Bernadette Ni Riada
Saints and Red Geraniums
My mother looks at herself again in the hall mirror. She puts on another coat of lipstick, then with both hands she settles her hat, the small green one that she always wears to Mass. Two of my siblings and I wait at the door. After inspecting us from the tops of our heads down to the skin of polish on our shoes, she herds us out through the doorway.
The well is on the edge of a small village. A crowd of people are there when we arrive, mostly mothers and young children. There is a gravelled path around the periphery of the well. People walk around this circle repeatedly as they pray. One of my mother’s friends and two of her children fall into line with us as we step onto the path. With a devout expression on their faces the adults pray aloud. The rise and fall of their voices merge and blur into a hum, like bees around flowers.
Eventually, the two mothers finish praying and we, the five children, trail after them as they step off the path. By now we are hungry and talk to each other about what we will eat when we get to the tea-shop in the village. The two mothers stop at the nearby makeshift shop with its canvas awning. They spend ages looking at medals, holy pictures and statues, before making their purchases.
The tea-shop is at the bottom of the street. We walk along, admiring all the terraced houses. They have no front gardens, but all have window boxes, hanging baskets and pots on either side of the hall doors, overflowing with displays of highly colourful flowers.
Halfway along the street, we all stop to admire one particular house. Its walls are painted white, the windows and door are painted red. Here, the window boxes, hanging baskets and pots have just one type of flower on display, red geraniums.
Our mothers tell us to run on ahead of them and to wait outside the tea-shop. We are given a stern warning to behave ourselves, coupled with a reminder that we have just come from a very holy place.
All five of us play pretend- skipping as we move on towards the tea-shop. I stop and look back. The two mothers are breaking off pieces of the geraniums and dropping them into their bags.
first frost a slime of wilt on summer blooms
About the Author
Bernadette Ni Riada is a native of (and lives in) County Kerry, Ireland. Her main genre of writing is poetry, and her work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Still In The Dreaming (anthology), A New Ulster, Ireland’s Eye, Poetry Breakfast, River Poets Journal, The Haibun Journal, Kokako, and Drifting Sands, among others. She has frequently read her work on her local radio station.