dianne darby
gloves

this is a memory from a photo of someone's wedding. the gloves are white or another pale colour which always comes out as white. the church is very black. the gloves are not dramatic. they do not snake seductively up the arms like the gloves of filmstars in strapless velvet dresses in a pool of silver light. no. these are short and neat and white in the dark of the church doorway.all the bridesmaids are wearing them. they make their hands look as if they’ve been severed at the wrist. the gloves are to disguise the replacement hands or are perhaps themselves the replacement, for how much nicer they are, kitten soft and so much tidier than those nasty old hands furious with whorls and loops that over the years fill with dirt from peeling potatos, that blister and crack and cut and slap and go veiny and warty and callousy and knobbly. i can’t remember which aunts or great aunts of which cousins are in the photo, all i can picture are the gloves holding snowy bouquets or shiny handbags that snap neatly shut with gold clasps. the handbags always arrive with the gloves. with their snickety click fasteners that bite down yappety-terrier hard snap, the women holding their tongues, snap,

pursing their lips, snap, folding their arms, snap, saying nowt, snap clickety snap shut. the handbags with their buckety interiors of slippery fabric smelling of compact powder and mints.soon the great aunts will gather for funerals with their walking sticks, haughty in their surgical collars, holding their snap shut handbags in neatly gloved hands, any remaining husbands bow their heads and follow them into the front room. the great aunts seat themselves to discuss arrangements. the handbags sit by their feet obedient and silent, the great aunts eat biscuits and the husbands gather in unobtrusive clumps. the younger ones are quick to make excuses, they have children and cannot bear the darkness and the room is very dark. colour is fading fast, the overgrown roses and deep green privet in the front garden closes in on the window, light slips into a tangle of undergrowth and net curtain. when it is very dark and this memory has become something else. the women place their handbags on their arthritic knees and unfasten the clasps. they take out little packages wrapped in faded pink or smokey white tissue paper and carefully unwrap them, they cup the little pairs of hands and tiny tongues in their smoothly gloved hands like baby birds and while it is dusk and hardly anyone is looking, they let them fly around the room clapping and singing.