Golden Dreams

The Assignment: Write a Flash Fiction piece using the words, button, fly, plant, trick

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Golden Dreams

When my sister Bonita Kim Lee legally changed her name to Virgin Mary Lee, I, Lily Kim Lee, was amused. Our mother was not.

“She embarrass me,” our mother cried. “What judge make this happen?”

“Probably some atheist,” I laughed.

“She trick me,” our mother yelled. “She say she going to be nun. She confuse me.”

Now I’m ROFL.

“Get up,” our mother screamed. “Or I plant foot in ass.”

My immigrant mother has a way with words.

I know why my sister changed her name: She’s a high class stripper who goes by the name Virgin Mary. It brings her tons of greenbacks in her G-string on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s that whole Madonna/Whore Complex thing, you know? She lap dances on the fly, as it were, while she’s wearing this slinky blue veil and very little else. I think it’s hilarious. My mother would think it’s sick and perverted. An affront to the family and a sin that will send her number one daughter straight to hell. Guys seem to like it. They’re making the Virgin Mary stinking rich.

V.M. has a long range plan: she’s saving money to go to college to study geology. Specifically, vulcanology, the study of volcanoes. Her dream is to stand on the edge of a volcano crater while it’s erupting. She says you can wear protective clothing so you don’t get burned. “It would be like being born of the earth as part of the earth is being born,” she says. “The raw power and beauty. Scarlet lava flowing to the sea.” But I think if she were standing there, she’d probably strip off her protective clothing and dive naked into the river of lava. It would tempt her and she would go. That’s how she is.

She’s also saving money to help me go to college in a few years. I’m a math and computer whiz, so I can probably get some scholarships since I live in a single parent, poor family. But any help she can give will be appreciated. So I’m keeping her secret.

I ask my sister how she can bear to be with all those men while they…they…I can’t even say it. She says she thinks of her future – volcanoes. I say that’s kind of sick in itself! She just looks at me with a blank stare on her beautiful face as if she doesn’t get the connection.

When I tell her how hard it is for me not to let our mother know about the stripping, she says, “Button it up, kid. Remember, I’m your lifeline out of the trash heap and into the world of golden dreams.”