Lianne Spidel

"I gave birth to a princess," her mother once told me, and I thought of my son pouring his Grape-Nuts in the garage so as not to wake her, of the moment her baby, seeing her now a separate entity, seemed not to breathe, refused to blink her sapphire eyes. I remembered again last night as she and I crossed a Florida street, the caution light running gold streamers over the dark sweep of her hair, when a young man coming toward us halted midway a moment, stunned, before moving on. So what is this Divine Right—less than bloodlines, or more? More than symmetry of face or a silver necklace nestled at a flawless throat, the nerve to send back bad food in restaurants, more than the big, loopy handwriting of the generous spirit? Call it bravery, that eager readiness in the eyes, the quality of the light shining there. Call it blessed assurance. Today, pony-tailed, she luxuriates in sun, opulent in a hot pink bikini. In deference the ocean leans away, a backdrop. I find myself bent, studying the shore for perfect shells to lay at her feet—cat's paw, prickly cockle, angel wing. Call it homage, more or less.

Minutes before the rain begins I always waken, listening to the world hold its breath, as if a phone had rung once in a far room or a door had creaked in the darkness. Perhaps the genes of some forebear startle in me, some tribal warrior keeping watch on a crag beside a loch, miserable in the cold, though I think it is a woman's waiting I have come to know, a Loyalist hiding in the woods, muffling the coughing of her child against her linen skirts, her dark head bent over his, her fear spent somewhere else in time, leaving only this waiting, and I hope she escaped with her child, and I suppose she did. If not, I wouldn't be lying here awake, alive, listening for the rain to begin so that she can run, the sound of her footsteps lost, the sight of them blotted away on the path.