Darkness Before Dawn

DBD | chapter 9

Chapter 9:

I could smell the bleach on the floor and the cheap tropical toilet gel that sticks inside it. I had sat in front of the mirror for a long while looking over my sunken face; dark circles, hollow cheeks, like some sort of Tim Burton character without the glamor.  My hair was flat, dried into choppy little waves from keeping it in the same bun for days. I turned to the side, looking at my jaw, how sharp it looked with all the weight I had lost. I was being eaten alive by my own body, something that felt so foriegn to me now when I looked over myself. I had prided myself in looking like my mother: slender, soft, beautiful. What I saw before me was a shell of nothing, a husk of sadness and guilt. My throat was dry and began burning the more I thought.

I turned on the bath water, letting it run a little bit to get hot. This would be the first time in awhile I had taken a bath, or even stayed out of bed this long. My aunt had come to stay for the week, packing up boxes of the house with my other family, dividing up my mother belongings between them all, selling pieces of our home to complete strangers. My room had remained untouched, that is until my grandmother had come in, demanding I pack my belongings to stay with her so they could sell the house. I had called my Aunt that day begging for her to help me, to say that I needed more time in the house to heal, that I wasn't ready to go back to school. She had sighed deeply over the phone and told me everything would be all right. A few days later she had arrived on the doorstep, airport taxi driving away. She smiled, so warmly, so understanding, with tears in her eyes. She gave me a hug, long and tight and I could smell her faint wonderful rosemary mint shampoo. She gave me a hug like this at the funeral, about a month ago.

"It's okay," she whispered into my ear, "you can live with me," she finished with a light kiss on my forehead. I began sobbing and she held me closer into her arms. She didn't tell me I needed to heal, or that I needed to move on. She told me that everything is how it is, and that she would be there for it. As she looked around my room she helped me fold my clothes into a suitcase, packing the rest away into boxes and carefully wrapping my fragile items in specially marked boxes. She had made all the messy stuff so easy, so much more bearable as she gently cared for everything around me. Aunt Margo had held me in her arms as she talked about the day my mom had found out she was having me, with tears in her eyes she would tell me how special I was to everyone in the family, how I was the baby there but so strong for my age. She had listened when I told her that it was my fault, and how I had pushed them away. She would just simply tell me a story then, a story about a girl who was unbelieving strong for losing her closet family.

The water had gotten hot, and I placed the plug into the drain. I sat on the edge, slowly pulling my socks off my feet and my other clothes. I got into the tub, feeling the hot water slowly raise and surround me. I remember traveling to the snow one year, the little snowdrops piling up around the window. It was so cold that when I stuck my tongue out it felt as if it had turned into an ice cube. I had just turned twelve, and my mom had gotten me this purple floral swimsuit, a two piece which I had secretly desired for about a year because other girls my age had brightly colored padded ones. I was wearing it underneath a towel, and I was waiting for her to find her to finish getting ready so we could go outside to the hot tub in the snow. She had appeared from the bedroom, which had two beds, one that was untouched and the other with strewn thick white covers.

"Let's go," she had with joyful buzz, shuffling me to the slider door and outside. The water had roared from the jets and steam was coming off of the top. I took off my towel and immediately shivered as I bundled it up to sit on the side of the stairs going in. I grabbed the railing and quickly moved up, touching my toe into the bubbly water and being greeted with pleasant warmth. I slowly began to sink into the water, breaking in my brand new swim suit. I touched the bottom of the hot tub, chlorine filling my nostrils and water up to my shoulders. The wind had made my face cold, nose hot and red, but now my body was warm, and comfortable. Mom slowly made her way in, giving a little shake and brrr as she bent her knees to be as deep as me.

"It feels nice right?" She asked, looking at me with a big grin.

"Yeah it's so warm, but now the back of my hair is freezing because it's wet," I told her. I sunk into where the water began touching my chin.

"I should have put up your hair," she replied, making a frown.

The water had risen and made my body red hot. I shut off the water, it had covered my face, almost spilling out of the tub. Even if the water was too hot it still felt nice, it had reminded me of that snowy winter day where we sat in front of the fireplace making watery hot chocolate with gummy old marshmallows. We had shared a piece of seven dollar cheesecake from the little store up the road, the only one for miles in the snowy mountain town from our rented weekend cabin. We had also binged on stove top popcorn that night, playing one of the old vhs tapes they had of cartoon Snow white before the power had gone out. It was memories like these that flooded my head when I laid in my bedroom all day, staring out the window watching the sunrise before I finally drifted to sleep.

I was finally able to close my eyes, spare myself the slate white ceiling which had been freshly painted a month ago for real estate tours. Like the white clouds which my mom and I had looked up on when I was 15, and she had told me she wished things could be different for me, she wished that I had a better father, and she apologized for not being a better mother. We were at the pond, geese squawking in the distance and fighting the turtles for thrown food. We laid our backs on the grass, my back bare because of the halter top I was wearing, something I had bought with my own money from working my small summer job at a yogurt shop. I turned to my side, to face my mom. She continued to look up at the clouds, her blonde hair falling past her shoulder, behind her back. Her white scar on her forehead fading into her makeup.

"I love you," I told her and smiled, my pink lipstick shining in the reflection of her eye. I didn't say it then, I wished I had, that she wasn't a bad mother. She smiled, big, her eyes glowing and glinting with green. She grabbed my hand and I felt warm. The summer heat that was kissing our skin and making our hands clammy.

After those memories, it seemed to- fade away. I wanted to chase that warmth, stop the coldness which consumed my body, which made me frail and sad. I wanted to hear my mother's voice again, for her to tell me that she loved me, for me to apologize to her that I wasn't better. That I had wished things were different for her. My heart ached and even submerged in the water I had tears coming out of my eyes, making the water all around me cold.

"Jamie, it's okay, I'm here with you," I could hear mom call out to me. I opened my eyes, water encasing them.

"Mom?" I yelled out. But she was gone. I pushed myself deeper into the water, closing my eyes and hoping that I was able to see her again, to tell her I needed to be a big sister. Everything around me had gone quiet, and I coughed, gasping for air. I tried to push myself up, but I was so cold, I couldn't be cold and get out of the water.

"Jamie!" I heard a voice call from a distance. I heard it again, then I heard nothing at all. Blackness, stillness, a rising panic in the back of my brain as I struggled to push myself in the water. Then hands grasp around my shoulders and I'm pulled away from the warmth. My father shook me aggressively, screaming at me for climbing on top of the monkey bars even though I was fine. My face became wet and he demanded that I suck it up and stop crying. I had felt so alone in those moments where I would daydream fantasies to pretend I had friends like me, who also struggled with dark memories, much like the ones I had felt now.

I was cold, coughing, trying to fight for anything like the time I am pushing myself hard to outrun my dad during a race; my tiny legs are moving so fast, making giant leaps to try and make up for the lost distance as I push a burning breath from out my nose, then gasping for air from my mouth. My aunt touched my face, looking into my eyes with her brown ones, crying like rivers on the earth's surface. She pulled me in close to her homemade soap smell, holding the back of my head and sobbing into my shoulder. It was the first time I had let the coldness take over my mind and the first time I had seen my Aunt truly break down.