Charlie had never trusted her mother.

Sure, she believed effortlessly that her momma would do everything within her power to see that Charlene was brought up to survive; she even knew In a fairly concrete fashion that her mother would do the standard lay-down-her-life thing that most all parents would. In these things Charlie trusted Claudette implicitly.

She trusted that Claudette would never put a condition on her love, and she trusted that there were no boundaries to that love. What Charlie didn’t trust her momma with, though, were the innermost places of her spirit where all the things that she couldn’t readily take for granted on the day-to-day --like hope and comfort and other equally-wild imaginings-- were stored up against wear and fading.

This caused a state of constant discomfort when Charlie was in Claudie’s presence, resulting in her mother trying that much harder for Charlie’s regard. Charlie faked real good, but Claudie read her real good, too.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

“Teach me possum! Teach me possum!”

He lie there, he lie there, he lie there. There were tens of years stuffed into every single minute that he was immobile and board-like. Charlie would lose her four-year-old mind if he didn’t move soon, she was sure of it. Her impatience throttled at her so hard that it made her want to let fly with great, bruised tears. By the time she was five, she would learn that the sooner she sat beside him on the carpet, the sofa, wherever, the sooner she grew quiet and a reasonable facsimile of still herownself, her daddy would be magically re-animated; it was only then that she would get a turn.

She mastered Playing Possum roughly a month before her seventh birthday. She had listened as Douglas spoke to her about how a mind could make a body believe anything it wanted, could tell that body it was meant for hibernation more convincing than than some stupid old lumbering bear’s, could tell that body to make its pulse and its breathing  a fairly imperceptible thing.

Charlie had always just believed in her daddy, trusted him with every secret she ever tucked away from the peering eyes and pointed noses of humanity at large. On some level she held the realization that when they played possum he was teaching her great and important things that not everybody had the privilege of knowing. The act of stilling her body’s movements, in time, lent to complete awareness of her frame when it was in motion. Yeah, she was excellent on the fake, alright.

What she didn’t realize --not until after his death, anyway-- was that her training had begun with what she believed was a game between father and child. Douglas wasn’t simply engaging her or passing time with her, he was readying her.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

She had amazing breath control, but she often had problems in the patience department.

Fuck, Slick, FUCK, if you would get off of me I could snap some things into their proper places.

Her impatience was a liability, she knew this.

get off me, Get Off Me, GET OFF ME, GETOFFME

When it got like this, she knew she might become a detriment to herself. In order to keep this from happening, she had developed the habit of replaying concerts she’d seen, note for note, movement for movement, painstakingly detailed, deep in her head. She forced herself to go there now, to watch.

She trapezed herself across a jangling bassline, skipped easy rope under the shim of maracas. She was just past the acidic razor of guitar riff when Aloysius’ wet gobbling insinuated itself into her attentions. She was calm enough now. She was sweeter with her internal monologue.

I mean, it's handy that you plunged that hulking asshole into darkness, but if you would get off of me I could explode into movement and fuck this situation into some sort of order.

If Slick would get off of her, she could explode into movement and fuck this situation into some sort of order.

Comments

[Palinode]

I knew it. I KNEW it. What did I know? I don't know, exactly. But I knew that Charlie was biding her time and waiting for the moment to bust out some ninja solution. Excellent.

[Susan]

Woot! That Charlie's got it going on.

[Mongoliangirl]

"She trapezed herself across a jangling bassline, skipped easy rope under the shim of maracas. She was just past the acidic razor of guitar riff when Aloysius’ wet gobbling insinuated itself into her attentions."

Absolutely delicious.

[cIII]

*swoon*

[ms picket to you]

and PJ Harvey lives, like Charlie, beyond the framed poster on our wall...