fiction by sanziana timis

The Pledge

Grevilleas for good luck. Roses for longing. A bouquet to celebrate. Tulips to apologize. 

She had learnt the language through the time of day and the time of year. Through the sentiments that she would write. She was the messenger of hidden meanings. When she noticed the frequency of orders heightening towards a given person, she had the urge to write ‘sorry I cheated on you’ on the tiny card but refrained. It wasn’t that she wanted to save these oblivious wives from their unfaithful husbands, she was jealous. Jealous of the attentions they received, knowing they were spoiled with more kisses and insincere pillow whispers ‘you mean the world to me.’ Wilted petals falling on the same tabletop he leaves his ring.

Monday was always the day that the Sunday late night orders would pop up in her inbox like seedlings hatching from the bare ground. She made predictions for the event forecast. Two weddings, a funeral, a cancer patient and three new honeymoon phases. Click. Only five orders jolted awake. Little less than usual for March. She sipped her coffee, and it burnt. The new barista from the café next door was still in training and doing terribly. Bright eyed, long golden hair always loose with an over accommodating nature even though a girl that pretty should be arrogant and proud. Bright Eyes smiled with her whole face, even when she didn’t smile back. Bright Eyes mumbled songs under her breath and the men expected her to remember their name. Looking down at her coffee cup, she saw she’d written ‘have a good day!’ on the side. She poured the coffee down the sink and threw away the cup. Fuck off. 10:30 for personality assessments. Click.

Please incorporate violet and whites. No geraniums or carnations. No yellows, oranges, reds, no warm colors. Can you also please add more foliage than usual, we are going for a folk-y vibe (it’s a Woodland theme). I can come in person, too. Type A, still with her high school boyfriend. He is a doormat; they’re having a baby, he decided they may as well get married, too, after she dropped hints for months. He doesn’t really care for weddings. She has been planning hers since wearing tulle as a child.

Bright happy flowers. Preferably sunflowers. He is trying to save his depressed girlfriend. He’s sweet, but she doesn’t appreciate him anyway. She is the perpetual sad girl, Mitski for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He goes for runs and doesn’t really understand her. Doomed.

Can I have the biggest bouquet of roses possible? Bingo. Proposal or anniversary. Why is it always roses? No girl with a personality actually likes roses. But men don’t listen to their girlfriends, they listen to tone deaf tropes floating around and think that’s it! This’ll show her my devotion! My bleeding heart! When did stealing ideas from grey shirted men on reality tv set the standard for a romantic exchange?

She shook her head. Placed a hand on her heart and remembered the vow she had made to the mirror in her moldy bathroom years ago. To singlehandedly break up with the patriarchy for the good of all women, everywhere. 

A silent pledge to never find herself in a dance with a man. To not tolerate the recycled romantic displays. The first dates that led to a drop in standards. The social justice conversations that led to disappointment, they either didn’t know, didn’t care or cared for the wrong thing. Pretending to be oblivious to the elephant in the room, that women have to masquerade as the vulnerable while they gently hold the male ego in their perfectly manicured fingers. No, they hadn’t painted them for him! No, of course they hadn’t gotten into compromising shower positions for this shaven childlike yoni, only to deal with ingrown itchiness for the next four days. No, no, the sex was good. No, I didn’t cum, but it doesn’t matter. 

She was sick of the charade. She had found the truth and she was happy! No, not lonely. Never lonely. Free! She liked the periphery. Watching the jaded lives of others unfold, indulging here and there, just a little. But it’s okay! She got to live in the moment, consequence free. Their moment. She winced. It’s all lies anyway, she reassured the roses. They pricked her back.

*

The walk home from work involved trudging through a graveyard. It cut the walk back five minutes. Which she didn’t actually believe was worth it because of the cumulative time her soul would spend in hell from walking on the dead. On her detour she took opportune to visit her dead friends, whom she’d never met, but noticed the same plastic flowers had not been moved in years. She’d assumed anyone that cared for them was dead now too. So she paid homage to the lives they may have lived. Although she knew they were probably boring if they died in this town. So Penelope who was probably a hairdresser was now an abstract artist. Julie who was probably a stay-at-home mother was now a supreme court judge. Nevertheless she believed her basic dead friends deserved real flowers. Not plastic bouquets lying dormant in a junkyard. But that’s the thing about plastic flowers, they don’t die. It was a jarring irony. A slow rage burned in her throat. The blasphemy, to tease like that. She had the sudden urge to scream ‘they’re dead!’ into the afternoon. She didn’t. But instead fumbled at the ground with her feet, trying to emanate the fashion of a teenage boy kicking at rocks on a lonely driveway.

I’m sorry you’re dead, Pen. She patted her gravestone. They were chummy like that.

*

The next week, she walked into the café and prayed for another barista. Bright Eyes appeared as chirpy as ever, her voice always ending in the tone of a question. She wondered why they hadn’t fired her yet and considered putting in a complaint. But it was no use. Pretty girls always win for doing nothing at all. Pretty girls don’t do their tests but always get A+. Bright Eyes probably didn’t even cook but spent her evenings staring into the distance with her happy, simple thoughts while eating grapes exclusively from a vine. She reminded her of someone. The memory annoyed her, even though she couldn’t remember.

“Here you go, babe.” Teethy smile. Not getting one back. Babe. She took a sip outside. Still bad, but drinkable. She ignored Bright Eyes affirmation in her curly handwriting.

*

Woodland fairy bridezilla was visiting to catalogue the stock. She’d told her petunias to be on their best behavior and her poppies to not take up too much spotlight. They were too warm of course. No they couldn’t stay in the shop forever, she told them. She didn’t tell them they would die in a week playing the role of ornament at a performative nature venue. They weren’t the real thing anymore, just a decorative symbol. But at least they didn’t have to play the many roles of women.

The damsel, the hyper independent career woman, the domestic servant, the bitch, the whore, the virgin. She had played all of them once, quite well. Once she had received flowers packaged nicely with a little handwritten note. That was before she drew blood and wiped it all over the bathroom mirror and screamed like a banshee in her paper apartment so the neighbors could hear and not do anything and flushed her ridiculous ring down the toilet and later regretted that she couldn’t get money for it. That was before the pledge to a life of romantic celibacy. There was no such thing as immunity from the theatre production of being a woman. But being in love, with a man, was a lifetime show.

“Hey, is this the florist place?” Taylor Swift Folklore album wife to be had arrived.

She turned to make eye contact with her flowers. Were they not flower-ing well enough?

“Okay cool, well, so I was thinking. . . “ Her squeaky domestic voice trailed off and her obnoxious engagement ring had met the sun’s gaze. It should have been a delicate accessory, but it seemed infused to her like an extra limb. She wanted to cut her finger off. “Would you like some tea?” she asked.

*

Were you ever married, Pen? 

Was he anything special? 

I guess you were because your generation was obsessed with the symbolic union of two incompatible people and packaged lunches and honey I’m home. But he probably wasn’t special.

I bet you were you pretty. Your name is Penelope for fucks sake.

Did you get a bunch of proposals? 

Or did you just settle for the first handsome horseman?

Did he die first or you? Did you die of a broken heart? Alone?

She looked away, suddenly embarrassed at her nosiness. No response. The gravestone stoic. 

I’m sorry you’re dead, Pen, she sighed.

I hope you died first though.

*

The keys rattled in the hole; it had been struggling to open lately. It was Winter and the handle stuck to her skin and blistered her as she pulled and pulled. The flowers were upset this time of year, they were forced into service when they just wanted to sleep, brought to life with artificial lighting and manufactured conditions. She felt more captor than benevolent keeper in those moments. A knock tapped. Gentle. A woman, obviously. They weren’t open yet.

She groaned. What was the urgency of this flower panic?

Turning the door haphazardly, she found Bright Eyes standing there. But her eyes were not bright. 

“Can I, um, get some flowers?” she finally said, her tone restless and unsure. Her hair was up out of her face, pulled into a tight braid that fell strictly like a schoolgirl. It was like seeing a perfect painting being slitted over with white acrylic to vanish its prior memory.

Something softened and she opened the door to let her in. Moving around from display to display she showed her the dahlias and the irises and the chrysanthemums. She offered her hydrangeas and nasturtium and magnolias. She began to gesture to the agapanthus but stopped. Nothing had captured Bright Eyes attention.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked.

A heavy motionlessness had paralysed the space. Her inquiry was met with a vacant gaze that saw painfully through her. She felt invisible, not knowing who the ghost really was. The question slowly drifted away like it hadn’t left her mouth. 

“Do whatever you think,” Bright Eyes said as she turned towards the door.

“Can I write a note?” she asked unexpectedly. She felt she wanted to keep her a minute longer. To know something more. 

Bright Eyes shook her head and walked out.

*

Bright Eyes was no longer behind the espresso machine on Mondays or Tuesdays or Wednesdays or any day. It had been weeks since she’d received a bad coffee with a note on the side. Could she admit she missed the bitter aftertaste, cringing at her positive affirmations and hearing her mumble under her breath her favourite song that week. Had she imagined the whole thing? Her memories fell on a now meaningless room, haunted by a phantom who had fled the scene.

She didn’t know her name, where she was from, why she was so bright working at a mediocre cafe. Why she was no longer bright that day she walked in.

She didn’t even know her eye color! Caramel, or turquoise or jade? Maybe a perennial brown. No, no no.

She didn’t know anything beyond the character she had invented and scorned. The pretty girl.

All the jewels of life offered in service of her beauty. Respected, admired, loved. Loved,

better. She had decided her prettiness was both a shield and an invitation.

An opening to a life half lived, half loved, always the receiver, never the giver.

Did she receive but never endure?

She somehow knew it couldn’t be.

Something twisted inside, a memory, a reminder. She blinked her eyes thrice as if to rid the thoughts through superstitious means. It didn’t work. Her mind was unfurling, racing with questions she didn’t dare ask. She did.

When was the last time she really knew someone? And not through a clue or a handwritten note. Not from the periphery. 

When had someone really known her?

She wouldn’t answer her own question.

She couldn’t.

*

It was the end of a rainy day; she hadn’t brought an umbrella and her pruned feet clung co-dependently to her socks. She walked exposed in the graveyard, with no tree to guard over her. No jacarandas gently swaying in violet brush strokes. Finding herself across from the gravestone that had grown to be her most familiar companion, she stopped.

Penelope Andrews, died sixty-two in 1989. Her faded gravestone read ‘Beloved by all.’ 

Penelope who was not an abstract artist. Penelope who might have been a hairdresser. Penelope whom she had never known and never would. 

But she knew she was loved, and that she loved.

Kneeling over she placed tulips next to the plastic bouquet on her grave. Maybe they were dollar shop trash, but they were immortal and that was enough.

Have a good day, Pen. 

She walked on singing under her breath. It would be the last time she visited.

Sanziana Timis is an Australian female writer, with a background in Journalism. In her writings she explores female identity, paradoxes and making the invisible, visible. She has been published in OPUS magazine and can be found on instagram @comicsanzi