Birmingham

BIRMINGHAM 1996

The disembarrassing achievement of eighteen had presided itself as revolutionary for Marisole; albeit, she conjectured that it was not in consequence of the cultivated duration of ripened maturation, but instead, Birmingham, Alabama, in its irreverent vitality.
    The metropolis was of inexplicably exhilarative divergence from Macon, Georgia; its enamoring marketsquares advertising unparagoned vogue with coffeehouses respiring the palatable redolence of cappuccinos and yeast immersed within locale patrons; its congregational brunches of devotional commonality; a panorama of backyard vegetable gardens with preservative marigold blossoms, dissuading presumptuous woodland critters.
    Instead, Birmingham was oxhide footwear clouting besmirched midtown pavement with congested vinyl briefcases and dispossessed domiciliary breakfasts; alleyways vandalized in galvanizingly abstruse artistry through inexpensive aerosol canisters; hypothesized "delinquents" vociferating profanities and trumpeting their oppidan anthems whilst monopolizing ramshackled basketball courtyards.
    The inhabitants were impenetrable fortifications of menacing fray, and the urban localities obliged as personifications of their societal asylum, impetuously forestalling from conformity. However, it was not initially of trepidation, but adoption―they would, in no circumstance, be bloodstained casualties of conventionality.
    Notwithstanding Marisole's tarrying apprehension and loathing of her mother's abstraction of a "fresh start"―an afflictive reference to a punctured conundrum of socially abhorrent lust and confounding treason―there resided a tenderness within her adaptive ribcage for Birmingham and its undemanding similes.
    Nightfall was encroaching upon the compass of the skyline and its superimposing atmosphere, a tincture of moonlit incandesence―the pinnacle of longleaf pines transfiguring into contoured silhouettes of powdered astral waywardness.
    Within the newfangled Holloway household perched Marisole, esconced atop dinette lumber, insufflating the smog circulating from the sugarcoated embers.
Succeeding the ebullient countdown from her mother and father poised athwart her shoulders, which had been swaddled within rosemary cableknit that accentuated her chestnut maelstroms for eyes, she careened forward, apacely assailing the multicolored wax, the celebratory blaze handsomely distinguishing.
    As her father circumnavigated around the oaken tabletop, outstretching to seize the silverware disbursed amongst the woven placemats, Gabrielle interposed, clamoring a spangling spoon against her mug, inducing the wavelets of her eventide brew.
    "Before we dive into Grandma Freya's notorious red velvet and cream cheese recipe," she introduced, catapulting a frolicsome grimace at a zealous Bennett. "I―Mari, my love, you're so grown. I know that things haven't always been easy, especially these last eight months, and even in Macon, but―you've become what your grandparents fantasized about."
    "She speaks none other than the truth. They would look at you and those big brown eyes, and your Grandpa Otis would grin as wide as the sky, and he'd say, 'Gabrielle, Bennett: you two better hold on tight. This little girl, well―she's going to rule the world someday,'" her father reminisced, his visage conflagrant with the sentimentality of an indulgent reverie whilst he ensnared a geography of feasting alongside Marisole.
    "I never thought to pin you two as saps; you're starting to sound like Mr. Jenkins when he's bothered about something," Marisole sniggered lightheartedly, satiatingly riveted by their ardent maundering.
    "It's as simple as this: we're proud of you, Marisole," her mother enunciated, depositing her beverage upon the fringe of the adjacent furniture to endearingly clasp her phalanges around Marisole's biceps. "I've been drowning in these words for a long time now, and―you're officially an adult today. You'll graduate at the end of this month, you've been accepted into a summer program at Brown, and―I want to tell you this before there comes a day where I can't anymore."
    "Truthfully, there's still plenty of things we need to talk about before June rolls around―" she conceded, floundering within her guardian's unyieldingly unfeigned ligature.
    "What your mother's attempting to say here, Mari, is that we need you to hear this now. We aren't approaching this with some sense of obligatory acknowledgment to you because its your birthday, you know―we accept who you are. A real, bona fide acceptance.  We tell you this, so when you head out there into chaos, you'll look at yourself and you won't be afraid of what's within you."
    "Mom, Pop―thank you," Marisole lamented, for the extermination of her foreboding of the impulsion of their confabulation, and her continuance of her controversion had impelled sublimely into commencement. Her eyelids tumefied with nebulous teardrops, and her mien pivoted into an indubitably exultant grin. "Admittedly, I never understood it before I had become it, and that's what feared me the most. This―to say the least, it helps. Coming from the both of you, it helps."
    "Well, we're still adjusting―myself more so than your father, I believe. The majority I don't understand and I don't think I ever will, but, in the end, I don't have to. You're my daughter, and that will forever be enough for me."
    "With that being said, my girls, let's feast on this legendary sucker."
    As the undercurrent of Marisole's interrelationships with her forerunners fluctuated, an amity diffusing from each of their interlaced filaments, and as the gaieties dwindled along with her mother and her father's mirthful impetuosity, she devised a falsehood. Fastening herself within her bedroom beneath the semblance of afterglow lethargy, she unlatched the derelict window, emancipating herself into an intractable affair tattled about within the passageways between Calculus and homeroom.
    There was evolutionary approbation, and there abided extricating adulthood, yet within her lambent beast, she was carnivorous for her prey; the experience of endangerment.
    The flowering seasonal waft cosseting her innermore airways throughout her interurban pursuance, Marisole could not assail the sensualism of the presaging unruliness of adventure. If Lust was the mutation of her unrighteousness, a daemon she would emerge as.