Dodie Bellamy
Family Jewels
Mardi is a suspense sex mystery. She stops before a poster stapled to the trunk of a
palm tree. It reads: Each of us is born with a share of the family jewels. Everyone
except Mardi, she thinks. She dresses in a blonde French twist and a tropical-green suit.
Her satin girdle swishes against the tropical-green gabardine of her pencil skirt. This is
the image she’s going for, contained, repressed. In other words, irresistible. She stares
off in the distance as she moves across the island, taking, taking. A man with dark hair
witnesses her persistent filching, mostly money, but also emeralds from the local mine,
and an occasional tube of lipstick. He thinks he’s the only one to see this, and so he falls
in love with her. Mardi struggles against his fake American accent. The man wants to
give Mardi his family jewels, so he turns his back to her, hoping she’ll reach out and
grab them. Mardi considers the family jewels, their pink, sweaty glistening, but she
doesn’t budge. She can tell the difference between fake unawares and true macho
vulnerability. She’s determined this man will never see what he’s already seen, beneath
her tropical-green suit, the raw red thrumming as her hand glides toward bounty she
was unborn for.
