Excerpt from JULIE
by Cora Taylor
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Julie felt a little breathless. She rubbed her palms hard on her cotton shorts to dry them. She watched as her mother turned the empty cup upside down in the saucer and handed it to her.
Julie shut her eyes. Now she had to know. Had to be sure. She opened them. She was staring at the calendar on the wall behind her mother. It was from Norton’s Garage in Hurry. They gave out two calendar pictures. Julie had been with her father when he got this one. He had left the one of the blonde lady in the cowboy hat peeking over her shoulder, her guns and holster hanging longer than the black satin shorts she wore, and had picked the one of a little girl holding a puppy. A little girl with a small heart-shaped face and a tangle of dark curls.
“She looks like you did when you were three,” he said.
Julie stared at the little calendar girl’s eyes. Large brown eyes that looked directly at you and followed you around the kitchen. She had to be sure. She looked at the numbers beneath. They were red with the numbers of holidays hollowed out. Then the number ten turned back and began to grow away from the paper toward her.
She took a deep breath and she could smell them the way she had smelled the geraniums long ago. Mothballs. She glanced at the teacup.
“You will,” she said in a voice she hardly recognized as her own, “receive bad news on the tenth.” Suddenly Julie felt very cold. Almost shivering in the warm kitchen. “That’s all,” she said in her own voice, not looking up from the cup.
Through the kitchen window Julie could see her father chopping steadily, sweat staining an oval on his shirt between his shoulders. Had she done that right? Shouldn’t there have been things about dark, handsome strangers and getting letters and taking trips.
She stared at the soggy jumble of tea leaves in the bottom of the cup, then crossed the kitchen and scooped them out into the garbage. She could hear her mother’s voice asking about the flight times to Victoria.
From Julie, text copyright © 1985, 2005 by Cora Taylor. All rights reserved.
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