COASTE | NOVEL
This month COASTE is honored to present an abbreviated chapter of Ms. Christine Lemmon’s Portion of the Sea — which you can read to conclusion online at YourCoaste.com or click here . Ava China breaks. A wedding dress dulls. Money gets spent. But the prayers awomenutters inher lifetime flutter back and forth throughout the generations like eternal butterflies landing ever–so-lightly on the shoulder of a daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter, or any old girl, often without her ever knowing. It was a cold New York morning, and I knew the coldness had something it wanted to say to me. I could tell by the way it howled outside my window and then knocked on my bones, At first I tried not to pay it any attention, but then when my knees started creaking, I knew the cold was following me and that it wasn’t going to give up. I put my robe on and walked over to the table in my room, the one near the window in the spring, and the one where I drank my tea under the rays of morning light. This time of year the table is dark and I place a blanket over my legs when I sit there. The cold doesn’t bother my daughter as it does me, so I try not to complain of it, and we go on drinking our tea in the cups I inherited from my mama. They were part of the set that I was given after her death, and they reminded me of our moments long ago when she, Grandmalia, and I would drink the comfort tea together. But it wasn’t the tea or the china or even the brandy that meant anything. It was the ritual and those have a way of continuing throughout generations if someone takes on the sacred responsibility of declaring them rituals in the first place. “I don’t have time for you,” I said rubbing the goose bumps on my arms. “Why don’t you come back in a couple of weeks?”
I glanced at the clock behind me. It was seven- thirty in the morning, Where was she? My daughter usually came wandering into my roomby now to lazily plant a good-morning kiss on my cheek before sliding down into the chair across fromme. I loved having tea with her each morning, before she left for school and, occasionally, if the boys weren’t in a hurry for work, they would wander in, preferring coffee to tea and only having time for a quick sip, if that. I call them boys, but that’s because I’m their mother. Ask any women, and she’d say they’re men! Their days living here with me at the estate were numbered, but I wasn’t counting. They could stay as long as they wanted, but my oldest son would soon be engaged, and my middle son was thinking of buying his own place — twice as big as this — and my youngest was making plans to move downtown. The boys grew up too fast, which is why I’m grateful God blessed me with a daughter. I still had her home with me for many years yet, and I was glad. I wasn’t at all ready for a childless house and life. I enjoyed having tea in the morning with my children. But once they all left and the house was mine, I switched to coffee so I could write. I drank three cups spread throughout the day. The room was cold, so I stood up and paced back and forth a few times, leaning my hands over the tray with the hot tea and rubbing my fingers over the rising steam as one does over a campfire. I thought about which story I might tell my daughter today. She enjoys hearing one story before school, but a short one, and she prefers nonfiction to fiction and her favorite genre, simply put, is true stories having to do with me — her mother — at around her age. But now that I’ve entered my fifties, I forgot things that happened when I was fourteen or fifteen, so I have to think awhile before coming up with a good story to tell her. I tell her whatever I remember. Or what I want to remember. Or what I want to relive. Or what might reunite me with the girl I once was. According to recent statistics, the average life expectancy for a man or women is under fifty-five years old. I refused to become a statistic.
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