****Throughout the twentieth hour of that sunny day one week into July, they had seemed a bounty of blessings. Out they popped, like gumballs. Septuplets. The local media had a field day. Even when the frenzy diminished, Mom stayed astounded by her full rainbow of joy.

****For a time, the rainbow was monochrome. Onesies and joggers in matching sets. Shared books, shared blankies, shared picnics in the park.

****But time passed, and their colors grew distinct. Last year, on their sixth birthday, they’d still managed to share a celebration—a hectic yet amiable trip to the arcade. Twelve months’ maturation proved severe. The divergence was so great that no single party could be agreed upon, and the household splintered into separate festivals for each child.

****William and his friends stood in the study, assembling Lego recreations of the Taj Mahal and Chichén Itzá. Charity was contained in a bedroom, hosting a house elf tea party with chilled cucumbers. 

****If only every party remained so tame.

****Juniper was screaming that the volume of Natalie’s Akira Kurosawa movie marathon was perturbing her tribe as they lay prostrate on foam mats, aligning their chakras. Zachary’s brass band, puffing out do-re-mis, stomped ruthlessly across Grayson’s art party, where he and his friends sat recreating early 20th-century Canadian landscape paintings. Over Grayson’s howls, the destructive march continued, discovering another victim in Adriana’s game of Risk. Tiny plastic soldiers across several seas and continents were trampled underfoot as Zachary’s trombonist tumbled into the full-length mirror, shattering it to bits. 

****Bad luck, that.

****Aghast at this chaos, her rainbow’s dispersion, Mom found all her pleas ignored. She moved in desperation, tugging down the attic ladder, scampering into that dusty pyramid, and returning with a wooden box beneath her arm.

****“Family meeting! Now!”

****The siblings gnashed their teeth, but before the fire in their mother’s eyes, they grumblingly clustered in the foyer. Fourteen eyes flickered to the box.

****Mom tossed back its lid. 

****Inside, keepsakes of Grandma Saba. The septuplets craned for a peek. There was the Shiva figurine she’d adored. The calendar with her notes scrawled on every day of the week. The Snow White puzzle they’d completed together, huddled around her kitchen table. 

****Grandma Saba, you see, had been the treasure of her grandchildren’s eyes. Afflicted with illness, she’d recently passed, three years short of her desire to reach eighty.

****“Can’t we get along?” Mom said. “For Grandma Saba?”

****The siblings exchanged blank glances and fiddling fingers.

****They turned back to Mom.

****“For Grandma Saba,” they agreed.

****The party’s invitees, initially relieved by the celebrants’ return, were discouraged by the siblings’ new manner. They’d all grown sullen and introspective, and the parties lost their shine. The friends stood and scowled and filed toward a caravan of parent pickups outside.

****The septuplets gathered in the now-quiet house, staring at shattered glass, spattered paint, and scattered toys.

****“Well,” said Juniper, slipping her arm around Zachary’s shoulders and releasing a heavy gust of air. “The cake, then?”

 

 

 

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Timbray Shafer is a traveling teacher and a passionate devotee of birds and carousels. He is the author of seven works, including The Rens series, and has work published in Apparition Lit, Every Day Fiction, The Dribble Drabble Review, and more.

@timbrayy

Illustration courtesy of Timbray Shafer

 

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