StorySLAM 2014 - May - Elemental - A Day in Your Village

Water

We are walking together through the stream. The water is cool and it hugs our ankles in round ripples, and it catches my rubber slipper and slides it off my foot. I stop talking and run after it over the hard, round pebbles and the soft, gritty sand, splashing my legs. Tiny grey fish disappear darting under the edge of the stream, under large, shady tree roots and hairy seaweed. Peacock green dragonflies whizz around the nettles and weeds along the shore.  Hens cluck and scratch unseen in the bushes of the shore.

You watch me with your open face smiling, showing me which way the slipper has gone. Your hair is short, up to your ears, and your tanned skin is glowing in the dappled streaks of sunshine.

You tell me about the village school and you welcome me into walking through the village’s dusty roads.

Earth

The skin on your legs is a caramel brown, and it glistens under the water of the water pump. We have been walking through the river and then on the dusty road, and the dust has caked on our legs into the shapes of the water drops from the stream. We have walked to the water trough the cows drink from in the evening, on their way home from the pasture on the hill. We are washing our feet and our rubber slippers dangling from them. The water is cold but our feet start looking brand new now that they are clean and shining wet.

A horse-drawn cart passes on the road, its iron central beam sticking out long at the back. Your eyes sparkle, naughty. You put your finger to your lips to tell me to keep quiet and motion me to follow. You run after the cart and hop on the beam, holding on precariously to the edge of the wooden cart, and stretch your hand to call me over.  I run and sit next to you on the beam, stifling my giggles, my belly tingling with excitement while I flounder for something to hold on. You put your arm around my waist and I hold you around your shoulders, and I choke on my muffled laugh that’s bursting to come out. The man driving the horse hasn’t noticed us and his back stays safely turned away from us.

Air

The cool evening air has descended and it seems to have entered every courtyard through its open gates together with the cows that come home by themselves at 8 o’clock.  I can hear their bells from the road as I sit on the porch, waiting to eat auntie’s gritty polenta with creamy stewed pickled cabbage. 

She turns the cast iron cauldron over the wooden board to pour out the polenta, and I breathe in the steam curling into the air, its scent homey and filling. It pours into an egg-yolk yellow coloured dome, warm and steamy, with the texture of a gloopy sand pie. It’s firm and auntie cuts it with a stitching thread. There is thick, fresh cream on the table in a mug and I spoon it over the cabbage and polenta. The cat is drawing the figure of eight around our ankles in lusty caresses that run all along her furry body to the tip of her tail, and I try to catch a touch of it before she moves away. I lure her with pieces of fatty pork skin from my plate.

The air is light and stings with cold,  and it rings with the sounds of cow bells, dog barks, hens clucking sleepily perched in their wooden hen-house. A TV playing somewhere inside the house.

Your call comes on the evening air from the road, “Cu-koo”, and I gobble up the last pieces from my plate before running out to meet you.

Earth – closer

The night has thickened on the road but our eyes have gotten used to it and we can see. We play hide and seek and I follow you to a dark awning in the side of the road. There is a very narrow footpath between the wall of the house and a ditch that looks deep, maybe up to my waist.  I breathe in the rotten eggs smell of stagnant mud and cloying duck droppings, I saw the ducks there earlier today. There is a tree that clambers up against the wall of the house, growing from the path and blocking our way. You move like a cat, holding on to the trunk and skipping over to the other side, and make it look easy. When I follow, I hold on to the thin branch that sticks out over the ditch, and hoist myself over to the other side of the trunk, trying to be as feline as you. But I feel the branch cracking in my hand while my foot is still mid-air, and I fall. My back hits the bottom of the ditch with a thud. I stop breathing, and my back is numb.

“Oh my God, Maria!”, I hear you whisper.

Numbness makes way for pain as I grapple to stand up, and I’m gasping from the panic of losing my balance. 

“You’re full of mud. Did you break anything?”

The pain and fear sting my eyes and I feel like crying.  The boys have found us, especially the one with green eyes, and I can’t cry and be ashamed in front of him. I better laugh before they do.  So I laugh instead of crying, peals after peals of laughter. And I am full of mud and smelly duck poo and there’s nothing else to do.

“Thank God you are laughing!”, says your voice from the shadows.

The boy with green eyes walks me home holding his bicycle on the other side, and when I get there, my Auntie washes my muddy clothes and hangs them on the line to dry.