Some Day One Day

9

Two Weeks later
I tossed and turned in my bed, trying to find a position that would comfort me but unable to successfully find any. It was agonizingly hard to sleep with the way my heart thumbed so deafeningly in my ears, ridding me of the complacence I was searching so desperately for. I needed all the rest that I could get because I was now also training in the kitchen as a server too apart from being a housekeeper.
Frustratingly, I sat up in bed, scooted backwards until my back rested against the wall and stared straight ahead at me at the stream of light that sneaked through the broken blinds.
For the past two weeks, sleep was a deprivation that I could not avoid. It left me fatigued and overwrought at work.
After the night of the party, nightmares that left me shaken and dreams that left me waking up with a smile on my face only for hollowness to swallow me soon after, had tormented me at a constancy. This wasn't new to me in any type of way though. These sorts of happenings took place periodically, and I guess it happened whenever an incident occurred where I'd have some sort of unpleasant encounter with someone. For a long time, I'd isolated myself from people purposely because of the shame written all over me, and whenever I had to face people, I would ruminate too much a bout how it happened when I came to the loneliness of my home.
The intense, self-deprecating brooding would then lead to my heart throbbing expeditiously and sometimes if I thought too much about it, I'd end up having a panic attack, having to use my inhaler to placate me.
I stared up at one corner of the ceiling where the wallpaper was peeling off from exhaustion and old age. Then I shifted my gaze to the alarm clock that stood on my nightstand. The intimidating numbers of three thirty beamed at me in neon, ruddy colors. They mocked me for not being able to sleep when I had to be at work in two and a half hours.
After some fervid cerebration, I capriciously decided to take the day that was to take tomorrow off, which was my originally signed day off anyway. Slipping out of my bed, I waded to my kitchen cabinet and gorged down two more sleeping pills in hopes that sleep wouldn't betray me this go around.

~o~o~o~

It must have been the light that filtered into my room that violated my sleep. I woke up with jerky movements, my heart suddenly racing and my eyes frantically searching for the alarm clock. It read seven o' clock and that's when missiles of realization landed on me. I hurriedly went to my bathroom in a panic and took a quick shower, thankful that the hot water had returned but not able to enjoy it the way I wanted to. After a revitalizing shower, I dried myself, and started chaffing my hair while I looked at myself in the cracked mirror. That's when I finally realized that today was my day off and I didn't have to go in. I was so accustomed to never taking a day off that I'd scared myself into getting ready with the innate thought that I had to report to work.Throwing my towel frustratingly on the sink, I stared at my mirror image. And just like that, I saw a little girl, lost in a world of pretense happiness.One thing that I'd always known was that sometimes unhappiness had so much tenacious strength that even the greatest pretender couldn't muster enough skill to hide it...Emptiness stared back at me, and if nobody knew what it looked like, all they had to do is look into my eyes.
I was staring at myself in my mirror with its exorbitant frame, imported from an antique shop in France. My mother got it for me when decorating my bedroom, stating that 'I deserved all the finer things in life and I should never deprive myself from getting the best'.
I didn't get much sleep last night because the argument had been too loud for me to bear. Even if Mom had come to check up on me later on to explain through lame prevarications that they weren't fighting, the after effects of their argument still vacillated within me like a stubborn itch that wouldn't leave. Daddy came to my room later on while Mom was there and told me that I had nothing to worry about. As the two of them talked to me, laughing and joking like all was well, I couldn't help but think that, damn, my parents are some good actors. I even began to wonder if that was them who'd been arguing in their room while I sat outside their door and listened. I guess it had been idiotic on my part to stick around and listen, but my parents never usually argued. Their arguments were very infrequent, so I'd been impertinent to find out what they were even arguing about.
But as I grew older, I learned that they were only being pretense in order to protect me from their arguments-the same way they tried to protect me from the world.
What they needed to realize was that they couldn't protect me from everything, and this go around I didn't buy their lies about their argument. The altercation wasn't about the usual, marital issues that I usually hear my friends say their parents have. Their dispute was about a relative of ours and the choice of whether to help them, or let them suffer through their own wrong doings.
Ponderously, I tried to get myself ready for school by applying make up and turning the curler on for my hair, but I didn't have the energy to do it that day. School had started about two weeks ago and the excitement of it was dying down with each passing day. The only problem I had so far with school was Shawn. Everytime I saw him, I'd freeze up, clam up...just...do all the things I normally don't do when I see a guy. I felt strange whenever he looked at me. I felt in some ways that he was looking through me. That made me feel like I wasn't being genuine. Not to others, but to myself. He made me feel like I was lying to myself-but the problem was I thought too much about stuff.
Today, I finally, bravely decided that I wasn't going to wear make up. I donned some sweatpants and a t-shirt-something I never did. But it was just one of those rare days when I didn't care what anyone else thought of me.
"Honey!" my mother yelled at me from what I surmised was down the hallway, "Hurry. Your breakfast is getting cold and we're running a little bit late."
"Coming." I sang out to her and made my way downstairs soon after to find both of my parents sitting at the table. There my mom was, a lady in her late thirties, absolutely stunning in my eyes. Everyone said that we shared the same, dark almond-shaped eyes and the same heart-shaped mouth. On the table my father sat, the man whom I'd inherited the aquiline nose and hair from. The newspaper hid his face though.
When my mother looked up, it was to scrutinize my gear with a strange expression while pouring some coffee into my father's cup.
"Why aren't you ready?" she asked and I could see the prefacing signs of impatience on her face and hear it in her tone. Just because my mother spoiled me rotten didn't mean that she let me get away with everything.
I glanced down at my anything but fashionable attire.
"I am ready. What," I asked haltingly and looked up, feeling suddenly self cautious, "Do I look bad?"
"No, no," my mom shook her head immediately, "I'm just not used to seeing you go to school like that. Hurry, sit down and eat your breakfast it's getting cold."
I sat dutifully and stared at my plate, feeling a sudden uncertainty about myself.
"Hey baby."
I looked up at my father staring at me through bespectacled eyes, smiling a smile that revealed the deep dimple in his left cheek. I had his dimple on both of mine.
"Hi Daddy." I tried to smile but it was hard to, something didn't feel right that day for some reason.
"Are you okay? You look sick." He observed.
"I'm fine." I told him with a faint smile. My father had always dandled me the most, and that's probably why I was so used to having my way all the time. I wasn't used to him telling me no-well he'd been doing it a lot more since his heart attack though.
"Where's Teresa?" I glanced at the empty seat beside me. Teresa was my older sister.
"She left early to go finish an art project."
I nodded quietly. My sister was just like my parents. Academics ruled her world, and that's why she accepted to go to the private school that I told my parents I'd never go to even if they paid me. Although education was really important to her, she seemed to have everything else. Looks, smarts, boyfriend who had the looks and smarts. Me and her were cool, but ever since she started doing all that extra curricular activities like joining after school clubs, taking college classes while still in highschool, and focusing on her social life too, we sort of drifted apart and that's when Angie and I became closer than before. I still loved her to death though.
After barely eating my food, I told my mother to hang on a second so that I could get something that I forgot from upstairs. In less than ten minutes I was entering the car a changed young woman.
"How did you change so quick?" my mother asked me incredulously and I shrugged apathetically while snapping on my safety belt.
"I didn't say you looked bad Beyonce. All I said was that I wasn't used to you dressing that way. You don't have to do change just because someone else says something you don't like. Why are you so sensitive?"
"I'm not! I changed cause I wanted to." I knew that I was trying to convince myself moreso than her.
We drove quietly for a while, which was strange because my mother was a very talkative woman. Then, slowly but surely, the conversation about my aunt started lightly, but ended up on the complete opposite end.
"Section eight housing...how can he tell her that?" my mother asked, not expecting an answer with her eyes stilled to the road, her voice carrying with it a fervor that surprised me. She was saying what she'd said for the millionth time when my uncle had advised her about where my auntie should stay.
I knew that my parents along with their brothers and sisters had grown up poor because of the stories that they'd told about their childhoods. Their poverty had been so tragic and depressing to listen to that everytime they recited their living conditions to me, I'd be horrified and promise to both God and I that I would never ever end up that way.
Even if I had never been poor, my biggest fear apart from losing my parents was being poor and I think I inherited those worries from my mother.
That was her biggest fear too.
Losing.
That was my fear.
"Why can't she come and stay with us then?" I asked my mother, clutching onto my school bag tightly as an unsettling feeling went through me.
My mother scoffed.
"She's too proud to accept anyone's help. But I knew that this was something she shouldn't have done. She should have been smarter."
My auntie had hopelessly fallen in love with this guy-so much that she quit college to help her boyfriend, not even a husband, but her boyfriend to pay for medical school. When he was through with medical school, he was through with her too. He went on to marry the lawyer who he'd been having an affair with. My auntie had yet to move on though.
I stared straight ahead of me, feeling a strange peal of fear build up inside of me. The fear then reminded me of the void that I'd always felt, and the void became more and more hollow as I thought of being poor and alone just like my aunt was.
I couldn't merely imagine such a life.
It seemed so...horrid.
"And your father won't let her come stay with us anyway."
"Why not?" I asked even though I knew the history between my father and Aunt Meredith. After her boyfriend had left her in a financial slump, my parents let her come and stay with us until she could get herself together. The depression that followed her boyfriend's unjust treatment to her made her so useless at work that she got fired. With a lack of employment came the lack of money, and therefore her landlord kicked her out after months and months of no payment to the rent. Since she left without paying, her credit was terrible and no other place would take her willingly. She couldn't take a loan because she'd taken them to help her boyfriend pay for school-I don't know how dense she could be. At that time I thought she was just so damn stupid the way everyone else thought. Before she could even think about stepping foot into project housing, my mother took her in immediately and I felt at that time, my father understood her deepest concerns. If I had a younger sister, I wouldn't want her to live under such conditions whether she deserved it or not.
When she came to stay with us, I enjoyed having her around for a while until I realized that she wasn't the same fun-loving auntie anymore. Like everybody else, I noticed that she didn't do much for herself. She never tried to go out into the world and keep searching for a job. She did a few times, but every time they didn't take her, she would take this rejection to heart enter her deep, dark zones of depression. My auntie never took rejection well. It got to a point where even I started getting frustrated just like everybody else in the house. She didn't clean up after herself-by then we no longer had a maid for a period of time-she didn't help out around the house, and she mopped around the house all day, calling her boyfriend constantly to try and get him back in her life. I even started to think that she was obsessed.
As much as I hate to admit it, there was a point and time when I was actually ashamed of my auntie. There was a time when I treated her like a leper, unable to stay near her because I couldn't stand her ways. I couldn't stand the way she carried herself. It was disgusting to me. She reminded me of those type of people who don't give a damn about morals or self respect. How could she behave this way over a man? Was she serious?
Eventually, my father reached his breaking point and could no longer tame her anymore. He kicked her out despite my mother's pleas for him to allow her a little more sympathy. My father reasoned that sympathy was the very reason why she wasn't doing anything to help herself.
After she left, no one heard anything from her until last night when I heard my mother and father arguing about it. It was something about why my mother was consistently sending her money.
My mother's argument was that family should not let other family suffer even during their darkest hours.
My father's argument was, if you give a man a fish everyday, he won't learn how to go and get it on his own. 

"And your uncle had the nerve to say that she deserves everything that's happened to her! Does he truly think that I want my babysister to move into a drug infested neighborhood, with those drug dealers and addicts who do nothing but complain and blame the world for their misfortunes? My sister does not belong there. No way."
My mother shook her head adamantly and when I looked at her, the fire in her eyes scared me so much that I turned away.
"I'm not going back to let her go back to that type of life. I'm not." She was parked in the school parking lot now.
I bravely raised my head to look at my mother and wished I had never looked at her because my heart broke at the sight.
"Mom, she's going to be okay. Aunt Meredith is strong. I know that she's going to be okay." Even I didn't believe my own words. My auntie wasn't strong because she was so used to living for other people that at times, she forgot she existed. She was a people pleaser and used attention to fill up any missing pieces within her.
An unsettling wave went through me at those thoughts, but I ignored them.
My mother finally looked my way, smiling wryly.
"I know baby." She put her hand over mine even as it was clutched onto my bag.
"I hope I never end up like that." I confessed as I turned wistfully to the school building.
"You won't baby." My mom patted my hand, "My father and I worked hard so that you won't ever have to live like that. You've got me and Daddy so you never have to worry about that."
I nodded and sat quietly for a while. I kept thinking over and over how I had the best father and mother in the world because they loved me unconditionally. Now we weren't a perfect family. We had our share of problems, but we always let each other know that love comes first and foremost before anything else. Anything that my parents did for me, I knew it was for the best.
I made to leave, but her voice halted me and I turned to accommodate her when she spoke.
"But you know what the key to success is?" she asked.
"This," she tapped her temple, "Education is the only way out. Just work hard and you'll never have anything to worry about. All you need is a career. That's all you need in life to make it through."
I nearly asked my mom, 'Wat about love?' But I became discouraged since I knew that it was such a silly question, only asked by people who think of life as a fairytale. My parents had always been go-getters, ambitious and aggressive whenever it came to the professional world. Sometimes I wondered if they even loved each other as much as they loved their jobs. I doubted it. My parents never talked to me about relationships, and even when I watched them, they didn't have the same type of relationship that say, Angie's parents had.
The older I grew, the more I learned that their relationship was more business-related than anything else. That didn't mean they didn't love each other. They just...didn't love the way I thought they should. Angie's parents were more passionate and showy. They were free with each other and they told one another the sweetest things no matter how silly they may have sounded. In fact, Angie and Ojay were like a miniature version of them. My parents were more...civilized and isolated when it came to emotions. But I guess cuddling up once in a blue moon was their way of showing each other love. After all, they worked too hard.
I guess that goes to show that everyone has a different way of loving.
But I found myself wishing that I could find that one person who could take me to a place so far away from the world that I'd feel and think that I was getting a little piece of heaven. I wanted someone who I could talk to about anything and everything and not feel accused for opening up the darkest secrets in my soul. I wanted someone who understood me on the deepest level.
I wanted that one of a kind love. The kind of love that people say is unrealistic and impossible.
I wanted it...
I just wanted someone...
And at that time, there was someone who would morph into my mind anytime I harbored such thoughts...
If only he wanted me too.
Instead of voicing my musings, I nodded to my mother's words and told her a quick goodbye before kissing her cheek and closing the door. Hugging my books close to my body and levering the strap of my bag pack to a more comforting angle, I made my way up the grand steps that introduced the gigantic school.
Right after I stepped through the large double doors, I pasted a huge smile on my face and greeted some of the fellow students that I knew before going to my assumed corner next to the restrooms.
Hugging my books, I caught up with various friends, enjoying the compliments I received for the day. I tried to feel good, I truly did, but I couldn't. Thinking about my auntie over and over just kept on piling up in my mind until I started to worry about it. This time, the appraisals and the attention didn't build me up. It strangely made me feel cold and aloof. Disconsolate and dejected.
"Hey girl, why you all quiet?" one of my friends, Marquette, asked as she smacked way too loudly on some gum.
I felt a small sense of relief within me, readying myself to release my pent up emotions.
"I'm just worried about my aunt."
Her features twisted awkwardly, "Your aunt?"
"Mhmm." I nodded.
"What's up with your auntie?" She asked before looking past me and waving flirtatiously at someone before giggling.
"She's not been doing good lately." I told her unsurely because she wasn't even looking at me.
"Huh?" she asked distractedly, her attention still on whoever had stolen it. I stared at her in surprise, a little bit offended too.
I repeated myself nonetheless.
"What?" she finally looked at me, "My bad girl Marcel was walking by."
"Nothing..." I answered with a heavy sigh, wondering if I'd ever done that to somebody else in the past-ignored them while they told me their problems, or at least listened without much care.
I opened my mouth in an attempt to repeat myself, but she suddenly branched off the conversation to one about Marcel and their little issues.
That was the day when I knew that not everyone truly cared. And I also learned that they didn't have to. It wasn't an obligation on their part just because they were 'friends'. And the realization that it wasn't their accountability made me feel a loneliness that I had never felt before.
Loneliness amongst a crowd is the strangest loneliness to me because it reminds you that when it all comes down to it, you come in alone, and you leave alone.
I'm not sure what made me look up, but I did regardless and collided with Mr. Pretty Eyes himself. I'm not sure how long he had been looking at me, but I immediately cowered because I know I didn't quite look like the happy camper that I usually was. I optioned whether to smile brightly and wave at him perkily to conceal what was real. Then I thought of turning away with the true embarrassment that I felt of allowing people to view me this way.
But I did neither of those. I couldn't turn away because for the first time in a while, I felt as though I was looking at a myself.
The emptiness that I saw that morning in my mirror was staring at me now.
Only that the eyes staring back at me belonged to Shawn's.
He too was standing amongst a bunch of his friends, his back propped against the lockers, his hands in his pockets. The black hood of his jacket rested over his head, casting dark shadows-but his eyes were so striking that I could still see them.
As I stared at him, I wondered how many times he'd had that look in his eyes, and how many times I'd ignored it-how many times everyone had disregard it it. I thought of how many times he probably felt the same way I felt today.
That no one truly cared.
That even in a room full of people who knew you, they didn't know you at all.
That in a room full of people, you could be the loneliest soul.
Suddenly all our differences didn't matter and I found myself asking him something on impulse.
'What's wrong?' I mouthed to him and he stared in quiet surprise for a while before smiling faintly and shaking his head.
'You sure?' I asked, smiling my first true smile of the day when he chortled and nodded.
"You?' he asked me and I blushed unintentionally.
'Nothing.' I mouthed back, enjoying our little secret exchange like we were the only two people in the world.
Shawn hefted his chin and twisted his lips in a disbelieving gesture that made me laugh.
'You sure?' he mouthed again, more seriously this time, with his eyebrows raised high.
I nodded and he soon nodded his understanding too. It didn't take long for his attention was stolen direly from a female who wanted him all to herself.
I smiled secretively to myself, feeling a little bit more comforted than before.
Later on during the day, my spirits brightened up a little bit until I received an unexpected call at lunchtime. I had to sneak out of the lunchroom to answer the unknown caller who remained persistent even when I didn't answer.
"Hello?"
"N-Beyonce, I need you to come and get me."
"Who is this?"
"M-Meredith. Aunt Meredith. Why won't your mom pick up her phone?"
"I'm not su-"
"Please come and pick me up."
"I'm at school." I explained to her, rolling my eyes and leaning against the wall of the stall I was in. She'd pulled something like this before. I'd been so worried that I went out of my way to check myself out of school to pick her up only find out when I got there that she'd led me to her ex-boyfriend's house! To know that she was still messing with him made me feel more indifference to her than ever.
"Please. P-please I really need your help."
"What's wrong now?"
"I can't tell you over the phone. Why can't you just come pick me up?! After all the things I've done for you?...Bitch" the mumbled bitch was the last thing that i heard. And just like that, I snapped.
"Are you fucking serious?" I hissed in a harsh whisper, " You need to get yourself together. I can't come and pick you up because I'm at-hello? Hello?"
She'd hung up on me before I could even get a chance to tell her about herself. And that was one of Meredith's biggest flaws. She couldn't handle it whenever someone told her about herself. And it was more sad to me because of the way we'd all lost her. I don't even know where things had gone wrong for them to end up like this. I tried calling the number back, but it suddenly told me that the number didn't exist. Now I felt bad, like I'd betrayed her. I wanted to get her now more than anything but didn't know where to find out. I eventually stepped out of the restroom to find some girl dressed in all black who always lingered there around lunch time. After glancing at myself in the mirror, I left the restroom, no longer feeling the need to return to the lunchroom since my mood had turned sour. I knew I'd have to deal with all those so-called friends and their hyper-active states. Since none of the teachers were loitering in the hallway, I slid against the white brick wall, crouched into a ball with my arms over my knees and my eyes closed over them. Those earlier fears I'd had earlier in the day had returned.
"It's getting a little bit strange, running into you all the time like this." I heard someone say.
I didn't bother to look up because I already knew who it was. Nobody had a voice like his.
After a while, I finally lifted my face and looked straight ahead at the baggy jeans in front of me.
"Shawn..." I called out to him even though he stood right in front of me. I didn't know where he was coming from or what he was doing there, but all that mattered to me was that he was right there.
"Yeah."
"Don't you ever just want to get away?" I asked him quietly, knowing very well that I was asking someone who stood somewhere in between a stranger and someone I knew very well.
When he said nothing, my head fell back and I glanced up at him. He was staring at me with a pensive look on his face before he turned to the hallway.
"I'm leaving," he turned to me and asked an unprecedented question, "You coming?"
It took me a moment to understand that he only meant leaving school.
My eyes drifted down the hallway where the lunchroom was. I glanced up at him again.
"Are you sure?" I quavered, not quite sure myself if I actually wanted to take the risk of cutting school.
Shawn looked down the hallway, turned and started walking off.
"I think that's something you need to be asking yourself." He said as he left.
Without another word, I got up and grabbed a hold of Shawn's arm, stopping him until I walked up front to stand face to face with him.
"Wait..." I said as though he hadn't waited already.
We stared at each other and I could've sworn he was thinking the same thing which was basically, what in heaven's name are we thinking? He holding the question if he should leave with me, and me the question whether to leave at all.
"Lets go." I capitulated, my hands habitually smoothing over my hips when I started to feel really strange. It was that tingling sensation that usually came over me...
I think it was the feeling of bravery to go against the norm-to break the rules for once.
"Where are we going?" I asked him shifting from one leg to the other in an uneven tempo, nervous jitters traveling up and down my spine.
Shawn smirked at me, probably oblivious to how sexy his smirk was, as he pulled the hood of his jacket over his head before shoving his hands in his pockets and walking ahead of me.
"That's for me to know." He said, and before I followed him down the hallway, I smiled a little bit before shoving him playfully on his shoulder.
Shawn only laughed in response.
~o~o~o~