The Forgiving Business by Adele Evershed
Five years before Aggie was born, the grandmother she never knew looked at her daughter, and recognized original sin in the apple of her cheeks. So, she begged God to keep her June safe. After, she forgave God, but she was unable to forgive June.
Four years before Aggie was born, June tried to fill the groove her mother’s words had worn with moonshine and men who mumbled kindness in the dark. The raw alcohol smudged the edges of her ‘good girl ‘catechisms, and she became undone. After, she always forgave herself, but she was unable to forgive her mother.
Three years before Aggie was born, June met a man who loved himself too much. Greg took her hand and led her onto the dance floor like a prize heifer. As he twirled her to the music of The Benny Goodman Orchestra, her heart hoisted to heaven on a swing beat. With Greg’s hot breath in her ear, she didn’t even need a drink to let him undo her. With him, it felt like love, so after there was no need for forgiveness.
Two years before Aggie was born, June told Greg she was pregnant, and Greg married her because he liked to believe he was a better man than he was. June wore a dusky pink dress that served up her bosoms like poached eggs and promised to love, honor, and obey as her stomach started to cramp. After the miscarriage, Greg said he forgave her, but he never really did.
The year before she was born, Aggie’s mother grew into a shrine of waiting. Each evening, she stood in the window, alabaster skin glowing with her body straining forward; June looked like she would fly from the glass cage she found herself in. She bargained with God, promising her soul for her husband coming home before dark. Most nights she would still be there counting stars like rosary beads until Greg returned, his wages wafting on his breath. As he staggered around demanding food, she’d fold her arms across her heart as if trying to stop something from getting out or maybe from getting in. After she forgave him but, she was unable to forgive God.
The year Aggie was born, men were flying off skyscrapers in faraway New York City, and her father disappeared. It was only then June discovered he had remortgaged their house. To pay her bills, June did the one thing she knew how to do. As Aggie slept in a dresser drawer, June put on her pink dress, rouging her cheeks to match, and stood with a straight back in the window. Some of the men who visited were kind, and some were not, but in the holy hour, the time between darkness and dawn, they all asked for her forgiveness. June would smile, open the window, and pour another glass of whiskey. Then she’d touch their heads and tell them softly she was no longer in the forgiving business.
Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer. Some of the places her work has been published include Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit. Adele has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry and has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). She has published a novella in flash with Alien Buddha Press called Wannabe and her short story collection; Suffer/Rage has recently been published by Dark Myth Publications.
Find her on X @AdLibby1, Instagram @ad_libby and Blusky @adlibby.bsky.social
Turbulence in Small Places Wannabe ( Available from the FFF Bookshop! ) The Brink of Silence
Read more of her work @thelithag.com.
Christina by Amedeo Modigliani, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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