Pink Walls

I Remember....✓

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isn't it funny how people who never thought to care

decide to rant about why you never told them

when it wasn't like they ever tried

because they were really the entire problem

I remember...

When my father walked out the first time, my mother cried-bitterly. As I knelt in front of her bedroom door, not really understanding what had happened, I listened for her muffled sobs. I counted each one as I stared at the second hand of the watch on my hand.

I needed to tell Dad how many times he had to apologize. It wasn't the first time he had made her cry. Ever so often, a tear would slip down her cheek when we watched TV together. Whenever I asked why she was crying, she would just shake her head and smile.

Dad didn't come back on those days but when he eventually did he always asked me if he made her cry and in the end he would make it up to her with a gesture so grand it made the news.

The last time, he bought her an island. She had cried for an hour and I counted fifteen-and-a-half sobs.

The day he left for good, only ten islands could make up for it.

I stayed there, my head pressed against her bedroom door, until everything went quiet and I was sure that she was asleep.

I remember...

That day had been my birthday. I had worn a pretty pink gown that day because Mother said it would make Dad smile and be happy and stay with us forever. She said he wouldn't spend months at work anymore and we would have dinner together.

He did, smile I mean. He wasn't happy though, I could tell that much. He also cried when he saw me and pulled me close to his chest while stroking my hair lovingly. He didn't stay, he left that day. I thought he wouldn't come back but he did.

A Saturday ten months later, he stood at our door in a rumpled business suit with a bottle of Whiskey in his hand.

I understood now that they had been mourning somebody that I didn't remember-An older sister I should have had-but they had done so in different ways. While Father ran away from it, Mother tried to give me double her love until she couldn't anymore. I didn't know why I didn't know who she was. My memories stretched to times when I couldn't yet walk but I couldn't remember the person I had been named after.

Since Mother said that we were born together, she had to be my twin, the first Olive. She wasn't here anymore and I knew that it was my fault. It had to be.

I was the reason Mother hated me. I was the reason Dad left. I took their daughter away from them and I can't even remember why or how.

I wonder what she was like.

Did we look alike?

Now I know that the small dresses in my wardrobe belonged to her. We must have shared the room together. Maybe the reason Mother never entered this room was because she didn't want to remember Olive. . . Or me.

I knew why she named me-us-Olive.

I remember. . .

She told me when I was younger. She married Dad without loving him, but after she gave birth she decided that she was going to be as good a wife and mother as possible. Having her first child named Olive was the equivalent of extending an olive branch to my Dad and asking for a fresh start.