Messy Make-Believe

A Mess of Bandits

  The hearth fire tickled the bottom of the cooking pot. Honey-grain porridge burped and bubbled as it warmed. Chandra’s mother pulled a stool up near to the pot and dipped her spoon in to stir it. She studied the grainy paste as she swished it back and forth looking very much like a witch pondering her latest brew. Already she could hear Chandra in her bedroom thrashing and crashing about. She knew the child would be climbing up the walls, jumping from the shelves, pulling out all the drawers in her little room to find the few things she needed with her when she went adventuring that day. And she would leave everything else in her room in a tangly heap. Chandra’s mother imagined every crinkle and corner of that mess, from the broken creases of the crumpled mountain of bedclothes down to the path of a single marble rolling out of place across the floor. Her attention returned to the cooking at hand but when she looked down at the porridge again she saw her fingers turning white as they strangled the neck of the stirring spoon. Peeling her fingers from around the spoon she realized that those messes would be forever sprouting all over the house. They grew and they grew in her mind’s eye until there was nothing left. She could feel the rubbish pressing against her chest, squeezing out the last breath of air. There was only one way to put these messes away forever. That day Chandra’s mother decided that she would make her own messes and then they would see whose mess was the largest.

  She sat up from her stool and stepped to the window sill, forgetting the stirring spoon so that it was swallowed up by the porridge. On the edge of the sill there sat a white stone only a little wider than a fingernail. Chandra herself had brought it home the day before calling it a pearl even though it was egg shaped and pock marked. Taking the pearly little pebble with her Chandra’s mother turned to the pantry closed off from the rest of the kitchen by a hanging cloth. She pushed the curtain aside to enter but the cloth was heavy enough that it pushed back again against her. She fell forward into the pantry as if swallowed into a giant’s mouth. Though daylight slid in under the curtain and trickled up over the top of it a moment passed before her eyes adjusted to the shadows of the room. Pushing herself up from the floor Chandra’s mother crossed to the furthest corner of the pantry and reached up into the highest shelf. She groped through tendrils of cobweb and brushed against dust bunnies that leapt and swirled away at her touch. Her fingers finally found their way to a box hidden behind some pickles drowned in a jar of cloudy brine. Snatching the box down she brought it out into the fuller light of the kitchen. The box fit in her cupped hands and holding the lid closed was a silver lock that glistened right through the dust sprinkled over it. With a puff Chandra’s mother blew the dust away. From deep inside her own blouse Chandra’s mother produced a key on a spindly chain. She opened the lock and let it clatter to the floor. Stashed away inside the box was a bundle of berries with skins of such a deep red that they sparkled like gemstones. Taking a stem with three berries on it Chandra’s mother dropped them into her pocket beside Chandra’s own pearly pebble. Grabbing up the lock again Chandra’s mother replaced the box so fast the pantry curtain hardly had time to settle again as she passed in and out.

  Leaving the kitchen and the brighter parts of the house Chandra’s mother crawled down into a darker corner. Spider webs barred her way but she pushed through them so the strands tangled themselves up in her hair. Her fingers went out searching again among the shadowy shapes stored away in that lightless little crawlspace. Finally her finger tips bounced against a trunk. She gripped it and tugged at it, using all her weight against it, until the box began to grind its way across the floor. Soon it was out in the stronger light of the cottage with a halo of its own dust hanging in the air around it.

  Breathing heavily from her work Chandra’s mother sat down on the trunk. The box was so high that her own feet could no longer reach the floor except for the very tips of her shoes. She traced her toe along the floor leaving a swirling line back and forth in the settling dust. Though she had dragged out the trunk with an almost manic excitement she suddenly found herself reluctant to open it up. Instead she contemplated her own dust drawings and listened to the wild thrashing of her daughter through the cottage walls.

  Chandra’s bedroom door burst open, swinging wide and smashing into the wall. Something rattled loose from a shelf nearby and when it hit the floor it tinkled with the sound of breaking glass.

  “Mama!” The child bellowed. “Me and Beruka are going to the swimming spot! Mama? Is that okay? Where are you?”

  “Here child. Right here.” Said Chandra’s mother with a softer voice. Chandra stomped into the room in boots so big that they nearly passed her knees and her feet rattled around inside them with every step like two little bell clappers. Beruka the rag doll was jammed inside a thick belt cinched up tight around the girl’s waist. There were not enough holes in the belt for the girl’s tiny stomach so she had to wrap the extra belt around and around and hold it all together with hair clips and rubber bands.

  “What are you doing mama?” Asked the girl as she looked from the trunk to her mother and back down to the strange black box. “What is that? I’ve never seen it before. Is there treasure inside?”

  “No! No. No treasure.” Chandra’s mother replied as she spread her own skirts to cover it. “It’s nothing dear one. Why don’t you go out and play and I will call you in for lunch?”

  Chandra walked into the room squinting hard at the box. She reached for it slowly as she approached. “Is it… did it belong to-”

  “No!” Before the child could touch it Chandra’s mother slapped at the girls fingers. But Chandra was quick and hopped backwards out of the way.

  “Okay.” Said Chandra. She wrapped the offending hand around her other elbow and looked sadly away from her mother and her mother’s strange seat.

  “It’s okay Chandra. It’s okay. I’m just doing a little cleaning that’s all. Now please, just go out and play.”

  “I want to go to the swimming spot.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Okay. Bye mama.” Chandra clunked her way out of the house but popped her head back in the front door a moment later. “Beruka said that you were mean! But… But she still wants to be friends okay?” Without waiting for a reply Chandra was gone again, her boots clopping along down a dirt path until Chandra’s mother was finally left in silence.

  Slipping down to the floor Chandra’s mother knelt in front of the trunk. Holding the trunk shut was a black-metal lock so fat around that it could fill up both her hands at once. Dipping a hand down the front of her blouse she rummaged around until she lifted out a key hung on the end of a braided leather cord. This key had been pressed from black-metal also like the lock and it had many angled teeth cut along its blade. Lining the key up with the lock she pressed it into the keyway and twisted. But the key did not turn and the jolt ran back into her hand so that the key slipped through her fingers. It fell from the lock and hit the floor flipping end over end until it finally lay flat on its face. She picked it up and stuffed it into the lock again and with her full strength she gripped and twisted the key. The key would still not turn even as it began to bend in the middle from all the pressure being brought to bear on it. She kicked out at the trunk but the lock only rattled in place. She kicked again and the key shook loose from the lock. Curling up her fingers into fists Chandra’s mother stomped out of the room and returned a moment later with a hammer and a saw. Smashing the hammer into the trunk and cutting pieces away she finally tore the lock free of the trunk along with the trunk latch, nails, and bits of jagged broken wood.

  Lifting the trunk lid up on its hinges Chandra’s mother revealed an entire wardrobe of men’s clothing packed away with tight precision. Belts were rolled up so they looked like a line of sweet-rolls. Shoes fit together along their grooves with matching socks folded inside each one. Pants folded together along their creases bordered a pile of shirts folded up into perfect squares and stacked into multi-colored layers. Slipping her arms elbow-deep into the trunk Chandra’s
mother pulled up a ball of clothing wider around than her own middle. She held it tight to her chest and turned to the front door that Chandra had left halfway open. Running outside, shirt sleeves and trouser legs fluttering around her as she moved, Chandra’s mother plunged into the woods. She ignored the path that Chandra had disappeared down but even as she picked her way through the bushes and scrabbling branches Chandra’s mother did not stray too far from that dirt track. Soon she was at the edge of a drop with a thin silver river below her cutting its way through the mud and stone of the forest floor. Chandra tromped around along a shallow edge of the water and with every step she sent up little eruptions of mud and foam that slapped against her outdoor dress. The child also wore swimming goggles and heavy rubber gloves so large that they swallowed her arms up to the shoulders. Every few steps she would crouch down over the river so that the ends of her dress hung down over her boots and trailed in the water. Pushing her gloved hands into the water she scrabbled and searched along the edge of the river. Her fingers were too small though to actually close the fingers of the gloves. All she could manage was to stir up the river bottom until the water clouded up with silt. Then the river would carry away her mess along its gentle current until the water cleared again.

  Chandra’s mother returned to the forest and found a spot near the trail where the trees spread a little thinner and bushes grew up hopefully in between trying to gather up the scraps of sunlight that slipped through the forest canopy. Setting down her bundle of clothes Chandra’s mother selected a single shirt and opened it up, wrapping it around a bush so that branches pushed through the sleeves like arms and leaves sprouted out past the shirt cuffs like fingers. She gave the bush a leather cap and a scarf to cover its brambly neck. Stopping at another bush she pulled up some of its roots and stuffed them into a pair of pants, giving that bush its own shirt and hat and scarf as well. She even stooped down to slide a pair of boots up against the cuffs of its pants so that the bush came to look like a tall man overstuffed with roughage and with his boots on the wrong feet.

  After attending to several more bushes Chandra’s mother began to pick up stray sticks from around the feet of her disguised bushes. She gathered up every broken branch and cast-off leaf that she could find throwing most of it away into the deeper woods but keeping a few of the driest bits to make a little pile in the center of her clearing. She lit the sticks and made a small fire and lashing together a few larger branches she made a tripod over the fire. From her pocket she revealed the three ruby-red berries she had stolen away from her own pantry. Hooking them by their own shared stem at the crux of the tripod she left them to the fire. The heat and smoke of the tiny fire wove its way around the berries, warming them until the skins of each berry began to crack. A sweet smell, tantalizing almost to madness, leaked out from the cooking berries and began to seep into the forest all around.

  With the bushes set and the fire going Chandra’s mother turned back to the bundle of clothing she had brought. Only a wide leather cap and a blue striped scarf remained of her stash. Laying the leather cap on her own head it fell down over her eyes onto the bridge of her nose so all she could see was a bit of daylight along the bottom edge of the hat. She looked like Chandra playing dress up for the man’s hat fit Chandra’s mother only a little better than those boots had fit the girl. She lifted the hat up to see better but it fell down again stubbornly across her face. Taking up the scarf next she threw it over her shoulders and wrapped it around and around her neck so that she was covered all the way up past her chin and over her mouth. Still there was much of the scarf left and the two frazzled ends hung over her shoulders and down her back. So, disguised similarly to the bushes around her Chandra’s mother settled down behind a log to wait until her daughter had her fill of playing at the water’s edge.