While having just been released from prison, due to a night full of misfortunate mistakes, Red McCoy witnesses an old friend of his, son being kicked out of his apartment in the middle of the night.
Beverly Reid had been living on his own since he...
| B E V A N D R E D | • • • |M O N I C A M A R I E M C C O Y |
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I was fourteen years old, when I realized that my life's purpose was to sit back in the sidelines as a bystander, and watch as every other girl my age was experiencing new things. My oldest sister, Caroline, had lost her virginity to an older man, even my younger sister, Beth, had spent most of her time with her very first crush.
Looking in the mirror, was a death wish for me. I was so ashamed, so ashamed of what I had become. As a young girl, I was relatively healthy, always on my pretty pink bicycle whenever I got the chance.
But after my oldest brother had gotten arrested, and was tossed into prison for nine years or so, I began to gain a large sum of weight.
My siblings were all blind to it—but I wasn't. I remember, one morning, I had been trying my absolute best to button myself into my favorite pair of dark blue jeans, and when spending thirty minutes or so trying to pull them up my thigh, I realized that they just weren't going to fit.
The pressures of freshman year, and my brother being arrested was too much. My mother was devastated everyday, my brother, Nick, never even left their used being shared bedroom.
And me, I couldn't stop eating.
I'd sit alone in my sister, Caroline, and I's shared bedroom, at the foot of my bed, pounds of snacks and previously frozen foods surrounding me, as I sat, and moped.
Whenever my clothes didn't fit, I began to stuff myself into more and more sweatpants and sweatshirts, careful not to let my massive weight gain become prominent to anyone else around me.
My mother took weeks to become aware of this, her not being able to fully notice until her devastation had deteriorated for the time being.
One Sunday morning, while me, and the rest of my family had been getting dressed, and getting ready for an annual Sunday morning. Which consisted of pancakes and orange juice for breakfast, made by Nick, and church, serviced by reverend Lake.
But as I was trying my best to stuff myself into one of my old Sunday church dresses, I took one look down at the size, and began to let out a small cry.
The label, on that baby blue, ruffled short-length dress, I had taken advantage of before, read size 4. I sobbed into my hand as I realized that as of that moment, I was nowhere near a size 4.
I remember hearing my mothers familiar footsteps neighbor my bedroom, as she must have heard my crying from a mile away—in other words, from the downstairs living space.
She sat herself on the foot of my bedding beside me, as she analyzed the small and tight dress that had once fit me so perfectly. She pulled me into her side, and gave me a soft kiss at my forehead, reaching out for my trembling fingertips.
