Peaches and Pearls
Anita wakes with her spine pressed against the wooden frame of the kitchen window. The glass hums faintly in the wind. Trails of dried tears ridge her cheeks, though she doesn’t recall why she was crying. The air feels too small for her body—like she’s outgrown both her skin and the room that holds it.
She stands and wraps her arms around herself. Outside, the hills shine like coins under the last light, the trees shedding gold and rust drift like cooling embers. Her reflection trembles in the glass—pale, half-lost to the dusk. She leans closer, trying to catch herself. The braids hanging over her shoulders look unfamiliar, the colour too dark to be hers. The face behind them is blurred, edges smudged as if the glass refuses to remember her.
Her breath ghosts the pane. When the fog clears, her mother’s face looks back—cheekbones sharp, hair wild, eyes hollowed by exhaustion older than sleep. Her heartbeat climbs. Anita jerks forward–one–the image dissolves. She steps back—two–the image returns. Forward-back, forward-back—steady as a heartbeat, familiar as breath.
Her hand drifts down, smoothing the threadbare patch on her nightgown. Once. Twice. Thrice. The gesture feels borrowed, a relic from a girl who once lived here.
A quiet decision rises in her chest, solid as instinct. She opens a drawer, finds the orange-handled scissors—dull, cold. The first cut rasps through the braid, the next through the memory that tied it there. Each rope of hair falls heavy as rotten fruit to the floor. When she stops, her breath trembles. On the tile, the heap of hair looks animal—a small, dead thing that might still wake if she called its name.
Her lips move. She whispers nothing. Outside, a bird cries once. Sharp. Alive.
The air shivers.
She blinks, and the night gathers quickly; silver light thickening until the room feels underwater. Suddenly, she is starving. She wipes the dust from a lid of preserved peaches, opens the jar and eats them with her fingers. Syrup runs down her wrists, sticky and sweet, turns dizzy in her mouth, grounding her in the only proof she trusts: taste, texture, breath.
As the world tilts, gentle and final. She crawls beneath the table—her small fortress of blankets—and the dark folds around her like memory made warm.
The space is low, close, a pocket of breath inside the larger silence. The table legs rise like narrow trees; moonlight filters through the weave of old fabric, turning dust to faint constellations. The scent of overripe fruit and dust settles around her, syrup-sweet and earthly. The floor creaks once, like an exhale, and she imagines the house shifting to make room for her small kingdom. Here, the rules are simple: stay quiet, stay small, breathe. Above her, the wind rattles the glass, but beneath the table the air hums steady and kind, as if the house itself remembers what it means to shelter.
In her dream, she stands at the threshold between kitchen and porch. Wind lashes the screen door.
“Anita.”
Her mother’s voice rasps through the storm. Anita turns.
Her mother is facing the counter, kneading dough, apron flaring like wings, hair twisting into fire. The kettle screams. Steam rises. The air ripples.
When her mother turns, her face shines wrong—mouth too thin, eyes burrows of black. Strawberries spill from her lips, each drop striking the floor with the measured rhythm—tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick…
Anita tries to move, but her feet are fused to the threshold.
Her mother hums—a low, lilting tune that sways with the falling fruit, the melody keeping time with the red drops.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
The tune folds into her pulse—tick, tock, one-two—until she can’t tell which is hers.
It feels almost like warmth.
Then, mother’s skin begins to shift, as if the memory itself were decaying.
Anita shuts her eyes, but the sound keeps coming.
Until it stops.
She is crouched inside a closet. Her body, small again. Dresses sway above her. The air smells of soap and dust. She presses her face into a navy skirt, breathing deep. Something clatters—six pearls scattering across the floor. She gathers them—one, two, three—drops them—one-two-three—plucks them up again.
Tick, tock. Tick tock—
then, the one-two of footsteps. Closer. Closer.
Her mother’s song rises—soft, measured—one-two, one-two—the rhythm of the clock, the heartbeat of control.
Anita falls backward—into cold. Her shoulders strike the kitchen floor. The dream shatters. For a moment she doesn’t know which world she’s in—the waking or the dead—then the wind groans through the house, and she knows.
A growl rises from the dark. She pulls herself up, eyes glued to the dark, and reaches back for the knife by touch; the wrong edge meets her hand. Pain flashes, hot and bright. The sound moves closer—claws clicking on wood.
When breath overlaps breath, she throws.
A yelp—then silence. Then a whine, small and pained.
Guilt cuts through terror. Anita sinks—down, down, down.
A warm nose brushes her cheek. A tongue, alive and gentle.
Awake. Birdsong. A dog sleeps curled at her feet—shaggy, gold, the wound on her flank shallow but closed. The tag reads Paula.
Anita mouths the name but it’s like mothballs against her tongue.
Anita has an idea. She steps into the pantry, feet slapping against cool slab. She gathers jars–one-two, one-two, then lines them up on the counter.
Paula watches, tail thumping once, as if in quiet agreement. The jars gleam faintly in their neat row, syrup catching the light like small, obedient hearts.
Maybe this is how it happens—slowly, without noticing—you start keeping her time.
The room ticks with her; even the jars seem to breathe in rhythm.
Anita’s gaze lifts toward the staircase. A thought flickers, fragile and bright:
maybe it worked. Maybe the rhythm, the order of it all has brought her mother back.
She feels the pull again—the shimmer at the edge of sight—and she wants to see, to be sure.
If her mother is waiting, she will know what to do next.
Anita wipes her palms against her nightgown, breath quickening, and begins to climb. Each step creaks like a question. The hallway smells of dust and sweetness, like fruit left too long in summer heat. Her mother’s door stands ajar; moonlight spills through the curtain’s tear, coating the bed in silver.
Her mother lies where Anita last left her—cheekbones carved, hair dulled and darkened. In the hollows where eyes once were, something black glints—beetle wings or the slick of rot, glimmering faintly. The smell is thick: salt, copper, and the faint oversweetness of fruit left to ferment. Her mother has eaten too many strawberries. A dark crust rims her mouth, dried along her neck and collar.
For a heartbeat, Anita clings to the thought—strawberries, mother loved strawberries—but the truth glistens through it: not berries, not sugar. The red is wrong. Too dark, too dry. The air is silent—no hum, no count—just the slow, uneven beat of her own heart, learning a new time.
Anita does not recoil. She kneels, and for the first time the sight does not frighten her—it feels inevitable. The body that taught her fear has collapsed into something human again: fragile, finite, soil-bound.
From mother’s vanity, Anita pulls the small tin box. It is warm, as if the metal remembers touch. She grips it tighter. Downstairs, Paula whines—a call to the living.
Anita stumbles into the yard. The night air burns her lungs clean. The box slips from her hands; the lid pops open and pearls scatter across the grass, pale as moons, rolling into the dark.
For a heartbeat the world holds still—the house, the hills, the dog. Then the wind exhales through the trees, carrying the faint scent of peaches and rain.
Anita kneels amid the pearls, breath hitching once, twice, then steady. She realizes she’s humming—her mother’s low tune, but softer now, her own.
The house quiets, finally. The air tastes new.
And somewhere beneath that stillness—
a rhythm, patient and alive,
not haunting her anymore,
but holding her.
One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.
The rhythm had changed, but time was still hers to keep.
