In The Moment

White

You hate white, you declare to yourself for the thirtieth time that day. You hate it with a passion. White walls, white bedspreads, white floor, white ceiling, white chairs...white everything. You hate it all!

You long for some color. And those kitty posters stuck on the surrounding walls don’t count. Neither do the toy dolls or the stuffed animals lying haphazardly on the white floor.

You want the color that is everywhere. You want an ever-stretching blue ceiling and soft green floors. You want a room without walls, where you can run and run and run, without any boundaries to sift through. You want to breathe, really breathe in the green air. You want to feel like breathing in everything, not breathing out to get rid of these toxic fumes surrounding you.

You sit on your white chair and look out the white paned window and look at the beautiful green and blue. You long to leave. You long for your feet to touch something other than cold and hard.

But mama says you mustn’t. Not while you have pointy things stuck in you, putting things inside your frail body. Not while you’re barely able to take three steps without crumbling to the floor like a ragdoll.

Mama smiles when you walk. But she gets very sad when you fall, and she rushes to catch you before you hit the ground. Mama’s confusing like that. Happy one minute, tearful the next. You wish you understood.

You wish you never fell, so mama would always be smiling at you.

You love mama’s smile. Especially when the corner of her eyes crinkle and her nose scrunches and her teeth peeks out from behind pink lips. She looks so beautiful when she smiles.

When you tell mama that, her smile goes away and her eyes shine, like she’s about to cry. You don’t understand what you did wrong. You try to apologize, but by then, she’s smiling again. And it doesn’t look right. Her lips are tight and her eyes are glassy. And her nose isn’t scrunched up.

Then mama picks you up and stands in front of a mirror with you. She points at her reflection and questions, “You think this is beautiful?”

And you nod, because those sparkly green eyes? Those beautiful plump lips? And oh, those long, dark curls? What could be more beautiful.

Mama smiles sadly and shakes her head. Her finger moves from her reflection to yours. “This…” she whispers, “This is beautiful.”

But you don’t have the dark locks mama has.Your head is void of hair altogether. You don’t have mama’s pink cheeks or pink lips. Your eyes are a dull blue, growing dimmer. You’ve no eyebrows or eyelashes to speak of. And you are pale, very pale.

You don’t understand why mama thinks you’re beautiful, but when you look into her eyes, you see desperation. She wants you to see what she sees.

You wish you could, but all you see is a skeletal head placed atop a skeletal body.

Mama sees the confusion upon your face and she has tears in her eyes again. Then she insists that you are beautiful and she holds you close. In a minute, she is sobbing into your bony shoulder, and you are left watching yourself pat mama in the mirror.

You smile at yourself. Because you don’t care how beautiful you look. As long as you’re comforting mama, holding her, you feel more beautiful than all the hair and pink cheeks the world could afford to give.

It’s a long, long while later when mama pulls herself away from you and apologizes. You don’t know why, though. But you smile and express your forgiveness by kissing mama on the cheek.

Then her real smile shows up through the tears again.

She carries you to your white bed and you both lie down. Then you both stare at the white ceiling and for the thirty-first time, you declare to yourself that you hate white with a passion.

“Mama?” You ask, your voice barely above a whisper, “Can I go outside?”

Mama doesn’t look away from the ceiling as she whispers back, “One day, sweetheart. One day, when you’re better.” Then, not long after, her eyes close and she’s snoring softly.

You wait for her to be fully asleep, before you turn up the volume on the small TV that hangs under the ceiling and slip out of the bed. With the help of your crutches, you quietly make your way to the bathroom.

You lock the door behind you, then you pull up the toilet seat, get down on your knees and empty the contents of your stomach, not that you had much in there anyway.

You suffer five to six rounds of icky smelling vomit, and by the third, there is blood. After all, it’s not just the food you ate that you’re discharging.

You flush the toilet three times before all the contents are gone. Then you pee and flush once more.

Stumbling over to the sink to brush your teeth seems harder, now that you’ve got nothing inside of you. But the lady in the white dress will come to feed you soon anyway, so you don’t worry.

Once you’re finished with your tasks, you leave the bathroom and go back to bed, curling up next to mama. Still asleep, she pulls you closer to her warm body and you snuggle into her, feeling content with your life.

Your condition may be worse than ever, but you have a good feeling about this now. You will be free soon, mama had said. And then you can do anything. Anything.

You close your eyes with that thought. And you drift off to sleep with a small smile on your face, wondering how much longer till you can leave this room of white. Wondering how much longer, till you’re running on green grass, under blue skies. Plucking dandelions and watching them blow away into the wind. Shielding the sun from your eyes as you watch the sky, seeing a bunny in the clouds and naming it Coco. Digging a small hole in the ground to plant a seed and watch it grow into a beautiful flower. All those small things. You wonder how long, until you’re free...

You wonder...but you will never know. For tomorrow, you won’t wake up.