Apricity [a-PRIS-i-tee]: The warmth of the sun in winter
Briar Elizabeth Maddox
Became a social outcast over the summer and now her used-to-be friends treat her no better than the dirt under their shoes. But no matter what she's been through, she'...
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"How is the season starting off?" Aunt Gina asked me. I didn't bother to correct that we were already halfway through the season.
We had her boyfriend over for dinner tonight. I liked Cooper, but I didn't really understand why they were so unstable.
"It's going really well actually. We have a new star player this season and won all of our games so far already."
She nods over the dishes as she scrubs the suds around our dirty plates. I grab a towel and join her to grab the clean dishes for drying.
It was just the two of us now, Cooper had left a little bit ago. Cooper attempted to make conversation with me and I soaked it all up. Aunt Gina pitched in here and there, asking me a few questions herself.
"You know your dad was MVP in high school?" She smiled softly.
"What? He never told me that," I say surprised. "What sport?"
"Football, and he wouldn't have, he was very humble when it came to sports."
"Huh." I think about it for a while as we go silent again. She scrubs, I dry, and we both think in silence.
"Gina?" I pause, trying to form the right words. "You know we talked one night... there was something about it that I wanted to bring up with you." I had been hesitating to talk to her about it every moment we spent together after that. This was the first time I was able to muster up the courage to mention anything.
I noticed her scrubbing slowed, but I still went on. "You said um, you said that I was smart. Smarter than you were at my age." I wait for some sort of reaction but she just keeps scrubbing on. "Aunt Gina, can you tell me what happened between you all? Why I didn't know you all these years?"
She lowers the plate into the soapy water and leaves it there. She stays quiet for a long dragged-out moment. And then she says, "I got pregnant."
I hold my breath. Aunt Gina didn't have any children. At least not that I knew of.
"And for a teenage girl just getting through high school... it was rough to say the very least. Our father was religious to the point where it was mortifyingly sinful to become pregnant outside of wedlock, yet not religious enough because he encouraged abortion before anyone else found out."
I stayed quiet as she went on with her scrubbing, mindlessly handing me dishes to dry. "My family and I, we were never really close, you know. We were pretty much strangers living under the same roof. My dad only practiced religion when it suited him. There was so much about growing up in that house that I hated. So much that I was supposed to grow into. When the pregnancy came around and I thought about raising a child in that household, I couldn't. Couldn't take the pressure, the expectations, the guilt... any of it. I left and never turned back."
"But you were still a minor, a teenager. Didn't they file you as missing when you ran away?"
"Like I said Briar, strangers under the same roof. No one cared enough and that suited me."
