December 18, 2018

PodCastle 553: Grounded Women Never Fly

23 minutes

* Author : Stefani Cox

* Narrator : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

* Host : Setsu Uzume

* Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh

Discuss on Forums

PodCastle 553: Grounded Women Never Fly is a PodCastle original.

Rated PG-13.

Sound effects used in the host spot are in the public domain and can be found here.

Grounded Women Never Fly

by Stefani Cox

It is the women of the community who can run, but don’t.

The women are the ones who can place a foot just so, another precisely calculated in front of it and leap across yards of empty space. If the women did move in this way, there would be a rhythm. The settling of muscles. A steeling of the mind for the goal of the further rooftop. And the moment when the visualizations and intention explode into movement.

For a short time, such a woman would experience flight. There would be a spreading of arms accompanied by weightlessness; the thrill of a body propelled over nothingness. She could bridge impossible distances this way. She could crisscross from building to building among the packed houses. She could scale walls.

This magic is not a substitute for wings, for this woman would still be humbled by gravity. It’s just that that such a force would seem a mere afterthought. An inconvenience to be shrugged off.

In the end, however, none of what they could do really matters, does it? Because the women do not run.

The hardest day of Janae’s twenty years of life was the one that Lila left the family. She remembers this while she beats rugs she’s hung over the frayed drying cord between their home and the Medillas’. The weight of the water-sodden weave pulls the thick string down so the carpets are almost touching the earth. That won’t do. Janae needs to pound more water out of them before she can leave the sun to finish the job.

Even if Janae could understand, she doesn’t want to. She beats the rug hard as she imagines again the back of Lila’s head, black duffel bag hung over one shoulder. When Lila went, the family changed. Their mother became dull. Their father left too — Lila had always been his favorite. Janae was left with a shimmering rage and something more tender underneath that she can’t stand feeling too long. The water in the rugs is dissipating slowly. Each time Janae takes a swing, more droplets fly off. The sun beats down on the back of her neck, and she can feel the sweat rising up from her exertions.

It is then that Janae catches the barest hint of red fabric at the edge of her vision. A flutter, though there is no wind. Without looking, Janae knows this cloth. It is Lila’s dress on the day she left. The burning shade is locked in her mind’s eye forever. Janae tenses to turn. But no. She will not indulge this fantasy by looking. Some memories are just memories.

Lila was the older one, by five years. She taught Janae running late in the humid silences of the night, from the safety of the rooftop. Lila lay flat on her stomach, chin resting on the back of her interlaced hands so she could watch the exact placement of Janae’s feet.

“Don’t touch your heels down. You’ll make too much noise.”

“Faster. You run as though you are afraid of the edge.”

“Where will you leap? Your footing is off.”

“Don’t look at me when you are unsure. You have to feel it in yourself.”

Her words cut, each phrase leading Janae to believe that she would never master this thing that came to her sister so easily.

...more

View all episodes

By Escape Artists Foundation

4.6

498498 ratings