Maeya Brookes

Chapter 1 - Not a Normal Day

-//- Chapter 1 -\\-

--Not A Normal Day--

            It was supposed to be a normal day. Wake up, get dressed, go to work at the shoe store, deal with normal cleanups and shoe-sales, come home, clean, make dinner, eat as much as I could, shower, and go to bed, only to wake up tomorrow and do the same exact thing. The routine was simple and I easily learned to follow it after I graduated six months ago from high-school. Apparently, the fates were fed up with my routine, and decided to make work just a little more unbearable than usual... making me a lot more fed up with my boss than I normally am. That is really saying something since I’m always fed up with him.

            At the start of every week I tell myself, “You can put up with it. At least you have a job! Who cares if your 70-year-old boss likes to look you up and down and lick his lips when he thinks you’re not looking? It’s totally normal!” I would have dealt with it perfectly fine today if he hadn’t cornered me in the supply closet. I tried to push past him and get out, but he’s strong for seventy! If the customer I was helping hadn’t wandered over to see what was taking so long to get his size ten shoes, I don’t know what would have happened.

            But what did happen was I took off my nametag, threw it on the ground, and stormed out. Just like that. I actually had to go back in the store and give the customer the shoes I went into the supply closet to get in the first place, but then I stormed right back out again and headed home in the cold air and snow flurries of December. I don’t know what was wrong in my head at that moment, but I marched right into my kitchen and told my father that I quit. Sounds like an easy thing to do, am I right?

            When I said it to him in my head, it was. I pictured him nodding and feeling bad for me having to endure my ex-boss’s disrespectfulness for so long. I even thought he might decide that instead of having a job, he would send me off to college just as I’d always wanted! But that could have only happened in a dream.

“What did you say?” Growled my father; his eyes barely slits, his teeth bared like a vicious dog’s. I stood across from where he sat at my kitchen table, gripping a steaming cup of coffee and the morning newspaper (in the afternoon!) like they were the only things keeping him alive.

            “I quit my job at the shoe-store.” I repeated, wishing I hadn’t decided to tell him at all. He threw the paper and cup on the table. The hot coffee oozed from the cup onto his lap, but he didn’t even wince. I knew then that something bad was about to happen.

            “I must be hearing you wrong,” he said, kicking his chair back with a clatter and standing to face me, “because my daughter… My Maeya would never do something as incredibly stupid as quitting her job!” He slammed his hands down on the table and the coffee cup jumped right onto the floor. I watched it bounce on the floor once— no, twice, before shattering into a million tiny pieces of glass. When I looked back up at my father, his sneering face was barely an inch away from mine. I could smell the strong stench of coffee on his breath.

            “My boss is always checking me out when I’m working.” A chill rushed up my spine just from the thought of it. I looked as the ground as I spoke, “It creeps me out! And today, he—“

            “Shut up!” my father roared, making my ears ache, “You go back there first thing tomorrow morning, and you beg for your job back, you hear me? Beg on your hands and knees if you have to!” he turned away.

            “No.” I said. My voice was barely a whisper. He whipped back towards me, his eyes wide and maniacal.

            “No? NO? How dare you say no to me in my own house?” He raised his palm quick as lightning and struck me in the face. I felt the print of his hand on my cheek, burning as if it was on fire. I raised my hand to soothe it, but my father grabbed it and pushed me onto the pile of glass. I felt a shard dig into my palm and tears sprang to my eyes.

            “Stop—“

            “Clean up this mess and go to your room. I don’t want to see your face until you have a job again.” He growled. My long brown hair had fallen to cover my face, but I could still see his feet standing next to me. I nodded, biting my lip from the pain in my hand. My father’s thundering footsteps got farther and farther away until I heard the door to his room open and slam shut. Only then did I dare to pull myself off of the glass.

Knowing he could come back any moment, I left the glass shard in my hand and swept up the glass, trying my best not to wince in pain. I threw it away and, ripping a piece of bandage from the bandage roll we had in the supply cabinet, ran through my bedroom to my bathroom as quietly as possible. Clenching my teeth, I pulled the shard out of my hand and rinsed off the blood, wrapping the cut area in the piece of bandage. I sighed, brushing my hair from my face to look in the mirror. I drew in a sharp breath.

“How can you let yourself get hurt so much, Maeya?” I whispered to myself, seeing my tear-stained face with my father’s handprint still bright and visible. I gently ran my finger along the edge of it, trying to keep my tear-filled eyes from overflowing again. “Don’t be weak...”

Still, a tear escaped from one of my eyes and slowly inched its way down to my chin, where it lingered for a moment before dripping onto my shirt. I looked down at the tiny water droplet and ripped off my shirt and the rest of my clothes. I turned the hot water handle of my shower and jumped in. A chill ran down my spine from the cold water that slowly turned hot, running down my body. I scrubbed angrily at my skin with soap.

“Stupid, stupid… That’s all you are!” I hissed at myself. “Stupid for quitting your job and stupid for being delusional enough to think your dad would be happy for you about it!” I continued cursing at myself in that same fashion, pointing out all of my flaws, all of the things I’d done wrong in my entire life. I stomped my feet in frustration, which probably wasn’t a good idea in the first place. I slipped on the soapy water at my feet and fell into a heap at the bottom of my shower. Finally, I succumbed and let go of all my tears.

By all of them, I mean all of them— the ones I hid when my mother passed away from cancer when I was six, the ones I pretended not to notice from the first time my father yelled at me on my seventh birthday; the ones I refused to let out when I attempted to climb a tree my father told me I couldn’t climb and broke my arm at eight; the ones I held in all through grade-school when I was teased for not having a mother; all the ones I’d stifled in high school when people mocked me for being different than them… but especially, I let run the tears that never even tried to leak from my eyes, remaining deep in my tear ducts, hidden away for years at a time, just barely even whispering their presence.

Not eighteen years of tears—no. When my mother was alive, my father was a completely different person who never yelled and never even got a little tiny bit angry when I did something wrong. From infancy until six years of age, my life was filled with happiness and joy. When I cried tears for all the years of terror and miserable pain in my life on the floor of that shower, I only cried twelve years of tears.

I watched them glide down the shower floor, swishing around from left to right, taking their time on their journey into the drain, mixing in with the soapy water and bubbles as they went; free to combine with whatever and splash around wherever they pleased…

Free at last.