She said, “Look at what you’re wearing.” As if that had anything to do with it. Smoke curled around my mother’s head; her cigarette conducting an orchestra of one. She’s on fire and doesn’t even know it.
***
I’d gone to the bank for a loan to pay for college. Up marble steps. A supplicant. The altar of finance run by white men with white patent leather belts. And she judged what I wore?
***
Escorted to the president, I follow instructions and see a crony of my father’s. I’m a kid called to the principal’s office. I search for business as usual while dust motes fill the air, afraid to land. Just like me.
***
Yes, Mr. Powers, just a student loan. Please. I’ll pay it back. I always do. My gossamer-thin self doesn’t reckon the prophecy of his name. The might, the muscularity, the authority, the clutch of power plural(ed).
***
I seek interest rates. He fancies how I swam in his posh pool as a kid. I clothe that girl in his memory, evoking how I hid in the water. Mr. smiles smug. The girl evaporates.
***
The shellacked woodwork hears no talk of pre-approval. Or what this transaction will cost me. Powers, steward of the community, forsakes his mask. I recall his wife made the best crumb cake. I shall hate it now for good.
***
He grabs my breast. The left one. The right one left alone. The medallion carpet sucks the sounds I do not make. He twists my nipple. One day this breast will have a cancer surgically removed.
***
Serving the boss-man, a panty-hosed woman ushers me out. An institution of lending that only takes. A monolith of cubicles, windows and vaults. Desks and decisions. I wanted withdrawal, but left with less than I entered.
***
A loan never appeared. I was not worthy. My flesh insufficient collateral. Walking home on fractured sidewalks, each crack breaks my back. How naive was I to believe this unholy war was confined to my bedroom.
***
Crying, I tell her his sins. Her words, “Look at what you’re wearing,” sound like “Daughter, I cannot control the world.” She means men. And hands me the blame, like a laurel wreath of thorns she lays upon my simple yellow t-shirt.
Carole Vasta Folley is an award-winning playwright and columnist. Reviewed as having the “storyteller gift,” her plays delve into our shared vulnerability and longing with a mission to create powerful roles for mature women. Vasta Folley’s column, In Musing, published since 2017, has won awards (2017-2024) from the New England Newspaper & Press Association and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Currently, she is a student of Nicole Breit’s writing programs for creative nonfiction, having previously been taught the Spark Your Story intensive by Rowan McCandless.
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Matt Gibson
