Sapphic Voices General Fiction

The Storm

Leah did not carry anything in her pockets.

Half of her pants or skirts didn’t even have pockets.

No, Leah carried a purse.

Different purses for different outfits.

Not as many, mind you, as they girliest straight girls she knew, but certainly more than your average lesbian. Which I suppose is not saying much.

Leah’s purses were filled with all kinds of surprises and fun.

Her wallet of course, loaded with receipts from weeks of purchases. Her dad had instilled in her to save every receipt. And Leah would comply for a few weeks but then where were they to go? No filing system Leah could imagine or design would suit even a month’s worth of receipts never mind years. So Leah would carry them until she was sure she would not be returning anything or until they simply became too much of a nuisance in her wallet.

Her checkbook and plan book, both of which she used too inconsistently for her own liking.

Her hand lotion and nail file, which often went missing at the most inopportune moments. Cracking hands and split jagged nails irritating and frustrating her until she could get either to a CVS or to her apartment just in time to avert a mental catastrophe.

Her cell phone, which only a few years earlier she had sworn not to overuse because Leah was convinced they caused brain cancer. And she laughed at the people who talked on the street or in stores because who possibly could be that important.

A small hairbrush left over from a job interview.

A few wet towlettes for hot sticky days.

An occasional sample size of hand sanitizer for when bathrooms did not comply.

Stray Starbursts or Hershey’s kisses from CVS contraband she had carefully snuck into the movies in her oversized purse.

Two lipsticks and two lip glosses, which in Leah’s mind meant endless possibilities of endless combinations of colors and sheens to apply when and how she liked.

And though that was more than she needed there often lay at the bottom straggles of paper or caps from pens that she assumed had gone missing or expired coupons she had vowed not to let expire or supplies for work she forgot to take out.

Once a year, Leah would have a massive clean sweep of her closet and clean every purse she owned. And she inevitably would discover pennies and quarters and dollars and occasionally ten or twenty dollar bills that Leah didn’t even know existed.

Or lipsticks she assumed lost or the pens to the ubiquitous pen caps.

And sometimes Leah went more than a year. Before undergoing such an adventure.

And what she would find would surprise or delight or frighten her.

Her twenty five dollar favorite iridescent MAC lip gloss that she had not replaced because had been discontinued.

Five year old movie passes that Lowes still accepted because they forgot to look at the expiration date.

A granola bar. Leah marveled for a moment at the wonders of preservatives.

A movie ticket stub or museum stub or restaurant receipt. Something she was saving that she ought never to have saved. For the memories. For memories that came rushing back in a flood that caught Leah by surprise and for a moment she neither blinked nor breathed nor felt. A calm before the storm perhaps.

Before a storm torn region littered with flying debris and remnants of formerly whole and vibrant towns and villages and lives. Roofs blown off and swirling shingles. Abandoned dogs roaming for their displaced owners and toxic sewage flooding into basements of houses and souls. Crying children and grieving spirits. Crumbling brick. Vacated stores. Stores of memories in safe caverns of her brain. Barren branches and uprooted lives. Overflowing riverbanks of memories – mental and physical and spiritual. Memories Leah assumed dead and buried unearthed by the recent storm.

And before she could be washed away in her own tears or left gasping and wheezing from her own howling gales of breath, Leah carefully folded the stubs back up. Along the perforated lines. And placed them gently back in her pink patent leather purse. Maybe next year she would get to that one.

If you have enjoyed Lani Radack's "The Storm", then please be certain to e-mail her at  radacklani[at]hotmail.com  and thank her for posting this Story.

Click here for a list of all of Lani Radack's  Stories and Poetry at  Sapphic Voices Authoresses.