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Blood caked underneath my fingernails.
Bruises between my legs.
I was so over being me that I needed a new word for over. I needed a new fucking life. I patted my bra over my shirt, feeling for my bus ticket for the hundredth time. I breathed a sigh of relief when the paper crinkled against my skin, my reminder that a fresh start was only a bus ride away.
I righted my shirt and took in my surroundings. The small house was once very familiar to me, in what seemed like another lifetime, but in reality was only a few years ago. I used to feel at home there.
Oh, how things have changed.
I nervously crossed and uncrossed my legs, as Mirna shuffled around the kitchen. I felt everything and anything but at home. This had nothing to do with Mirna (I’d always called her by her first name) and everything to do with me.
I pulled down on the hem of my shorts as if I could somehow make them longer, suddenly all too aware of the hole in the pocket exposing the skin on my upper thigh. After uselessly yanking at the worn denim, I switched to my sleeves, stretching the fabric over the palms of my hands and folding my fingers over it to keep it in place. Sunlight beamed through the large window of the living room. The last light of the day rendered the thin material of my shirt completely see through, and I hoped with everything I had that Mirna wouldn’t see my arms.
My stomach twisted. The H I’d had over the past week wasn’t nearly enough to get me high, only enough to keep me from plowing head first into major withdrawals. My head throbbed and my body ached like I had the flu. The major hangover that never really went away.
My stomach could have also been twisting because the second I’d entered my grandmother’s house, I’d officially become the worst fucking human being on the planet.
Unofficially, I’d already held that title for quite some time.
I rocked forward to quell the nausea, but there was little that could help me that didn’t come in the form of a syringe, or a less used and abused body.
I wondered what was taking Mirna so long because I was’t sure how much longer I could sit there without vomiting into the planter next to the front door. Another wave of nausea washed over me and without thinking I bit down hard on my bottom lip to keep the contents of my stomach down. I licked the blood from my lip, the taste of copper adding to the already disgusting taste of bile on my tongue.
Mirna came back into the living room with a big smile on her face. She set down a silver tray on the coffee table, the one she only used when company came around.
My grandmother, seemingly unaware of my discomfort, poured tea into two mismatched cups. One was light blue with a chip on the rim, and I recognized it immediately. The chip had been a result of me running my big wheel into her coffee table as a kid. I’d sent her entire tea set, a wedding gift from my late grandfather, crashing to the floor. Mirna had sat with me on her lap on the kitchen floor, stroking my hair and comforting me for hours, even though it was me who ruined her entire tea set beyond repair. All had been lost, except for one cup.
The one cup I now took from Mirna as she passed it across the coffee table.
My hands shook, rattling the teacup against the saucer. I smiled as politely as I could, setting it carefully back on the table without so much as taking a sip. My grandmother returned my smile and watched me curiously over the rim of her teacup, and just like when I’d first knocked on her front door several minutes earlier, I waited.
Nothing.
The last time I visited, Mirna was having trouble remembering things. Where she’d put the keys. What time her friend Hilda was picking her up for Bingo.
It seemed things weren’t only different for me, but Mirna as well, because I never expected the woman I spent every summer with during my childhood since I was four years old to not recognize her one and only grandchild.
When had things gotten so bad?
“Do you know who I am?” I asked softly, in one last attempt to stir up some kind of recognition. I stared unblinking at her and tried to will the recognition into her eyes. Eyes that matched mine. Eyes that used to hold so much life but were now dulled like they’d been frosted over.
Maybe, there wasn’t anything wrong at all. Maybe, she was totally with it and just didn’t recognize me. After all, last time she saw me I was all glossy black hair and tanned skin, and now I wasn’t even a shadow of my former self. Gaunt, with sharp collarbones and pointed elbows. Deep dark yellowy circles under my eyes. Pale grayish skin.
I didn’t need to look in a mirror to know I wouldn’t be able to recognize myself.
“I’m Andrea,” I said. Nothing still. “Dre?” I asked, switching to my nickname, just in case it could ignite a spark.
“Oh!” Mirna exclaimed, holding up her index finger. I sat on the edge of the cushion, leaning over the table, waiting for her to confirm that I’d broken through. “You’re from the church, right? They keep sending people by to keep me company while Rick’s overseas, but I’m just fine. My nurse training keeps me busy, and in my free time I’m learning how to be a better cook, although, I need to work on perfecting Mama’s meatloaf or she’ll never come over for Sunday dinner.”
My heart dropped into my stomach when Mirna referred to my grandfather as if he was still alive and overseas fighting in the war.
Guilt, sickening guilt, twisting guilt, washed over me and clung to my rotten insides. In the grand scheme of things, it was probably better she didn’t know who I was.
Or why I was there.
I was reminded of that reason when a crash sounded from the back of the house. I cringed while Mirna seemed unaffected by the commotion. She was sipping tea with a polite pinky raised in the air like the proper southern debutant she once was.
Just as I told myself that she hadn’t heard the noise, she tilted her head and pointed down the hallway. “How much longer do you think they’ll be, dear?” she asked, as I’d been wondering the same exact thing.
My pulse spiked. “Uh, I don’t know what you’re…um…who?” I again pulled down on my sleeves.
She smiled and leaned forward, crooking her index finger for me to do the same, so I did. “There are two men in the back room,” she whispered. “They broke my window and they are stealing from me.” She slapped her knee and a burst of laughter shot through her mouth as if she’d just told me the punchline to a joke. “Can you believe it? Isn’t it all so very exciting?”
“I’ll…I’ll just go tell them to leave for you,” I announced, keeping my voice as steady as possible and ignoring the head rush I got when I stood abruptly from the couch. Then, as calmly as I could, I made my way down the hallway.
“Thank you so much, dear,” Mirna called out. “But you don’t have to do that, someone is already on the way. He’ll be here shortly.”
“Who?” I asked, turning around.
“Samuel,” she offered, like it was a name I should know. She picked up her cup and crossed her legs, settling back into the sofa and turning to stare out the front window into the yard.
Pinkie back in the air.
I turned and raced down the hall, pushing open the back bedroom door. I almost fell over at the sight before me. What used to be a guest bedroom and doubled as Mirna’s scrapbooking room, was now filled with rows of green plants. And not just any plants.
Weed.
Mirna was growing weed out of her guest bedroom.
Green leaves jutted out in every direction over a complicated web of clear tubes and glass planters hanging from the ceiling, and the walls creating several aisles of stacked plants.
Stumbling around the room, shoving as much of it into garbage bags, and sending the glass planters and tubing crashing to the floor as they went, were the two men the bus ticket in my bra was going to get me far, far away from.
“What the fuck is all this?” I asked, my mouth gaping as I took it all in. “And why is it here?” Eric and Conner both looked as if they’d won the weed lottery, yellow toothed grins plastered on their gaunt faces. Er
ic’s ripped t-shirt hung like an old potato sack off of his thin frame. His cheeks were sunken in. His sneakers were mismatched, both in color, one black and one white, and in condition, one had a hole with his toes poking out the top and the other had the sole coming loose on the side. Conner didn’t look any better, although his shoes were the same color. “Tell me what the fuck is going on?” I demanded, wishing that sober didn’t feel so god damned awful.
