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The Private Records of Flora Walters by Zach Witt Flora kept her diary under the top left corner of her mattress, the one closest to the wall, for extra safety. She figured that the written warning, “The Private Records of Flora Walters” would dissuade those with a sense of honor, and that the small lock would serve to keep out those less morally upright, but that it didn’t hurt to keep the diary itself hidden. Less temptation and more safety overall. She knew about temptation, and had a surprising amount of empathy about it for such a young girl. The details of her thoughts and feeling on the matter were well documented on pages 44 to 49 of her diary, in the subsection headed “Feelings”. According to the text, she first consciously experienced empathy while observing the family dog, Roman, attempt to clamber onto the couch. Roman was an ancient dog, old when Flora was born, mercifully passed some years back, but at the time he was still quietly making a go of it, accepting limitations the way only dogs and saints could. It took him three or four tries each time to get up there, and when he missed, usually clipping the coffee table in the process, Roman sat for a moment and collected himself, readying for another attempt. Flora actively felt the frustration that Roman must be undergoing, the confusion and single-mindedness needed to keep at it. She learned in that moment that people could experience a portion of what other things felt. It wasn’t until some years later, cataloging this memory in her diary that she realized the immensity of this sensation, how multi-faceted and dangerous it was. Naturally, her next entry (pages 50-52) dealt with insight, and how it wasn’t always the great thing grown-ups pretended it was. Flora spent a great deal of time working on her findings, eschewing more typical, childish pursuits. Frankly, she found them a bore, as they served only to distract, giving no greater insight as to her purpose here, instead calmly obsessing over why she was born Flora Walters and not George Washington or Cleopatra or not at all. When Roman the dog died, she didn’t weep, didn’t cling to her mother or ask for a new puppy. Flora watched the family, looking for clues. They acted differently than the last time something died, when the policeman came to the door about her brother. With Roman, her mother didn’t cry, or take off work, or spend the day drinking grown-up drinks that made her sleep. Her father didn’t yell like he had at the policeman, telling him that no, he was wrong, it couldn’t be his son, that he had made a mistake, calling the man lots of bad words, and then, when he had gone, sitting in the armchair in the corner, looking like the wax figures that Flora had seen at the museum on their class trip. When the dog died, her mother just packed up the dog bed in the corner, and put Roman’s dishes in the kitchen cabinet. Her father dug a hole out back, underneath the big yellow bush Flora knew wasn’t theirs, because it was called “For Cynthia”. No long talks from her parents either, just a sympathetic hug here and there, telling her it would be ok in the hollow voices they used now. Flora had gone back and added pages, folded loose-leaf from her school binder, to the section on Death (pages 4-26, and addendum pages 1-4). There were Big Deaths and Little Deaths. This was important to know. Robby was a Big Death, one that made time slow down, or maybe stop all the way, and turned people into different, paler versions of themselves. Flora had sections on good things too. Friends Being Nice, (pages 60-61), Birthday Wishes, (page 73), Relief, (pages 77-78, chiefly detailing her feelings about a substitute teacher in Mr. Wynn’s class the day of a poorly studied for exam), but the older she got the more she came to realize that happy feelings didn’t need as much analysis, were easier to understand on the surface, and probably didn’t hold as many surprises as the sad ones. Flora began to get discouraged in her research; too many things were good and bad at the same time, or too big to find the right words for. New entries became rare. When it came time to move, years later, when Mom had decided that she’d rather be on her own, and Dad couldn’t see the point of living in a big house with only two people, the diary was little more than a familiar lump in the bed. Flora encountered it with mild teenage disdain, like a treasured childhood blanket or kindergarten drawing, blue line at top for sky, green line at bottom for earth, triangle on square for house, four stick people for family. The key was long gone, but Flora found the lock easy enough to break, one swift “Crack!” against the corner of her bedside table. She flipped through the pages, noticing the writing becoming more legible and adult as time passed, eventually tapering off to angry scribbles and blank pages. Flora grabbed a nearby pen, and carefully added a short note to the bottom of the last page. She closed the diary, sprung lock swinging on one busted hinge, and tossed “The Private Records of Flora Walters” into a nearby cardboard box, where it landed with a soft, unassuming thump. |
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