Siren
by Cheryl Pappas
At the 4th of July family cookout, at which the whole extended fam got blind drunk, I camped out under the kitchen table. Underneath the thick red tablecloth, I counted 28 legs. They walked fast onto our linoleum floor, their voices seeking potato chips, mustard, more beer. Their sandals or Converse sneakers deposited strands of grass before the slider clacked open and shut again. It was easy to tell the men from the women because of all the hair. If you look at a lot of legs, they start to look like robot legs; they move with a mission. I was about to try to nap when I saw an emerald skirt glide by, smooth silk nylon legs, punctuated by black patent leather heels. She came from the sidewalk, no grass. Aunt Marilyn. Old Uncle Leo was at the far end of the kitchen, slurping his Schlitz. “Just came back from Seville,” she said, as if she’d just gotten back from the supermarket. “It was very hot there.” The backs of her heels were so close I could touch them. “You always were a star, Marilyn,” he slurred. After he shuffled out, she bent down and lifted the cloth to see me. Her fire-engine red hair always startled me, though it matched my own. “Hey little fire.” “Hey big fire,” I said. She took my hand. “I have something for you, all the way from Spain. It’s a lucky charm.” She placed a plastic pink elephant in the palm of my hand and closed my fingers around it. “Don't ever lose it. You never know when you might need it,” she said.
Dad thought the most fitting punishment for not doing my homework again was to rip my shelf off the wall and smash everything on it. I picked up the mess after he left, the smell of cheap beer still in the air. My tiny elephant had lost part of his trunk. I wondered if that’s where the luck lived.
Now, pouring a bottle of bourbon down the toilet of a hotel in Paris, I stare at the faded pink elephant on the bathroom counter. He’s come with me on all my travels. Sometimes I wonder where luck lives. Sometimes I know.
Cheryl Pappas is a writer from Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, Juked, The Chattahoochee Review, HAD, and more. Her flash fiction chapbook The Clarity of Hunger will be published by Word West Press in September 2021. Her website is cherylpappas.net and you can find her on Twitter at @fabulistpappas.
