Paper & Twine

The box rested gently in my hands as my fingers brushed the smooth surface of its paper covering. The twine wrapped around it was rough, crossing on the bottom of the package and looped into a bow on top. There was only one word written on the brown, paper-covered box, filling the space in the top right corner between the strands of twine. I had seen that writing, so many times before, but the feeling it brought was so different than the very first time.

I used to love the way he wrote my name. The 'A' was always taller than necessary, with its little line crossing over top of the rest of the letters. The 'N’s' were curvier than you’d expect, after such a jagged 'A', and the 'I' never had a dot over it. The way he wrote the 'E' at the end of my name was like a little spiral, with its tail always flying off in a different direction. I used to love the way he wrote my name; but as I stared at his writing on the paper wrapping, I felt my knees buckle with fear, and then watched the package fall to the floor.

We all paused for a moment, and simply observed the box on the floor at our feet. The three of us were watching it with such intention that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it sprouted legs to run away from our gaze. He finally broke the stillness by crouching down and picking the box up off the floor; and I remembered the night before when he crouched down and caressed my face –before saving me from the dust of an old red barn. I lowered myself back down onto the chair at the kitchen table, and began longing for another piece of chocolate cake in front of me.

He put the box on the face of the kitchen’s table, evenly between the two of us. He ran his finger along the letters of my name; and I noticed that he let his thumb linger, covering the last three letters, and smiling with an odd sense of joy at the remaining 'AN'. She was still standing in the middle of the kitchen, wringing her hands on the apron tied around her. Before coming back to us at the table, she approached her front porch again. Without opening the patio door, she looked up the driveway, and frantically each way down the road. There was no one in sight, and no cloud of dust behind a fast moving car. She brought her attention back to us, and shuffled to the table with fear and curiosity.

The box sat between us, staring us each in the face. The world was continuing outside the walls of the kitchen, but all that seemed to matter was the three of us at the table –observing an unmoving box. Finally, I reached out a hand and felt a strand of twine between my thumb and finger; I pulled, and we all watched the bow collapse in place, and then lie flat on the edges of the box. With a few more pulls of my fingers, the twine was free of the package it was holding, and I let it fall to the floor below.

The brown paper around the box was fastened with only one piece of tape, and I knew that he had wrapped it. Every wrapped gift I had ever received from him was always crisp and pristine; and whenever I wrapped for him, he’d complain about the amount of tape while pulling off the paper. Gifts from him had become a sort of ritual, in fact. I’d wake up the next morning, with my body sore and bruised, and as I’d rub the tears from my eyes, I would see a box on the bedside table. He would wrap it in bright paper that he bought especially for those occasions, and then watch as my trembling hands would open it. I came to love these moments, as well. He was never as soft with me as he was after a beating.

He always expected me to be careful with the wrapping, and would say things like, “Do you want to be a woman, or a child on Christmas morning? Grow up, Annie!” The excitement would drop from my face, and I would thank him with the maturity that he expected. His eyes weren’t there to judge me though, and his voice not close enough to scold me. I felt a playful smile spread across my face and began ripping into the paper.

My lips may have been smiling, but my heart was raging like a bull. I tore off the paper like an excited child, and then ripped through his writing like a rebellious teen. I watched my name split into two and his letters fall to the floor with the rest of the discarded paper. Underneath was a box of the same colour, with no markings anywhere on its surface. Its lid folded from one side, stretching across the length of the box, and tucked into the opposite edge. I pulled on the lip in front of me and watched the cardboard lid fall back onto the table.

The inside of the box was lined with tissue paper, wrapped around the contents inside. I took a moment for another deep breath before I could reveal what was still hidden from our sight. I wanted to look up and meet her gaze again, but I worried that I would fall into her safety and push this box into the back of my mind. Finally, as gently as I had removed the twine, I pulled the thin flakes of paper to one side of the box, and then the other –revealing the delivery that had made its way to me.

Everything within the box was familiar to me, and that’s what brought tears to my eyes. It wasn’t a gift within the cardboard walls, and I realized just how different this beating was from the rest. He always brought joy back to my face, right after –as if he couldn’t stand the sight of the pain he’d caused. He would gift me something I wasn’t allowed to buy for myself, and I would feel loved by him. This time was different, though; and this package was the proof.

The box was filled with simple trinkets –little items that you might find at an old woman’s yard sale. There was a little glass angle, and a ruby shaped like a heart; a ball of elastic bands and a bracelet from the local fair. The box was filled with memories, and little objects I had collected throughout my life. These simple little trinkets didn’t mean anything to anyone, but I would always hold them close to my heart.

At the kitchen table in an old farmhouse, I sat with my collection of trinkets in hand. Tears began to pour from my face and collect in the box on my lap when he leaned forward and pulled the cardboard from the surface of my legs. He placed the box in the middle of the table between the three of us and gave me a slight nod before removing the items and placing them on the table.

Her eyes were on me as he pulled my collection from the box, and I stared at every piece as he held them in his hands. The little glass angel looked so small in his mighty hand, and yet she seemed so safe in his grip. He moved each item without hesitation, until he stopped to stare at the bottom of the box. From where I sat, it seemed that the box was empty, but he glared into it like it was the actual gate to hell. Instead of pulling the item out for us to see, he used two fingers to push the box closer to hers. She gave him a questioning look, but he simply nodded at the box, offering her the remaining item.

She looked in the box slowly, and after only a quick glance, her eyes darted back to him in disbelief. “How...?” she began, as she turned her gaze over to me. “Where did you get this?” She pulled the final object from the bottom of the box, and I became just as confused as them. It was square and flat, as I had always remembered it, with its white border that began fading long ago. It was a Polaroid photo, and truly my most treasured possession.

When I saw it rise with her hand from the box, I gently snatched it from her and gazed at it with the love it always evoked. It was a photo of a little girl, standing in a field of yellow and orange Marigolds. Her arms were stretched up to the sky with bundles of flowers in each of her hands. She had a crown of flowers and vines placed perfectly on her head, with a rickety old farmer’s cart below her feet.

There was still love in my eyes when I looked back at them; and their eyes were full of anticipation, for the question I had yet to answer. With the photo still in my hands and my thumb tracing along the face of the little girl, I offered them what I could. “This is my favourite photo –the only photo I have of my mother. She died when I was young.”

I felt a twinge of pain in my heart as those words left my lips, and I closed my eyes for a moment, to honour her. When I looked back up, their mouths were gapping open, and she began to reach for the photo still in my hand. She pulled it from my fingers as she slipped a pair of glasses on her face, and held the photo in front of her eyes. She had the same look of love spread across her lips, and she traced her thumb along the girl’s face, just as I had. With love still in her eyes, she brought her gaze back to me and said, “This is me, when I was a little girl.”

To be continued...

• Part 1 – The Old Barn
• Part 2 – Peace & Cake
• Part 3 – The Kitchen Table
• Part 4 – Paper & Twine
• Part 5 – The Polaroid Picture
• Part 6 – Bulls & Bullies
• Part 7 – The Raging Beast
• Part 8 – Water & Ice