The next day, I wake up to a knock at my door and roll over in my bed, wincing at the pain in my leg as the weight of the cast gets caught on the white sheets and twists it in an awkward position. I push down the pillow under my head that threatens to suffocate me as it puffs up over my nose and mutter, “Come in,” in a groggy tone.
The door creaks open a few inches and Sherry pokes her head in, already dressed in a business casual outfit that consists of khaki pants and an emerald green blouse with ruching around her waist to make her appear slightly skinnier. Her makeup is already completed and perfected with minimal eyeshadow and baby pink, well-lined lips. I groan and begin to feel self-conscious about the state of my own appearance, and I pull the comforter upwards slightly to hide the lower half of my face, peeking my eyes over the top like a meerkat in its underground hole.
Sherry smiles widely at me and asks, “Breakfast? I’m making eggs, bacon, and sausage, but I can make you something else if you would like. I have the ingredients for biscuits and gravy, or an omelet, perhaps.”
I position my body to sit up in the bed and rake my hands through my treacherous hair. My head is full of fog and I use my fingertips to massage my temples, squinting from the light that pours in from the window at the side of the bed after I forgot to pull the curtain closed last night. “Yeah,” I respond to her. “Eggs are fine. I’ll be down in a minute.”
She grabs the handle to the door and begins to pull it closed, but she peeks her head back inside and I snap my head up again. “How do you like them?”
“Over easy,” I answer before adding a, “please,” at the end.
She beams a smile and closes the door quickly before I hear her briskly walk across the floorboards of the hallway and the creaking of the stairs as she makes her way down to the first floor. There is an eerie quietness that resonated in this room, and all I can hear was the sound of birds chirping in the oak tree outside the window, muffled by the walls of the house that encased me.
I release a sigh at the thought of having to leave my bed and throw the comforter away from my body, letting it lazily flop onto the end of the furniture. My leg throbs as I lean over to the nightstand on the right side of the bed, grasping the small prescription bottle of pain medication the doctor had given me for the side effects of the pins and screws they inserted into my bone. Popping the lid open, I cup my hand underneath and pour a few of the pills into my palm and use my index finger and thumb to take one of them before sliding the remainder of the pills back into their bottle.
I dry swallow the pill, my throat struggling to push it down from the lack of hydration I’ve had in the past day. Carefully, I swing my legs over the bed and reach for my crutches that rest against the footboard of the bed. My stitches in my arm itch and I pray the day that they remove them will come sooner rather than later.
The hardwood floors are cold against my bare foot when I make contact, and I quickly find an outfit from the maroon suitcase that is still sitting on the end of the bed. I don’t bother with an outfit that communicates that I am aiming to look presentable. A pair of white joggers with a vertical teal stripe down the outer legs, a matching teal t-shirt, and a black sweatshirt to wear overtop.
The air is slightly colder than my liking when I enter the bathroom and I shiver, quickly changing out of my pink pajamas and tossing them into the hamper just outside of the bathroom door. I'm still getting used to pulling my own pants over the cast. The hospital gown that I wore for several days made it much easier to manage, and the nurse had helped me with my attire yesterday when I left the hospital. I don’t know Sherry well enough to ask her to help me, to let her see my almost naked body as I struggle to dress myself. I have become accustomed to learning how to do the tasks by myself that most women grow to learn from their mothers. My dad tried his best to be involved and provide me with any female products I needed from the store, but I always found it abnormal and I found comfort in allowing my best friend’s mother to take on that role when she offered, knowing that my life lacked a female figure to go to when I had any questions about menstruation or sex.
I lift my leg to the best of my ability and yank on my sweatpants, cursing when I realize that the bulkiness of the cast around my ankle would stretch out the elastic of the joggers at the base of one leg permanently. My foot drops to the floor and I cover myself in the cotton fabric of the shirt, and then I fight the sweatshirt over my head and onto my torso, welcoming its warmth. My hands rest on the countertop as I inspect my appearance in the large mirror above the sink, and I use a purple comb found in the top drawer of the cabinet, brand new and still in the packaging, and pull at the knots in my chocolate brown hair. Using a washcloth that hangs on its metal holder near the sink, I turn on the faucet and proceed to wash my face off, the cold water draining any sleepiness out of my body.
The crutches annoyingly dig at my underarms and raise my sweatshirt up to expose the skin around my waist, and I find myself stopping every couple of feet to pull it back down as I hop down the hallway towards the stairs. Tackling the stairs is much harder going down than it was coming up, and it feels as if a century goes by in the time it takes for me to reach the bottom step. At the base of the stairs, the smell of sausage powerfully wafts through the hallway from the kitchen and I hear the sizzling of bacon as it greets my ears. My stomach growls at the scent and I eagerly stride towards the kitchen. The hospital food that kept me from dying of starvation was appalling: a mediocre attempt at meatloaf without ketchup, a tiny cup of starchy mashed potatoes that had no seasoning, nor a hintful taste of butter, and green beans that I would have taken my chances eating raw rather than forcing the cooked ones down my throat. Although it was not a healthy diet, I practically lived off of the chicken and biscuits from Bojangles that I requested for Sherry to bring me on her visits.
When I arrive at the doorway to the kitchen, Sherry is parading around the kitchen, gathering ingredients out of the fridge and adding pepper to a skillet on one of the back burners of the stainless steel stove. She reaches behind her and fixes the tie of her apron that was beginning to droop down and then grabs a spatula that is laying on the spoon rest next to the skillet. She presses the end of the spatula into the skillet and flips an egg, listening to it sizzle as it collides with the black metal. Her eyes catch my figure in the corner and she startles before spewing out apologies.
“Oh, Kristen! I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there,” she claims, clutching her blouse near her heart.
“Sorry,” I mimic. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Nonsense,” she chimes and waves the spatula in the air before turning back around to face the stove top. “I’m old. Old people scare easily anyways.” She finishes the eggs that she was preparing and glides it onto a white ceramic plate on the counter next to her. Grabbing a fork from a drawer next to the sink, she uses the tines to roll two sausage links she had on a plate next to the stove onto the ceramic plate and places two strips of crispy bacon next to them as well. She retrieves a separate fork from the drawer and lays it on the plate before turning to me.
“You’re welcome to sit,” she calls to me, and I shake my head stupidly at the fact that I had been standing there the entire time.
“Right. My bad.”
I take a seat at one of the bar stools and Sherry slides the plate over to me. I thank her just as Mark appears in the doorway and he walks up to Sherry to kiss her on the forehead. He picks a sausage link up off of the serving plate with his fingertips and shoves a bite into his mouth, and Sherry smacks him in the back of his head playfully with a notepad she picked up next to her stack of cookbooks.
“We have plates and forks, you know?” she scolds and Mark laughs, covering his mouth that was full of sausage as if to not spit it out. She drops the notepad onto the island and places her hands on her hips. “Who needs kids when you have a husband?” she mutters to herself and a chuckle escapes my throat as I stab a bit of eggs with my fork.
She seems to enjoy that she made me laugh and a smile reappears on her face. My uncle takes a seat next to me at the island and I could smell a hint of his cologne as it battles the scent of Sherry’s cooking. “How did you sleep? Do you feel any better?”
I was caught in the middle of a bite, and I hurry to swallow the food before it’s fully chewed up. I let out a small cough, holding my hand to my mouth as I speak, “I slept fine. It’s a little cold in there, but the bed is comfortable, and I feel better now.”
“I have a small space heater in the attic. I believe it still works. I’ll find it today and get it down for you. If it doesn’t work, I’ll buy you a new one,” Mark replies and my aunt hands him a similar plate piled with scrambled eggs, sausage, and bacon. He grabs his fork and eagerly digs into his breakfast.
“You don’t have to do that.” I shake my head and bite a piece of sausage off of my fork.
“I want you to be comfortable while you’re here,” Mark insists. “It’s really no bother. We don’t want you to freeze to death.” He nudges my shoulder with his fist in a joking manner and I force a smirk.
Sherry finishes preparing her plate and turns off the burners to the stove. She stands on the opposite side of the island while she eats and inserts herself into the conversation. “Kristen, I was thinking,” she begins as she cuts into her runny eggs and slices her sausage links into bite size pieces. “I thought it would be nice if we went shopping today. I know our car didn’t have the capacity to bring all of your clothes with you, and given your leg,” she pauses to gesture towards me with her hand that holds the fork, “I figured you would want to find some more baggy pants that could fit over your cast.”
I stop for a moment and glance towards Mark, who is captivated in his food, not paying attention to a word she is saying. I swallow hard and bring my eyes to meet hers. “I don’t have any money.”
“You don’t need to. I’m buying,” she says quickly, like my comment is preposterous to her.
Although I hate to take her up on her offer, I know I need clothes badly, especially seeing as how I agreed to go to the new school on Monday, which is only two days away. I slowly nod my head in agreement, “I would appreciate that. I don’t have many things to wear that can be worn with this cast.”
“Great," my aunt chirps. “Once you get done eating, I’ll do the dishes and we can head out right after. I’ll show you around town a little bit while we’re out as well, and we can have lunch at this pizza shop I know of. Do you like pizza? Oh, of course you like pizza. What teenager doesn’t like pizza?”
My aunt drones on about all of the exciting things she is planning for us today, and I carry on with my breakfast, lost in irrelevant thoughts and nervousness for what may come Monday.
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Sherry had taken me to an outlet mall stocked with boutiques and stores that I had never heard of in my life. After putting up a fight, she finally let me carry two of the seven bags full of clothing that she had purchased for me. Any time my eyes were drawn to a shirt or a pair of pants, she was already grabbing my size off of the rack and heading towards the cash register to pay. I had never been spoiled like this before, and my dad always taught me to be humble and never ask for money. I admired my dad for instilling that in me. Needless to say, my aunt was a stubborn woman who never took 'no' for an answer, and against my best judgment, I let her do as she pleased, too exhausted to argue.
On the way towards the pizza place that my aunt had spoken highly about, I pull my phone from my sweatshirt pocket and click on the 'maps' application, typing in our location to bring up a list of nearby stores out of curiosity. I scroll through the list and notice a small, local bookstore only three miles away.
“Can we stop at this bookstore?” I ask her pleadingly and hold the phone closer to her from the passenger seat.
She peers at the phone and tilts her sunglasses up to see the screen, her eyes dancing between the road and the phone. “Yeah, I know where that’s at,” she tells me, bringing her eyes back to the road. She flips on her turn signal and waits for the coast to be clear before turning right onto a side street that will eventually take us to the bookstore. “You like reading?”
“Yes,” I respond and click on my Facebook application, watching the screen shine blue in my face as it loads.
“What do you like to read?”
My phone finally loads and pulls up my news feed, so I begin to scroll through the collection of posts. “Mostly thrillers and mysteries.” I keep my eyes towards my phone as we take another turn into a parking lot in front of the bookstore.
”Like Steven King?” she presses further. She pulls into a parking spot and shifts the car into the park position.
I shake my head and click the phone off before shoving it back into my sweatshirt pocket. “I tend to like books that aren’t as well-known. Steven King is good, but everyone knows who that is. I like finding authors who aren’t as appreciated. Diamonds in the rough, you know?”
Sherry smiles and tells me that she agrees. Although, I could tell that thrillers are not her cup of tea. I picture her as a Nicholas Sparks fan, if she reads any. I had seen The Notebook once, but I never read the book. I like the storyline of his books, but there is something about mysteries that keeps me on the edge of my seat wanting more. It’s a guessing game, I suppose.
My aunt steps out of the vehicle and quickly paces towards the other side of the car to hoist my crutches out of the backseat for me, even though I told her I could do it independently. We enter the bookstore and I question why it is so desolate. The store contains every genre one could ever dream of, and there is a labyrinth of aisles to get lost in. In one of the aisles, there is a stream of old records categorized alphabetically by artist name, and it leads to a small coffee bar at the far end of the store with a plethora of options on the menu. Sherry asks if I want any coffee, to which I reply, “No, thank you,” since I do not like coffee and she makes a beeline past the records to order.
The aisles contain name tags at the end labeled with their coordinated genres, so I meander into the aisle labeled 'young adult fiction'. I typically find my favorites in this area of any bookstore, and after a few minutes, I already find a few titles that sound intriguing and begin to read the backside of them for the summary.
Sherry returns promptly, toting a small styrofoam cup in her manicured hand full of an unknown coffee drink since I am not familiar with coffee. She pretends to be interested in the titles that I pull from the shelves as she sips her coffee and waits patiently for me to finally pick which books I want. Her fingers trail along some spines, but they all appear to be books that I would never read; books that would probably be made into a chick flick movie with lots of kissing and crying. I politely decline the ones she picks out for me and decide to strike up a conversation to keep her occupied with something else while I browse.
”Can I ask you a question?”
She takes a sip of her coffee again and nods with her eyes widened. “Sure,” she replies after she swallows the steaming drink.
“Why did you agree to let me live with you?” I ask curiously. My mind convinces me that the question may have come off offensively, so I add, “I mean, I appreciate it, but you and my dad never really talked and I haven’t seen you and Mark since I was, like, five years old.”
She holds her drink with both hands and shifts her weight before sighing. “My brother and I didn’t see eye to eye,” she begins, and I turn to face her with my books that I had picked held in my arms. I raise an eyebrow, unaware of the quarrels between her and my dad. He never spoke about it, and I never thought to ask him.
“How so?” I ask. I step to the side and use the large bookshelf in the aisle to balance my weight.
She seems to pause to find the correct words, and I wonder if she is afraid to speak scornfully of my father directly in front of me. I don’t understand how anyone could though. My father was a great man and always went out of his way to help anyone in need.
“Your dad,” she hesitates and sighs with her chin tilted downward shamefully. “Your dad was a nice man, but when he met your mother, I warned him about her. I never approved of their relationship, and he resented me for it. When I found out your mother was pregnant with you, it drove a wedge between us. I begged him to leave her, to create a better life for you, but he refused and was hopeful that things would get better on their own. He didn’t want a broken family and have to trade you back and forth between your mom. He tried to make things work.”
“He did make things work, though. Just me and him.”
My aunt shrugged her shoulders and took another sip of her coffee, forcing a smile on her face as she turned back towards me. “Your father did a good job with you, once your mother was out of the picture, but he had already blocked me by then. Perhaps he was afraid that I would come back and throw it in his face; to say ‘I told you so’, but really, all I wanted was to see you again and build up that relationship we used to have.”
She smiles sadly at me, and I notice that my jaw was hanging slightly open. I bite my lip and stand up straight. “You missed seeing me?”
“I did,” she announces immediately. Her eyes are slowly succumbing to tears and she blinks past me, her daze keeping her attention towards a random spot on a random bookshelf in the back of the store. I adjust the books in my arms that are beginning to slip and watch her as she continues. “I never got to see you grow up, and it pained me to be kept away. I never had a daughter to call my own. Mark and I tried to have children of our own. We went to fertility doctors and IVF, even surrogacy, but it never worked, so even though I had distaste for the relationship between your parents, I couldn’t have been anymore excited to have a niece to spoil.”
A deep silence grows over the bookstore and I stare blankly at the outdated beige and burgundy pattern that I note within the carpeting design, hanging onto every word that my aunt explains to me. Sherry and Mark were strangers for a majority of my life, but my father had never told me why. I had always assumed that it was simply because of the distance between our two locations. I knew that Sherry and Mark were successful and wealthy, but in spite of my father’s humble nature, I assumed my extended family wanted nothing to do with me. Instead, my dad cast them out and didn’t want anyone around who did not approve of my mother. My father did love her, but he learned the hard way why I could never call that woman my mother any longer.
A chime rings overhead and our heads snap to the front of the store, seeing a young girl in an orange sweater dress and brown leather, knee-high boots entering, her gorgeous blonde hair pulled into a tight ponytail as she carries herself towards the coffee bar just as my aunt did earlier.
Sherry lets out an audible sigh and drops her shoulders before snatching the books from my hands and walking towards the cash register. “So,” she changes the subject, “how about that pizza?”
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