Jude Potts

Content Warning

child abduction

When I was maybe four or five;

I studied the transformative power of an audacious slash of crimson, the dark flutter of lashes, the cat-flicks of ink-lined drama. I sat on a battered trunk full of bent wands, tatty silk handkerchiefs and sequinned leotards, watching my mother until I was needed. Learning magic of my own.

I knew the wistful sigh hidden in the heady, chypre trail lingering long after Mama slipped into her costume and began her performance. 

Before she powdered and curled, she was Mama, soft as a lullaby. Once nails and lips turned scarlet, she was a character from a tale I never wanted to read. Hard and hungry, beguiling but cruel as summer.

Afternoons, while Mama sweet-talked out of paying rent, I was busy too.

Hair in ringlets, cherubic cheeks pinched pink, I stood outside the tent performing card tricks. Stopping maternal-looking ladies in shiny shoes with matching handbags ‘Find the lady,… lady?’ I called, all blue-eyed and shining. A Mexican Turnover isn’t easy with tiny, pudgy hands, so doe eyes and a pouty little smile or a cocky wink and a ‘better luck next time’ kept them looking adoringly at my ringlets and dimples, not my chubby fingers. 

Flirt and giggle wins the bet.

#

When I was maybe seven or eight;

I learned to become invisible, to slip backstage and clamber into the tiny box where my mother hid as my father plunged it full of swords. I’d crawl inside while my mother, who’d slipped out moments before, disappeared backstage to flirt with the stage manager and drink his gin.

My father spun the box, threw open the doors, Mama vanished. He’d pull out the swords, spin it again and I’d slip in, for him to reveal me in Mama’s place, wearing a miniature version of her spangled leotard. The grand finale of their show. The swords and I brought the house down every night.

Don’t show your hand until you know it’s the winner.

#

When I was fourteen;

The nails and lips were always red now and layers of mint and Mitsouko over the telltale medicinal tang to Mama’s morning breath. 

Mama taught me to tilt my pelvis, hips drawing an infinite figure eight across the room, silk-wrapped thighs whispering to gentleman callers who seized and squeezed, looting booty. I gambled for dangerous stakes. 

Mama showed me how to rest my hand briefly on an arm, arch an eyebrow, and give a wistful sigh. She taught me to hold, then drop, a gaze, giggle, then walk away on heels that needed an age advisory notice and made a skirt too tight for hips as young as mine, cling to curves just bursting into bud.

Mama taught me men were easy marks if I played them right. But she didn’t teach me the rules of this game, didn’t name it or explain the stakes I was playing for with my swayback strut and parted glossy lips.

I left just a pile of scarlet-stained sequins, the night I disappeared. Mama drowned herself in gin on the nights that followed, plunging the swords drunkenly into the trunk again and again. She threw back the cover to the hidden compartment, sobbing every time it remained stubbornly empty.

Mama clung to Papa, her broken nails unpainted, lips bare and chapped. Papa remained silent, just as he always did. No magician could conjure up a daughter lost on a hand of cards. 

Only bet what you can afford to lose.

Lover of whimsy and the ridiculous, and the dark compelling shadows. Doesn’t believe in the ghosts of people, but believes in the ghosts of places. Can’t bear Santa. Addicted to tea (mine’s black, no sugar, touch of cold water at the end). Talks to every cat she meets, even the really rude ones. Swears in vivid technicolour. More charming than she looks. Has said she will create a website for herself if she gets one more thing published.