The Story Garden 5.0
Flash Fiction
Housewife
Women talk in code. A woman might talk to another woman, her mother, perhaps, about everyday things. Ordinary trifles, really. They may talk quietly while the daughter sips coffee and the mother sips tea. The mother, in the course of conversation, might say that it's good for a woman to have a degree. "A degree is, after all, --" and here the daughter might finish the sentence " -- a woman's insurance policy."
A daughter might begin to understand her mother in a new way, to see her mother with fresh eyes.
Women talk in code. They do not use words like "extricate," or speak aloud about the possibility of car accidents. Instead, a mother might say that it's good for a woman to have a plan for things. She might say that it's good for a woman to have a little part-time job; put some money aside. Perhaps a mother will offer to pay for an evening course or two. They do not use words like "economic independence." They sit and talk quietly while sipping coffee or tea, perhaps about the clutter -- the odd shoe; the Lego block; the tiny cookie cutter; the doll on its back. They do not use words like, "I don't remember when this became the measure of me."
Women talk in code because a woman cannot bear to admit what she's done. That she's brought another woman into the world. They talk in code because a woman cannot bring herself to look at her little daughter and tell her the truth: "Now, my dear, you are three orifices, each of which creates its own special sensation. You will be expected to use them alternately and in tandem, and to keep them available at all times. This is the measure of you, and you will forever be less than the sum of your parts." A woman will not look at her grown daughter on her wedding day and say, "Don't do this. My God, don't do this. Travel, finish college..." or, later, "Don't have this baby. When a woman has children, her love for them makes her a wild animal, and she will let her husband hold her by her neck in order to keep them safe."
A woman will never say these things to her baby girl, small or grown. But she might invite her grown daughter over for coffee or tea. She might give her daughter a kiss and tell her to enjoy her class. And she might hold her baby granddaughter tenderly, and listen as her daughter whispers in the baby girl's ear, "A degree is a woman's insurance policy."
--Mary Kelly
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(previously published in Linnaean Street and Pidjin)