Performed by Val Cole

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Della One Morning

Word Count: 695

Della’s spine eeked pain all up and down it as she walked to her car under Bonita Spring’s morning starlight. Della realized she no longer carried keys in her hands with keys pointing out between her knuckles, to prevent an attack. She was sixty-three, didn’t think anyone would bother now. No fear of pregnancy if they did.

Della looked back at her apartment building and saw Luna’s light on. Luna and her husband Jeremiah and their kids would be up, going to work and daycare early, so they could make their shifts.

Humidity in the air was hanging like regret, like the dress on the door that should never have been shed with the wrong man, a guy who wouldn’t remember thanks to Jack down his gullet, and here it was, water in the air that would make her car gummy and grumpy and coughy, like COPD or worse. Had Della had children, she’d have been able to call one, if they lived close, for a ride, if they were early risers, if they’d taken after their mama, but she had no kids, and an Uber felt like defeat, a sign you didn’t have anybody to call in an emergency.

Della’s Corolla coughed and caught, the sound she’d prayed for, and she reached for the wooden Mary from Fatima, standing in her car cupholder to protect her. She told herself it was like a doll, yet Della put Mary the doll in every car she ever borrowed or owned. Mary had been Aunt Glenda’s, and Mary protected Aunt Glenda from all sorts of harm.

The handsy customer got transferred out of Florida, thanks to Della’s prayers to Mary, and a season in which Mary the doll even went into the diner with her, in her apron, such were the advances of the man with the thick hands and halitosis for days.

Della scooped hair out of her eyesight while the motor warmed. Maybe a breeze blowing in, maybe rain.

She’d worked this shift at O’Briens diner for seventeen years. When Mark needed her on her day off, in she came. In seasonal surges, Della was in place, clean, ready, serving with a smile.

But hurricane Milton— when she’d had to evacuate to a Motel 6 near Ocala— when storm surge threatened to flood the whole area, up to eight feet, Milton was something else.

Della had a wad of cash on the lower level of the armrest storage spot, down in the false bottom, cash that regulars slipped her around holidays.
Della’s new boss Steve was a jackass, with beach volleyball dreams. Della could feel it in her back how his talking made her tense, her shoulders up to her ears with him around.

At the stoplight, Della could see she was the only car among contractor trucks, going to paint, restore storm damage, replant gardens, make things right again after.

Instead of getting into the left turn lane off Tamiami, Della didn’t indicate.

She got all the way over and headed right, onto Bonita Beach Boulevard. She had ten minutes to go look at the Gulf. It was dark, but enough moon to see water. Her engine was making no coughs or sputters, warm and ready, it could go all day, which prompted Della, instead, to go straight, north.

Della could leave the dream of the child she thought she was carrying when she was thirty-eight, the one she thought was making her abdomen bigger only to find out it was a fibroid and nothing more. She could let go of Steve’s hovering. She could put miles between herself and her aching knees, both needing replacement. Mary felt warm in her hand from her perch above the wad of cash hidden below. Luna could send her what she needed from her apartment, Della’s lease had only two months left.

Mary the doll, like a dousing rod, could point the way up and out of these flood zones. Maybe the water she needed was the Mississippi? Maybe she could head west to New Orleans and go north there, have some oysters, heck, the world was her oyster. The heat from Mary seemed to be agreement.