Georgie Sunshine
When Georgie turns five, more than anything, she wants a Baby Alive.
Baby Alive, soft and clean, she can drink, she can eat…
She knows the song from Saturday morning television by heart, and whispers it to the small bundle of still damp bath towel she gathers up into bed with her, into arms, cradles in the dark, her index finger tracing figure eights along the satin monogramed initials, GO.
…I love you Baby Alive.
No one has ever told Georgie they love her, though she most definitely knows what love is.
Instead, for her birthday, she gets the Sunshine Family Dolls, the adults, more to the point: the silent parents with their creepy big eyes and high foreheads; their childless, hippie house filled with drawn Russian novels, painted, flat encaustics and far too many spider plants, frozen, hung, swinging in sticker macrame. Activism in two dimensions, by Mattel. The card reads: Straw dogs, Georgie. Straw dogs. Happiness and freedom abound. Da & Mims.
Georgie is to be the lone kid here too, the Sunshine Family baby, she gleans.
And although her heart still wants for her loved, lost treasure, she grows to feel familiarity and something akin to fondness for this gift. Mr. Sunshine admiring his garden of unnaturally perennial cosmos and his eternally clean and gassed up family van as though there are awards for this type of caring. Mrs. Sunshine making yogurt in the kitchen, always a step to the side of the times.
When Georgie cuts her pinkie finger crawling across the metal floorboards, the Sunshines stand unmoved, unmoving, pupils wide, watching the droplets of her blood, her life fleck their fringed, brown braided rag rug. She wants to cry. She wants to reach up for someone, but recognizes the empty space. Sorry, Georgie says, and mops the mess up with the sleeve of her white turtleneck sweater. Sorry, she says again.
On Georgie’s sixth birthday, she receives a yellow basket filled with crafting supplies. Matière. The card is blank. She glues down three spider plant babies, reaching out, curling out from the wall on last year’s present and wonders, what is it to create, to originate, propagate, cultivate? These pups, though unruly, are unreal and unchanged from this same time last year. The spider mama looks a little worse for wear; flowerless, her three hangers on, now fixed, remain in no rush for the root.
This very same day, Georgie’s best friend, Kat, drops her own Baby Alive into the creek behind her home, where it floats downstream far enough never to drink, never to eat again. It is no longer clean, blonde hair matted and algae stained, rust metastasizing, oozing from its holes turns softness, touch, into an at your own risk experience.
Kat has never loved her baby more. And for this, Georgie is grateful.
Copyright, Kimberley Orton, 2021
Publications, Productions/Readings & Samples
Poetry
Contemporary Verse 2 (CV2), Fall 2021 Issue, “Louise”
The West End Phoenix, November 2021, The Mimico Issue, “mimico/here on endless sound”
League of Canadian Poets (Fresh Voices and Poetry Pause), March/April 2021, “/fray/“
Book of Matches, A Literary Journal, Issue 3, September 2021, “slide”
Book of Matches, A Literary Journal, Issue 3, September 2021, “cinematic moments I remember in my bones/a rough guide to Creemore”
Arc Poetry Magazine, November 2020, finalist (“slide”) for Arc’s November Award of Awesomeness, Judge: Nancy Jo Cullen
Understorey Magazine, Issue 18, Fall 2020, “Pretty Corners Catch The Eye”
The Daily Drunk, July 2020, “For James Fenton (Respectfully, I Disagree)
Creative Non-Fiction
The Daily Drunk, December 2020, lyric essay, “someone’s house party in the beaches”