Midmorning

xvi. zero days

It was midnight.

When I was born, that is.

Of course I couldn't remember it, and I bet maman lied that she could just so she didn't look like an entirely awful mother. She recited the fact it was the most beautiful day of her life because she overheard women in crowded cafés say that to their little five-year-old daughters, but little five-year-old me still thought I was special. Apparently I was a handful, and nothing had changed since. Eyes crinkled when she giggled and coughed. You're a good girl really, Briar.

I soon realised she mixed this beautiful day up with the day my father left her, which was only a week before. They'd argued: bottles smashed, tremors, pleading, front door slammed. She shut doors with especial caution for seventeen years after that, nudging them slowly as they creaked one, two, three times into the doorframe whilst gently twisting the doorknob into place as if she were waiting for someone to knock again, letting them know she'd kept the door open for so long but would still let them slip through.

I never found out what they argued about. Me, probably. The smartest thing maman ever did was never tell me.

When I was six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, I'd gotten used to taking care of my mother, tipping water down her throat, careful, both hands, the way I should've been practising on a doll. I used to go out and spend hours in parks with kids who didn't care about me just to come home to find her scattered on the living room floor. I didn't understand. Was I meant to? Mummy, why are you sleeping on the floor? Why were you sick? It smells of vomit in here, maman, wake up—

I didn't go out very much after that.

But Hogwarts peeled me away from it. It was both terrifying and refreshing. The only thing was that nobody's parents were like mine—theirs were together. Proud. But I couldn't tell if they were happy. A slice of me well-kept in the ragged pocket in my chest hoped they weren't. It was selfish of me and I knew it but each time I watched a gift fall into someone's lap during breakfast, I felt like crying my ribs sore.

Wren would rub my back. 'You'll get a gift someday.'

             Someday, I echoed silently, and like someone descending into anaesthesia, I began to count backwards.

             Twenty.

After I'd visited my mother, I slept the rest of the day away. Packing didn't bother me—I'd toss everything into my trunk later. It was only at three in the afternoon did I smell Wren's sweat and perfume and wake to see most of my things stashed away, only a few things she seemed conflicted on left on its overside. Moments after, I cried into my pillow in the empty dorm and forced myself to sleep again, head pounding with guilt.

             Nineteen.

I'd successfully stayed there until night fell again. I heard a few girls crying. Graduation, I supposed. But I still wanted to ask them why.

I never did.

Instead, we all silently cried in unison, a morose choir. Sometimes we'd be out of sync, one girl sniffling while another snored, each exhausted by her own despair.

The last to sleep was Wren. I wasn't like Tom but I was nearly certain I knew her every reason for muffling her wails in her blanket. I wanted to get up and say something. But when I went to Germany, Greece, then Italy, I needed her to feel nothing but relief.

             Eighteen.

It was strange because I spent the entire night praying and praying he wouldn't kill me but I knew. I'd call my brief sleep a nightmare but I stirred too often for any cruel image to truly solidify, palms clammy from being pressed together for so many hours, mouth dry from wasted orison. Maman said our prayers didn't have to be the recited kind because we weren't like that, they could be said anywhere, any time, not just in church or at the dinner table. They'd work as long as you meant them.