Eileen in Her Garden

by Ben Sloan

Instead of snakes, a mass of black-eyed susans growing in the place of her hair, medusa-like, rock concert audience-like, hands clapping above their heads, she lives in a mobile home on a dirt road surrounded by a hundred dusty orange trees. Upon release after six years in prison, she was introduced by a second cousin to a forlorn wealthy couple in Los Angeles she now works for as a surrogate mother, hoping it goes well and she can find her way to helping out other infertile households. She testified before the jury about her role, pointing a pistol at a clerk in a bridal shop while her boyfriend, whom she loved, or thought she did, was busy in a back room raping a customer—a turn of events, the rape, she was in the dark about at the time. Standing among flowers, hand angled visor-like against the ricocheting light, she knows she is, feels she is, growing at once larger and smaller. It’s weird. Given how tangled up and confused they are, how can you ever truly know which yellow head belongs on which green neck?

6S

Ben Sloan has been published in The Tishman Review, Pembroke Magazine, Rumble Fish Quarterly, and the Rabbit Catastrophe Review. A teacher at Piedmont Virginia Community College, the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, and Buckingham Correctional Center, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.