The Red and Black Boa

The red and black boa startled me. I gasped in surprise. I never thought I'd find this! It was exactly what I needed for that feathery costume I wanted to make for my 6-year-old grand-daughter. But who had put the boa in this old basement trunk? My mother? When would she have worn it? And why? 

Though mom had often dreamed of being on stage, I knew she’d had never stepped foot on one. Yet, this red and black boa was just the kind of thing a dancer or performer would wear. For a second, I closed my eyes envisioning mom dancing around beneath red and green spotlights, tossing her golden hair and smiling becomingly. Ah, she was singing too! Her rich, melodious voice rang out across the theatre. The audience was mesmerized and mom knew it. She was in her element, confident, beautiful, happy! They had come to see her, only her, and she was giving them everything they craved and more. 

I opened my eyes again and the heart-warming vision faded. As nice as it was, I knew it had never happened. I picked up the soft boa. Little red and black feathers loosened and floated gently down onto the dirty concrete basement floor. The boa was old. The more I touched it, the more feathers dislodged themselves. It most definitely hadn't been my grandmother's either. She was long dead and had never left Poland. But mom had. When WW2 ended, dad had brought her and me, just a baby, to Australia to begin a new life. 

“Australia is a land of milk and honey,” my father had told her. “We will have a good life in this country. There is nothing for us in Poland. Nothing!”

But for mom, that sunburnt country and her new life with a husband she didn't love, and a baby she never wanted, was anything but milk and honey. 

As a 13-year-old child in Poland, before the German soldiers had snatched her away in the night to work in the prison camps, mom had loved to dance. She was a natural, with rhythm in every part of her body. But after she married dad, whenever she danced with him, her movements were stiff, unnatural in case she stepped on his toes: 

“Watch what you’re doing you stupid cow. The man leads, not the woman!”

She had loved to sing too. Occasionally, she even sang to me, but as the years went by, the music went out of her heart.

“Mama, would you sing me a song please? I love listening to you sing…”

“I don’t feel like it Jadzia. I’m too tired. Leave me alone.” 

But there was one song that lit up mom’s eyes when it came on the radio. It was that old classic, “Smile” from the Charlie Chaplin movie, Modern Times. When Mom heard that, I’d catch her humming along to the words that reminded her to smile even though her heart was aching. And, from the look on her face most of the time, her heart ached too often.

As mom drew closer to her last days on earth, she would tune into AM 740, the “old people’s station” as she called it and her eyes still lit up when Nat King Cole came on and reminded her to "SMILE". After all, mom knew a lot about smiling: she'd been practising since the first time Dad slapped her face when she was 18 and told her to smile when he was talking to her. She’d smiled when he commanded her to kneel down and kiss his little finger. She had thought he was kidding so she smiled, even laughed. But he wasn't kidding. He’d wiped the smile off her face with a kick in her swollen pregnant belly. She’d smiled when she served him the dinner she'd taken hours to prepare and he spat it at her asking what kind of garbage was she feeding him? She’d smiled as he took her paycheques and gave her a $1 a week allowance for being a good wife. And she’d even smiled when he called her a filthy whore and a stupid bitch with nothing between her ears. Only a smile and complete subservience was acceptable.

I looked again now at that red and black feather boa in the trunk. How did it get there? It must have been mom's but why on earth did she have it? When did she buy it and why? 

‘Of course!’ I said out loud to no-one. “That’s it!”

After dad had passed away, mom started to live...never quite the way she wanted to since, after all, she was now far too old for dancing and singing on a stage. But at last she was free to go where she wanted and spend what she wanted. No more $1, $5, or $10 allowances generously doled out to her by the man who had ruled her life and controlled the purse strings for over 50 years. 

Mom’s old friends, the “girls” from the factory began urging her to come out with them. She was hesitant at first, but after a few trips with them to the local casino, mom started smiling again. Really smiling…from the heart. 

“I had such a nice time with the girls, Jadzia. I played on the pokies, had a fantastic buffet lunch, even a glass of wine.” 

She giggled…almost like she’d done something naughty…and I shared her girlish giggles. I could almost see my young mother again, and my heart filled with joy at her renaissance as she recounted her indulgence in the simple pleasures other women took for granted. For the first time in over 50 years, she was truly enjoying herself. 

She’d also come home from an entire week away with bags of "stuff" that she'd purchased when the “girls” took her shopping. Neither she, nor any of us needed what she purchased, but she bought things just because she liked them and thought we might like them too. One week it was a ceramic doll for my adult daughter who'd long ago stopped collecting ceramic dolls. Next time it was an infant's crocheted cap and scarf, but there were no longer any infants in our small family. Another time, she carted home two sets of satin sheets for her own bed, but complained crankily that 

“…they’re too slippery to sleep on! I’ll fall out of bed!”

And she did that more than once too when the chemo treatments started. 

Every shopping trip resulted in another pair of shoes that were pretty, but pinched her swollen feet; or a pair of slacks that looked exactly like the ones she'd purchased on a previous trip but the elasticized waistband on those had been “too tight” and the legs too long for her 4'10" frame. She'd spend a week cutting and hemming the slacks by hand, her eyes blurry with cataracts, while she simultaneously watched old videos with Jeanette McDonald or Jane Powell or Carmen Miranda singing and dancing on the big screen. And she'd smile, living the life she had so wanted through these beautiful women of film. 

The red and black boa. Yes, I remembered it now. Mom had bought that for Victoria, my younger daughter, the one who did grow up to become the singer/dancer mom so wanted to be. She had thought Victoria might be able to use it in one of her shows, and even if she couldn't, well it was pretty, wasn't it? And besides, now, with “him” gone, she could buy whatever she wanted, right? So why not! There was no-one to tell her it was useless, to berate her for spending hard-earned money, or to ask her why on earth she'd want this or that silly thing. All that mattered was that it was pretty… and she liked it. That’s all. Simple. And it made her smile. 

I put the boa back in the trunk and closed the lid. I'd have to find something else to use for that costume. Even though mom was gone, I wasn't ready to see something that had made mom smile used frivolously, even if it was falling apart and useless. 

After all, what was useless about something that made a mother smile? I’d found a treasure and as far as I was concerned, that red and black boa was priceless.