At No. 10 Poplar Way, there were two kinds of people:
Women and abusers.
Women who represented the oppressed party everywhere.
Women who always found a way.
Women who did not live adjunct to but in spite of men.
The hatstand in the hallway was crooked, like everything else in the house. ‘Cos fixing things was a man’s job, and men certainly weren’t welcome indoors.
Olive used to say, A man can always put on his hat and leave. So the hatstand stood bare.
Olive was the maiden-aunt of the family. Had she been fair, she might’ve married, but she’d been built like a skilletful of bubble’n’squeak.
So instead, she stuck by her sister. Olive watched on as her pretty sibling’s good-for-nothing husband gambled, philandered, and furled his unruly fists. ‘Til one day, he sent her sister flying right through a stained-glass window, which disfigured her. After that, she went mad and eventually got sent to the loony bin. Olive stepped up to be “matriarch,” and that’s why her portrait is hung over the stove.
Oh, she thought about poisoning the old bastard’s supper every day. But she never did because:
That’s not how women endure, the girls chimed in unison.
This story was family, chapter and verse.
Then he met a younger woman, the spit of her sister before the accident, and they eloped together, to the city. That’s a man for you.
Her sister had a baby girl, and that daughter grew up to be Mama Hazel. Mama Hazel went on to birth two daughters, and they were called Clover and Clem. Hazel sustained all four of them on hefty alimony payments, having taken her wealthy ex-husband to the cleaners for being a shitfaced, lying hound.
It’s true to say Clover & Clem came from a long line of women survivors. And the key to surviving was:
Look pretty, and make no fuss.
Clover was herself surviving (secretly) as a sugar baby. True to the season, she’d just been dumped.
But Daddy Klaus! It’s Christmastime! she’d exasperated over text.
Despite having it drilled into her that men are solely a means to an end, Clover had a romantic disposition and was still hoping to buck the family heirloom of heartbreak and disillusionment.
Clem, too, was surviving. She wasn’t so sure that she was “a girl.” If she wasn’t a girl, she definitely didn’t feel like a brute. She contemplated the pictures of saints around the house. Some of them looked so androgynous. Maybe she, too, could be as holy as a breastless martyr. If the most feminine thing about Clem was her melancholia…she could empathise with women by suffering in silence.
The family were sat around the kitchen table signing cards, cards that had certainly missed the last Christmas post:
Seasons Greetings.
From,
Hazel, Clover, & Clem
And Olive, who lives on in our hearts
Abruptly, someone knocked the window.
(*It’s overfamiliar to knock at the window, isn’t it? The type of thing that only a friend does when they’re impatient to impart gossip.)
The women looked up. It was Auntie Kat.
There had been a number of years when Mama Hazel’s friend Kat had been living with them. She’d been going through a “bad” patch with her “bad” husband. During that time, when the girls had got home from school, Auntie Kat would be laid out on the sofa with a migraine or locked in the bathroom with an anxious bowel and a cigarette. Their home was a refuge of perpetual succour for long-suffering wives and their preferred smokes.
Kat went on to ditch the “bad” husband, after which she’d been getting by making medical claims. Her relationship with their mother had soured on the back of an argument from yesteryear. ‘Cos Hazel believed that women held each other in times of strife. But Kat was always pulling up the drawbridge and putting herself first.
That woman’s a piece of work, Hazel often said.
Which was true. The tricks up Kat’s fur-lined sleeves were many and varied and each more wicked than the last.
It’s a Christmas Stranger! she remarked, eyebrow raised.
Kat waltzed up to the kitchen table with a bottle of 2019 Beaujolais and slammed it down among the envelopes.
Ladies!
Great-Aunt Olive (who is dead but not forgotten) was certainly looking down on Auntie Kat with condemnation from her seat in heaven at that moment. Her face presided over the entire scene with a frozen expression, judging behind her eternally stiff lips.
He’s got six weeks to live, she said. Six weeks, then his two million buckeroonies go to yours truly.
Turns out, she’d gone off and married for money. At 60 years old, she’d become a later-life gold digger, proving it’s never too late to open your legs for a nest egg.
Not that she’s a looker, said Mama Hazel.
Ah, but I’ve got what they call charisma, said Kat, poking her décolletage.
Clover went to plug in her burner phone, having been inspired to get back on the hunt for a whale.
People die at Christmas time, and that’s a fact.
Merry Christmas, you’re shortly to be a widow, said Hazel. Are you bereft?
A rich widow—sure! I dare say I’ll miss the companionship, answered Kat.
Kat’s elderly husband (87, no heir) had a wedge of shares in a chain store for hardware sundries.
You told me he was a right old bigot.
Uh huh. He’s a fascist with a limp dick and a gangrenous limb. But my politics can be very flexible for a price.
Hazel had been made aware of this marriage-of-convenience, and to be truthful, it had her conflicted. Marriage was a holy union. But men were a stipend. In that sense, Kat had really cut to the chase.
Don’t speak ill of the dying in this house. Hazel crossed herself. And stop showing off to the girls. He’s been faecally incontinent for the last year now. There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world, and I’ll tell you that for nothing.
Faecally incontinent…BUT he recently gave me power of attorney over his health! So it’s no frills from here on, after the stoma bag, Kat answered.
The Beaujolais was from her husband’s wine cellar, and there was plenty more where that came from. Kat topped up Clover’s glass, wearing the expression of a charmingly sozzled shrew.
Now, it’s just formalities really… The hospital want him in a care home. And he’s got the money; but that’s my money now. And of course, he wants to die at home, but it’s not up to him.
What are you going to do with your newfound fortune, Auntie Kat? asked Clem.
Invest in my future. That’s what’s shrewd and proper—but afterwards, I’ll sort these. She pointed to her hooded eyes.
Clem thought about the bits of her body she’d like to take a blade to.
When he’s dead, I’ll have a yard sale, she said. And you girls can help me out. You know what, Hazel, I’ll gift you a new dish rack, to replace this old thing.
She knocked the pile of tentatively-balanced cartons propping up the makeshift dish rack.
The whole thing clattered to the floor.
What’s that? A telescope? she asked, pointing to the tool in the window, which had been unobscured by the deluge of fallen brick-a-brack.
Heavens! What for?!
Clover and Clem looked bashful. Mama Hazel had a dirty habit of spying on the boys-next-door.
…to keep an eye out! Those boys are becoming men, and goodness knows when they’ll start to prey on the girls.
They’re kids, Hazel. Let them be. Have you ever spoken to the boys-next-door? asked Auntie Kat, folding the telescope in on itself emphatically and shoving it into her mock croc handbag. Hazel snatched at the handbag, and the ladies began to grapple playfully.
GILFs in your area, wrestling for an eyeful of step-son’s boner, Lamented Clem to her sister.
My money’s on Auntie Kat, Clover retorted.
Her freshly-recharged burner phone glowed up from the windowsill.
Post from the North Pole! she exclaimed.
$GentlemanProvider$_
Hey Baby, this time you’ve found yourself a REAL man.
R U wet for me?
Clover and Clem peered out of the window, looking for the neighbours’ boys.
Do you think they even know who we are? asked Clem
Everyone knows who we are—the scorned women of Poplar Way.
Do you think they think we’re pretty?
A girl’s either pretty or she’s not. And the ones who aren’t better be wet for it.
Clover went to compose a reply to $GentlemanProvider$
It doesn’t matter if you’re wet or not…as long as you don’t make a fuss when they stick it in, said Clem.
You talk like an ugly girl sometimes.
Clover crafted her reply and pressed send:
Lucky_Cl0ver_
Baby’s snow cone gone all slushy—Make it snow, Santa!