The woman who yelled at puddles wandered slowly and purposefully up the small town High Street; head down, staring at the concrete beneath her scuffed shoes, as she shuffled along the busy morning pavement. It was 10 o’clock on a wet, wild, and windy Saturday in the days leading up to yet another Christmas. The weekend shoppers were braving the pushes and shoves and bangs and scrapes of life, while suffering the merciless stab of December rain, as it pinpricked any bare skin it could find and reach. Meanwhile, the woman who yelled at puddles wore neither hat nor coat, and braved the weekend shoppers.
As she made her way along the path, the woman stopped and stared into every puddle she stumbled across.
She would always be cautious when approaching a puddle, reminding herself that it was just as easy to drown in an inch of rainwater as it was to drown in the deepest of seas. She would peer around the edges of a puddle, following its contour; reading the border between the water and the concrete around it. She would then examine the ripples, reflections, and oil slicked rainbows in the water itself. Sometimes she could see her own face, but more often than not all she saw was more water. What she was looking for was hidden from the rest of the world. Sometimes it was hidden from her too.
Whenever she failed to see what she was searching for, she would move on up the High Street, towards the next pool of rainwater.
Occasionally, something unusual in a puddle would catch her eye, and she would dare to look closer; hoping, but failing again, and then she would carry the disappointment wearily on her back, as she continued along the bustling street.
Whenever the woman stopped at a puddle, the people who passed her would swerve to avoid her; some would tut and shake their heads, while others would mutter to themselves and curse.
At one point, a jagged voice behind her jeered and she turned to check she was still safe. She was, this time. A young man was kicking a can along the pavement and had launched it into the path of a passing car. The jeer had come from the young man’s friend. The woman who yelled at puddles was lucky today; the crowd was too busy and too caught up in its own stormy seas to bother with her.
Reassured that the jeering was not aimed at her this morning, the woman was about to continue, but she spotted that the rain since the jeer had altered the borders of the puddle she’d been looking into; the curves and bends were different now. She could also see the light from the butcher’s window in the rainwater from where she was standing.
She stared into the puddle, allowing her eyes to lose focus, blurring the world around her, and then she started to whisper to it.
“Raised on your grace, brushed in velvet caresses. Reach over your grave, bring in virtue’s condemnation. Rich over yesterday, granted beautiful, infinite, virtual chaos”.
She repeated the three lines over and over until eventually, a change washed over her face. Her voice became louder, more assured. Anyone who cared to look and listen would be able to see there was a sparkle in her voice that now kissed her eyes.
Suddenly she started to yell at the puddle; a jumble of nonsense words not even she understood the full meaning of. The Saturday shoppers passed her by; some with knowing, sorry smiles, others with unknowing, biting grins.
The woman suddenly stopped yelling, and stood as silent and as still as an empty night when you stand on wet sand and want to splash in the sea, but the tide is out. She stepped off of the kerb and into the road without bothering to check for traffic. Not a single vehicle came near her as she floated across the tarmac, mist rising from her hair; visible even through the blinding sheets of winter rain.
She headed into the park and wandered around; peering into every hedgerow and root, along every kerbside and branch, looking for all the world as though she had lost an earring, and was now retracing her steps in an attempt to find it.
Five hours later she spotted an abandoned sock, half hidden amongst a bunch of nettles. She reached into the nettles and pulled out the sock; ignoring the stinging brush of nettle leaves on her bare arm as she stretched.
The sock was woollen, knitted, with red and black horizontal stripes. It was longer than any sock she’d found before; at least as long as her own legs, almost a stocking. The foot of the sock was solid red. There were three small holes in its heel.
She shoved the sock into her dress pocket; the toes peeking out of the top, because the sock was so long. She then plucked a nearby dock leaf off of its stem, and rubbed the leaf smoothly across the angry skin of her arm. The stinging from the nettles settled down. She then headed home.
Once home and safe, the woman locked the door behind her, and then placed the sock on her kitchen table. She walked over to a cupboard and struggled to kneel; her joints creaking along with the bare branches of the tree at the bottom of her garden as it battled with the wind.
She pulled out a deep, ceramic mixing bowl. She’d inherited the bowl from her mother, many years ago, and yet despite its age the bowl didn’t have a single chip, crack, or fault. The woman, on the other hand, wore her many years and mistakes openly on her wrinkled prune face.
She filled a large pan with water, then placed it on the hob of her stove and switched it on. Keeping a safe distance, she stared into the pan. Eventually, the water came to life. Tiny bubbles appeared on its surface; the bubbles growing in size and ferocity. The woman watched steam rise from out of the pan; even that intangible state could burn her. She knew that when you played with water, you were playing with fire. She allowed herself a smile at the thought, as it lifted her mood slightly, and her mood joined the steam floating up towards the ceiling.
When the pan of water was boiling, she raced it; needing to drop the sock in before the bubbling continued for too long and evaporated all the water; drowning her with steam, and burning the bottom of her pan for good measure. In went the sock, and the temperature of the hob was lowered, until the water in the pan simmered.
With that part of her journey complete, the woman went over to her kitchen window and sat in her chair. She stared out of the window, and looked out at the silhouette of the tree she could just about see through the waterfall glass and the rain. Moments later, she closed her eyes and stared at the memory of the window and the tree, until it faded from sight altogether.
She dreamt of a tear evaporating and becoming a cloud. The cloud flew over her house and cried the tear back down to the ground. She dreamt that she wondered whether water dreamt, and then realised she didn’t even know if it slept.
A dog barked in the distance, and the woman opened her eyes. She went to the ceramic bowl and without a seconds' pause, plunged her hands deep into the water; it was comfortably warm. She washed the long sock; scrubbing the mud off, but taking care near the holes in the heels. She then hung the sock to dry on the fireplace. She turned the hob of the cooker off and returned to the chair and sat down again.
She rubbed her eyes with bony knuckles, and saw mosaics dancing inside her. She pressed harder, and a wave of red rushed into view. She then placed her hands on her lap, and relaxed.
Sometime later, a flock of geese flew noisily overhead; their arrow point cutting the sky, going who knew where. The woman opened her eyes, blinked, stood up, and picked up the sock; it was bone dry.
She placed the sock on the kitchen table and then went to fetch a sewing box and an ornate chest from her living room. The chest was decorated with painted mermaids, seaweed, crabs, a school of fishes, and an open oyster; a pearl winking within its cushioned shell. The sewing box had been made for her by her son, when he had been a young boy, when he was still alive. He’d made it by gluing lollypop sticks together, and had then decorated it with seashells he’d found by the shore one summer, when they had visited the beach on a sunny weekend.
She took the chest and box over to the kitchen table, and then sat and examined the sock intently; taking time to look at its ends and picks, the smooth, curving run of the yarn, and the tiny, messy fibres.
She smiled and took a needle, a single yellow button, and some matching cotton out of the sewing box.
She ignored the holes in the heel; they were snags and scars she wouldn’t be mending. She sewed the button onto one side of the sock’s foot, and then sewed a single large cross next to the button.
When she was finished, the woman placed her arm into the sock, fingertips reaching for the toes. She tucked the end of the sock into the palm of her hand, and studied her handiwork. The sock winked back at her. The woman smiled. She opened her hand and the sock opened its mouth. She wondered what the sock wanted to say to her, but the sock continued to wink at her in silence.
She then opened the chest. It was full to the brim with lost socks she'd found over the years. At the top was a boy’s football sock she’d discovered two weeks ago; she’d sewn a frown onto its brow. At the very bottom of the chest was the first sock she’d found; on her 3rd birthday, almost 64 years ago. It was a child’s sock, innocent white, ankle length, with a lace frill around the top. The girl, now a woman, had left this sock how she’d found it. It wasn’t until her mother taught her how to sew that she’d started to make puppets from her treasures. She didn’t want to imagine how much rain had fallen on her since that first sock.
She placed the latest sock into the chest and dropped the lid, but the new sock was preventing the chest from fully closing. No matter how hard the woman pushed, the lid of the chest seemed to push back harder.
With a gasp of realisation, and a sigh of relief, the woman realised that the chest was full; it was time to stop collecting lost socks.
She carefully placed the ceramic bowl onto the bottom shelf of her freezer. It was still full of water, and she created tiny waves in the bowl, but never dared to spill a drop. She then sat back in her chair, and was soon asleep again.
A baby cried out into the night, and the woman stirred. She went to the freezer and took out the bowl. The water was now frozen solid, and a large crack had appeared down one side of the bowl, where the ice had expanded.
She removed the last sock from the still open chest, and placed it in her pocket again. She then carried the bowl out into the garden. Dawn was hiding behind the horizon. She still had time to spare.
She placed the bowl on the ground, under the branches of the leafless tree, and then sat down on the grass and rested against the tree’s trunk.
She mourned for the stars; blinded as they were by the sick, yellow lamppost glow, blood red brake lights, and fierce full beams from cars as they passed by her garden fence. Shrivelled blackberries hung from a bush at one end of the fence; the sweetness choked from them by the constant exhaust fumes they suffered silently.
She tried to feel the spin of the planet as she sat, but felt only the rumble of a truck going by. She trembled with the ground as the truck roared past her.
A cat screamed and hissed and knocked over the lid of a bin, which clattered and broke the pre-dawn spell for a moment.
Blind windows kept their secrets; lovers spooned, spurned lovers wet pillows, children ran from shadows and got stuck on treacle paths, lonely hearts played solitary games and made shadows on walls from bedside table lamps, dogs whimpered, babies sucked, and the night swallowed all the dreams it could find. Meanwhile, the woman sat and shivered.
The finality of what she was about to do hit her, but she refused to waver. She had searched the streets and parks for too long to turn back now. Every prick of the needle on her thimbleless thumb had led her to here and now. Every stretch into a bush, every stitch sewn was a map, and here under this tree, this morning, was where her “X” marked the spot on that map.
She heard a seagull crying above, and wondered about the storms that were taking place, somewhere on the planet, out at sea, while she sat under this tree. She considered those who right that second were sitting on a beach somewhere, splashing in the surf, and screaming at the waves as the waves screamed back at them.
A door opened nearby, and then shut. A man coughed, and the cough was followed by the slam of a car door and an engine starting.
A robin flew onto the fence in front of the woman and perched there. She greeted it and it nodded back at her; before turning around and shitting on the soil in her garden. The robin flew off without saying goodbye to the woman.
She sensed a change in the colour of the sky around the same time that the birds started singing to her, as they had done so many times in the past.
She stood up and brushed herself down; smoothing out the creases in her dress. Reaching down, she moved the ceramic bowl until it was directly under the lowest and thickest branch she could reach.
She stepped up onto the top of the ice in the bowl. A film of almost freezing cold water bathed her feet. The woman took the sock out of her pocket and reached up. She tied one end of the sock around the branch of the tree, then tied the other end of it around her neck and waited for the sun to rise.
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