Elizabeth Grace
Jamaica Wilson listens for the door to close and then rises from her bed. She promised her daughter she’d stay put, but this business of dying obediently is starting to wear on her nerves, so on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays when Melly leaves for her shift at the hospital, Jamaica wanders through the house and sometimes, when she’s feeling especially defiant, into the field behind it.
Life indoors, with its safe, smooth flooring, leaves Jamaica heavy with want. She turns toward the windows like a blossom leans to the sun, instinctive in her need for nourishment. The acres of wildflowers beckon, their colorful petals as thousands of fingers crooked to lure her out past the concrete bird bath and sagging clothes line. On days when her energy matches her desire, she answers their call.
The house is sticky-hot, its windows sealed from generations of Wilsons painting over the worn sashes, and Jamaica grabs the edge of the counter to steady herself. She pushes a kitchen chair across the room and uses it to prop open the storm door. The screens were replaced long ago with panes of Plexiglas, the lower one now scratched opaque on both sides by a series of house pets anxious to get out and then equally urgent in their need to return. Jamaica shares the longing to run free and then come back to the comfort of her hearth, but on this day she wonders if her legs could carry her far enough so when she looked back, she would see nothing manmade. She pictures the reedy pond where she’d swam as a child—her clothes heaped on the shore as she waded into the chest-deep water in her underwear—and fights the urge to make her way out to it now.
Jamaica opens the fridge, pours a glass of sweet tea, and carries it to the doorway chair. She lowers herself onto the frayed wicker seat, its bristly edges poking through the thin cotton of her dress, and presses the cool glass against her flushed cheeks, grateful for both the beverage and the summer breeze.
Looking back into the kitchen, Jamaica chides herself for her domestic uselessness. Breakfast dishes sit unwashed in the sink and the ironing board where Melly had pressed her uniform before running out the door this morning, late and fretful, stands open. A basket of freshly laundered clothes sits on the table, awaiting attention.
Determined to carry her weight, although as her daughter reminds her whenever she expresses discontent, she has more than done over the years, Jamaica stands, walks carefully across the kitchen, plugs the iron into the outlet, and shakes the can of starch. She pulls a pair of pants from the basket and holds them by their cuffs, carefully matching the seams before laying them smoothly across the board. She slides the iron up over the length of a pant leg and a crisp crease forms along its front edge.
Jamaica had loved to iron as a young wife; she’d enjoyed most of her household chores, taking great pride in sending her husband and children into the world well-loved and properly tended. Even now, with only Melly left at home, Jamaica finds pleasure in helping where she can, though her daughter prefers she rest, reading and sewing about the only activities still approved.
The heat from the iron, combined with the oppressive August temperature, bring Jamaica’s thoughts back the pond. She lets her mind wander over decades of sweltering summers, when she’d splashed with her children and then returned to the water with her husband once prayers were said and stories read, the two of them glistening in the moonlight before huddling together under a shared towel.
The tip of the iron strikes something, drawing Jamaica’s attention back to her work. She sets the iron face down on the pad, reaches into the pocket of her daughter’s khakis, and retrieves a keychain with a single key. She holds the key out for examination and then wraps her gnarled fingers around it and brings her fist to her chest, a smile turning at the corners of her mouth.
Jamaica had grudgingly surrendered her license last winter, after running her Saturn over a parking block in the Piggly Wiggly lot. Melly had insisted and while Jamaica argued that it was the ice and not inattentiveness that had caused the mishap, she’d finally given in and handed over her key, agreeing to leave the car in the garage and travel into town only in the passenger seat of Melly’s Subaru.
Her daughter had hoped to find a buyer for the car, but Jamaica convinced her to hold off and now, standing in the steamy kitchen clutching an ignition key, Jamaica feels a quick rush of anticipation. She knows she can’t drive down the public road, but she sees no harm in taking the car across the field and parking it beside the pond.
Jamaica shuffles to the linen closet, takes a neatly folded towel, and tucks it under her arm. She walks out to the garage, pushes the button to raise the door, settles in behind the wheel, and starts the engine. She backs out of the stall easily, as she had done with a long string of cars beginning with her father’s Chrysler wagon almost sixty years before, and pulls around the house to the back yard.
Congratulating herself on her resourcefulness, Jamaica drives through the field and just as she had planned, parks alongside the cool water. As she wades in, holding the hem of her dress above her knees, Jamaica looks back toward the house, pleased that she’s far enough away to see nothing manmade.
Beyond the water’s edge and past the wildflower fields that have been the playgrounds of Jamaica Wilson’s life, stands the home her grandfather built, stout and sturdy. And in the kitchen of that very house, a cottony ironing pad sparks, its hungry flame fed by the gentle summer breeze coming through the still-open storm door, while its mistress stands cool and happy, knee deep in the reedy pond.