Jelly

“Tell me, Nina,” Aunt Sophie’s voice interrupted Nina’s train of thought. It was mid-afternoon and Nina was sitting in the kitchen while poking her jelly with a fork. The crystal bowl and the blue plastic fork brought her back to the past. So often she wished she did things differently but more so, she wished her life was different. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing much,” Nina paused. “Just the past.”

“Going back to the past isn’t always a good thing unless you have a good past,” her aunt joined her on the opposite side. “So which past are you at?”

“Unfortunately, not the good one,” Nina sighed.

“I can’t believe the jelly I made has such strong impact on you,” she teased. Nina smiled. “So why that certain past?”

Nina had always been close with her aunt Sophie. Although they were aunt and niece, they were just five years apart from each other. Their relationship was unique as aunt Sophie was more like a big sister to Nina than an aunt. They practically grew up together and spending way too much time imagining another life. They were always there for each other no matter how good or bad the situation was.

“Well, I was cleaning out the storeroom last night when I came across this,” Nina placed her blue bag on her knees and unzipped it. She fished for something in her bag and took out a photograph. “You know this photo, right?”

Aunt Sophie took the photo and analysed it. It was a photo of a man and a woman in the garden. The woman was holding a red rose. They were staring into each other’s eyes and they had beautiful smile. They looked happy. The woman in the photo was the mirroring image of Aunt Sophie and Nina.

“Your mum looked so happy here,” Aunt Sophie let out a sad smile. “What I would do to see her smile again.” There was a moment of silence as both of them took a few seconds to think of Nina’s mother. “I haven’t seen this photo, Nina. You know this man?”

“Well he isn’t my father,” Nina tensed up immediately at that question. “He is…”

“A friend,” Aunt Sophie completed her sentence instead. At those words, she could tell that Nina wasn’t too happy that she labelled the man in the photo as a friend. “Nina, this is something that I don’t understand. Why are you against Norman?”

Nina stared at the photograph and froze. For years she was against Norman for a good reason. She never told anyone how she felt about Norman. Whenever someone talked about him, Nina automatically travelled back to the old house they once lived in. In that memory she was always on the veranda just finishing the jelly with a blue fork. She sat on the rattan rocking horse while rocking it back and forth as she ate that dessert. She travelled to places in her imagination and she remembered making a mental note to share it with her mother during dinner.

“He destroyed everything,” Nina whispered as she lowered her head.

She remembered hearing her parents and Norman arguing. She stopped rocking the horse and eavesdropped on their conversation but it made no sense to her as she was just a child. Voices were raised and it only ended with the slamming of the door.

“What do you mean?”

“Based on very little knowledge,” Nina started. “I was just a child when I heard my parents arguing with him. He’d come to our house during tea time and one afternoon, something went wrong. The argument started and within weeks, it became so heated that grandparents took me to their home. That was when we started staying in the same room.”

“I remember that time, “Aunt Sophie smiled. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Nina just nodded.

“This is the truth of what happened as I was a little bit older than you. I heard your grandparents whispered in their room at night. All these while you’ve portrayed Norman as the villain in your memory but that isn’t true. To be honest, Norman was the one who helped.”