dreamland

twenty-eight

I woke up and I automatically knew that I was home. I could feel the ruffle of my pillows beneath my head and my soft wool blanket tucked under my neck. I breathed in through my nose, still not opening my eyes.

But then, like an inundation of five days of nonstop rain, I recalled what you had revealed.

I opened my eyes and sat up looking around at my room. All was the same. My curtains were tightly shut like they were every morning from the night before. My digital clock was still looking at me with its glowing numbered eyes. My mirror was still facing my window so that it was always paralyzingly bright on sunny mornings. Mornings that were not like this one.

I stood up and when I saw my pillows, I saw a small puddle of black blood. I touched my head immediately and felt the tender and awfully ever present pain. The spot was bandaged somehow. I looked into my mirror and blinked at the enormous dark circles I wore. This morning was not like the others.
On this morning, I did not open my curtains to let the light spill in or the cloudiness skimped inside.
I just didn't.
I just couldn't.
I even grabbed an old towel and hung it up, getting rid of any light.
I didn't know if you were somewhere outside and I didn't want to know either. I had a gut feeling, that felt like a kick in my stomach, that told me that you weren't going to stop watching me.

I went downstairs and saw that my mom and dad were already both gone.
Or so I had thought.
My mom was sitting in the living room. She was just sitting. She wasn't eating breakfast or watching the morning news.

Mom, I said my voice scratchy like my elbows.

She blinked, and slowly looked over at me.
She asked me automatically, like a preset recording, who you were.
I was going to do what I did every time—waste time by asking these questions I already had the answers to. But her eyes told me that she wasn't up for that.
Not today.
This morning was not like others.

I said no one, because I couldn't say the truth. You were really, a stalker, a cheater, a liar, a mistake even.
Her lips were tight and her jaw was set.

If he is a no one, then why did he come in here, calling himself your boyfriend, she asked.

What, I asked reaching the curtains and closing the tiny crack shut.
I would not let not even an ounce of sunlight peek through.

He is not my boyfriend, he's delusional, I replied feeling flared up and angry.
Liar. Liar. Liar.
That is who I should have said you were.

He was, a long time ago, I replied, clarifying it to her and hoping you could hear that too.

Her face fell down into a sad expression.
He was, she asked, when, she no longer had her arms crossed, angry and demanding but rather at her sides, beaten down and caught by surprise.
I looked back at her from the window.
I had never told her about you.
Not when I came home, in the middle of the night, smiling so hard that it would hurt to stop smiling.
Not when I was sneaking out in the middle of the night to go and see you.
Not when I was arguing with you on the phone so loud that my voice bounced off the walls and under the tiny crack of my door.
What was the point of you never even wanted to meet my parents.
You didn't even want to meet my friends.
And all those times that I asked you why, you would say that it didn't matter, this was between you and I anyway.
But really you were just keeping your cover intact. That thing that we had always had to remain clandestine.
I wanted to cover my mouth but the truth had already been laid out, well at least just a quarter of it.
The truth was too big and I don't think even I knew all of it.

Mom, don't look at me like that, I said my voice small.

Why can't I, you don't say anything to me, ever, it's like you're hiding things, and well now I see what those things are, she said before falling onto the couch.

She touched her forehead and her ring glittered despite the lack of sunlight in here.

Mom, I'm not hiding anything, I'm not, really, I said pacing around and trying to see if I could see your car or something that look like it didn't fit outside.
But I saw nothing really.
I just saw my mom's face of disappointment; in me, in herself, in life, I wasn't so sure.

He wants to get back with me but I don't want that, I said sitting beside her.

She looked at me and said, because you like someone else.
She didn't ask me that, just stated it. It was a fact to her. Was it that obvious? I still dreamt of him even when my head was all banged up and everything felt so screwed up.

No, that's not why, I replied cooly.
Well it is, I mean, I don't know, I said confused and frustrated with myself.

But you're doing drugs aren't you, she asked.

I gave her a look that hardly hid that truth.

Yes you are, I know that look, she said.

It's just pot, I said looking at all the picture frames on the fireplace.

There was one of all three of us is Mexico. There was another of me and my best friend in black and white at some school dance.
There was one of just my mother and I with our heads touching as we stared into the lens. My dad snapped the picture that day and frowned, saying that we looked so serious. There was a Ferris wheel in the way far distance behind us, actually this had been the first time I had noticed it.
Other than our somber faces, all I saw was my mother, so cool, so beautiful and so alike to me in facial features. We could maybe have been confused to be sisters by a stranger wandering through. Maybe even now as she asked me if I was doing drugs without that motherly tone.

Are you sure, she asked me looking where I was looking.

I looked over at her and said, yes, I promise.

We both stayed silent and while we did I kept staring at that picture of the both of us.
Soon, the ugly insecure yellow-green monster swarmed over me. I started to compare my eyes and my nose and my hair to my mother's. No, we didn't look alike.
I fell way short next to her.
I had to look away.

Are you scared, she asked.
I don't know what she was talking about.
If I was scared of your looming shadow in between the thick tree branches.
If I was scared of never being able to pull myself out of this dark hollow hole.
If I was scared that he had only had sex with me and that was that.
If I was scared of what came tomorrow because tomorrow was so unknown.

But anyways, I replied to my mother, as I looked at the scattered pieces of pine form the Christmas tree near the television.

I said, I don't know mom.
But because I didn't know if I was or weren't, I think that meant I was absolutely terrified.