I smile and nod for her to continue, while wishing she’d just shut up. Her hands flair in the air and I hate it. I hate how passionate she is, how much life she breathes into every word.
This is the same way she used to tell me bedtime stories. There were times that I was so scared to fall asleep that she’d be stuck there with me until the early hours of the morning. She never got frustrated or stern with me. No, my older sister, perfect person that she is, that she has always been, would only smile and start another one of her made up adventures. They usually featured two little girls surviving in a world where they could only trust each other.
They had always made me feel better. Somehow lessening the sting that no one else cared for us. She always knew the right things to say.
I try to hold onto those memories, to help ease the embarrassment that I feel when we’re in public together.
I struggle to keep the smile on my face as her hands land on the table a bit too loudly, before picking up the wrong fork.
I discreetly look around, already knowing what I’ll see: old money bitches having entire mocking conversations about us with nothing more than a few shared looks.
I hate them. I hate them more than I could ever hate my sister.
Years ago, I had been excited to marry into this life. It was a fairytale come to life. I had felt special when my husband would tell me that I was a breath of fresh air, someone more genuine than the people that ran in his usual circles, his family’s circle.
It had taken me months to figure out that the compliments my mother-in-law gave me were actually insults. Sharp, cunning, and cutting deeper than any other confrontation I’ve ever had.
Honestly, I hate my husband a little bit too. Him pulling me into this world, where I am surrounded by people who judge and judge until I hate myself more than I ever could them, it feels like a betrayal.
Finally, I can see our waitress making her way over. I have been ready for the check since she brought the food out. She smiles and goes to speak, but all that comes out is an obnoxious blaring sound.
Confused, she snaps her mouth shut, clears her throat, and tries again. The same thing happens, but this time I don’t feel as if I am sitting at the table. It feels like I am floating somewhere above it.
I try to hold onto the dream, to push the sounds of my alarm out of my mind.
As I open my eyes I push back the urge to cry.
I would give anything for just one more miserable minute at that table.
Instead, I sit up in my small twin bed, swinging my legs over the side, feet resting on the cold floor of my studio apartment.
I take a second to center myself before looking over to the only picture frame on my bedside table. It’s scratched, the stain is worn in places on each side, and one of the corners is glued together. It’s perfect.
I trace the face of the young woman centered in the photo. She’s laughing with her head thrown back. There is a kind of happiness in her that can’t be faked. This face was supposed to stand with me so that we could take on the world together. This is the face that I want to remember her by.
Not the thin, worn image from the newspaper article that I have hidden just behind it.
For me she had grown up fast, filling the shoes that our parents refused to. But no one had ever done the same for her. All the comfort and warmth that she provided me, she could only find from a guy named Ricky who sold 8-balls for eighty bucks out of his shitty Pontiac Grand Am.
For a second I let myself feel the embarrassment, the hatred that I have for her, for leaving me to face this life without her.
It takes me longer than normal to push the feelings back down, to stuff them in a box deep inside that I never consciously open. But I do it. I set her back down on the stand beside my bed and get ready for work.
It’s an hour later, after I have flipped off the lights and am halfway out the door that I pause, calling back to her, “I’ll see you tonight”.
It feels like I am trying to pressure her to be there again, and I guess I am. I will spend the rest of my life hoping to have shitty dreams of us together so I can escape the nightmare that is having to survive life alone.
—
Naomi Sheely thrives somewhere in chaos and caffeine. This has led her to the Dean’s list and literary publications at HCC, all while completing a double major and several all-night study sessions. It has, somehow, also given her a steady and calm husband and a well-behaved dog. Predictably, though, her three children are feral. There is no free time for hobbies, only the sweet escape of the written word.