Fireworks
Firework (n):A device containing combustible chemicals which causes spectacular effects and explosions when ignited.
That was what he had always called her. His little firework. She could still remember it, as clearly as if it had been just yesterday.
“Gramps! Are you nearly ready?”
“Oh, be patient!” her mother snaps, drawing her coat tighter around her expanding stomach and shivering in the November chill. Her father is helping Gramps balance those coloured tubes in old milk bottles, and then she has to laugh at the two of them jumping up and running back down the garden to the little group clustered on the patio. Gramps stands behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders. She likes it when he does that. It makes her feel safe.
Suddenly, one of the coloured tubes flies up in the air, knocking the milk bottle sideways. She is still watching the milk bottle, so she gets a fright when there is a loud bang, and a splash of colour explodes in the sky and is gone.
“What…?” she starts to ask, but there comes another, and another. She watches in fascination as reds burst into the sky, to be replaced by greens and blues and even, once, a purple. Once the few that were set up are done, she turns to Gramps and asks in wonder, “What are they?”
“Those, darling, are what we call fireworks,” he answers with a smile. “Aren’t they lovely?”
“They’re very pretty,” she says.
“Just like you,” he tells her, and his smile widens. “I’m going to call you that from now on. My little firework.”
“I don’t look like a firework,” she says, amused, and her mother snorts. Gramps shoots her a look, before crouching down to Ellie’s level.
“Not now you don’t,” he tells her. “But when you’re older, you will be as bright and as pretty as any of the fireworks they can make.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise,” he says. “So I’m going to call you my little firework. And now your daddy and I are going to set up some more of them, all right?”
“All right,” she says happily. After the men go back to the milk bottles and the box of fireworks, she jumps up and down a few times, singing, “I’m a firework! I’m a firework!”
“Behave!” her mother hisses, and she stops, and stands there quietly on the edge of the group until Gramps comes back and they all watch the next batch of fireworks together.
“So much for ‘bright’ and ‘pretty’,” she said now, with a mirthless laugh. Her hand drifted unconsciously to her right arm, where she had a permanent mark. A little dot, that told the story she had spent so long trying to keep a secret…
“What did I tell you?” her mother hisses, her eyes wild to ten year old Ellie. “Only take out one toy at a time! Jesus, how hard is it to remember that?” She tries to explain.
“But the car is FOR Barbie!”
“I don’t care! You were making too much noise!” Before Ellie can open her mouth to point out her mother’s rapid change of tack, it is too late. She leans over Ellie and, as she speaks, the girl can smell the gin on her breath. “You know, I never wanted you. You were just a mistake, one I’ve spent the last ten years regretting!” Ellie promptly bursts into tears. “Oh, shut up, you crybaby! At least you’re not being lied to, you know the truth.” When Ellie does not stop crying, her mother grabs her by the arm. Ellie cries out in pain, at both the vicelike grip and the cigarette burning into her skin, which her mother appears to have forgotten she is holding. And then she slaps her.
She winced at the memory of that slap. It had shocked both of them to the very core. And no matter how her mother swore she wouldn’t do it again while she was sober, out would come the drink again, and Ellie was always the one who suffered. Eventually her father had given up and moved out. She could still remember it vividly, pleading with him to stay as he loaded his suitcases into the car, and then drove off without a backward glance at his only daughter. After that, it had only worsened. All distraction gone, it happened every other day. The only place she had been able to go to escape was her grandparents’. Her grandfather, knees now too far gone to arthritis to run the length of the garden, had promised to take her to the big local fireworks display. She was looking forward to it, had been for weeks.
And then everything changed.
She grimaced, thinking about it. She was getting close now, and she could see in the orange glow of the streetlight that there was no one else around. Good, that would help.
She stopped, and looked at her hands. Grandma…Gramps…she said in her head. I’m sorry we never got to go to the display. I’ve been watching some of them on the way over here, everywhere I look the sky’s exploding in colour. Kind of apt really. She paused for a moment, then continued. If you can hear this, then you probably already know what I’m doing. I just…I love you, ok? And I hope you’ll understand.
She looked up, trying to fight down the rage she felt at the person – stupid, selfish idiot – who had put the firework through their letterbox just a few days before. 'A senseless tragedy’, the papers had called it. She liked that, it was poetic. They had called Gramps Roger though, he would have hated that. He always went by ‘Gerry’, for a reason she had never known. And now never would.
She took a deep breath. And for a split second, she could have sworn she saw her grandparents smiling at her, waiting, before, seeing the lights, she climbed over the barrier, ran into the road and waited for the bang.
Copyright Lauren Cook, 2006.