Poor Reflections

REBECCA

Rebecca drove her white Fusion north from her home, Shireen slumped in the passenger seat. The car was suffused with a stony silence, the result of a rather heated argument between the sisters regarding the catastrophic lack of Mountain Dew, and certain parties being unwilling to obtain fresh supplies. I shall rid Shireen of her crippling caffeine addiction yet, Rebecca thought as she basked in the self-righteous glow of her minor authoritarian victory.

Still, it would be awkward if we arrived at the orphanage with both of us in a foul mood. With the press of a button, a chime sounded from the dashboard.

*bing* “Line in. Please say a command.”

“USB,” Rebecca enunciated.

“USB,” the car replied.

“Play artist, ‘Lily Allen’.” The car complied, and soon Lily Allen’s dulcet tones filled the car. Rebecca smiled as Shireen closed her eyes with a low groan and rested her head against her seat.

“Must we?” Shireen asked.

“We must.” Rebecca turned east and drove towards the shady part of downtown. Shireen leaned her head against the window as she stared at the passing consignment stores, and grew increasingly miserable with every passing city block.

Around the line, “and we’ll get a Chinese and watch TV,” Shireen couldn’t contain herself any more. “Ugh, why? Why listen to this? It’s so… so…”

Rebecca glanced towards Shireen. “Poetic?”

“Lame! Who sings about this kind of nonsense? Who listens to this?”

“Shireen, some people look forward to a lifestyle of peaceful domesticity, as opposed to the cruel realities of most relationships.”

A shadow crossed Rebecca’s face as she spoke, but Shireen didn’t notice as she crossed her arms. “Well, I hate it.”

“Hate is a strong word, sweetie.”

“Not when it comes this! Peaceful dom– uh, domin–”

“Domesticity?”

“Yeah, that. Peaceful domesticness isn’t what I look for in music!”

“Well, maybe one day your tastes will mature.”

Shireen squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her palms against them. “Rebecca, please. I’ve got such a bad headache, can we listen to anything else?”

“No. Consider it your just desserts for drinking Mountain Dew like it’s water. You reap what you sow, sister-dear.”

Shireen slumped further into her seat with an exasperated sigh and returned her vacant gaze to the window.

Several city blocks later, on the eastern outskirts of downtown, the orphanage rose up as a small volcanic island amidst a sea of concrete and brownstone apartments. Shireen immediately perked up upon seeing the brick-and-mortar building, and both sisters grinned as they saw a tiny figure sitting on the front steps, head in hands, a nun hovering behind her.

Rebecca pulled up to the front gate, and Shireen hopped out of the front seat. The young girl on the steps hopped up as well, and they raced to give each other a hug. Rebecca smiled at the scene, as did the nun standing on the front steps. They waved politely to one-another through the windshield as Sam and Shireen ran back to the car.

Rebecca turned to look in the back seat as they clambered in. “Hello, Sam,” she said as she offered the sprightly youth a warm smile, “how have you been?”

“Hi, Rebecca,” she chirped, “I’m doing pretty good! It’s really great to see the two of you!” Her endearing ear-to-ear grin forced a chuckle from the back of Rebecca’s throat.

“Well, I’m glad to see you too, dear.” Rebecca pulled out of the parking lot and turned west.

After a few moments, Sam’s smile faded a bit. “Um, what’s this we’re listening to?”

Rebecca’s eyes flicked to Sam’s in the rear-view mirror. “Lily Allen. Do you like it?”

Sam’s mouth formed a tight line. “It’s, um, fine.” She nodded. “Yep.”

Rebecca returned her gaze to the road. “If you don’t like it, sweetheart, we can listen to something else. What sort of music do you listen to these days?”

Shireen’s jaw dropped, an incredulous glare cast her sister’s way, but Rebecca pretended not to notice.

Sam was oblivious. “Oh, I dunno. Something a little more, um, rock-ish? Something with electric guitars, maybe?”

Rebecca furrowed her brow. “Hmm. That might be a bit of a trick dear, I’m sorry. Unless – have you ever heard of Creedence Clearwater Revival?”

Sam shook her head.

“Oh, we need to fix that.” A short conversation with her Fusion later, the driving beat of “Fortunate Son” filled the car.

Sam nodded her head in time to the drums, and smiled as the guitars came in. “Yeah, this is way more like it. Thanks, Rebecca!”

“Oh, wait to thank me until you’ve heard the whole thing.” Rebecca turned up the volume.

Sam grinned as she turned to Shireen to ask her something, but stopped short. “Shireen? Are you okay?”

Shireen stared at the back of Rebecca’s head, unblinking, jaw clenched as tight as her fists. “I’m fine, Sam.”

“It’s just, your eyelid is doing that twitching thing again.”

“I’m fine, Sam,” she repeated as she turned to face her. She forced a smile. “I just have a really bad headache, is all.” She changed the subject. “Hey, I gamed straight through lunch – have you eaten yet?”

Sam shook her head, her shock of blonde hair flapping back and forth. “Not recently, I had an early lunch around eleven.”

Rebecca met Sam’s eyes again through the rear-view mirror and asked, “Did you want to pick something up on the way back to our house? We can go wherever you would like.”

“Really? Gee, I dunno – I don’t get out much, haha. I could eat anywhere, I’m pretty hungry.”

“Someplace with Mountain Dew,” Shireen piped up.

Rebecca was about to argue when Sam nodded with an energetic “Ooh, yeah!”

The older girl frowned slightly with a roll of her eyes, but conceded. “Alright, that narrows it down somewhat. How about–”

Sam interrupted as her eyes flew wide. “Ooh, ooh, what about Taco Bell?”

Shireen gasped, a wide smile on her face. “Yeah, Taco Bell!”

Rebecca cringed in her seat as she looked at the both in the rear-view mirror. “Girls, are you sure? That’s barely even food–”

“TACO BELL,” the two girls happily chorused, “TACO BELL!”

Rebecca sighed. “Taco Bell it is.”

Rebecca did her level best to try to ignore the ravenous homf-homf-homf noises coming from the dining area as she made herself a peanut butter sandwich – half because of the horrific table manners, and half because she was unsure if allowing her wards to poison themselves on crudely-wrapped faux-meat garbage constituted good supervision. She came into the kitchen with her sandwich and a glass of lemonade and sat across from the two younger girls.

“Urf sho goobv,” Sam mumbled around a massive mouthful of burrito, “fank oo sho much.” A tiny rivulet of grease trickled down her chin.

Rebecca shuddered. “You’re certainly welcome, dear. I’m glad you’re enjoying your, er, meal.”

Shireen drank deep of her extra-large Mountain Dew. “Oh, sweet elixir of life,” she exclaimed, “pipe it into my veins!” Sam and Shireen shared a giggle as Rebecca looked on and tried not to retch.

A chime from her hip distracted her from the gluttonous display before her, and she gratefully removed her phone from her pocket. It was a text from Alexis’ older sister, Allison:

Hey, just now leavin with Alexis. Be there in a jiffy.

Rebecca steeled herself for the inclusion of the Third Musketeer, and sent back a reply:

No worries, we were just finishing up some food.
The little ones are looking forward to Alexis joining them.

“Looks as though Alexis will be joining us shortly, dears.” A cheer went up from the far side of the table, and they set about finishing their food with renewed vigor.

True to Allison’s word, Alexis arrived just as they were clearing the table, and Sam and Shireen burst through the door to greet their friend with a giant three-way hug. Rebecca stood in the doorway and tossed a polite wave at Allison, who remained in her truck in the driveway as she watched after her sister. She caught her eye and waved back, and Rebecca nodded.

Once the three younger girls had calmed down and come inside, Rebecca lined them up in the foyer. “Okay, listen up you three. I have a very important commission that I need to work on today, so you are, effectively, going to have the house to yourselves.” This provoked a chorus of excited gasps, which was entirely the wrong reaction for Rebecca’s liking. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and gestured at Shireen as she continued. “Our mother seems to think that you three are capable of being left unsupervised, and I am not much in a position to argue, much as I am inclined to disagree.” She leveled a glare in her sister’s direction.

Shireen narrowed her eyes at the reproachful look. “What?”

“The Salamander Incident.”

Shireen balked. “Okay, that was over a year ago, and you can’t prove–”

“Enough!” Rebecca held up a hand to forestall further argument. “All that aside, I cannot in good conscience leave you to your own devices without hearing from your own mouths the rules of this house, so” – she extended a finger – “recite.”

The trio groaned. Alexis quipped, “Do we have to?”

“Recite!”

They heaved a collective sigh, then said in unison, “Rule number one: no setting things on fire.”

Rebecca extended another finger. “Two!”

“No explosions that could cause a fire.”

“Three!”

Their gazes shifted to the floor. “No chemical reactions that may cause an explosion that could start a fire.”

“Four!”

“No rated ‘R’ movies.”

Rebecca extended her thumb. “Addendum: no noise loud enough to summon me from the basement.”

Amidst much sighing, and much less in unison, the three girls repeated, “No noise loud enough to summon Rebecca from the basement.”

Rebecca nodded, satisfied. “Very well. Do not disappoint me, girls.”

“We won’t,” Shireen replied as she planted her fists on her hips. “Can we go?”

Rebecca dismissed them with a wave. “You may go.”

The girls bolted up the stairs to Shireen’s room as though fired from a gun. With a deep, calming breath, Rebecca descended the basement steps.

As she approached her workstation, she found her stride lengthen, her head held higher. She turned on the sole overhead light, bathing her small section of the basement in a fluorescent white glow. She sat, surrounded by the tools of her trade. Here, in her workshop, she was in full control – a master craftswoman, about to ply her trade. The world above – school, family, supervisory responsibilities – faded away. All that existed was the Work.

This was her favorite time to be alive – the moment just before taking the plunge and beginning a project, particularly one of this magnitude. A palpable energy tingled in the air and sent shivers down Rebecca’s spine, and she sat still, enjoying the brief thrill, before she reached up and turned on her fume hood. Her contented smile broke into a wide grin as she plugged in her soldering iron and unscrewed the lid to her canister of flux.

The components of the pendant were arrayed in front of her – carnelian and jade, nacre and jet, silver and gold wire in a dozen gauges. She took a deep breath as she turned on her magnifying lamp and swiveled it into place. The song, which she had woken to each morning since she first took the commission, played unbidden in her mind. She grabbed a pair of tweezers and considered the tiny chunks of beautifully smooth carnelian beneath the lens. She set one, then two aside for inclusion in the staff – as that was to be the focus of the piece – and softly sang to herself the words she had committed to her heart in preparation for this moment.

Satisfied with her selections, she continued to sing as she began to twist the gold wire into the correct setting for the stones, then soldered it into place. Once finished, she tamped the stones into their settings one by one with practiced ease.

A handful of minutes after she had begun, she held the finished miniature Ruyi Jingu Ban in her hand, gold end caps glinting, carnelian flashing in the harsh glare of her mag lamp. Fully in the zone, she allowed herself the faintest of smiles as she sang, “Begun the havoc in heaven.”