Anna

Signature Piece— “Up the Roof”

It was my birthday. I was on the roof.
The sun had not exactly been shining into my face. It had been too early. My eyes had snapped open somehow. The hoofbeats picked up speed. The woolen blanket rubbed against my bare arms. There was a crest in the rolling folds near my neck. Mother had put in stitches where it had torn. Wheels creaked, some sort of hooves clattered past the house—horse or ox. Crack of a whip, a loud smack of flesh struck. No humming, no bristles scratching the floor, no knife cutting through to the chopping board.
I padded to the kitchen to be sure. My footsteps were louder, as if my feet had grown overnight. I skipped a little as I hurried back to pull on my favourite green overdress. My fingers fumbled at the many buttons up my throat. Mother did it so much more deftly, but when she was not around, I let a few loose, for moving room. The ladder leaned right next to the back door, its grain clear where it was damp from last night’s shower. A bird’s eye on its rail looked at me where I stood. I had one foot in the garden’s dirt. I had gotten Mother to promise I could try planting something. My other foot was on the uneven threshold. I looked back.
And up. The top of my head was barely at the third rung. Above, there was a fourth rung, a seventh rung, a ninth… It disappeared into the brightening blue. Mother said the ladder was for when men came over to repair our thatched roof. I had never seen any men on our roof. She told me we only need repairs every ten years or so. I thought it leaded elsewhere and I wanted to know where.
I had to stretch my leg up to about waist high to get onto the first rung. My palms felt damp, probably from the leftover rain. I gripped the rails tighter and hauled myself up. The edge of the roof was at my eye level. Yellow-brown, golden in the increasing light, dried straw prickly to when I reached out a finger. For a moment I almost toppled. I had touched our roof!
The giggle went out of me when I saw what lay over the ridge. The roof sloped upwards to the base of the chimney, but suddenly it was not there. The fields were there—sprinkles of yellow were in the green, the first of the rapeseed flowers coming in. A wagon at the mouth of the road. Chestnut horses flicked their tails at its front. The same I had heard in bed? At the other end were white dots over another shade of green. Stray sheep in—That was the church’s backyard was it not? I lay my head on the side of the chimney. It was warming nicely, though the roof I sat on was not yet dry. I could not see the house beneath me. It was me and the roof and the sky and no walls. Now the woman in brown walking down the road, that looked a lot like Mother. The woven basket on her arm was the one she used for eggs and cooking mysteries.
I sat up straighter, waiting for her to notice. She caught something before it hit the floor and stared, a carrot in her right hand. “You are the first!” I called out, “No one’s even looked up!” She lifted the hem of her dress and took quick steps toward me. The carrot was still in her hand. I had better get down.
I knew I would be back up again.