Wonder

The image in the mirror stuck his tongue out and pulled his cheeks to flash the huge split across his lips. A mischievous shock of hair encroached on his forehead. An excited giggle shook Marlon as he pranced about and twirled his head in all directions. His heart stopped as another face cropped up in the mirror, the wide, warm smile on her face relieved him. He turned around to his mother and returned her smile. She rushed to him and gathered him in a crushing hug. He could feel her coarse palms around his neck, he wriggled to get out of her affectionate coils.

‘Don’t pull anything now, you hear?’

A warning finger waved in the air as he caressed the intricate gilded carvings on the mirror frame.

He ran out of the room to the next, there were toy cars littered all over the marbled floor, some wrecked beyond repair. He gasped, bent and picked a car that had lost its front wheels,  gingerly. ‘Brmmm, Brmmm,’ he raced it on his tiny palm, head angled in delicate, aesthetic concentration. He felt a gentle pressure on his hand, as his mother prised the toy out of his hand and laid it back on the floor.

‘What did I tell you my pet?’ there was no anger in her tone or her face, he knew as he gazed into her haggard, wrinkled face. The flush of youth still gasped through the premature creases of her skin. As she turned towards the door his hand firmly in her grip, she spotted a little pair of denim shorts, hanging loosely over the bead head. She picked it up with a sigh, folded it with great finesse and laid it on the side of the bed. She saw his impish grin and tousled his hair, he was wearing an identical pair.

‘It’s breaky time, ok?’        

Marlon’s eyes lit up as she led him to the sprawling kitchen with its neatly stacked rows of veneer pantry cupboards and the imposing double door Kelvinator that held center stage. His eyes widened, as a sumptuous feast of grapes, apples, jelly and chocolates loomed into view as she opened the refrigerator. She successfully thwarted a brazen invasion of tiny hands from raiding her stock. She bit her lip, as he tucked heartily in to a weird meal of apple, jelly and chocolate.

A horn blared outside, she rushed to the window. She sensed the gleaming white Mercedes outside the gate before she saw it. Martin the gardener was already opening the gate. Her panic alarmed Marlon even more. She tore off a paper napkin and wrapped the remainder of his feast, and thrust it to him. She hustled the boy through the back door of the kitchen that opened to the back yard.

‘Be a good boy angel, tell father that I won’t be late ok?’

 Her breath faltered as she saw her flesh disappear through the back gate. In a flash she was back in the kitchen.

copyright @2010 Jude Perera