LAURA
I’M BRUSHING MY teeth, when I glance up and meet my eyes in the mirror and I know, with one hundred percent certainty that I don’t want to do this anymore. I smile because it’s okay. I’m giving myself permission to go.
At first they will cry and wonder why, but with time they will forget me. They will learn to smile again, they will still cook, eat and sleep.
A part of me wants to hold on but this wave has finally gone over my head.
The mirror moves as I open the cabinet door. A bottle of blue pills are there for the taking. Anti-depressant’s that my mother owns.
My silk lavender pajamas are cool against my skin as I sit down along the bath tub. Opening the tablets, I’m almost giddy. I take a handful and chew them. The taste has me squinting my face until I swallow them. I’m up getting a glass of tap water, gulping it down removes the taste. I fill up the glass and sit back down with both the glass and tablets.
I put two more pills in my mouth before taking a large gulp of water.
How many was that?
Five I think. I’m not feeling very giddy now. I think of Thomas. Would he grow up and wonder why his sister didn’t stay? Would he think he did something? My eyes blur as I put two more pills on my tongue.
I wish it had been different and I can only hope it is wherever I go next
My thoughts shift to Mary so young. Will she become the focus of my father’s abuse? This makes me cry harder.
“I’m sorry Mary.” I tell her even though right now she’s tucked away in bed, obliviously to the damage our father’s hands can inflict. I take a handful now I want to dull the ache in my chest and the panic that’s starting to rise inside me. I feel sleepy now. But my thoughts move to my mother.
Will she cry for me? No. She will cry for herself and her loss. It will be unfair that she had to bury a child. I know that’s how she will look at this and that thought has my chin and lip trembling as I cry.
A part of me doesn’t want to die. A part of me wants someone to step in right now and fix this. Take me in their arms and lift me to safety. But it’s just me and the cold tiles. It’s so cold. My fingers tremble as I shake out more pills while knocking the bottle across the floor. I shove them into my mouth. The glass of water has slipped from my hand, so I chew slowly, sluggishly and my final thoughts are of my father.
Fun times when he took me fishing, or when he called me his princess. Or when he collected me from school and we just chatted about the day. Or when he built lollipop robots and paper airplanes with me. It all vanishes as his hands touch me, his alcohol infused breath rushes across my neck. His heavy breathing and sloppy kisses. Hands roaming; touching. Those moments have led to this one, and I’m ready to let go. I release my final breath on a cold white tile, in the middle of the night, alone, dying like a sheep in a ditch.
I wake up on my bed. My heart threatens to come out of my chest. It’s still day time. Light flitters in from the high window in my room. I can still taste the pills in my mouth. I put a hand to my lips. Is that what Violet felt. Were they my sister’s final moments? I turn on my side and pull my knees to my chest. She never thought of me. She thought of Thomas for Pete sake. Thomas who was a sheep after my father and Mary. A laugh leaves my lips. Mary was a fence sitter. How could she think of our vacant mother? My anger was boiling. Rocking my body, but I stopped the motion and froze as I thought of her final moments and right now on this bed I felt my heart break for my sister. He had been abusing her. I hadn’t known.
“I would have stopped it.” I sob now into my hands. The ache in my chest was all too familiar and I took deep breathes through my nose and out through my mouth. I didn’t want to pass out again. I was so sick of it. Right now, I wanted to grieve for the sister I lost.
My mid keeps going over her final moments. She hadn’t even thought of me. She had been so worried about him abusing Mary and not me. Why? Why had she not thought of me? I loved her so much. Wrapping my hands around my stomach I try to push down the ache that is rising. It’s like an invisible hand is twisting my insides. I don’t make it to the bathrooms before I puke all over the hall floor. The cold floor on my hands is soothing the burning flames that lick my body.
I’m gagging on bile when Minnie arrives. “Oh Laura have you seen Stones?”
Tears and vomit cover the ground in front of me. I look up at Minnie, she’s so oblivious to my meltdown. A laugh breaks through my raw lips. “No Minnie I haven’t.” The sentence ends on a sob. But she nods and walks away. I swallow the upset and lie on the floor just like Violet had done in my dream. I place my hand where I saw hers. Knowing her final thoughts are far worse than guessing. I had thought I was the final face she may have seen. That I would have been her regret. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything to her. Closing my eyes. I rest for a while, until the smell of sick starts to become overbearing. No one has passed since I thought I heard footsteps earlier, but they could have been Minnie returning. I sit up, the ends of my hair have soaked up some of the sick.
“Ughh.” I quickly wrap it around the ponytail and into a bun, will holding it with two fingers. I don’t want sick whipping my face as I mop up the mess on the floor.
I find a mop and bucket in the storage closet. I have the area cleaned up and everything returned when a nun passes me, she doesn’t smile as she looks at me, just a curt nod. I hate how they look at me, like I’m a criminal and not a patient. I get clean clothes and make my way to the showers where I get freshened up without any interruptions. I count the tiles in my small area. I count the fifty-four tiles over and over again while running my fingers over the ones I can touch. I do this until my body is wrinkly and old from the water.
Once I get dressed into jeans and a clean blue sweater, I brush my hair and tie it back up, all the while I count the scratches on the surface of my wardrobe. I lose count several times, as they interconnect and overlap. With the scratches catching the light if I tilt even slightly they disappear, and I get confused. I blink away the unshed tears.
Why was I crying now? Always crying. Always sad.
Violets voice invades my mind and I falter. stepping back and losing my balance. I land heavily on my ass.
Pain shoots up my spine, but I try to ignore it.
“Violet?” I whisper looking up at the ceiling before turning to the window, but no one is here. It’s just me.
I want to cry, I want to scream. But instead I reach for my diary that’s almost full with the ghost of Violet.
Unfixable
You slip through porcelain fingers,
Grasping, reaching for reassurance,
But it cracks a fine line through nothing.
Red spills from the unknown,
A doll’s broken face discarded.
What we were once,
What we could be,
Shattered now, broken.
Unfixable.
Lips painted red want to speak the truth,
But pinchers tear the sweet swollen flesh,
A limp hand, the sting a distance thing.
A golden bird its feathers black.
Pool with pieces of porcelain, a porcelain face.
What we were once,
What we could be,
Shattered now, broken.
Unfixable.
I throw the diary across the room, this time my words aren’t bringing me ease. I feel panicked and out of control and right now I just want someone to take charge and tell me everything will be fine. That tomorrow it will be a brighter day. A storm is building in me, telling me that nothing is ever going to be okay again. The sense that runs through me is that I’m caught up in someone else’s story. Violet’s.
It’s always Violet. I was starting to hate Violet for leaving; had she any idea what she left behind?
My heart breaks all over again as I think of the abuse she survived. Why hadn’t she told me? I might have been able to help. Stop it? Done something but instead of helping her now she’s gone. I will never have the chance to save my sister.
I leave my room, and for the first time I seek Rose out. I need to talk to her or I’m going to explode.
I pace outside her room rubbing my hands along my thighs. I count to fifty before I knock.
“Come in.”
I open the door and poke my head in not stepping in fully. “I need to talk to you.” I tell her; she removes her glasses.
“Take a seat Laura.” But I’m already shaking my head.
“Could we please use our normal room.” I swallow the saliva that’s building up in my mouth. I wipe more sweat on my thighs. I want to tell her not to argue that I’m too close to breaking. Just get up and come with me.
That’s exactly what she does. She flicks on the light of our normal room and I sit down, it feels like forever before Rose sits in her seat.
“Where’s your clipboard?” My eye twitches and it irritates the crap out of me.
With raised eyebrows Rose speaks. “It bothers you that I don’t have it?” I hate showing my flaws. I know it shouldn’t bother me but it does. I ask myself, does it really matter? No, it was just another thing out of place.
“No.” I cross my legs to stop the tremble that has entered them. “Yes.” I say uncrossing them. Rose nods like she cares.
“Will I get it Laura?”
I close my eyes. “No. I don’t want you to leave the room. Yet I don’t like that you don’t have it. So, you have really put me in between a rock and a hard place.”
“Something has upset you.”
I nod, while I clamp down on my jaw. I swallow a mouth full of blood.
“There’s something really wrong with me.”
Rose is focused on my mouth. “You have blood on your teeth. I run my tongue across my them. Embarrassment has my cheeks growing red. But I need to talk about Violet.
“I’m fine. It’s Violet.” Rose sits back now, and I pour myself a drink.
“Violet your sister?” Now I look at Rose, she really doesn’t listen. But it doesn’t matter. I just need to say what I’m thinking out loud.
“I had a memory of the night she died.” Her blue face flashes behind my closed eyelids and I open them.
“She never thought about me Rose and I know it’s selfish, but it hurts so much.” My eyes burn but I don’t cry.
“Who did she think about?” Rose asks, I find myself sitting up straighter, wanting to find some logical explanation for her forgetting me. Rose and I could figure this out.
“Thomas, Mary, Mom even Dad.” I say, and she nods with slightly narrowed eyes.
“Laura how could you possibly know someone’s final thoughts?” I clutch my arms to my chest.
“What?” my voice is so quiet even to my own ears.
“How could you know what Violet was thinking?” I’m rocking without knowing it, just rocking and it’s keeping something inside me, something that feels like it’s clawing its way up my throat. Rose is sitting forward now, her hands resting on her knees.
“Sometimes when people go through very traumatic events, they either supress those emotions and memories or in your cause, they create another version of themselves, so they can separate themselves from what they suffered.”