I want to be younger, young, youngest again, be the little girl with ratty pigtails in the countryside, with the pidgeon coop and ducks as playmates. I could ever be the princess, and Sir Duck the Knight would be my hero and we could charge across the feild, hunting dragons that weren't. I want to be able to brandish my caittail sword and banish all the demons that scared me, and then run home gasping through the dusty rabbit trails to the hot meal at home, feeling the itch and bite of vicious mosquitoes and the hissandcrunch of my sneakers through the dry, end of summer grass.
I want to be able to sit on the porch again and listen to the crickets and see the sun set over the duck pond blood red, and race down to the stream to find frogs covered in mud that always slipped through your hands like grape jelly.
One year later.
I want to be free again, no worries, early morning sunrises and feeding the chickens that wonderful stuff that smelled so good like fresh grass and wheat and oatmeal all at the same time, but you couldn't eat it because it made you sick. The scratch feed running through my sticky honey fingers, clinging to my damp palms, feeling the seeds run over it like snakeskin. Racing my brother back to the house, he always won because he was twelve and I was four but he always gave me a highfive anyway and let me look at his comics in his room. Sometimes we snuck into Teetee's room but she always yelled and sprayed perfume at us.
Two year later.
Tee's room was beautiful, beautiful like dust and cobwebs and clean ceilings and a lonely rose in a vase. The unicorn poster I always wanted, wanted so badly that she finally gave it to me, but its magic didn't look right in my room, its magic didn't work so I was upset but I didn't tell her, so I snuck it back into her room one night and we never talked about it again. Her walls were always white, and I always admired her so much because she was so beautiful, everything was so beautiful about her, and everything was muddy about me. I wanted to be her so badly, exist within her body, be someone else, only be her.
That night at dinner when dad said Giles was going away I cried and hated. They were talking my brother, and he was only fifteen, only ten and five because he put stuff in his body he wasn't supposed to. I remember that night and I wore his skull T-shirt to bed so when he came in late he woke me up and talked to me and said that the drugs weren't the problem, parents were, and they didn't understand cuz everyone did them. The next day I didn't get to feed the chickens because Giles was loading his stuff in the car, old suitcases, they haden't been used for years but they creaked with his stuff. Giles hugged me and said he was sorry, but sorry was never good enough, was it? Then dad drove him away.
One year later.
The airport is cold and warm with rushes of air from the sliding door, and everything is so shiny and loud and important sounding, and I can smell the excitement and and anticipation in the air, but I can feel is dread.
My new dress is crinkly and blue with ruffles and silly sequens that itch and I want to pull them off but I can't, and my shoes are white and shiny too, shiny enough that the light reflects off them and they're pretty. Teetee is happy and laughing in her new black velvet jacket, she looked so exotic and nice with her lone rose in her hair, her such long hair, and I feel mine and I know it's been cut so short that it barely touches my shoulders anymore and falls in my face so that I have to wear clips to keep it up. I shake it into place and finally it sticks, and then Giles, gaunt and pale but Giles still, musses it again, so that I have to shove him and then we both get yelled at.
Tee rushes over to hug us again while dad looks at the flight numbers, looking for the one that will take her away to New York, farther than she's ever been, so that she can learn things that she's never known much about, to live in the city and be exciting. Her perfume fills my nose, and its the one that she always sprayed at us when we were in her room, and suddenly I realize that she'll never shoo us out of her room again and I cry, only it gets her jacket wet, and the Giles cries too, even though he is sixteen and tough as nails and never cries. Tee snuffles but doesn't cry because she's wearing mascara and mascara smears. I take one last sniff of her and then she's gone, her presence disappearing like her perfume, evaporating into the air, trotting down the entrance ramp onto the plane, going far away, and I'm sad and jealous all at the same time because Mommy doesn't love enough to give me up and let me go.
One year later.
New York is so big, it's so dizzy I can spin and spin but never see the tops of the buildings they're so tall. Teetee laughs at my dancing wildly in the park, and I have to sit down so the pidgeons will come, and I'm so excited, so e-x-c-i-t-e-d that I bounce in my seat and I wait for the pidgeons and when they come theres hundreds like a cloud, and I can see why Tee bought an extra muffin. They swarm us and land in my lap and peck at the poppyseed muffins Tee bought, the sky is blue and cold and cloudless and my breath is there, but I'm warm anyway, and I can't help thinking that it's the same exact sky as home, only different.
Three years later.
The long drive to Seattle is worth it because Teetee, Tee has a new apartment and she's moving in! My Tee! Teetee! Giles is mature and stoic but his eyes are glittering, he wants to see Tee, too, and maybe make her remember her little brother gone good.
It's dark but it's lit up with so many lights it makes my eyes hurt but I love it because Tee loved it enough to move here, away from the clouds of pidgeons in New York.
As we pull out, Tee! She's there! A strange man is holding her hand, and I wonder is this a new friend? A replacement brother for the one that went bad? But no he kisses her and Tee calls him her boyfriend and the words make me cringe because he sounds more important than me. But then Tee sees me and sweeps me up in this giant hug, and her perfume fills me up to the top until I feel like I'm just like her, as exotic and beautiful as a lone rose.
Two months later.
Tee is sad because, the boyfriend is going away now, he doesn't want to be the boyfriend anymore, and I feel sad because she does, and she sits in the kitchen crying while I try to figure out how to make her happy again, because Tee is never broken but now she is. I stand at the edge of the light, watching my mum tell her he wasn't good enough anyway, he wouldn't have made her happy anyway, but then Tee cries harder and I guess he really was perfect if it makes the invincible Tee sad. My toes are cold and Giles isn't here to sweep me away to read comics because he's gone now, too, and then mum looks up and see me and shooes me away and I don't get a bedtime story again.
Two years later.
I'm at the table, summing up sums for my math, undoubtedly failing again, it's almost midnight anyway so I'll have to go to bed when the door slams open with a rush of cold night air and Teetee is in, laughing and talking a million miles an hour, and I shriek and go hug her, and the oustide of her coat is chilly, but her perfume is the same as always. She has a new boyfriend, and he's going to marry her because she has a baby inside her! And my heart freezes in my chest, because I'm hugging two people at once. Mum is down the stairs at the news, and they're talking adult so fast its indecipherable, and Tee rushes in and makes two sandwiches, one for me and one for her.
They talk and talk and talk, and this time, I'm not shooed away because I'm part of the talk, and I'm important. We talk until it' starts to be early morning, and my head pounds sluggishly from news and no sleep.
Tee gets up to leave, and mum finally shooes me away from the room, saying I am well to get some sleep, but I hang at the edge of the stairs and listen.
"Will it make you happy?" Mum asked her.
Tee only laughed and spun, and even from around the corner, I could see her lone rose beauty shining out from her. I rush downstairs for one last hug, and then she's out the door again, heels clacking on the sidewalk, her perfume hanging in the air.
"Get upstairs this instant. You could catch cold."
I go upstairs, and I look at Tee's unicorn, hung and trapped on my wall. It never was mine to begin with, but she gave it to me anyway.
Callowyn of Calypso Community Member 
|
|
Community Member