It was a themed submission that inspired this story.
Medley, an International Literary Journal, was seeking submissions for their 10th issue and the theme was "Daag".
I didn't recognize the word but was intrigued when I read the theme description:
In a world obsessed with filters and flawlessness — where anything remotely "stained" is scrubbed out of view — we chose to lean into the very things most people hide. Picking “Daag” as our tenth issue’s theme felt like touching a bruise — delicate, risky, but deeply necessary.
'Daag', that literally translates to stain/tainted. "Daag" says the hyperventilating newsreader, "Daag" says the cautious mother. Of unease, Of play, Of shame as much of shamelessness, Of unkindness, Of the genocide.
"Daag". A scar, a mark. Marring the mundane beauty of the universal, these bruises bleed in paradox. They make us imperfect, and imperfection's a gift of the soul — the canvas for a painting. They are our frailest memories recalled with stubborn strength.
This issue is an attempt to protagonise, for once, these very scars the world prefers hidden beneath its woollen sleeves.
Within minutes a story began to emerge. Distracting me, drawing my attention to it, calling me to notice: sort of like a stain.
Below is that story.
Originally published via Medley | International Literary Journal
Click the link to read my story on their site (it is a fantastically unlittered site that allows for comfortable and easy reading) and while you are there I hope you will read other stories, essays, and poetry. And, if you are inclined, consider checking out the theme for their next issue and see if an idea of your own wants to manifest.
Thank you to Medley for offering a theme and sharing their audience.
the stain
It didn’t matter that she willed herself not to, with almost every pass Ramona made by the mirror she glanced toward that stain on her tooth.
Her small son was asleep in her arms, and they were alone. She had taken her two older boys to the elementary school – grateful they had both been in a singing mood that morning rather than a complaining and hitting each other one – and upon arrival home (a two car garage that had been renovated into a two bedroom apartment space) had glanced in the rear-view to peek in the backseat where her almost two-year-old’s car seat faced backwards. Without being able to see him she couldn’t be sure whether he had fallen asleep on the drive, but he was being quiet, so she’d decided to take a moment to pluck her eyebrows using the same mirror.
Adjusting the rear-view she was about to get her trusty tweezers from the tiny pocket in her purse when she was surprised to notice a light brown stain on one of her canines. Not a big stain, but one she had never noticed before. Coffee? Almost certainly.
Rather than pluck, she decided to brush her teeth. Gathering her not quite sleeping baby from the back she headed inside.
As always, the quiet of her apartment when the children were at school unnerved her. It was impossible to drown out the silence, but she didn’t want to become one of those women who needed distraction, so she always allowed time for the adjustment rather than turn on music. The silence would slowly edge away while sounds made themselves known. Electricity, traffic outside, birds in trees; these sounds and others could be attuned to if given the space.
Her small son was falling asleep so rather than brush her teeth Ramona chose to pace and bounce her body, giving him the motion needed to fall into deep slumber. But there was a large mirror in the tiny bathroom, and it was drawing her to it. She easily paced from one bedroom to the other (she slept with the baby in one room and her school-age boys slept in the other) attempting to avoid glancing too often at the mirror in the bathroom between the two rooms.
Anyway, a stain on her teeth was not a big deal. It was kind of cute, really. Light brown – like the skin on her second oldest son. Coffee was famous for staining teeth and coffee was a gift she had been giving herself since the age of thirteen in her rush to be a grown-up. Coffee, the beverage of adults, hadn’t taken much getting used to for her – she’d tried to like it black in order to feel the most adult, but in the end she always needed a little cream to love it. Now, as a single mom with three sons, it was still the grown-up gift in her life and a stain on her teeth might simply be a way of wearing that gift on the outside.
Now, if the stain had been a darker brown, like the skin on her oldest son, she might have worried. Not that the colour isn’t beautiful – how many years has she spent wishing she had been born with such dark beautiful skin! – but a darker stain might need attending to and she could not afford a dentist.
Her small son’s body grew heavy, and Ramona recognized this phase of sleep. She looked down at his sweet face without changing the rhythm in her bounce. How handsome he was! His pink cheeks, his soft sleeping skin, his toddler scented breath, his little lips with a finger to them, the copper tinted wisp of hair on his round head. She kept moving but couldn’t stop herself from kissing him gently.
How strange it was to have this pale child. How strange it was for it to be strange to have a pale child. Ramona herself was pale, yet this two-year-old– with skin the colour of her own – seemed almost foreign. Her older sons were dark, her oldest especially, looking much more like their biological father than like herself. They had his dark skin, and his hooked nose.
Of her they didn’t seem to have anything. She did not seem to have stained them at all. Though they were still young, only four and six, so there was time.
As Ramona slowed her pace in order to prepare the babe in her arms for a transition to the bed, she let herself explore this idea of staining her children.
It was true that they did not look like her, but it was her that was making all the decisions for them. She had decided for them that they didn’t need a dad, that her love would be enough to guide them. This whole business of needing fathers had seemed ridiculous to her. She and her sister hadn’t known their father, she hadn’t really noticed anybody’s fathers growing up, so how important could they be? Her own mother had raised her and her sister on her own and their home had been mostly wonderful. The three of them still had a good relationship, though there were too many miles between them to spend a lot of time together, they were still connected in a comfortable way.
Why would raising sons be different? “Boys need a father” people said to her. Why? Why did people act like gender mattered so much? Love was love, and Ramona loved her boys with every fiber of herself. She had loved them from the moment she was old enough to imagine having them. Ramona had imagined being a mom for as long as she could remember.
The fathers of her sons were nice enough guys, but they hadn’t wanted to commit.
Her first romance, she’d been engaged to be married to the father of her oldest two sons, had been a constant game of, “one day, one day,” any time she tried to get an actual plan from him. He was never around, always away on business, and when she did visit his home, it was never unpacked. Like he lived his entire life saying, “one day, one day,” and so she’d said no more. If one day is not today, then we are not going to be a family. And when he’d tried to keep the game of “one day,” going, she had said no. You can see your sons, but not as my partner. And so he had chosen not to see their sons.
His dark skin, his hooked nose, that’s all they had of him. His bloodline was unknown to her as well. He had an accent, he traveled around the world and spoke several languages, he said he’d been born in England and had family in India, but she didn’t really know much. And even what he had told her, she’d suspected were invented tales.
Were these decisions she made for her sons, to raise them on her own, without a father, without knowing where their beautiful dark skin and features came from, a mess she herself was making? A stain they would later grow up to notice in a rear-view mirror?
Interestingly it was Ramona’s more recent romantic relationship that had started her wondering about this.
She had been happy on her own, grateful to have found the garage apartment with the nice couple who lived in the house and were able to do maintenance or offer coffee when Ramona was running low. She could not work because she had to stay home with her children, but government assistance was just enough to live on and that’s all she needed. To live and be with her children.
It wasn’t what she’d imagined before becoming a mom of course. The boys fought and made messes and yelled at her and no matter how much love she tried to offer in response, they didn’t care. They needed discipline she wasn’t good at serving up and consistence she wasn’t good at maintaining and rules she wasn’t good at enforcing. She needed sleep, she needed cooking lessons, she needed gas money. It was hard, but she was happy.
And then she met him. As she remembered him, the way he had been with her sons, the way he had seen her specifically and noticed the little things she did, she smiled and looked down at their child. He seemed foreign to her still, at two years old. He was so different from her other two. Not only in colour but temperament. Quiet, always quiet.
He was fully asleep now, deeply so, and Ramona bounced her body toward the bed she shared with him so she could lay him down and get a better look at the stain on her tooth.
With him cradled in her arms she leaned expertly toward the bed and laid him softly down. He was sweaty in the places he’d been laying on her, and she was too. Their sweat mingled, stained.
She sat beside him and gently rubbed his back as he pulled his finger into that little mouth and nibbled gently. His father had been pale, had had copper hair, had nibbled on her fingers gently.
Ramona thinks she had loved him, and that he was the only man she had loved. She thought she had loved the older boy’s dad, but that had been more of a practical thing. He was there, he said he was offering her marriage and a family, they were nice to each other, she wanted to be a mom. They had been together for several years. It made sense.
But with him, things were different. Her heart skipped, her head reeled, her stomach fluttered. She had been working in the daycare at the therapy center where he worked.
For Ramona it was a temporary gig because the usual woman who worked there had broken her arm and needed six weeks off. It was a wild coincidence that she’d been able to step into the role.
She had been at a playground with her children when the boys made friends with a disabled girl playing at the park. According to the girl’s mom, she had spina bifida. Apparently, it was the sort of thing that affected each person differently but in this case the six-year-old could not use the bottom half of her body at all. She was playful and funny, and Ramona’s oldest son played with her for hours while Ramona chatted with the mother. As luck would have it her other son made friends with a boy who was also at the park and the day turned out to be hours of wonderful play. Those are the days parents of young kids live for.
The mom Ramona made friends with that day worked in a therapy center, one that had a day care for the children of therapists who work there. Which is why, when the usual worker broke her arm, Ramona was offered the position. One she took happily so long as she could bring her own children at no cost, which they – being desperate and it being temporary – agreed to.
It was during those six weeks that she met, fell in love with, and then lost him. It was during her late-night chats with him that she questioned her confidence regarding not needing a man for her sons. Because he questioned it, but not in an offensive way. He questioned it with honest curiosity. He was a therapist at the center who worked primarily with young men, and he felt one of the most important things for them was a strong male role model. He called the boys without fathers “strays” and even recommended Ramona watch a movie of that name to back up his reasoning. They had these talks easily because during the day when the boys were awake, he clearly marveled at Ramona’s parenting. He watched her with admiration and consistently noticed little lovely things she did. Things she hadn’t really noticed herself.
But when the six weeks ended and Ramona no longer worked there, he wouldn’t answer her calls. It was strange. She had felt such love from him, and then nothing. She could have let it go but then soon she recognized that she was pregnant and it became important to her to let him know. Hopefully, also, to find out what happened. What had scared him away.
She went to the therapy center and waited for him to get off of work, her boys playing wild in the car. They loved playing in there, unbuckled.
When he saw her car in the parking lot, he stopped. Ramona saw that stop, and saw the unhappiness on his face; she couldn’t believe how hard it was to hold back tears. Ramona was not a romantic person, but she was a person. And he clearly did not want to see her.
She told him about the baby. He told her about his wife. She was without words. Nothing came to her mouth or mind. He told her he was sorry, but he wouldn’t be able to take part in parenting. She told him he knew where to find her. With a stain on her heart, she left.
Again, she was certain her sons did not need a father, they needed love, and she had that to give. But had she stained them by making the decision to be fooled by this man? To make a baby with him?
She softly kissed her small son on his small head and carefully got up from the bed and headed into the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled. The stain was not noticeable. She leaned a little closer to the mirror, still smiling, and tilted her head a little.
There it was.
Light brown, probably coffee. Probably permanent.
She picked up her toothbrush and dipped it into the homemade toothpaste (more sustainable to make it herself, financially and environmentally) and began the delightful chore of brushing. How anyone could not love brushing their teeth Ramona did not understand. Perhaps people with sensory issues, okay. But otherwise? What a wonderful feeling! To have the power to brush yourself clean and healthy.
Sure, maybe there was a stain but only because there was life.
Life had mess.
Some messes stained.
