Three
Emily skips happily beside me, wearing her favorite outfit—a pink shirt featuring glittering ballerina slippers, a matching tutu, and silver ballet flats. Today her hair is up in a high ponytail. It swishes as she skips like we're off to see the wizard. I feel slightly under dressed in my dark jeans and faded Dr. Pepper T-shirt.
"Emily, wait!" I suddenly call as I notice one of my neon green shoelaces has come untied.
She stops, glancing back at me as I kneel to redo my laces on my black converse. I finish and stand just as her foot begins to tap impatiently. Then she smiles and continues skipping a few inches ahead on the sidewalk. The performing center is just ahead. After I hand over our tickets, Emily and I make our way inside the darkened auditorium to find good seats. Luckily the front row still has plenty of empty seats and we take the ones in the middle. Emily squirms in her seat with excitement, her head turning this way and that to take everything in. I'm glad that Rory could spend the day with Holden, otherwise he would be here grumbling the entire time.
About ten minutes later, Abs and Mai's older sister, Lea, join us. Lea is a senior and basically looks just like an older version of Mai with chin-length hair. She shoots Emily and I a friendly smile as she sits down.
"Hey, great seats," Abs says, making herself comfortable on my other side. She looks around me and waves. "Hey Ems. What's up?"
Emily just smiles back, her white teeth shining in the dim light.
Abs opens her mouth again but before she can say anything, the red velvet curtain on the stage opens. Blue lights shine down as a line of beautiful dancers in glittering ballet costumes make their way gracefully across the stage. Abs leans back in her seat as the show begins.
Mai is right in the center. She flashes us a quick smile before she begins to move with the others, her long, lean body stretching with the movements. Her shiny black hair is up in its usual bun, held in place by the silver hair sticks that Mai has been wearing since seventh grade. She moves as if she is water. When I glance over at my little sister, she is transfixed on Mai and the rest of the dancers, her mouth slightly open.
After the performance, my quiet little sister suddenly cannot shut up. She keeps chirping nonstop about how great the performance was even by the time we make it outside. She's still going on when Mai joins us in her street clothes—a worn gray tank top with the words LET'S DANCE! on the front in glittery rainbow colors, a short black skirt, thin gray leggings, and white ballet flats.
"Did you like?" Mai asks, smiling down at Emily.
Emily beams up at her, eagerly nodding. "Yes! Yes! You're the best dancer ever!"
Mai's smile widens as she looks up at me. I smile back, feeling very grateful that Mai had invited us to this performance. It has been a while since Emily has been this excited. It's nice to see her looking so energetic and alive after her episode, which still lurks in the corners of my brain.
"Thanks. I love your outfit," Mai tells Emily.
I'm not sure it's possible for Emily's smile to get any bigger, but somehow it does. Emily is going to have quite the ego today. Hopefully it will make up for all the times that Emily gets depressed over the knowledge that she will probably never become a dancer herself.
"How about we get some ice cream? It's on me," Lea announces.
"I need all the calories I can get," Mai says with a laugh.
Emily jumps up and down, latching onto my hand as we follow the others to the parking lot.
The day becomes bleaker when Emily and I return home a few hours later. Just walking into the crowded entryway alone makes my happiness deflate. Luckily Emily doesn't seem to be as affected by the mess today as I am. She just continues to skip to her room, probably to play with her dolls. Mom's car wasn't in the driveway, so I know she has to be out shopping. Again. The thought makes my hands ball up into fists.
For the next few hours, I try to clean as much of the kitchen as possible. I wash all the dirty dishes in the room, sweep the dirty floor, and start going through the pantry and fridge. It's amazing at how much food is way past the expiration date. The inside of the fridge is disgusting. Old spilled food has begun to grow mold, there's a puddle of blood in the meat drawer, and rotting fruit and vegetables in the crisper. A part of me just wants to rake out everything and throw it into the trash. I'm not sure I will be able to eat any of the food that remains. I shake my head when I finish cleaning the fridge out, looking at the two full garbage bags in front of me.
Next I wash out the fridge. It's not an easy job; I almost throw up three times. It seems to take forever, but finally the inside is clean. Not a single spec of dirt or rotted food remains. I can breathe easier as I replace the still good food, though I am still wary about it being contaminated. I open the freezer and just stare. It's so full of food that it has all been iced over. I'll have to go through it another day. Maybe tomorrow.
As I'm shutting the freezer, I hear the front door being unlocked. A moment later, I hear the all too familiar rustle of shopping bags. I immediately grit my teeth and turn toward the doorway. I hear my mother unload the new junk onto the couch. Then she shuffles into the kitchen.
Her dark green eyes widen as she looks around. "Wow, been cleaning?"
No shit, I want to say, but I don't. I just nod.
She gives me a slight smile, showing her grayish teeth. Then she shuffles to the fridge and opens it. She holds the door open for a moment and I wonder if she is admiring my cleaning until her round face turns toward me and her eyes are suddenly narrowed. Uh-oh. Her eyes go to the two trash bags. The fridge door slowly shuts as she goes to the bags and opens one.
"Hailey, what are you doing? This stuff is still good!" She starts pulling stuff out, shaking her head and mumbling beneath her breath. "For Christ's sake, I just bought this a few weeks ago! This was expensive!" She looks up from the bag to me.
My mother used to once look like an older version of me. Over the years she got older and heavier. She's very overweight now—perhaps three hundred pounds- but doesn't seem too concerned with it. Her black hair is almost halfway gray by now, though she keeps saying she's going to start coloring it. The sad thing is that she's only in her early forties. She doesn't seem too disturbed at how she's changed. Maybe she's stopped caring.
Shaking her head, she pulls the bag to the fridge and begins to pile the outdated food back inside. My stomach does several somersaults. "Mom, that food is bad. Look at the expiration date." I try to keep my voice calm, but I can hear the anger in the words.
She waves a dismissive hand as she shoves rotting fruit back inside. Don't get sick, don't get sick. "Nonsense. Those dates are only there so they can get you to replace stuff sooner. Food stays good way past the date. We can't afford to replace food all the time."
"Maybe we shouldn't buy so much," I can't help but say.
She stops what she's doing for a moment before slowly turning toward me. Her dress is rumpled from her shopping adventures. "Maybe you should stop trying to throw my food away. I pay for it so stop touching it!" Her nostrils flare at me.
I turn to the sink and wash my hands with the water as hot as I can stand. I wash them again, just to be sure. "Fine. When you get sick off of some of that crap, don't look at me," I say before stomping out of the room.
I'm so angry that I have to keep myself from kicking and punching at the piles of clutter all around me. I'd just spent hours of my life trying to clean up some of this mess and now my mother was undoing all of my progress. Super. SUPER. Why did I even care? I slam my bedroom door behind me but I know she doesn't care. She doesn't care about us anymore; she only cares about all her stuff.
I go to my bathroom, deciding to take a bath. My body is still prickling from the thoughts of all the germs I probably encountered in the kitchen. As the water is running, I wash my hands again, scrubbing hard to get the invisible layer of filth off. Then I pour some vanilla bubble bath into the tub and wait for the tub to fill. The water is almost unbearably hot, but it has to be like that to become clean again. My body stings from the heat as I lower myself into it. Then I begin to scrub hard at every inch of my skin, especially the places that came into the most contact with the rotting and expired things.
When I finish shampooing and conditioning my hair, I lean back into the slowly cooling water. My skin looks like a boiled lobster, but at least I'm clean. Unless the water is contaminated. The thought makes me swallow hard. A feeling of intense helplessness fills me. I won't turn eighteen for another six hundred and thirty one days. Can I really make it that long? Can we really make it that long? It seems impossible. Six hundred and thirty one days seems so far away. I'm not sure if I can stand living for that long in this house.
What would it be like to not have to worry about it anymore? What would it be like to just not be living anymore? Was there really a Heaven and a Hell? Would I go to Hell for wanting to escape what felt like a Hell in itself? Surely if God exists, He wouldn't be so cruel to make me live through another Hell. Wasn't this one hard enough?
It would be so nice to not have to worry about the clutter anymore. No more scary asthma attacks or rotting food or tripping over stuff in both the daylight and the dark. At least Hell would be clean. Right? Or would it be just like it is here, to punish me further?
The thought of Hell being just as bad doesn't stop me from closing my eyes and lowering my head beneath the water. I brace my hands against the sides of the tub, forcing myself down. Water fills my ears and all of the outside sound is muffled by the water as it trickles in the pipes and surrounds my body completely. My nose and eyes are burning, but I don't care. I stay there, wondering how long it takes for the oxygen to completely leave my body. Wondering how much drowning hurts. Wondering what it feels like.
It doesn't take long for my lungs to begin to burn for air. My hair is drifting around me. When I open my eyes, my vision is blurred from the layer of water above. Black spots begin to dot the surface. My heart panics. Are those bugs? We've had bug invasions before. Terrible bugs with teeth and stingers and lots of legs. Bugs showing up everywhere. Bugs in everything.
As the spots become larger and more frequent, my body fights to lift itself up out of the deadly water. My arms hold it down. My legs begin to instinctively kick. Why does my body continue to live even while my brain knows it's better to die? Doesn't my body know that life is overrated? What kind of life do I have, exactly? My mother is an extreme hoarder. My dad left years ago when he was unable to deal with the clutter. We haven't seen him for three years. He still sends us money, but never a letter to see how we are. No phone calls or social network requests or showing up at the door. Emily doesn't even remember what he looks like.
Emily's asthma attack enters my mind again and the memory of it makes me sit up. I gasp as air enters my lungs. For a few moments, I sit there with my hands still braced on the sides of the tub. My body shakes as I greedily gulp down air and spit out lukewarm soapy water. My lungs burn. My nose and eyes burn. My ears are slowly draining the water. I close my eyes as salty tears begin to invade.
As much as I want out of this life, I can't. I can't leave Emily and Rory like that. Somehow, we're all going to have to survive until I am old enough to take my brother and sister away from all this. Away to a cleaner life. It won't be easy, but at this point, anything is better than this.
After I dry off my pale, freckled body and my dripping hair, I wrap the towel around myself and go into my bedroom to get underwear and my nightgown. With the towel still around my shoulders, I retrieve my journal and sit on my bed, leaning back against the wide headboard and the pillows there.
March 24, Sat. 6:00 p.m. 631 Days.
Took Emily to Mai's dance performance. Abs and Lea were also there. It was great as always and Emily was the most excited that I have seen in forever. We had ice cream afterward. Tried to clean the kitchen. Got all the dishes washed, the floor swept, and the cabinets and fridge cleaned out but Mom came home (from shopping, AGAIN) and was upset at all I threw away. Started loading the expired and rotted food back into the fridge.
I feel so sick now. How can she really not believe that expiration dates are there for a reason? But no, she thinks it's a scam that stores make up. Sigh. I was so angry. I felt so helpless that I almost drowned myself in the bathtub. Not as easy as it would seem. I'll probably be coughing out soapy water for weeks now. I just have to survive for 631 days. For Rory and Emily.