golden

eight: a cold hallelujah

It didn't happen often, but when it did, it came as a hurricane.

Harry's gentle prodding of sun-kissed daydreams, remnant of his new knowledge of Texan wildflowers coalesced shamelessly with memories she fought to keep buried.

Hurricanes.

There'd been only two of the threat since her move to California. Each a harbinger of bad tidings. Each only bringing heavy rainfall. They didn't make hurricanes like that in Texas. There seemed to be several each season, all worse than the previous. All chalked up to that tiny island town of Port Aransas. And it wasn't until those two Californian storms that Elizabeth remembered the paralyzing spread of fear that had overtaken her each time a storm threatened to flood them all into oblivion.

The only constant hope being the everlasting monument that was the Lydia Ann Lighthouse. Shining her beacon across the sea and beyond, that swiveling light foreseeable from the window of the bedroom she and Howie had once shared.

It all seemed so far off now, a foggy dream she didn't quite remember having. The tender bubble of blood that bloomed at the tip of her finger each time she attempted to sew. Dirt and mud caked under crescent nails because burrowing in the dirt was the closest semblance to digging her way out of that town she could get. The slap of a yardstick against her palms each time she spoke out to question the existence of God Almighty, for why on earth did bad things happen to good people if God existed? What God poured hellfire down on his people and called it mercy? Peeking around the corner to see Howie steal a gulp of off-limits sauce from their father's private stash. Having barely enough food to stave off their hunger and still sharing it with the neighbors.

Port Aransas and her childhood, Mother Katharine's School for Girls, the smell of fresh bloomed Calla Lilies, and the sight of her mother making two identical birthday cakes.

Do you ever miss home, Harry had asked her that first night.

Of course, she said yes because what person didn't miss home? Anyone normal would have said yes and gushed about their technicolor rearing and how fond they were of the life and history they left behind.

Elizabeth wasn't normal. She never had been.

If he were to ask again, she would supply the truth. The stern no a gust of relief. It was all black and white in her mind, the only color arising the day she kicked dust behind her feet and never looked back. Sight so vehemently set on Hollywood, she never stopped to think of her repercussions.

Then again, she never had back then.

Water and dirt. Her only escapes from the torture of normalcy. The fear of blending in when she was destined to rise above. Fresh, inviting saltine ocean air intermixed with the swell of the water around her as she ventured further and further towards the depths of the unknown, to make it known to only her. Compact dirt reduced to nothing but crumbs beneath her fingers as she dug and made a home for a green stem out of a hole, conscripting nature to her will in the attempt to create something beautiful for her sake.

If lanky stems could grow and flourish into bewildering flowers in Aransas, by God, so would she.

And she did.

All it took was the rejection of whatever life everyone else had planned out for her. No, she would not accept the notion of a God she didn't care to believe in. No, she would not prick her finger seventy times a day for seventy years. No, she would not sign her life over to Gerald Finchly- who shipped out the same day as Howie and didn't know he wouldn't live to see the Lydia Ann Lighthouse ever again- and be resigned to a plain life of having babies and burning herself on a stove and sharing a bed with a man who chewed with his mouth open and palmed her like he owned her.