Echoes of Her

Lola Goskov

There was a small pool of dark, red blood. It dripped down to the table, just missing the gingham square of fabric that was spread out next to the sewing machine. She lifted her finger to her mouth, dropping the sewing needle onto the carpet floor and sucking on the wound as the droplet laid next to the material. She watched with doe-like awe as her Baba cut and manoeuvred the fabric around the machine. 

It was hard for her to imagine a product of beauty coming from this harsh environment — a dim room with rickety windows, haunted by the sounds of the wind moaning. A loud machine, spitting needles in and out of its tip as it ate the fabric. A blood-stained table and a sad, little girl suckling her fingertip. 

Her wounded finger was dressed in a bandage as her Baba presented her with a new sundress. The corners of the square fabric became the puffed sleeves, the edges became the collar, and the thin scraps she deemed useless transformed into a waist belt. She watched as beauty was born amongst the ugly.

This was the day she fell in love with being a girl. 

A loincloth covering is tied around her underbelly. She rubs her swollen stomach as she stands, feeling her feet squish into the wet mud below, leaving their imprints as they track her movements. Her sister bends over, cupping the moist mud in her palm. She smears it like paint upon her sister’s body, covering her form with a layer of clay. 

Under the sun’s stress they walk, the clay cracking as they move around their landscape. They gather, not only provisions, but as sisters. They nurture, not just as sisters but as women. 

In El Castillo Cave, the sun sets, and the clay is washed off. She warms her feet by the fire’s flame before her fingertip touches the red paint.

She stains the walls with her stories. 

Her fingers pressed into the pan of makeup with too much force. The glittery eyeshadow broke like pieces of an impossible puzzle. Her fingers were covered with shimmer as she smeared the pigment onto her eyelids. 

Taking the tube of mascara she stole from her aunt, she blinked into the bristles of the wand, coating her lashes in layers of navy blue. 

Her two friends leaned close, positioning themselves in front of the mirror. One of them remarked how her parents won’t let her play with makeup. The friends giggled as they watched the girl apply blush to the apples of her cheeks. They explained how they joined Thursday night football together. How they didn’t ask her because their parents said she was too much of a princess to get her knees muddy. 

All she had wanted was to be a princess. Yet, something about their words made it feel dirty or wrong, like a stain on her personality.

If she got her knees muddy, would she taint the parts of her life she loved so much? If she remained a princess, would she stay left behind?

She hung, suspended between the line of mud and eyeshadow.

The blue pigment on her eyelids is smeared. The kohl bleeds into the wetness of her eyes, creating spots of black she tries to blink away. Her son, Caesarion, cradles her leg as she weeps into her palm. She doesn’t open her door. Her tears stay hidden behind her son. Her grief would be a telltale sign that she is too much a woman to rule. 

She marries again, another man with another sword. She lets herself love and be loved. 

She holds her husband in her arms, not in an embrace of tenderness but of agony. He cups her face, hands encrusted with mud, as he bleeds onto her chiton. His last wish to be graced by her love once more. 

Men bleed on the battlefield; women bleed in love. 

Her grief can no longer be kept behind her royal walls. She swallows the venom of the snake. 

She sat at the table, twisting the plastic ring around her finger. Cardboard pieces of the Christmas bonbons were scattered around the table. Her uncle stretched and declared it was nap time. She was alone with the survivors of Christmas lunch, a twelve-year-old surrounded by those pushing fifty. 

The conversation turned to the newest entertainment craze. Her parents had declared her too young to watch it, a television series about a throne made of iron. 

She listened as her family tore apart a character named Sansa. 

‘A real girly-girl princess that one.’

‘Always crying. She is too emotional, just suck it up.’

Candlewax melts onto the wood of her desk, extinguishing the last light of the flame.

The faint sound of the lute from the closest tavern keeps not only her body but also her mind awake.

On nights like these her mind can wander without filter, her eyes can see without the veiling. In the silence, her stories can scream.

She lights another candle, touching her ink to the paper. 

Blood to ink, bleeding on the page. 

She writes of love first, then of love again. 

Later in life she writes of Joan of Arc. 

Her words are lost within the history books. When she lays cold at her burial site, no one remembers her or her love poems. 

But the world remembers her stories of Joan. 

Winter announced its arrival that grim Sunday. The sun shielded itself from the world behind melancholic, grey clouds, and the air became icy. Kids passing by her window practised lifting imaginary cigarettes to their mouths and exhaling.

It was one of those days where she allowed herself to drift through the house in her nightgown until noon. She sprayed her sheets with lavender mist and her hair with rose oil. Her tea was Earl Grey with a teaspoon of honey. An incense stick burned near her window as she cosied herself in bed. 

She continued to watch her television series; one episode rolled into another. 

Night fell. 

She stared at her computer, tears ran down her face as she watched as Sansa was raped. 

The leaves move slow in the wind. From side to side, they perform different steps of the same dance. 

Branches try to keep them secure, yet their earthy green colour fades and they shrivel.

They fly before they fall. 

She arrives in England that afternoon. Light-headed and dazed, she meets her husband in the gardens. 

They say she is not the standard of beauty for a queen. They cut, slice and dissect every measurement and feature.

To be a woman is to navigate life as both audience and act.

From autumn leaves falling, to the sticky air of summer nights. She gives birth to their first son. 

Their love remains warm through all seasons. Fifty-seven autumns pass. 

She is told she is a true lady. England feels safe with her in their garden. 

Their king is losing his sight. His environment is only the beginning of what he can no longer see. Violence becomes his only garden to explore. 

Locked away from the world, he sits with his thoughts. She must learn to rule now, not the kingdom but their family. 

She nurtures her autumn leaves. 

She sat alone in class, the frosty months of winter had taken her friends by storm. Each day they dropped, falling victim to one of winter’s many sicknesses. 

Her teacher handed out feedback on her writing piece. The red ink down the bottom of the page burnt itself into her memory.

‘It’s 2020, do you really want your protagonist to choose marriage instead of fighting in the war? I’ve attached some resources about strong female characters in literature here… They may be useful to develop your protagonist more.’

She thought about her own dreams, how she had her wedding dress picked out since she was ten. How she longed for the slow mornings where the sunshine peeked through the window, her children wrestling at her feet. She was reminded of the baby names she had immortalised in her notebook, they played through her head—Theodore, Avery, Rowena, Belle. They repeated.

She opened her laptop and searched ‘strong feminine characters’.  

She stared at the top result: ‘top 20 most girlboss characters in film and TV’. 

Did her character have to be a remarkable warrior? Were women only valued today if they appealed to the masculine? If they achieved the extraordinary?

Was there strength in femininity? She was sure there was, yet the world had forgotten it.

She hung there suspended once more, between the line of mud and eyeshadow.

Theodore, Avery, Rowena, Belle.

She meets him again at the diner. He points out how her chin is smeared with whipped cream. Leaning in, he wipes it clean with his thumb. Their laughter fills the room, a sound as sweet as the milkshakes they sip. 

The jukebox plays her favourite song on repeat, his loose change funds her smile. 

They are married, not in black and white, but silver-tone.

She makes milkshakes, topped with whipped cream and cherries. She cleans the house to the tune of her favourite song. She dresses her children in matching attire, capturing the moment through a black-and-white picture. 

She does this not out of duty but out of love. 

She is surrounded by it. 

She is happy.

The chair in the waiting room was stained with pink liquid. The poster on the wall read something about children’s fiction.

It wasn’t long before she was called inside by an older lady. She sat opposite the woman. 

Conversation flowed between the two. They picked apart her resume, they spoke of teamwork and quick-learning, and then of time management.

‘Where do you see yourself in ten years?’

It was a cliché question. She did not know what she wanted from life, where she hoped to go, what ambitions she wished to manifest into reality. 

But her heart knew what she wanted most. It was the same thing she had wanted since she was five years old, since her finger bled onto her Baba’s table.

She wanted a white wedding. She wanted the house with a picket fence, she wanted children, lots of them. She wanted love. Every form of it. She wanted that to be the centre of her world.

She was reminded of the princess movies she grew up watching, how most have been changed to teach the new generation a girl’s purpose is not finding love.

It scared her to admit how much she wanted a life like the old princesses. It scared her how much of herself she saw in them. Their softness, their elegance, the beauty they sought in the tainted world around them, and their desire to fill their hearts with so much love that it may shatter. If the world had no place for women like that anymore, what did she have to offer it?

She wanted there to be a place for the feminine in the world, a place for herself between the black and white. A place between the mud and an eyeshadow palette. A place where she could feel confident in her femininity. And a place where she didn’t feel isolated because of that.

Was that something women were allowed?

When the afternoon sun begins to soften, she returns home.

She greets her love with a kiss and a cup of tea as he comes back from work. 

His neck is stained with red. Her marks of love lay upon his olive skin.  

She feels soft.

There is softness in her mind. There is a softness to her body.

Syncing with her emotions, she cries.

In the shower, lavender scented steam rises. Her hands brush her stomach and arms. Their softness both distresses and comforts her. 

Curls form as her wet hair begins to dry. They take their shape. Bold as they spiral. Hair is said to hold memory. No matter the ways she burns or muddies it, her curls will always return.

Her femininity is not her weakness. Just as it never was for the women who came before her. 

She lets herself choose love.

She lets herself find comfort between the line and in the softness.

Lola Goskov is a creative writing student at RMIT. She was born and raised in Geelong. Lola has a special interest in both fiction and creative non-fiction with a passion for exploring a wide range of themes through a romantic writing style. She enjoys reading and being creative and is lucky enough to love her day job where she works from home as a nail technician.