Salamander Magazine | a magazine for poetry, fiction, & memoirs

Margaret Osburn

When Iris moved to the sofa and I slipped onto the camel saddle at her feet, she gave my knee a firm but gentle pat. The room was open—a great tiny room with a kitchen and living area rising to an unoccupied loft. A color TV in a far corner—a giant whispering night light—relieved the darkness.

“Where’ve you been this time?” she asked. “The gulf.”

“The Gulf ? So tell me...what got away?”Iris had a system, asking first what most interested her, then politely asking about the rest, one question each, before looping back to the start. It was as if she was afraid you might be called away too soon and she’d be left alone again to ponder the lives of others in silence. I told her what I knew, without mentioning Becky, and once we’d compared notes on Mick, I launched in again where we had started.“In Louisiana, there were those snowy egrets....” They had floated above an emerald knoll as if pulled up out of a canal on a string—white fans edged with the gold embroidery of the sun—black legs, yellow feet dangling like tails of kites. She devoured my reverie. Plantations. Churches. Cemeteries. Canals.

But what more needed telling?

The first time I saw Iris, Mick was marrying Becky’s cousin. For that occasion I had no camera. Not even a Kodak Instamatic. Iris wore a platinum blonde wig from her collection of blonde wigs, a black-and-white, floor-length kaftan, and a gold-braided purple vest. Her mother-of-the-groom shoes were sandals, the kind that cut between your toes. I didn’t need a photograph to remember the details. The gold lamé toe thong was bejeweled with big, colorful rhinestones.

I was drifting. This was the last of several days I’d stolen from Becky. I was AWOL. When I got home I’d find my darkroom supplies in the trash. Still, I stripped off my shoes and socks, and stretched out on the chaise. Alone there, I sank into its beat-up cushion. Black beauties had gotten me this far. I popped another.

“How old are you now...?” She always asked.

“Thirty,” I said. “Too old to be trusted.” I reached to touch her hand, but she held it to her breast. When light from the TV skipped onto the facets of her ring, a rainbow sprayed between us.

Margaret Osburn teaches creative nonfiction writing at The Johns Hopkins University. She is the recipient of regional press awards (IN) for news and feature writing and wrote a documentary film broadcast on PBS.