“Seemed Pleased” by Malena Morling
Just after the plane lifted
off the ground with all of its
weight, a small hand, its nails with
partially chipped off red nail
polish, worked itself back
from in between the seats in
front of me and sort of waved.
The next I saw of the person
with the hand was a blue eye
peering back at me and then
the girl stood up on her seat
and smiled. She had brown, just
above the shoulder length hair
and bangs and she wore a blue
and white striped sundress. A
red rose of the same material
as the dress was attached to
the middle of the upper
lining which was also red.
“My mother is dead,” she told
me suddenly. “She is already gone–
She is in heaven.” The girl seemed
pleased, almost proud at that
moment, to be able to inform
me of this, perhaps as a
handy way of meeting.”This
is my dad,” she said, and pointed
to the back of his head of
blond thinning rather unruly
cap of hair. “My dad.” She
exclaimed again and again
and hugged his face with all
of her might until she knocked
his glasses off and they ended
up in the aisle. Then she introduced
her brother, engrossed in a book:
“This is Marcus, he is eight.
I am four and a half.” And then
she proceeded to demonstrate
the workings of a doodle pad.
On the cover of it was a clown
riding in an airplane waving
his hands in the clouds. And that’s
when the trays of food arrived and the girl
whose name I never learned was told
by her father to turn around
and sit down and eat what was
being unwrapped for her on her tray.