Sunlight

Light through the branches of the thorn bushes outside the window plays on the creamy stone floor.
"Ugh, scratch that," the woman says, "it sounds like the opening page to a romance novel."
She stares at the floor for a good bit, waiting for words that don't bore her to come to mind.
Words that aren't in her own voice. At least not in her voice as she's known it.
She tries to think in different voices. All she gets is Marge Simpson.
She listens to the music that fills the room, soft and rhythmic. Indian, it sounds like.
She stretches under the cover and imagines for a minute that the sheet is a sari, and she dances to make the folds of the fabric shimmer.
Her cat looks at her like she is mad.
She settles for waving her arms and moving her feet to the music, still laying in bed. Splaying and curling her fingers in wave patterns, striving for grace.
Invalid dancing.
Lazy dancing.
The only kind of dancing there was before the discovery of the coffee bean.
"What do I want my voice to sound like now?" she asks the ceiling.
The ceiling replies by whispering, then laughing - in the voice of her Aunt Pinky.
She hasn't thought of Aunt Pinky in years. The memories she has of the slight, dark woman with the raunchy laugh and a fondness for Brandy Alexanders have faded, they are worn and monochrome.
Racing around the driveway loop with her, almost always losing.
Being snuck pieces of fruitcake - stop wincing - the homemade kind that has sopped up four times its original weight in fine Haitian rum.
Hunting for earthworms to gross out Grandma.
A talent for cussing that could stop Grandpa's war veteran buddies in their tracks and send them back to their cars.
Being taught to read on her knee at age three.
Calico dresses. Yes, in this era.
Being told jokes that she wouldn't understand for some years, and then would make her blush.
What remains most about Aunt Pinky in her mind is the way she loved life. The way she met it head on, never appeared to be afraid of anything, her completely unbridled love.
The woman's thoughts also remember things Aunt Pinky tried to tell her, tried to get her to understand.
Why a woman will stay with a man like that.
That nothing is forever.
That dreams are just dreams, and screaming is rarely worth the trouble it brings.
She was trying to teach her how to endure, without being erased.
It was all she could do.
Aunt Pinky wasn't her real aunt, of course, as people loved to point out.
Just in case she hadn't noticed. There were whispers about it.
"I didn't grow up around people one could describe as socially tolerant in any way," the woman muttered, still dancing with her fingers.
There always was a sense of mystery about why Grandma and Pinky were so inseparable.
Hints of a scandal.
Neither woman ever cared a whit about the whispers, and so she didn't either.
Pinky was one of three strong women in the woman's life.
They tried to teach her things, things her mother never would.
Ignore the scandals.
Endure the bad men.
Enjoy the good men.
Laugh with the children.
Drink the rum. Drink his rum, too.
Cackle under the moonlight when the coyotes sing.
The music in the room has changed, something with heavier drums, an undercurrent of flute.
She shifts her movements accordingly, and goes back to dancing under the sheet, let the cat think what she will.
The sunlight and shadows played across the floor - yes, the creamy stone floor - in time to the drums.
The woman never turned on her stereo this morning.