In a modern world, not many girls could claim that their parents met at a colonial ball. My mother was a tour guide at Mr. Vernon and had sewn her dress by hand. Tears of frustration and drips of blood were mixed with the fabric, but when she observed herself in the mirror she’d known it was worth every trouble.
She reached for the final touch to her costume—a historically accurate hand fan—only to discover her dog had found it first. “Don’t worry, take this,” her roommate had insisted, thrusting a cheap Chinese fan into my mother’s grasp. The thought of going to a colonial ball with such an obvious fault in her costume was offensive to my history-conscious mother. But the thought of not going at all was even worse.
Father was just out of graduate school, and still trying to figure the use of a Masters in History. He preferred books to costumes, but he had stuffed his breeches with newspaper in the traditional fashion and accompanied his sister.
I liked listening to colonial reels on my iPod, my eyes closed as I imagined them. After their first set she would stare intently at the painted scene on her fan—the Chinese garden—and try not to laugh at herself for the ridiculousness of the situation. Since his sister had taught him the language of fans, he would recognize the sign with a grin. “I like you.” Perhaps his eyes caught on the curve of her arched wrist as she brushed the hair out of her face. “Don’t forget me.”
In the end, the colonial girl with her Chinese fan wasn’t forgotten. At the ball the following year, my mother proudly wore her Chinese fan closed, handing from her left arm. “I’m engaged.”
I adore quirks in history like the language of fans. I grabbed this fan up thinking I'd do something like that... and then it was a Chinese fan, so that complicated things. In the end, I think it worked out anyway.
ReplyDeleteI ADORE this piece. Brava, Alyssa
ReplyDeleteNice job, Alyssa. The details of the colonial ball are interesting and the use of the fan as an active courting device is great. I wonder now where this language came from, if it is derived from American colonial culture. That seems to be the implication in the story. But then, I also wonder if this language is universal, or if it differs from culture to culture (where fan-use is pervasive, that is). What I wonder then is if there's a chance for there to be some miscommunication. What if the language of Chinese fans is different than American colonial ones, so the father maybe misreads the mother's comments. Maybe he's an expert in Asian history and is more inclined to read the Chinese fan differently, despite the context of the colonial ball. Anyway, all this makes me think of some greater obstacles that might give the piece even more energy, perhaps humor or drama.
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