“The Cheese Master”

By Christine Stoddard

Sirlia did not dance—she embarrassed the roaming fireflies and even
the stars with the pixyish motions of her tiny feet. Every one of her
gestures appeared illuminated. Only the most discerning of eyes
realized that beyond the astounding beauty of her movements, Sirlia
was no typical dancer. The girl of dewy eyes and subtle chin was
crippled.

No one ever mentioned that one of Sirlia’s pristine legs was shorter
than the other by three or four inches. For when she danced, the
discrepancy was as invisible as the love burning between two comets
fatefully crossing paths for a passionate instant. Only when Sirlia
walked, unprotected by her guardian melodies, did anyone truly notice
her jarring limp. In order to prevent unnecessary humiliation, she had
learned to disguise the limp through dance long ago.

That is why Sirlia hardly ever walked. She despised the awkwardness of
her steps, the way her torso fell forward with no warning. It angered
her, the fact that she could possess so little control over own her body.
She wanted reign over her very cells so that not a single one pulsed
without her permission.

But Sirlia only claimed such tyranny in her lithe footwork, with the
sound of gorgeous music weaving in and out of her dreaming mind.
She cursed the moments that demanded her to walk or, worse, run.

Sirlia could not run at all. The cripple could only hobble. She bitterly
remembered once, as a small girl, being chased by a black dog during
an October drizzle. Sirlia toppled over with the gracelessness of an
acorn and her jaw slammed against the cold sidewalk. The dog
scampered closer, relishing the opportunity to taste the bright red
blood of an innocent. Its hot breath grazed her neck for a second
before its noble owner seized it by its scruff just in time to save the
crippled girl. Sirlia sighed, so relieved that she forgot to thank the
canine’s owner. She only sat there before struggling to get up,
whereupon she twirled away, suddenly becoming the acorn spinning
across the coolness of an autumn.

When Sirlia did not dance, she worked in her parents’ cheese shop,
located between a bike repair shop and a large, commercial bookstore.
At least that was the alleged reason the girl spent so many hours alone
in her parents’ business. In all honesty, she had nothing else to do
besides bore herself at school. More often than not, Sirlia played opera
records on an old phonograph as she drew outlines of strange figures
in the cheese meant for finicky customers.

Sirlia began by slicing the cheese into thin flaps, sometimes as fine as
paper if she felt particularly diligent. Then she took a toothpick or pin
and conjured zebras, penguins, dragons, llamas, and any other beast
that enchanted her imagination that hour. If she made any mistakes,
she simply smoothed them out with the warmth of her fingers. Once
Sirlia finished drawing the creature, she pressed down the toothpick
against the completed contours, and carved the animal out of its
cheese cage. Only she had the power, or desire, to set the miniature
beast free. Anyone else would have laughed at the sight of an animal
in his slice of cheese and then shoved it into a sandwich with some
salami or bologna. The sounds of Salome announced the cheese
creature’s newfound liberty.
“One day,” Sirlia whispered to every beast she made, “You shall return
to your mother. I promise.” The girl sat by the cheese shop’s window,
stretching her arm out to hold the silhouette of the beast against the
lemon moon hovering in the sky. The creatures never responded, no
matter how much as Sirlia thought they did.

Sirlia’s parents disregarded the girl’s unusual pastimes, asking only

that she be happy. With her defect, they worried she would never have
friends or a husband. They were sad to see that she did not have
success even at school. So, taking pity on her, if, from the backroom of
the shop, they heard a customer impatiently ringing the bell and Sirlia
failing to attend to the sir or madam, Mother or Father would rush up to
the main counter. They committed such a rescue almost daily.

“How may I help you?” either Mother or Father would inquire the
customer who tapped his foot or furrowed her brow.

Meanwhile, Sirlia continued talking to her cheese beasts, from finger-

sized men to owls.

“I need a pound of provolone, please.”

Pavarotti blared in the background.

“Provolone? Of course. Would you be interested in any of our other—”

“No, thank you. Just provolone.”

“Alright.” The parent would then turn and call to the distant daughter.
“I need more wax paper, Sirlia.”

If Sirlia was not too engrossed in her cheese and opera affair, she
would begrudgingly get up, always at a glacial pace because of her leg,
and limp to the backroom.

She returned with a roll of wax paper and then faithfully tended to the
silent cries of her cheese kingdom.

“Here you are, sir. Thank you. Be sure to come back for our mozzarella
special this Friday.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Once the customer disappeared into the grayness of the city streets,
Mother or Father half-hissed over the Bellini: “You have no courtesy,
child.”

Sirlia did not look up from her drawings. “I did not notice the cust…”
She trailed off. Sometimes she pirouetted out of the situation, as if any
moment could be transformed into a performance, but more likely she
remained there, fixated upon what she carved with a rusty pin.
Generally, Mother or Father would approach her from behind and
quietly run a hand through Sirlia’s tresses. There was no way to
effectively chide the girl. Take away her parmigiana, her Mozart, or her
dancing as punishment and Sirlia would not leave bed for days. Let her
ignore a customer once in a while, if not more often than that.

The girl almost never stopped for the world. She sourly reminded
herself of how it never stopped for her. It whizzed passed her, mocking
her in all her crippleness, when she had enough trouble taking a step
forward.

Only one in the whole world truly stopped for Sirlia. His name was
Ryan. A homely, pockmarked boy about her age, his scarred face
reminded Sirlia of the craters scattered across the moon. Beyond that,
nothing about him interested her, not even her family’s well-known
wealth or his vast record collection, despite his many attempts to win
her attention.

The following illustrates a rather typical interaction between the ardent

suitor and the reluctant artist of cheese and motion:

“I never saw a cheese moose before, Sirlia,” Ryan commented one

crisp day as the girl perched herself at the shop’s side counter like
usual.

“That’s because I invented it.” The reply came brusquely. She did not
bother looking at him nor pausing her hand.

“It’s cute. Like you.”

The girl cleared her throat, pretending he had not just accidentally
compared her to such a gangly animal and, more importantly,
pretending not to notice his come-on. Sirlia also pretended not to
notice that he smelled of gasoline. She never understood why he
always carried such disarming stenches. Some days, the lawyer’s son
stank of cologne; other days he stank at what may have been cologne
but its potency made it seem like something industrially related.
Ryan’s unnatural scent never mixed well with the strong diary odor
pervading the cramped space they both shared.

“I wanted to know if—Sirlia? Are you listening to me?”

Sirlia was not. The opera, the cheese drawing, and glad musings
preoccupied her.

“Would you go to the movies with me?” Ryan pushed. “There’s this one
about—“

But much to the ugly boy’s chagrin, Sirlia refused to hear the rest of his
explanation, let alone that very sentence. Swiftly she gathered up her
cheese safari and carving tools before scuttling to the backroom.
Carmen played as the rejected boy stood there, disappointed yet
again.

Sirlia’s terseness and rudeness did not deter the lovesick Ryan,
however. Accustomed to her timid behavior, he tried again and again
to gain her attention. So infatuated was he that, even when he knew
Sirlia was elsewhere, he dropped by the cheese shop. Ryan wanted
only to linger where she had once been. He sensed her presence even
in her absence.

About a year after Ryan started pursing Sirlia, their future together
appeared no more hopeful than after her initial dismissal of him. In
fact, the more Sirlia refused him, the more fervently he pressed for her
affection. No other tactic came to his mind. For the first time ever,
Ryan even climbed over the side counter where Sirlia carved her
cheese just to get closer to her.

This startled the girl and she grew even more perturbed when realized
that he had trapped her by blocking the door leading out of the
counter’s narrow alley. With her defect, she could not jump over the
counter as Ryan had so easily done.

“Get away!” she snapped.

“No.”

“I’m busy.”

“Is that Cherubini playing?”

Sirlia flushed in annoyance. “Yes. Now leave me alone.”

“No.”

“Go away.”

“I like it right here.”

“I’m drawing a rabbit.”

“Let me help.”

“Never!” Sirlia immediately clapped her hand over the piece of cheese,
unintentionally ruining her nascent creation. She groaned. “Oh! Look at
what you made me do, you—”

“Oh, Sirlia,” Ryan began, “Let me fix it for you.” He inched closer to her
until their wrists brushed against each other.

Sirlia, now in hot tears, barked at him. “I said no! Go away! It’s my
rabbit!”

“No! I’m going to help you!”

“This is mine!”

“But it’s—”

The girl groped the knife on a shelf just under the counter and quickly
withdrew it from its hiding place. She flashed it at him. It shone in the
dim shop light.

“Leave!”

A tension, augmented by the bellowing opera, hung in the air. Ryan

gulped as his squinty eyes dropped to the floor. The knife in Sirlia’s
quivering hand wavered. Defeated again, Ryan headed out of the
cheese shop.

“I love you, Sirlia,” he murmured before completely vanishing.

Sirlia, of course, did not respond. She merely caught the blue of Ryan’s
shirt blend in with the blueness of the outside. For a second at least,
everything seemed blue.

Sirlia let out the breath she had been holding and placed the knife on
its respective shelf. Then she rested her sweet face on the counter,
rubbing her left cheek against the cheddar. The sharp scent she knew
so well did not comfort her during her loss. Instead, she sang along to
the music blasting from the ancient phonograph for a few minutes
before finally dancing out into the street. But first, Sirlia pocketed the
squished cheese rabbit. It stuck to the inside of her plain cotton dress,
a costume so unfitting for such a skillful ballerina, but one appropriate
for the daughter of a man and woman who owned a quaint cheese
shop.

This time, Sirlia did not dance out of mirth but rather in mourning.
Instead of issuing quick kicks or cheerfully flailing her arms, Sirlia
floated as aimlessly as a dandelion seed. She had murdered her rabbit
before she had even cut its from its parmigiana prison.

“Abortion,” she reasoned.

For hours, Sirlia wandered. Used to their daughter’s frequent

disappearances, Sirlia’s parents did not ask where she had gone. She
ventured into construction sites, playgrounds, schoolyards, cement
covered squares, and any part of the city open to her entry. Colors and
noises flew around her but none of them could arrest her attention.
Never before had Sirlia destroyed one of her cheese pets, so now she
grieved the grief of inexperience.

No one dared speak to the long faced girl. Some, because they noticed
her crippleness and knew not how to respond; others because they
revered the melancholy poetry of her dance.

Finally, Sirlia reached a mural at the edge of the city, as far from the
cheese shop as one could get while still remaining within the city
limits. The mural, painted by local students, depicted the entire scope
of the universe as viewed by God or some other fortunate being.
Smears of galaxies melted into one another. Planets’ shadows
overlapped. Earth, in its mix of blue and green, suspended itself in a
lonely corner.

Sirlia stared at the off-white moon sticking loyally beside Earth. In it,
she saw Ryan’s pockmarks and shuddered. Yet a second later, she half-
grinned and whispered, “Not even this pretty mural does a justice to
what I know lies in the sky.”

The girl caressed the moon with fingers that smelled of cheese. It felt
like nothing, just flatness. Nonetheless, Sirlia’s right hand crept into her
pocket and tenderly pinched the mangled cheddar rabbit. Then she
bound the rabbit to the moon in the mural, gently smoothing it over so
it would stay. Sirlia kissed the rabbit, leaving the imprint of the lips
Ryan achingly wanted to touch, and shed a single tear.

Slowly, the crippled girl slumped down to the sidewalk, gazing at the
pathetic creature until rain began to fall. But Sirlia closed her eyes and
fell asleep in the nakedness of the street without witnessing her
cheese rabbit melt. The city continued with its colors and noise, its
noise and colors.