The Choice of One Woman to Love from Her Heart
short story
The Choice of One Woman to Love from Her Heart
Iris
Plethora of timeless becoming were a waft of fragrance from the flowers of her garden. Iris found peace doing things which were new but rewarding.
Every glance she stole in public was a snapshot of a soul. Her glare would prove too troublesome for acknowledgement, except by the rarest sort. Iris saw through to the bone.
“Can I get two scoops of the sherbert,” she beamed.
Hesitation, by others, mostly for her choices, was a noticed thing. That young woman behind the counter saw Iris as a chore to start. She thought Iris’ beaconing of playful abandon trite — a choice she would have denied herself by some slight — until that was broken, as Iris kept smiling right passed, for into their heart she would feel. Everyone was just some kid inside who got messed up from being who they were to Iris’ eyes.
“Can I get some sprinkles?”
Iris was not less than unaware at any one time. She knew how to push the right buttons for herself. In face of others there wouldn’t be a word spoken made for any but all. It came from within. Iris noticed her words and actions pushing people so far beyond their boundaries they would break back.
That girl behind the countertop of reflective faux glass was smiling eventually. She even asked Iris, from beneath the cap she sported with a sported style of excitement, right after the second scoop, and without a hint of reservation, “Want another one?”
While it was tempting. Iris was an honest sort. Two had been more than enough.
“That’s okay.” Her smile let through.
Walking with her gait so long had tripped a few through Iris’ time.
Her hips did pop and jaws would drop as stares could show a dreadful glow. Each lesser mark — had lost their spark. Each last spot her heart would show; twas Iris-love they came to know.
Breaking waves were heard within those shores of chestly resting. Taking leave to Middlebrook was her favorite escape. Sun and showers would combine in the foothills of Mt. Ferris, balancing some reflection of beaming blue that was lost to all but a special crowd.
Delaney proved where the heart remained focused. Iris had a daughter who was never far from some holding of precious belonging within. It made her most peaceful to know they would be beside each other in short terms of time.
Iris had been disabled by the way people treated her, and its cost was beyond what most would ever understand. Delaney was one of the few. She would always know that best. Within her mother left was a shadow of some spirit once known. What was left had been improved but far from the same. Less than she could have been, while more at the same time. Iris was like an angel to everyone, but the person who left that deepest imprint of compassionate and tender affection at Delaney’s youngest ages was gone.
It was as if, to the child, there was a third parent she could only remember by feeling and would always miss. There were moments always which beguiled Iris’ child. She tried to feather them just right. It was a part of her plan to hold on enough, so she might come out for her daughter and the chosen few.
Parks were great but the reservoir was their special place. Delaney had been driving them there lately, and it made her mother gleam into some far-off place of trust and disregard to be in her child’s car. Delaney wasn’t very good, not at all, but Iris believed them watched over in their way.
Delaney was shouting as soon as the trek began. Just plainest roars into the woods were let loose. Everything was wet from rains come down before the skies had cleared enough for light beams to filter through. Something Delaney didn’t want to talk about had happened. It was inspiring to see someone letting it loose, as everything came into focus for Iris. She had once been the same, though now it had all settled into something of peace.
When Delaney rejoined Iris on the path, that had made for a reconnection at the hip and breast. Delaney was never going to be as tall as her mother. She was a shorty for how little the other was.
People didn’t know what it was like. Everyone thought it strange. Delaney was smarter than everyone she had been raised alongside for those things she knew. Her mom, Iris, was the prettiest woman in the world. It never hurt her feelings for people to misunderstand, not anymore, not after a time it had made her hurt for some people to gawk when she was a youngest teen.
They had been walking into a restaurant and some boy her age cracked a joke. Delaney knew him from school, and he had been around a group of her female peers.
Delaney was broken when he said it, the little gap-toothed gay boy with braces and an inferiority complex. After laughing like a blatant imbecile placating his bigotry with a crowd pleasing, self-escaping projection of disgustful abandon, he had made some play to act cool in walking up to the counter before us.
His words were cruelest.
“I didn’t know you had a father, Delaney.”
Iris repressed a laugh, but only for her daughter. They were gripping their teeth. Delaney couldn’t handle it for one reason or another. I didn’t like that look on her face.
I thought about my options. I knew it one of the girls which bothered Delaney most. I guessed it the one he had been standing nearest who looked most pleased with herself.
It seemed so clear. I knew what I could get away with, and always.
There was a better restaurant nearby.
Somebody would have to come and drag her back to town if they thought it worth punishing a woman for taking care of her daughter’s feelings.
His belt had been accurately judged as not tight enough.
Delaney was stunned. Then glowing. And laughing by the time they reached car. When they got to the more expensive place to eat it became a celebration. Never again would a bigot get the best of her about her mother. Those people were the wrongness they wanted to make her love out to be.
By the time they reached the bottom of the gulch together it seemed that Delaney had screamed it out. She was feeling herself again with the closeness to Iris. They didn’t have to talk. It was an unspoken thing between them. Their connection was one of the hearts and that would be a most beautiful thing regardless of how different her appearance would sometimes seem as Delaney grew.
Shape changing was simply a nature of the mother she called Iris. It had been from the very beginning and never stopped for anyone but her. Stillness found beside Delaney was unique. Of peace beyond the pale to them both.
Rarest tidings of presence would become them both together. Every moment was a radiant notion. Each glance and touch a call to remember the one they loved the most. It was her mother who had earned her the right to pursue education in a system most correct. Despite the way her other family would denigrate Iris, nothing every soured Delaney after seeing her mother reflect it all without a shred of hurt. She was simply smarter than everyone who believed her less and that was absurd. To know it from the inside out, as Delaney did, and have such sight on her unknowable bravery too, sharing it all, would be the gift of life eternal to the joy of all when meeting Delaney alone.
For Delaney to see that be unacknowledgeable when with her mother, to all but a rarest — Iris’ warrior struggle for her daughter forever belittled by lesser minds — would forge a warrior in the girl-made-woman herself. She would never be the victim of someone trying to teach that forward by projection. Delaney was whoever she wanted to be.
It wouldn’t take much searching in Delaney’s heart to know where she got that spirit from.
Once they had lived together all the time. It was before Delaney had been taken from the world of active minds. She was disabled in a most unique way, and by the whole world, by the people she loved more than all. Something wicked beneath the currents of American society had once tried to lessen the woman from existing as she did.
Iris herself had changed it. There was a fight in her like no one else.
She did it all for Delaney.
Iris did it for every moment she would get beside her daughter. Losing herself had been a struggle of sorrow which none could ever know but Iris and God. There wasn’t a person capable of encapsulating the trauma she had been through. The person she once was had died in the cruelest way imaginable.
She had been crying for a friend while unhelped after being abused disabled for being a transgender woman. Iris had been taken from her daughter for no reasons but blatant ignorance and callous disregard. Even still, people were jealous of her for her body and mind. Those two things they thought were wrong but longed for the same — her illuminated brain, her body so difficult to maintain — and it was absurd for how punished Iris was for them by all.
Once, long ago, she had hoped to find a partner or friend who might stand beside her on the journey towards the end. Someone who might squeeze her tight had always seemed nice. A person to take care of her feelings was the truth of what was needed but denied. People of her world simply refused to take care of women like Iris. They denied her womanhood entirely, and by that action the most.
Hugging her daughter goodbye. Watching them leave her at home. Taking a greatest breath of her sycamore tree army which stood around the home. Iris was glad to see their car wasn’t waiting in the distance.
She had a stalker of sorts. Some old love who had done her most wrong.
All of her stories had been for them until they detransistioned her with disregard. She had almost been homeless when another had finally swept in to hold her in some comfort of financial stability while a helper was finally found to get her the proper diagnosis and help she needed.
Eventually, once it was only spoils they might take, her stalker decided it time to return. Iris had lost everything and rebuilt it herself. She was alone and in need but her body remembered. That evil person had taken her daughter from her. Iris still could have been a full-time parent if they hadn’t failed her so completely.
They came to knock on the door a lot — that woman.
Iris went inside, her keys jangling as they smacked its wooden frame, and she prayed they would not return. It was a hardest thing to turn them away and ignore their calls. She blocked all their messages, and in that same way they had blocked and taken her life.
Iris would always pay back what was owed.
She settled into a bath of bubbles and eucalyptus from the herbal shop bouncing in a burlap sack. Nothing was going wrong, not ever again, for Iris. One day, long in the future, she would be known to some goddess who would see and hold her like it had been meant all along. They were a lover of her art — some artist who bled their own heart for the world. Iris wrote for them, after the creep had taken her from life of mind, allowing her to face the worst thing that could ever be faced — her body had been changing back for a time, towards the maleness it was born to — and she lost a most beautiful home that her daughter simply needed to see again but would never have the chance.
Until they came to her. Until that one who would see her mind for what it was — some greatest blessing to the world refound — Iris would be all her own.
Iris was the goddess of the world, and to the Earth itself. She was a mother of mothers to her daughter, and the only light which steered them home, over again, leading towards love. Meeting her meant one would meet with the light. Every last look would ponder her sight. Never would any quite reach her fine might. Her song was the world — her love was the fight.
