Sharing some actual writing: Horehound and Innocence

We were asked to bring in some writing we were proud of, and I figured I'd cross-post it here.

Horehound and Innocence: Children Will Be Children
by Michelle Barbieri 2010



Matilda stood at the edge of the candy counter, her eyes wide and slick with the visage of hundred of gumballs, twelve flavors of rock-candy, three brands of chocolate bars, chocolate turtles, Bits-o-Honey—Oh, how her mouth watered, her hands wandering for the spare dime in her pocket she’d forgotten she’d already spent, her skirt swaying gently with the breeze of the fan in the summer heat. The soda fountains behind the long, glossy counter gleamed as Mr. Rogers gave her a raised brow and a vague smile- He was kind enough but he didn’t give hand-outs, that was certain. Though her eyes and mouth watered and sighed with the smells of the toffee baking in the back room by Mr. Roger’s dedicated wife, he kept washing glasses.
One by one, glass by glass, each a pale and gleaming in the bright sunlight from the front window, a rainbow mosaic cast by the thin colored paper and paint proclaiming his wares along the inside to the outside world, which hurried by in no motion eager to stop for him. She watched the taffy-pull in the window momentarily as it sighed and stretched, endlessly that bright band of golden-yellow taffy. The barrels by the window gleamed with the wax-paper wrapped morsels, sticky and warm in the noon-day sun. The Sunday was dragging on and people who all passed by determinedly had things to do—And yet, perhaps a half dozen children clinging to their mothers, fathers, older sisters, aunts or uncles, all stopped to gaze inside from the street, and spotted Matilda and her mother with envy! Matilda didn’t notice, as she kept her gaze intent on the tall glass jars and displays. Her mother approached from behind and laid a hand on her shoulder, her voice low, cutting through her waking-dreaming,
“Matilda, dear, you know we’ve laundry yet to do.”
The package of harsh soap hit the counter like a brick and Matilda wrinkled her nose. After church they’d stop by every other week for laundry soap, and Matilda would be left to gaze on—Once in a rare while her mother would relent, but from the look on her face this morning she would not. Birds had begun nesting in the bushes outside her window and she hadn’t slept well—While Matilda found them fascinating in their own way, her mother would have preferred them gone. Mr. Rogers didn’t look up as he moved to process her sale in the quiet corner store, and he made no notion towards conversation. Matilda swayed on her toes, eager, her dress feeling too tight and starchy in the collar and waist—Her mother had told her that was because she was growing, but Matilda found that rather it was because the housemaid was overzealous in the pressing and that she was in truth a very fidgety, impatient little girl.
All these thoughts were interrupted with the sound of the bell at the door. Matilda’s mother froze a moment, and turned- her expression was vacant and unwelcoming at the sight of the sudden visitor, and she sniffed, almost startled. Her voice was low, and not all-together unwelcoming, though perhaps a bit stilted and brusque as she spoke,
“Hello, Miss Amelia.”
The woman turned, her lace gloves to her wrist, crisp and white. Her smile was dazzling but chillingly cold for a woman in such a lovely, pale yellow dress. A bonnet shaded her eyes but now offered her a more sinister visage, and Matilda crouched back and away as she woman spoke, not unkindly,
“It is Miss Amelia Lindon, Mrs. Irving.” She sniffed, moving to the counter as Mr. Rogers murmured to Matilda’s mother a total- then turned, almost cowed to Miss Amelia Lindon, and glanced up, voice a tad gruff,
“What’ll it be today, Miss Lindon?”
Miss Lindon’s smile was slick as a snake and just as welcoming. Matilda moved behind her mother and peered from behind her skirt, frowning, brow furrowed- The shine in the store dimmed as a cloud passed overhead, and the fan’s breeze was suddenly cold on her skin. Miss Lindon replied, coolly,
“A bag of the usual. The lemon drops, Mr. Rogers- With three raspberry drops, if you would.”
The way she pronounced raspberry was stilted and strange, as though the very act of her specialty made her much better than everyone else. Matilda blinked and furrowed her brow, as Miss Lindon gasped and laughed aloud, almost as though she were startled by her own foolishness,
“Oh! And I have but forgotten, Mr. Rogers- A handful of the strange little root-flavored one, for my..” She chuckled and removed one glove to examine a pale digit with a golden little ring flourished across it, like a noose across a man’s neck at the gallows, her voice slick and purring, “My fiancé. We’re to be wed in April.”
Mrs. Irving permitted herself a raised brow of surprise as she turned and smiled dully, unenthused on the whole, almost warily,
“Really, Miss Lindon? My congratulations-- And Matilda’s, of course. Matilda, dear, stop hiding—Please congratulate Miss Lindon on this most wonderful news.”
Matilda furrowed her brow and shrugged vaguely, mumbling as her mother scooted her into the light,
“Congr’t’la-shuns.”
Mrs. Irving sighed and crinkled her brow, smiling softly, and shrugged to Miss Lindon as she bent to place her hands on Matilda’s shoulders,
“Use your whole words, Matilda—You’re being rude.”
Matilda shrugged and mumbled now, a little more coherently, “Congratulations. I guess.”
Miss Lindon raised a brow as she paid for her little brown bag of candy. Matilda eyed it hungrily as Mrs. Irving looked up with an apologetic smile,
“Children will be children, I suppose, Miss Lindon?”
Miss Lindon shrugged, and pulled back her lips in a smile that was perhaps uglier than it should have been from a woman of such beauty, and Matilda shuddered as she opened the brown back and dipped her fingers among the strange candies. She pulled one out and held it up, almost as though to offer one to Matilda, who’s attention snapped back and eyes widened—
Miss Lindon moved the candy into her mouth and shut the bag tightly with a crinkling like the cracking of a whip. She smirked and shrugged as she moved towards the door, the bell ringing softly in her wake,
“I suppose, Mrs. Irving. I suppose. Good day.”
She swept off into the busy streets, and Matilda stood there quietly, stunned. Her mother took her hand and the soap from the counter, and murmured,
“Let’s along home, dear.”
The bell chimed as they went along their way.
The bell continued to chime throughout the day, which stretched into hours, then into days at a time, to weeks, then months—Each day not quite the same to Mr. Rogers, but each visit with the same faces he’d come to know over the years. Each person, each order, each clunk of the heavy drawer was like an oiled machine. Matilda, her mother, Miss Lindon, the Rogers, the Dodgesons, the Crevits, and the multitude of other names and faces filtered in, working like cogs and bits of a clock, much the same every day, much the same times they attended. Until, one strange after-noon, a cog seemed to have fallen from place. It was a late midday hour, to which the exactness Mr. Rogers was uncertain, when Miss Lindon did not come in and purchase her candies. He had the bag waiting behind the counter—There was a strange, still silence, broken by bold and firm rolls of thunder across the dusty, pale sky, brushed with lines of orange and yellow as the sun began to set.
Mr. Rogers glanced to the counter and the calendar he had placed there, a date carefully circled. He adjusted his glasses accordingly—April the 13th. A Friday. He mused- something was supposed to be special about April, was it not? Some distant memory, tinged by the smell of lemon drops and horehound—
The bell didn’t ring, and thunder rumbled low in the distance. Added to this was the wail of what he was certain was a siren—
A melancholy siren, at that. One who screamed with reverent, human emotion, raw and strange- Roger’s found himself forming a quick cross as his eyes widened. From down the road, beyond the chapel to the neighborhood rose the soft wisps of dusts bought on by men in important boots, and his stomach clenched somewhat. He knew then that the bell would ring for Miss Lindon’s candies no longer—
He took the bag and tucked it away, and returned the untouched horehound candies to their jar in silence. They fell with dull thuds, like bullet casings to dirt, and he shut his eyes, murmuring a soft, forgotten prayer lost to the whirr of the fan in the shop. The taffy pull operated over his words and stretched and pulled, creating, giving, taking, as the air was filled with the sweet sent of sugar, and was washed away with the oncoming storm.

Year passed for Miss Lindon, alone, like the pull of taffy, coming together and falling apart rhythmically, as she watched the children go by her window down to the candy store. She sat on her porch in silence for a long many of those years, a faded letter wearing thin between her hands, the lace of her gloves doing nothing to protect her from the bitter news held within the crinkling paper. The footprints of those important men in all their suits and finery, all their medals and tragedy, all their strength and honor had long faded from the dusty path that lead to her house, but she still heard their footsteps carrying her hopes far gone with them. Her lips were long dry from licking them and tasting nothing, her eyes ached for years with unspent tears, and her heart beat heavy with the untroubled news.
The letter had called away her fiancé, and though she knew the war was long over by this point, nothing had ever returned with him. She had gone to the chapel with her mother and bridesmaids, only to find an apologetic not-father-in-law standing, head bowed. He hadn’t said a word—He had only placed the rings in her palm of her hand, where they felt like to burn through her flesh. She did not remember crying, though the town did. Some of them spoke like it was a banshee, crawling from the grave, begging forgiveness—She knew better.
Now she watches, and waited on her porch. She had seen Matilda grow up in what seemed a startling span of time herself- Mrs. Irving had died some time back, and her memories were fuzzy of the event. Everything was fuzzy after the letter, after the footsteps—her home had faded away in color and life, her mother had pulled away from her daughter’s intense grieving, and the children had all grown up and had children of her own now. She hadn’t paid much notice to the graying of her hair, or the eating of many hundreds of meals, or the passing of time or the news of the town itself—Her only comfort was a terribly aged bag of lemon drops and horehound, with three raspberry drops. She had been saving them for a long, long time--- They sat in a bowl by her doorway, waiting, as she did, for some better news.
The children ran outside, and stopped occasionally to stare into the dusty windows, into the little house with the little old woman and her little, shriveled heart. No one came in; no one went out, they said—Though this wasn’t true. A doctor came weekly, a man bought groceries, but they were of no importance—No one who mattered to them came into the house, and no one of any real curiosity left it.
Miss Lindon traced the little gold band on her finger quietly, where it stuck out yet to her like a noose. She stared at it for a long time—Uncertain, afraid. She looked out the window quietly, and heard from far-off the sound of a bell as the door opened. She watched Matilda go down the street with her mother—No, now it was Matilda with her daughter- or was it her own daughter with her mother? Or was it she, Miss Lindon with her daughter? Or was it in fact Miss Lindon as a girl, with her mother? Her head and heart ached while she considered this, and moved to the bowl—Her fingers picked up a lemon drop in the silence as she moved to the door, suddenly intent on giving this child- Whomever they might have been!- just something small, something sweet to delay all the pain—
She stopped at the door, as the child paused and stared into the house. She could feel her revulsion. She pulled back and put her back to the door, heart quickening, as the lemon drop returned to the bowl quickly. Her eyes narrowed and she frowned, and muttered bitterly to herself,
“Children will be children.”