose.”
“I bet you can’t even breathe out of your mouth-”
“‘Cause I talk so much?” She interjected.
“Yeah,” I admitted, a little dejected.
When I looked over again, she had already turned to me. I wondered how long she had been staring at me. At my mouth. At my lips. Her gaze was penetrating. I felt painfully perceived. She didn’t see me, she read me. She didn’t look at me, she deciphered me. Stella was an effortless translator. I didn’t realise she knew the language I was written in.
It wasn’t August, but Stella always made it feel like August.
“You make the days feel starry. Like a daytime star.”
“So, the sun?”
“Yeah, exactly! The sun!”
We both blushed.
I once read that the Early Modern Period believed that stars were a remnant of a world before the Fall. The idea is that the earth, its laws and its inhabitants, were altered by the forbidden fruit, but the rest of the cosmos wasn’t. The starry sky is a window into Eden. Stella was my window.
She was singular to me. I had one orange the same way the solar system had one sun. The first story God wrote was that of the sun. That was the only story I read in those days, when the sun wore yellow overalls. Turns out the orange was one of a dozen, only one from the overflowing fruit basket.
One day in August, probably a Sunday, I stayed until she had to close shop. Stella invited me upstairs for the first time. She might’ve wanted to show me the soft carpet in her room that she’d mentioned before. Or insisted that I stay for dinner. A child could climb up a tree, but I would climb up her stairs. Since I hadn’t met the father yet, that’s how I thought of this world, as hers. I only ever saw her commanding it. The furniture, the yellow door, the souvenirs, the typewriter, the cat, the oranges, the books. Anything that stepped foot inside was hers. We all belonged to her.
I don’t remember the kitchen, but I remember the fruit basket. I call it a basket, but it was most likely a bowl, a wooden bowl, like everything in Stella’s little hidden forest. I didn’t understand why I should eat the fruit when I could paint it. I remember a pink lady, staring at me, mocking me, calling me. Her fingers were running around me and I was sitting in her palm, but Stella stopped her, took her, flung her upwards and sideways, ready to dissect her.
She must’ve been turned to the counter, away from me. “Do you have a favourite fruit?”
“I find it difficult to pick favourites sometimes,” I shouldn’t be honest if that was going to make me difficult. Instead I remembered who always liked oranges, “I suppose I only ever eat oranges.”
“You don’t try other fruit once in a while?”
“I don’t try new things if I can avoid it.”
“But you’ve had an apple before, right?”
“Well, we have to. Imagine what people would say if you avoided apples without trying them.”
“It shouldn’t matter what people would say.” A beat. “But it does, it shouldn’t, but, to me, it does.” I’m not sure which one of us that was. I returned to the original question. “How about you?”
Stella tossed one half of the dead lady to me, the other she buried in her hand. “Changes all the time. Every day even. I’ll try any fruit, but I think it always depends more on the specific fruit, than its type.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I mean that, this pink lady,” she held the subject up for spectating, “tastes and feels completely different from,” she paused to think, “like a Granny Smith for example. They’re both apples, but sometimes a grapefruit and a blood orange will be more similar than two fruits of the same species.”
“Right, right. I think I get it now.”
“So, I like any and all fruit really. It’s not about the type, it’s about each individual fruit.” I understood.
“What about now? What fruit do you like?” I hoped she would understand too.
She had taken a bite and used the time to chew to also think. Suddenly the apple looked delicious. In her hands the freckled skin disappeared, and chunks of white flesh were torn from the seed like muscles from the bone.
An apple to her lips. The world between her teeth. Its core on her tongue. This was a star my mother could not eat. This was a star I wanted to eat.
“Is it alright if I steal your answer? Oranges fit so well with the warm August days,” said the warm August girl. She might’ve also blushed, there was no way of telling, I had broken eye contact.
Those days in August kept coming, again and again. We were spinning in orbit, me around the sun, she around an orange. But the sun will burn, and oranges are bitter. Time was a sphere, yet August wasn’t. Monday must come.
Chiara is a young queer woman studying English Literature at Oxford University, who enjoys writing in her free time. She was born in Germany to an Italian father and German mother, and moved to the UK when she was twelve. Some of her current interests include Jeanette Winterson, Adventure Time, God, bears, friends, and water.