11
I feel the woman’s gaze infiltrate me, as she looks for secrets that only she suspects. There is a tension, which is held by the birdsong that drifts between us.
‘I heard you sing,’ she says.
I am awkward and notice heat reddening my cheeks. I’m at that age when my body is growing at different rates and in ways that make me self-conscious. The garden is my private space, my retreat, to which no one is invited. She has found a way here, from across the hedge, from her private space. I hesitate in my response, uncertain how to talk to this adult, so I just smile and walk off to an area where she can’t reach me.
29
‘You remember Mrs Cotton, don’t you?’ my mother says.
I have a vague memory and ask if she means the old neighbour from my childhood home.
‘Yes, Mrs Cotton and Miss Richards.’
I am surprised, but somehow not.
‘No one said anything, but everyone knew,’ she adds.
Mum tells me about the women she has known who were like me. There is the PE teacher that we all suspected and mocked; there is the lady who lived up the road from my grandmother; there is the woman over the hedge and her friend. That’s what people called them then, friends. I am touched that she wants to tell me it’s okay, you are not alone: there have been others; we have known others.
7
The grown-ups talk like old friends, while the cousins are a giggling mass on the faux fur rug, legs and arms entangled beneath the smoky haze. I don’t know these children, but they look like me. Our genes are from the same place, like heirlooms inherited by long-lost relatives. There are similarities between my uncle and sister, and the eldest one of their family resembles our grandfather. We play straight away, like children do before they are affected by hormones. My hand brushes against an intimate area and one of them shows her disgust.
‘What are you? A lesbian or something?’ she says.
I don’t know what that is, but I know the answer is no.
36
I ask, ‘Is Aunty Rita a lesbian?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ he says.
His response makes me feel six years old.
‘Nothing,’ I say, wishing this reply will erase what has just happened. My father is offended that I have asked about his sister’s sexuality. I look away, as he looks away from me. Mum click-clacks on her knitting needles, and the silence makes her lose her rhythm for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he says, after a short while.
I feel like a bomb diffuser, as I choose my words carefully: red wire, blue wire. ‘Oh?’
He shifts in his seat and says, ‘I wasn’t prepared when you asked just then.’ I nod. Apology accepted, I think.
‘The vicar,’ Dad said. ‘She lives with the vicar. Brenda.’
He can’t bear to use the word.
14
I ignore the lad in school but play with him near the local vicarage when no one else knows. He is different, like me: it is our unspoken, unwanted connection. The other teenagers bully him and if they know I spend time with him, they might bully me too, as they unravel the truth like we have been taught to unravel simultaneous equations. We must pretend to be like them, but it confuses me, to try to be a different version of myself when I don’t even know who I am yet. I have recently started my period and I know I am devastated. I just want to be a boy, because I don’t know there is another way to be.
86
My great nephew stands in front of me, and I cannot remember his name. I share my life stories with this boy, but recent memories are harder to capture, like catching bubbles that burst on contact. I am fading and my wife holds my hand, as she kisses my eyes.
‘I have always loved your eyes,’ she tells me, but of course, I know that; I will always remember that.
I won’t be here soon, physically at least, and she will be left, reading my books, and walking around our garden. I will linger amongst the words and be spotted within the perennials that flower as a reminder of what we nurtured here. We will meet again in eleven years, but neither of us knows that now.
52
I have not seen her in such a long time, and she is now looking around my new house. We are polite, as she avoids the freshly plastered walls and negotiates the piano discarded in the centre of the lounge. We are both more interested in the outside.
‘What do you like about gardening?’ I ask my aunt.
‘It’s where life happens,’ she says.
I look at her properly for the first time and see an inner serenity. The aversion I feel towards this woman evaporates like moisture transpiring off leaves. We are not so different, she and I. We have things in common that neither of us acknowledges, as she turns to go, and we kiss goodbye.
18
He is kissing my lips, and I am not sure what I am meant to do. I make affirmative noises because that is what I have seen on television, but it feels mechanical. I have seen other things on TV, like the two women lying in bed together and I think it is the most beautiful image in the world. They remind me of the nymphs in John William Waterhouse’s paintings, unlike the Andy Warhol parody I am living now. I will spend years with this man. I will try to fit in. I will try to be me until I conclude that being me is not fitting in. It is not being with this man. And it is not the picture on the jigsaw puzzle box I will try to replicate all these years.
This flash presents the reader with an incomplete set of jigsaw pieces — little moments from various times in the narrator’s life — and invites the reader to piece them together and imagine the larger picture. I love the non-linear structure and the gaps left for the reader to fill in. I also love the way the narrator’s voice and perspective mature as she ages.
Ingrid Jendrzejewski
The truth about life is that it is a jigsaw. A spattering of events that we put together to make up a life. What the narrator realizes is that these events are despite our best attempts something that happens to us in a nonlinear fashion. There is a wonderful sense of curation as we consider not only what is presented to us but also what has been left out of the vista that is being presented before our eyes.
Nick Makoha
Susan L. Edser is a queer writer, who brings a diverse knowledge from her life and community-based work to the writing scene. She was inspired to pursue her writing career, after winning the wild card round in a spoken word poetry competition in 2023. Susan is studying for an MA in Creative Writing and Publishing at Bournemouth University and works for a non-profit writer development agency. She is involved in various projects, including a short film focusing on intersectionality and empathy, as well as her first novel.
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Oxford Flash Fiction Prize 