Love, Lose, And Repeat

Orange Peels

Amber practiced peeling oranges until her fingers went soggy and sour. She threw a small, circular peel on the floor and started to cry. Amber's classmate, Sally Ivan, told Amber if she could peel an orange in one long ribbon of rind, without any pieces tearing or falling off, it meant she was royalty. All day she sat on the floor of her bedroom, peeling the bag of oranges she stole from the dollar store on the corner.

Her tiny body was pale and pink with golden blonde hair that fell down her back. When she cracked the skin open from the last orange, she folded down its rind until it fell off, half-finished. Amber threw it with a small scream; it laid, filleted on the floor. Amber fell into the fetal position wearing her pink-lace princess dress. The bottom wrinkled up so her underwear peeked out from under its lace curtain.

Her daddy called her a princess. He used to kiss her forehead and read her fairy tales at night, about princesses in castles where dragons kept them locked in towers. The stories fell asleep with her but she couldn't carry the prince back from her bed when she got up and dressed for school in the morning. Then, her daddy stopped reading her stories and just laid in bed with her instead. He told her to take off her princess dress, because those frilly bottoms with lace were made for babies.

Her sister Cindy went by Claude because she said gender neutral names were empowering. She shaved her head and wore wifebeaters she found in her father's closet. She spent her weekdays skipping school and carrying liberal signs to the church to protest their "religious agenda." When she got home she lay on her bedroom floor and painted more signs with more slogans.

The lights were off and their mother lay like a statue on her made bed. She starred up at the ceiling and saw the leaks and the brown spot over her head. Claude brought her meals, Amber helped her to the bathroom, and their mother helped herself to the syringe of yellow liquid she hid underneath her husband's side of the bed.

"I can hear you." Claude said. Her arms, cut like notches in wood, twisted when she gripped her sister's doorknob. Amber lay on the floor, knees to chest. Her dress was pressed to her floor and her tears were making wet spots on carpet. "Stop fucking crying all the time." Claude kicked an orange peel towards her sister. Amber lifted her heavy head; her small, gray eyes popped up to see her sister. The little girl's eyes were sore and swollen red. Her fingers hurt and when she sat up she squished a half-clothed orange under her palm.

"I can't deal with mom and you." Claude said.

"I got to peel one." Amber sniffed with her tiny, red nose and wiped loose ooze on her arm, " so, I can be a princess."

"You're not going to be a princess." Claude's eyes were wide and voice pierced through walls and hurt Ambers ears. She covered them with tiny hands. Amber started singing to herself and the green ooze fell down harder; her eyes watered and dripped down, staining her cheeks.

"Take that dress off." Claude ripped one hand off her sister's head and threw it down to Amber's side.

She screamed, no, in a high-pitched alarm that forced Claude back to the door, "I don't want to." Then she turned into a whisper the echoed the empty of the house. "I want to be a princess."

"What would being a princess give you?" Claude was softer this time but still loud and the muscles in her arms strained with pulses of anger.

"A prince."

Claude leaned so close to little Amber's face that she could see tears form from pockets in her eyes, "You are a sad little girl" Claude said. "and delusional if you think a prince is going to come, bounding up on a white horse, and take you away from mom, this house, and the shitty thing dad did to you."

Amber's voice was small and timid like a mouse seduced into a trap, "and you."

"He did it to everyone." Claude spun around and went for the door. Her frame felt multiplied with the heaviness of her step. Claude's wide shoulders were muscle and bone that twitched when she lost control of her volume, "You're asking to be the wrong person." She turned the lights out on her sister, who lay on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees. Claude was steel eyes poking through a crack in the mostly shut door, "You know mom is going take him back. She needs her fix. You are going to have to know what to do when--"

"daddy is coming home?" In the dark, Amber wished she disappeared. She looked up at the ceiling. Turning onto her back, she watched light fall across the sky of her ceiling and pretended they were stars and that she was in a far off kingdom.

Their mother heard everything and lifted her arm off the bed. She was skeletal; her thin flesh covered weak bones. She searched under her back and brought the needle to her face, but the insides were empty.

"This is his kingdom, and you aren't the princess." Claude slammed the door. She thudded to her room, which was still lightless and cold, and continued painting signs.

Amber squeezed fleshy oranges with small hands until its juice dripped off elbows. She pointed her hand to the piece of popcorn ceiling that looked like O' Ryan's Belt. Headlights turned onto her road and shined through her window. She pretended it was a shooting star, closed her eyes, and wished on it, "I wish I was a prince."