All the Time in the World

You Are Not My Mother

   I awake to noise. Before, perhaps, I would have called these sounds silence. I know better now.

   My ears detect the rush of air conditioning coming through the vent under the couch on which I am laying, the hum of the refrigerator in the next room. I hear the quick, yet soft footfalls of my stepmother just to my left, and the heavy, lugging footsteps of my father making their way down the rickety stairs.

   No, this is not silence. I know silence. It is heavy and loud, it makes its presence known. It is unbreaking and utterly complete, immensely cold and savage. It ravages every crevice of your body with pressure and tears apart your mind with its deafening roars. Silence is terrifying and powerful.

   I open my eyes slowly and gaze at the off-white ceiling, bracing to be slammed with another migraine, but none comes. There is no residual pain.

   Liar.

   Ah, hello Olive 2.0.

   You're a liar.

   She's right. Perhaps there is no physical pain, but as I search my being for it, I come across something much worse. The dregs of sorrow, fear. My mind is a crime scene, covered in the blood of someone else's terror. Though the feeling isn't as potent as it was, it is there, an echo.

   But now is not the time. I push a thick woolen blanket off my legs as I sit up. So, Katrina was trying to make me sweat to death after she caused me to pass out? God.

   I turn to look at Katrina cleaning the table as I address her. "What the hell was that?"

    She startles, then turns around, eyes wide with mock surprise. "Oh, you're up! And language, missy! Another migraine?"

   She's playing dumb. Fresh anger washes over me as I stand and gesture at her. "What did you do to me? You grabbed my hand without asking, firstly, and then made me pass out and feel awful, horrible things? Last time I checked, normal people couldn't do that! What are you, Katrina Gibbons?"

   She breaks our intense eye contact and glances left, slightly. Just for a split second. An inattentive person would've missed it, but I've studied people long enough to know that whatever she's about to say next, will be a lie.

   "I'm sorry, I don't get it either, honey. And why shouldn't I touch your hand? I'm your mom, sweetie!"

   Pure rage rushes through my veins. I meet her smiling eyes and let loose all the daggers my eyes have to hurl at her. A laugh slips from my lips unintentionally, mocking how ironic this situation is. I shake my head, clench my trembling hands into fists at my hips, and scream, "YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER! YOU WILL NEVER BE MY MOTHER! I LOATHE YOU AND YOUR FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO WOO MY DRUNK OF A FATHER BY FAKING CARING ABOUT ME! I'VE HATED YOU SINCE THE DAY YOU JAMMED YOUR PATHETIC SELF INTO MY LIFE!"

   Suddenly I'm across the room, right in Katrina's face. "SO NO, YOU CAN'T TOUCH MY HAND! YOU CAN'T TOUCH ANY PART OF ME!"

   I smash a half-empty wine glass I didn't realize I was holding against the wall I have backed her up against. The burgundy liquid runs down the smooth surface. "YOU CAN'T BE MY MOTHER! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY, KATRINA GIBBONS? BECAUSE SHE'S DEAD! DECEASED! GONE FOREVER! AND IT'S ALL MY F-"

   My voice suddenly cannot make any more noise, fury has taken hold of my throat. Tremors work their way throughout my entire body: I am literally shaking with rage.

Step away.

   I obey without thinking.

   Go to your room. You've made your point.

   I'm sitting on my bed. My thoughts wander to another Jane Eyre quote. "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself." What just happened is the effect of people attempting to get too close to me. Companionship is not necessary for me.

   I thought that I could trust myself and no one else. I made a promise that I would never allow anybody to contaminate my perfect thought process. I told myself that I was incapable of failure, ignored the fact that mistakes were possible. After living with that mindset for so long, how can I accept what I did today? By making one wrong decision, by not taking action, I got my own mother killed. Every single bit of faith, one hundred percent of my confidence, I put in myself. I trusted myself completely, because I assumed that my thought process, my instincts, would always be correct. What do I do now that I know that that was a lie? How can I ever trust myself to make a good decision again?

   Anger flares crimson against the back of my eyes. How could I have been so careless? All the clues were there: the terror in her gaze, the tremor in her voice as she yelled, the suspicious black van, obviously she was trying to tell me something was wrong, an idiot could've seen that. And what did I do? I stood behind a damn bush, and watched as she was essentially run over.

   My legs straighten beneath me, fueled by the sheer power of this rage. My bookshelf looms in front of me, tall as the ceiling and organized by color, letter, and size. In every way, it is perfect. It's pissing me off profusely. With a great swipe of my hands, I empty an entire shelf onto the floor, and another, and another, until the shelfs look as barren as my mind feels. But still, it is not enough. The fury is not gone, the scorching hot ball of it still inhabits my body. As I look around my room, I spot my backpack lying, forgotten next to the place I was just sitting on my bed. I grab the bag, unzip it, and roughly pour the contents on the floor. Jane Eyre falls heavily upon my foot and I glare at it, silently cursing it for making this awful day even worse, then take the book into my hands and begin ripping out page after page. Paper littered with little printed, meaningless words falls around me, gliding soundlessly toward the carpet.

   Suddenly, my frenzied hands stop tearing the paper from the spine of the book. The anger ball quiets. I look around me at the pieces of pages scattered across my room, I examine the mess I have made with mild disgust. My room is never unorganized, let alone messy. It is truly strange seeing it this way and knowing that I caused it. What have I become? Since when do I throw temper tantrums in my room?

   I cross the room, stepping gingerly over the pile of shredded paper and books and sit again at the foot of my bed. Shame sits in my stomach, heavy as a stone. Seeing my mother die is no excuse to lose my head, I promised myself it would never happen, and I intend to keep it that way.

   I allow myself a moment of imagining a scenario in which I could go back, if only for a minute, and remedy my error before my logical brain stops me. That is impossible, and I know it. Still, this grief is slowly poisoning me, I can feel it.

   It needs an outlet and moldering in my room isn't doing any good.

   I've always told myself that remorse would do nothing for the dead, and that mourning was futile. The dead are dead, there's no use pulling your punches. Swallow the bitter pill and move on. Still, I can't help feeling that an echo of my mother hangs in the air, as if she has simply vacated a room, and left her presence behind. I have a strange longing to "make her proud" as they say.

   I fidget with the strange watch on my wrist as I replay the scene from earlier in my head. Her comments to me were so strange, what does "Don't let them get you too," even mean? Even just recalling the sheer terror in her voice sends chills down my spine. She seemed scared for her life and, as I unfortunately found out later, rightfully so. How could she have known?

   My mind whirrs. Perhaps she had been being chased by the van before she drove by Granite Bay High School and, by extension, me. That would make sense. It would explain her seemingly extensive knowledge of her fate before it played out. However, that still leaves the question of how she came back to life after being buried in a grave that I remember visiting (only once, granted, that's all I allowed myself to do, but still).

   That's enough. Guessing will only take me so far. I need definite answers. I know for a fact that my father won't know a damn thing, and frankly, me keeping him out of this is essentially thanks for keeping me alive for fourteen years, which is not a bad thing. I hate owing people. There can only be one place in this revolting house that my mother's secrets could have stayed hidden and undisturbed for so long. Her chest in the attic. That's where I'm headed.