Where's Joy?

Where she senses change

4:00am came and then left. 5:00am trumpeted in then trumpeted out. By the time 6:00am arrived, Joy Seawell was still wide awake.

She had waited, and waited and waited. George hadn't called.

Her telephone still sat beside her on the bed, not ringing, not doing anything at all.

She heard shuffling outside her door and knew her mother was awake. Her noisy slippers, smacked away at the stairs like fish in the sand. Joy listened to its sounds: Flop flop flop. Take me back to the water, Joy imagined them saying, it's the only place I belong.

But where do I belong? Joy wondered. It had been one of many thoughts plaguing her the whole night. Along with her lost love, her uncaring family, and her constant tears. Where do I belong in all of this?

If you stay in the same place too long, you'll lose your way.

It was one of those thoughts that had fallen into Joy's mind an hour before, and fallen out.

But the thought had tripped in again.

If Joy could describe her mind, she would liken it to a cage. Trapping anything and everything that it formed. And her mind grasped onto that thought like the bolt on her door.

If you stay in the same place too long, you'll lose your way. Her mind turned it over and over again until she was forced to process.

Joy had lived in the Old Town for approximately nineteen years, and in a week it would be twenty years.

She had spent four years with George, giving away her love to him the same way Peace gave tomato sauce to her spaghetti—ardently and in abundance.

She had spent two years pretending for the rest of the world that she could live up to being George's girl. So Joy had boasted that she only cared about buying pearls, and being a rich modern lady. Because that was who George needed her to be, and Joy was so good at becoming what she was not.

But really, Joy's dreams—both waking and sleeping— filled with images of jewelry deisgns. Gems of all kinds glittered before her eyes, gems she would twist this way and that, forming miracles even Patsy would be proud of. Her sketches tucked away under her bed never to see the light of any kind of day.

And, of course, Joy had spent all her life with a family that couldn't know her.

She had lost her way.

Even when she had laughed with George, even when her father showed telling signs of sympathy, even when her sisters played nice, and even when her mother offered her more than just curry sauce, still, the misery had attached to Joy's soul.

I've stayed in the same place too long. And the only way to find my way is to move.

And Joy moved.

Pulling her green robe around her night dress, tucking her feet into her slippers, she moved out her bedroom and down the stairs.

Her mother looked up when she passed the kitchen "You're up early as usual, sleep well?" 

I didn't sleep. I never really sleep. 

But Joy only replied with a shrug, and her mother went back to hurrying round the kitchen. When Joy reached the front door, she heard the blare of a telephone (not hers) and her mother's subtle voice:"Hey Marie, I'm about to look over those documents."

Joy hesitated.

Suddenly, she wanted to rush upstairs. She wanted to crawl back into bed and cry and pray, to whoever was listening, for George to call her and take her back. Because that was all Joy was capable of, right? Who was she to think that her today would be any different from her yesterday?

The draw to stay in the place she had always been was so strong. Joy's eyes filled with tears, her heart beat as though it wanted to fly.

Then fly!

The thought burst into her mind, and Joy had no choice but to drag her feet forward. 

To hell with it all.