Tahlulah

Tahlulah peeked anxiously out of the rose bush. Were they still in the yard? Or had they moved on to the next. The coast seemed clear. She slowly slid out from underneath the bush on her belly, trying hard to not break twigs or rustle leaves. Her eyes flitted around the corners of her suburban backyard – she scanned the carefully manicured lawn, the tall protective hedges, the partially trampled flower garden with daffodils and tulips currently in bloom. Her eyes stopped at the lilac bush by the corner of the house. Something moved. The cat jumped out to chase a bug across the stone path. Yes, they seemed to have continued along their way.
Feeling secure again, and hoping to remain undisturbed, Tahlulah returned to her little friends at the edge of the house. She had created a little world for herself there. There were families and neighbors all living happily – and generally peacefully – in their houses beneath the lilies of the valley. Whether they were supposed to be humans or fairies wasn’t clear; Tahlulah herself was unsure. She only enjoyed creating them and placing them into their new homes. Generally, after creation, she would leave them to their little lives. Sometimes she would come back to them to check up on their existence, but often she would simply move on to another location and another set of beings.
Her mother had, long ago, stopped appearing frustrated at having her grass torn up to create small paths, or her flowers being picked for hats. She had come to accept that this was Tahlulah’s secret world, and that it shouldn’t bother her if a few flower heads were removed, or if her seeds were dug up just as they had sprouted. These things were minute details in a world as creative and elaborate as her daughter’s imagination – and she was happy to donate these small pleasures to her only child’s creative impulses. Perhaps she would be an artist when she grew older, the mother often thought. She would certainly be in good company – the family was rich with artistic types, a fact which could be considered a good thing, as well as not.
Tahlulah reminded her mother of Grandma Sophia – often Tahlulah noticed her mother staring at her, while she played, with that melancholic distant look. Tahlulah knew that when her mother had this look on her face, she would not like to be pestered about things like lunch, or a lemonade break, or if they should hurry up now to get to piano lessons. Tahlulah didn’t actually mind missing piano lessons, something that happened with more and more frequency in the spring, it seemed. What she didn’t like was missing meals. She had begun to remedy this by fixing her own lunches. The joy of fixing your own lunch, thought Tahlulah, was that you could eat anything you wanted. She experimented with different sandwich fixings – ham and peanut butter was quite tasty, but she wasn’t fond of tomato sauce with jam, or turkey and pineapple slices. The all-time best sandwich was Nutella, peanut butter, banana slices, and honey, toasted in a pan with butter. It made the kitchen smoky though, and so Tahlulah did not make it as often as she would have liked.
Tahlulah was an independent girl. This was good, because there was nobody else around to depend on, besides her mother. Her mother was going through a spell, as she called it, and could not focus much on Tahlulah’s needs. Luckily, Tahlulah did not have many needs. Being only five meant that she was able to entertain herself, and it did not appear unusual to the neighbors that she remained at home every day. Of course, other neighborhood children attended daycares or preschools, but as Tahlulah’s mother wasn’t working, nobody considered it strange that she would want Tahlulah to be home with her. Some even thought how nice it must be to be able to spend so much time with your child – how quickly childhood fades, they thought, and then it is gone forever. One neighbor even contemplated taking time off from work so that she, too, could spend more time with her child; soon after this thought entered her head, though, her four-year-old son knocked a favorite Tiffany lamp off her reading table, and the neighbor reconsidered daycare as the best option for her family.
Tahlulah glanced up from her little friends to see her mother staring off into space from the steps up to the backdoor. It was going to be a fix-your-own lunch day, she thought to herself, and wondered what she would make. Perhaps it was an avocado and honey on whole wheat sort of a day, or an apple slices and pickles with mustard on rye, she could never tell what she would be in the mood for until she was in the kitchen. Luckily, it was still early, and she wouldn’t be hungry for a few hours. Perhaps by then, her mother was have snapped out of it and would make some mac and cheese with carrot sticks. Tahlulah wasn’t really very sure if she was supposed to use the stove, or not, when she was making lunches. It frightened her to think about the flames jumping off of pans like they did on TV sometimes – besides, there were usually things she could create without heat. Mac and cheese was something that she had discovered to be “not-good” when it was not cooked; as was frozen pizza. Jelly bean soup did not have to be cooked, but it gave her a headache sometimes and she couldn’t eat very much of it.
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