AVITUS B. CARLE
Within the Orphan Village
In our village, there are no children. Though the men marry women and take them to bed, and though the women settle for the men who propose, their bellies remain empty. Since there are no children in our village, we discover new ways to love. Some men divorce their wives for other men. Some women divorce their husbands for women. Some of us decide to never marry again and some of us detach ourselves from the terms man, woman, husband, and wife.
Outside of our village, there is an orphanage. Even the oldest of us can’t remember when it was built but knows it was always there. We believe the orphanage symbolizes an abundant time. A time when, maybe, we were children. We try to remember how children act. We try to remember ourselves as children, a time when the orphanage wasn’t on the outside of our village. When the windows weren’t all shattered with strips of curtains caught on their glass shard teeth. When the roof wasn’t dotted in bird droppings and the door hadn’t fainted into the mouth of the orphanage, filled with dust and abandoned candle sticks and shoes too small for our feet.
Between our village and the orphanage stands the mayor who proclaims that the orphanage must be destroyed. That the decrepit building only serves as a reminder of our failures. The mayor says, “we are out of options,” that this is our only choice if we ever want a chance to have the children we desire. One of us raises our hand and asks about those of us who don’t want children. The mayor screams that those of us who do not want children are as useless as the orphanage. That they will also be destroyed for they are also a reminder of our failures. Between our village and the orphanage, none of us admit to being failures because none of us feel like we are.
Away from our village, we release our anger through every wooden slat we break. We burn the door. We spit on the shattered windows before we light their tattered curtains on fire. We stand away from the orphanage and listen to the fire break its wooden spine. See how the orphanage spits flames from its mouth, wheezes dust and drools candle wax. How the roof sinks until it’s gone and there is nothing left but ash and smoke.
In our village, there are no children, and we ask the mayor why. Why, when the orphanage is gone, are we still unable to have them? Some of us believe we are failures while others blame the mayor. The oldest of us asks if the reason why we are still without children is because we ask for too many? The youngest of us asks if it is because we ask for too few? In our village, the mayor asks that we wait, that children require patience. That all of us must wait until the smoke clears and, then, the children will come.
Outside our village, there is an orphan who wears a curtain dress. We don’t know who notices her first. We don’t know who asks for her name. She tells us she can’t remember, only that she is lost. Her voice is small but steady, like the ticking clocks in our homes. We try to feed the orphan outside our village, but any food we give her reappears at her feet, unchewed. The mayor tells us that this child is a demon, unworthy of our love. The child cries and some of us go to her but when we try to pull her close, we grasp nothing at all. Some of us believe this child is a sign that, soon, the village will fill with children. Some of us believe she is a curse, that our village was never meant to have them. None of us stop the mayor from sending the little girl away, though all of us watch her go to the spot where the orphanage burned.
Between our village and where the orphanage burned stand children dressed in curtains. More appear every day and we ask who they are, where they come from, what they want. They tell us they don’t know, only that they are lost. The mayor claims that these children must be unwanted so we must not want them as well. That surely these children are a sign that better children are to come. Between our village and where the orphanage burned, the children begin to cry. Though we cannot touch them, we try to comfort them, all while the mayor screams that the reason we have failed in having children of our own is because of these accursed creatures.
Far away from our village we meet without the mayor and decide that he is the curse on our village. We take the curtain clothes from the orphaned children and give them new outfits to wear. We take the curtain clothes and tie the mayor to a wooden beam. We take the mayor tied to a wooden beam and find the farthest point in the deepest hole where no sound or light will reach and we abandon the mayor there, far away from our village.
In our village, there are children who laugh and cry and sleep in our arms. Children who don’t mind that we are one parent or two or more or papa and dad or mommy and mama or the names that we teach them. Those of us who decide not to have children guide the orphans to those of us who do. We don’t know who notices first but, eventually, our children learn to bite and chew and swallow and their food finds its place in their stomachs. Our hands no longer fall through our children and, sometimes, they hug us back.
And, in our village, we know these are the children we always wanted just as we know none of us were ever failures.
Avitus B. Carle (she/her) lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly known as K.B. Carle, her flash has been published in a variety of places including Five South, F(r)iction, Okay Donkey Magazine, Lost Balloon, CHEAP POP, and elsewhere. Avitus’s flash, “Black Bottom Swamp Bottle Woman,” was recently selected as one of Wigleaf’s 2023 Top 50, and her experimental flash, “Abernathy_Resume.docx,” was included in the 2022 Best of the Net anthology. Her story, “A Lethal Woman,” will be included in the 2022 Best Small Fictions anthology. She can be found online at avitusbcarle.com or online everywhere @avitusbcarle.