The Day I Walked Into the Wrong Room
Chapter 8: Fear of Self
Carrots. Her milk had a faint carrot flavor. Her fingers barely touched me, and yet, she maneuvered me to her breast, the correct hold, the correct position, the correct amount of pressure, everything by the book. The leader gushed about her form, her technique.
Nothing, nothing came with the milk. Just sweet carrot-flavored milk. But cold. Like a frozen river. Like she had no feelings, no memories, no doubts, no personality, but a memory of mine, something I hadn’t remembered until then, something buried deep, about when, at two years old, naked, I ran into the backyard. Mother had gone to the bathroom to run a bath. She and her friend had drank a bottle of wine, so she hadn’t remembered to put the child fence back in place.
In the mud, with carrots in my hands, I played and ate.
Mother screamed, lifted me by my feet, and rushed me to the bathtub. I cried, threw mud, and dropped carrots on the floor. The shampoo hurt my eyes as my mother scrubbed, yelled, and washed all the filthy mud off. Straight to bed, no dinner, door locked, Mother didn’t even let her friend check on me.
Samantha, never Sam, she hated when people shortened her name, she hated all shortcuts, her name leaked through her milk. She had too many feelings, bottled up, kept close to her heart. But somehow, someway, my story, my memory, caused a crack.
I pulled out the big guns, the sledgehammer of memories, a jackhammer to her wall. My hospital visit. A visit to see a woman whom I hated. Someone who made my life a living hell. I had to come because she lay on her deathbed, with minutes, hours, maybe a couple of days to live. She didn’t know me anymore, an empty husk, and yet, when I saw her in the bed, beige blanket pulled to her chin, arms mere dents beside her body mound, her beige socked feet outside the bottom of the blanket, my heart fluttered and I squeezed my hands together so hard that they hurt.
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