Stella kept on fading until she almost couldn’t be seen at all
A Short Story by Sally Curtis
Stella didn’t ask to be a mother but no sooner had the bouquet wilted and the confetti trodden into the ground, Stella’s mother was deciding whether to be Nana or Grandma, whilst the spinster aunts began their campaign for something to love like their own. When the first mass of living flesh bawled her way into her life, Stella was reminded of a furless ferret but Stella’s husband Steve helped heave the mantle of motherhood upon her shoulders whilst revelling in the congratulatory slaps on his own.
Returning to the office, Stella discovered Tiffany, the intern, had done a brilliant job filling in. By relieving Stella of some of her responsibilities, Human Resources assured her it was for the best, what with the probability of childcare emergencies in the future.
According to those who understood these things, Stella learned she must have it all, whether she wanted it all or not and, despite the curate’s egg of daycare, with nappies and rashes and colic and jabs and playdates and finding room on the damn fridge for the daily offerings those damn nursery teachers kept sending home, nobody explained how to make her original life co-exist with a brand-new one, so she forwent the oils and brushes in the sunny conservatory until she could find time to devote to her art.
When her daughter started school, Stella breathed a little but Steve whined about the fragility of his family name.
The second one had the face of a Gecko but Stella loved her as she should, kissing her tight lips before handing her over and returning to work, where Tiffany pointed out her desk now relocated to the corner by the fire exit. At home, Steve helpfully moved her unfinished canvases from the conservatory into the box room.
Once the boy had been born and suckled, his pig-like pot-belly just like Steve’s, Tiffany reminded her she had two sugars in her coffee and toilet breaks should not be taken unless absolutely necessary. Stella informed her how, after three births, all toilet breaks were absolutely necessary, but Tiffany remained unconvinced. Steve dismantled her easel and put it in the attic for her.
As the ferret-child stormed into adolescence demanding independence, Stella artlessly bought six hog bristle brushes but her ambition was swamped by shattered hearts and tumbling grades, achromatic love bites and cheap cider vomit: the first round of three. Stella’s mother judged from afar and the spinster aunts breathed easily at their nulliparous state. Steve took up golf.
After the final progeny left, offering neither thanks nor apology, Stella climbed the attic ladder but, half-way up, a flare of fire engulfed her. Through the fog, she held on tight but, pendulum like, she swung from leadenness to hollowness to weeping to laughing to wanting to take that bloody carving knife and stick it right between his bloody shoulder blades rather than the roast beef he insisted upon whenever his bloody mother came for Sunday lunch, grousing it was undercooked and the right way was to burn the bloody thing to bits.
Stella asked the doctor to do the same to her uterus but, whilst tapping in the next patient’s details, he acknowledged the prolonged bleeding was probably inconvenient, and her melancholy was merely hormones, my dear, and nothing to do with her shitty job and her shitty kids and her shitty husband who plays a couple of rounds on Sundays so she can get a grip before putting dinner on, and so her request was unwarranted at this late stage.
Today, Stella is collecting Tiffany’s dry-cleaning. In a shop window she glimpses someone she recognises but the woman looking back is insipid, like a faded Cezanne. Passing the library, Stella notices a board advertising an exhibition by local artists. Checking her watch, she slips inside, passes the rows of bound words, and enters a large space at the rear. An eclectic collection of local landscapes, a few of portraits, and too many paintings of people’s dogs greet her. She thinks of her half-completed pieces languishing in the attic.
To the right is a smaller room boasting an installation. She checks her watch again. She has wanted to view one for years. Photographs of women, bare from the waist up, line the walls. Printed labels state a name, a date, and a single word. She is particularly taken with Sarah, March 2022, Unashamed, a tattoo where her left breast would be expected. A tall man positions himself directly in front of her so she moves along to Melanie, December 2021, Passionate, squishing her voluptuousness up to the camera. In the centre of the room, a square is marked out with giant sticky notes. A crumpled woman in Crocs and a poncho, sits by its edge in a director’s chair. Stella has no idea what she is meant to be appreciating but stops to look.
Three girls bundle in, their noise cracking open the silence. At first Stella thinks they are school kids but, as they approach, she guesses late teens. One girl, her face punctured by studs, immediately peels off one of the yellow notes. Stella wonders if this is permitted.
“‘With the years, colours fade.’ I don’t get it,” the girl announces loudly to the room.
Stella shudders at her assertive ignorance.
“Then that one isn’t for you.” It is the crumpled woman.
The girl turns to Stella. “Do you know what it means?”
Before Stella has time to consider, the crumpled woman stands and takes the note from the girl.
“This one is yours,” she says, passing it to Stella and returning to her seat.
“What happens now?” asks the girl.
“If she chooses,” says the crumpled woman, “she can join the gallery; become part of the art.”
Stella watches these two strangers talk about her so casually.
The studded girl looks to her friends for clarification but they shrug their shoulders.
“What do you see?” the woman asks the girl, indicating the walls. “Daughters? Girlfriends? Wives? Mothers?”
The girl nods.
“Then you see labels. Each one bestowed upon us sticks a little faster until we become lost in a treacly wrapper of conformity.”
The girl’s upper lip curls. “But why are they naked? And why are they so old?”
Stella bristles: Unashamed Sarah and Passionate Melanie can’t be more than forty.
“They were ready to strip back to their truths.”
The girl rounds on Stella. “Are you going to do it?”
Stella wishes she had left earlier: she’s already late back from lunch and will have to make up the time, her mother wants her to visit after work, she hasn’t bought anything for dinner, and Tiffany’s dry cleaning is still in the cleaners. She doesn’t have the time, but then she hasn’t had the time for the last thirty years.
“Enter the square,” invites the crumpled woman.
The room is receiving a steady stream of visitors, some of whom stop to watch. Stella moves forward. A frisson of fear flashes from her chest, up her neck and into her cheeks. The studded girl waits. One of the friends blows a gummy globule. The third yawns.
Stella steps into the square.
A spotlight, white-bright, illuminates her: the centre of attention; a living installation.
“Say something then,” demands the studded girl.
“My name is Stella,” she husks.
“What else?”
The girl is impatient.
I’m a mother. “
“Is that it?”
Sweaty-palmed, Stella catches the bubble-gum girl roll her eyes.
“No. That’s not it!” Stella’s voice surprises her. “I am more than a mother … and I am more than a daughter.”
Her heart beats fast, her head fizzes but not from panic or fear; this is something she hasn’t felt in a long time: excitement. People turn from the photographs towards her, watching the living art.
“I am more than a wife,” she declares, voice rising. “And I am a damn sight more than a frickin’ office gofer!”
The studded girl whoops; a few people clap.
“But who are you?” asks the crumpled woman. “What are you?”
Stella thinks back to the reflection in the window.
Putting her handbag down, she shrugs off her coat and turns a full 360 degrees, taking in the women in the photographs: all shapes, all sizes, all reasons. Unbuttoning her blouse, it slips to the floor. People form a semi-circle, all eyes on her. Let them stare. Let them judge. Whatever this is, this is for her. This is her. She pulls back her shoulders, juts out her chin, takes a deep breath and unclasps her bra.
“My name is Stella. I am a woman. I am an artist and I am visible.”
She releases her breasts and, in the flash of a polaroid, Stella re-appears.
Author: Sally is a burnt-out teacher and would-be novelist. She has micros, flashes and short stories published online and in anthologies, and enjoyed competition success including Retreat West, Writing Magazine, and Flash 500. She is attempting to write a Novella-in-Flash but, so far, has only curated a collection of sticky notes.
Great story. I really enjoyed reading it. More please.