Sarah met an old acquaintance

Sarah met an old acquaintance who confessed there was something wrong with her, that her taste buds registered cilantro as soap, that she had noticed this only now, somehow, in her thirties, when she had eaten it for the first time entirely by itself, with two fingers, out of curiosity, out of a tiny glass dish among other garnishes, at a party of respected peers. Sarah asked her if her taste buds might change or change back but the friend admitted it was something elemental, genetic, final. Sarah thought about how strange it was that her eyeballs remained spherical and eyeballs. Her father had once called a stray dog licking at his ankles at a gas station a stinking miserable cunt of an animal and then asked Sarah not to tell her mother. The friend cried. Her boyfriend had confessed to her to loving Tex-Mex far more than authentic Mexican cuisine, which he had tried only once, and not been impressed by. The friend admitted she loved the boy—she kept calling him boy, boy—and insisted that the sex was fine, yes, perfectly fine, that she appreciated it, even, the break it afforded her, the opportunity for leave and release, just lying there, understanding there were some things she could have and others, finally, she could not.

Sarah receives by mail a letter

Sarah receives a letter, written by hand, from her nephew who has also drawn a picture of Sarah as the sun. Giant and yellow and happy and rare. Sarah’s sister has children whom she often sends photos of, who fold themselves like letters, sitting cross-legged on the floor or hanging in some abominable shape from the playhouse out back. Sarah has held these very same children like letters in her lap. 

The children like to share secrets, but only if they are written or drawn, and therefore able to be found out, and only therefore worthy of being kept secret in the first place. The children fold up these pictures and notes and sometimes stuff them into Sarah’s travel bags or the drawers of Sarah’s own house when they visit. Sometimes they stuff them in her pockets. Once, the nephew, who had seen his mother do this with her money, stuffed his note discreetly inside Sarah’s bra. The mother had a talk with him because that is the mother’s place. 

Sarah remembers folding very tightly the notes she passed in class. She remembers folding the large bills her own aunt gave her when she visited when she was a child. She remembers the same aunt teaching her how to cross and how to not cross her legs—and pushing her out into the sun when she had been too long inside reading a book. She remembers being scolded, many times, by a professor who told her she must never fold the poems she submitted to class. Henceforth she never did fold the poems because henceforth she never did permit herself to submit.

Sarah runs through the neighborhood knocking loudly

Sarah runs through the neighborhood knocking loudly, not exactly shouting, not exactly waiting for each neighbor to come to the door before moving on to the next, hollering back behind her as the doors open, Look up there, look up there!

Above the cul-de-sac swoop eleven bald eagles, all white-headed and grown. She’s a little out of breath now as she settles in for another good look herself. She hands off a spare pair of binoculars to a child and his father beside her. Can you believe it, she says, with the kind of enthusiasm she usually reserves only for the classroom when a student has come upon—typically stumbled upon, by accident—something very nearly magnificent.

I don’t need it, no, I don’t need it, says the boy as he pushes the binoculars back into his father’s hands. I can see them now, on my own. I can see them, I can see them! Out come sister and mother next. Will you hold me, the boy asks Sarah, and she does. He is only a little bit closer to the eagles now, but together they are much closer to something else.

On a few other porches stand a few other neighbors. Some have their own binoculars. One a giant telephoto lens. White heads and white tails, shouts the boy. I never knew they had both! I’ve seen them in the zoo, says the sister. You can put me down now.

The group breaks off into compartments, still visible, but heading in their own directions. Maybe families. Maybe soon-to-be mating partners. Are there even more awaiting them at the river? What’s a group of bald eagles called, again? She used to know.

The harder the eagles are to see, the closer the neighbors gather in the street. They pass among them the binoculars. Even the boy wants them now. I will never forget you, he says, and as Sarah hands him back off to his father, she is quite content to imagine he is no longer talking only to the eagles.

Brendan Todt lives and writes in Sioux City, Iowa. He has been working on a series of short prose that follows a character named Sarah. Other Sarah pieces have appeared in Necessary Fiction, Moon City Review, The MacGuffin, Complete Sentence, and elsewhere. “Sarah draws little moustaches” was a finalist in the Smokelong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. A book-length manuscript of these stories has been recognized in the Cider Press Review Book Award (Finalist) and Word Works: Washington Prize (Semifinalist).