In Summary
I clambered onto my roof, precariously placing hand over foot on the silver rungs. It was easier but scarier than climbing the fence. The sun was setting out behind the neighborhood trees and already the street lamps had flickered to life. I had a journal with me, thinking the solitude would give me some great muse. My tie-dye jeans and flower-child shirt were supposed to represent the free spirit that I was, a clashing of eras and beliefs in my person. The street lamps buzzed and a few dogs called to each other, and occasionally a car passed by on the street below or a door slammed. If you listened very carefully, the trains in Grapevine bellowed across Northeast Texas and the wind danced through the crunchy leaves on the shingles beside me.
I shifted constantly between lying on my back, sitting cross-legged, or pulling my knees to my chest. I sat up on the very peak of the roof. It was an excellent escape from the hum of the house, from the clanging of pots in the kitchen or the clink of tools in the garage, or Thomas and his friends “doing homework” –by battling each other in video games. Conversation with anyone had been limited since school and work had released everyone home. All were too busily wrapped up in their own affairs to trade more than a couple short sentences about kids in class or old employees or the funny thing Grandma had accidentally typed in her e-mail. It was fine, though; I didn’t much care for the details of their days and so didn’t expect them to care for mine. Every day seemed the same lately. When something changed, I’d let them know.
Giving up on the journal for a moment, I rolled onto my stomach and, with the slant of the roof, admired the baby pinks and blues of the sky. Too long like that would give me a seizure, though, so I sat back up. A stick with several crisp brown leaves was within reach and I grabbed it, lazily pulling off the small brown fuzzies between my nails. A fungus, I suppose, bus as a little girl in elementary school my best friend Alyssa and I had spent breaktime collecting them as pets. Her little brother died five months out of high school in a motorcycle accident, but she and I had drifted apart by that point.
I dreaded dinner. Lately Mom couldn’t make it through a meal without crying or throwing up. I hoped she’d forget to call me, but she never did. And I’d be forced to sit there, awkwardly trying to hold our quaint family dinner together while Mom cried behind the closed bedroom door, Thomas watched TV, and Jerry droned on about technical details of his job that were more foreign to me than Russian. He was a facilities manager. They had just gotten ducks in the pond outside his facility. Mom didn’t know; she would cook for us and the probably just go to bed early.
I had turned reclusive. It wasn’t a night for dance. It never was when I really needed the distraction, when I really needed to strap on my hard shoes and jig the wooden floor to death. I extended my legs, stretching out to reach my toes on the downward incline. I would look silly to anyone walking by below but my muscles sighed with contentment.
Pork chops for dinner, and peas and mashed potatoes. I would claim I wasn’t hungry – I’d had a big lunch at school. Chicken nugget day, everyone had pooled their lunches, it had been like a party, I would say if anyone asked. But I had told everyone at lunch that I needed to catch up on some studying in the library.
I wasn’t hungry, though. Or maybe I was, but I’d learned to shake the hand of my growling stomach and send it on its way. One bite and I would be fine; three and I’d feel bloated. Three saltines and twelve baby carrots had brought me right to 100 calories the day before. Today was saltines and just a tiny bit of ranch dressing. You can eat your weight in lettuce for 100 calories.
Her hearing loss was going to get worse, though, as would her sickness. So would the arguments between Thomas and Jerry, and the discord in the household, and the number of times Dad didn’t call. So would the not eating, and five years later my boyfriend would yell in my face and tell me without laughing that if I was pregnant he we was going to kill me, and for three weeks I would have to get myself drunk to eat more than two bites of anything. Thank God I hadn’t known then how much worse it would get or I might not have taken the ladder down.
Looking back, I should never have found my life so dull as I did. We were a tangle of hushed problems, of hearing loss and divorce, emotional abuse, neglect, migraines, arguments, abandonment, lies, and insufficiency.
I took a deep breath. The fires had started for the night, sweet families settling down in front of cozy fireplaces. Thomas and I would build one after dinner, maybe, if Jerry didn’t oppose. The garage door into the house opened and I listened for Mom’s steps but it was just Jerry going in to wash the grease off his hands before dinner. He closed the garage, forgetting I was still outside, now locked out. I could climb down but I’d have to bang on a door until someone let me in.
I thought that if I lost enough weight, I guess, something would change. Maybe one day I would wake up beautiful. And if I woke up beautiful, maybe another day Dad would wake up liking me. And then another day, Mom could wake up not deaf. Maybe me being beautiful would be a catalyst to solve the world’s problems, or at least those of my family.
The phone was ringing inside but no one answered. Calling my house was pointless. No one ever answered. Mom couldn’t hear on the phone and none of the rest of us cared to talk to anyone.
It was getting colder, crisp enough that now I wanted my coat. In just over two years I’d be at school in Boston and learn the real meaning of cold, but we only know what we know. And I was cold. My cheeks and nose had turned bright pink in sharp contrast with my pale skin and that fire was sounding better and better. Once Thomas and I had decided to roast marshmallows over candles. We had collected every candle in the house, some two dozen probably, and tried to roast them. It didn’t work. It just made them black and waxy. So then we just started dipping them in the melted wax. Mom was pissed when she got home. She grounded us, but I don’t know that she ever in our lives followed through on a single grounding until Thomas totaled her car.
I stayed frozen on the roof until the back door opened. Mom had remembered me. Probably she had searched the house and, not finding me, assumed me to be on the roof. I followed the dog in, leaving the ladder propped against the roof. If Mom started crying, I would stargaze instead of not eating.
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Wrote this in my nonfiction class. Set in February when I was fifteen.
Me at fifteen; second from the right. Ewwwww.