Bianca's Pants

The cursor on the screen was standing alone on the white page, blinking, and taunting me sarcastically..
“Go on. Do it. Write something good.”

I couldn’t think of anything though. The more I stared at the blank page, the more blank my mind became, and if I navigated away from it, I became distracted by other things.

I looked at my phone. Nothing. He still hadn’t texted back. What a tormentor he was. Constantly. Always making me wonder, making me wait. I became slightly uncomfortable as the famine in my stomach mixed with the butterflies that were building in stronger anticipation of his response. Enough of this.

I closed the computer and picked up my phone. I searched through my contacts and dialed “P”
I scrolled through the names:
Pam
Pandora
Paola
Papa Johns
until I got to “Paul.” I clicked the little green call button and awaited his answer. The phone rang four times and then went to voicemail.

“Hey what’s up? You’ve reached Paul. Leave me a message and I’ll give you a call back.”
I rolled my eyes and hung up, interrupting the woman at the end of the message who said “To leave a call-back number, press one! Or just wait for the tone.” I tossed the phone on the couch. Didn’t wanna talk to you anyway.

I paced around the living room, not used to feeling like there was nothing to do. Bianca interrupted me, and spoke too fast to notice my irritation. She faced the mirror.

“Like my new pants?!” she beamed.

I was surprised at the vivid purple color of the trousers that sat loosely on Bianca’s noticeably thinner hips. It was ironic that she would ask that question, because I was almost nauseous by how much I did not like those pants. They were so purple and dull, ‘weird’ is really the word. I thought to myself that no belt, no necklace, no accessory on Earth could salvage whatever appeal there was to these pants enough to actually wear them in public.

When I realized I hadn't said anything, I tried quickly to recover, blinking several times hoping to erase any rude facial expressions that I may have made in the hazy shock of my accidental disgust.

“Wow.” I blurted, meaning it.

Her smile remained and her eyebrows raised. She pursed her lips a little bit. Happiness was dancing all over her face.

Her sense of style was so off base. I stared at Bianca. Her Pocahontas-length hair was tied up in a large messy bun at the top of her head, pieces sticking out in every direction. Her shirt was blue and said something on it in pink, something I couldn‘t read because of the poor contrast in colors. The purple pants were just dying to be blue-jeans, normal, and she wore two different socks, one pink, and one striped green.

But everything about Bianca’s face was perfect. It was absolutely symmetrical. Her eyebrows were relaxed and expressional, her eyes were deep, unlike most people with dark eyes. Innocent when I looked into them, but a lot of young pain swam around in there. Her nose was faultlessly-shaped, not too big. And her lips were the same as the ones she had from infancy. Absolutely the same. Lightly pink, pouty usually, and the top one formed an arch like a dolphin. They were the perfect shape when she smiled.
In all her weird Dr. Suessly-inspired wardrobe, she was still the prettiest girl I knew. By miles...

“I just got them!” She looked down at the pants, smiling with immense gratification.

“They’re a little loose.” she added. It was a self-compliment, not a complaint.

“They look great, Bee.” I told her. What I meant was, ‘You look great.’

“What’s wrong?” she asked me, taking her eyes off the pants for the first time and now looking at me. She never missed a thing. Bianca’s face became vacant, not worried yet, but ready to be worried if my response begot concern.

“Nothing.” I said, my expression indifferent and unconvincing.

“Are you mad at Paul or something?” she dug.

“I just can’t think of something to write.” I nodded towards my laptop.

“Oh” she glanced at the TV which was on but muted.

“Can you take me to Adina’s?”

Apparently writer’s block did not precipitate much reason for concern.

“Um. I don’t know. I have to leave pretty soon.” I excused, thinking on my feet. Chauffeuring was one of my least favorite things to do.

“Okay.” she walked away, not a dose of anger or emotional at all dripped over her face.

“Sorry, Bee.”

“It’s okay.” she said in a monotone. Her easy acceptance of my decline made me feel bad, it made me know that this was something she was used to. Something she expected. She opened the refrigerator, though nothing interested her.

She was getting so thin, and it was great. I knew how body-conscious she had been feeling since she went through that odd spurt of weight gain last year, a spurt that I nor Angelina had never experienced, and certainly not Nicholas. All of us had always been slender, skinny, sometimes too skinny, and it was a little bit abnormal when we saw Bianca gain the weight.

My mom insisted she was just going through a phase, and she would soon get tall and stretch out. It took awhile, but that’s exactly what she did. Although when it did happen, when Bianca’s weight turned into height and her once fleshy, round face nearly withered away overnight, no one was relieved.
It became worry and alarm;

“Why is she losing so much weight? Is she eating?”

Poor girl. She‘s too big, she‘s too frail. She’s eating too much, she’s not eating.

I opened the computer and hoped the distraction cleaned away my thought-overload and cleared my head a bit.

There was the screen. White. And I didn’t write anything good.

Glum Kitchen Thoughts of the Other-Blooded Sister

As I scowled upon the awful disaster that was my kitchen, I finally came back to reality. My mind had been drifting elsewhere in the last hours that I was lying still upon the couch, seemingly calm in figure, but my imagination running wildly in a thousand different places at the time, jumping around from thought to thought like lemurs from tree to tree.

The kitchen was a glum reminder of what my life was, and, even more devastatingly so, what it was clearly not turning into.

Green dishes glared at me, cross that I had allowed the red and clumpy sauce from yesterday’s dinner to dry upon them, a couple even with some stray spaghetti strands stuck to the surface. Gross. Clear plastic cups frowned with brown droplets of this morning’s coca-cola becoming sticky on the inside. Silverware, coffee cups, spatulas and pans formed a pyramid-like booby trap within the nearly invisible sink.

I let out a rude sigh and irascibly wondered how only two people could accumulate so many dishes, and in such a short amount of time. It was but yesterday that Paul had loaded and ran the dishwasher, clearing the sink and the area surrounding it of all the greasy plates and pans that had piled up in the kitchen from the night previous.

The nasty messes didn’t really bother me when Paul was gentlemanly enough to take care of it, which was often. But tonight he was working and I was not. I had done no hard labor, in fact, I had done quite the opposite. Paul had gone to work at 3:00 today, and it was already past twilight. What had I done all day? What had I thought of? I couldn’t let him come home to all this...

On top of the kitchen, the bedroom was a terrible disaster, what with dirty clothes scattered across the floor, wires and chargers spread about, water cups that collected on my side of the bed over the last few days, and little papers dispersed in all corners of the room, junk mail, I imagine. The living room wasn’t all so horrendous. A few cups and a book sat unattractively on the coffee table and Simba had chewed a hole in his stuffed frog and spit out the cotton guts all over the carpet. But otherwise, I would just need to adjust the couch pillows and throw the shoes in the closet, and then it would be comfortably presentable. The biggest demon was finding the motivation to clean those dishes!

When I did, it wasn’t as miserable as I had anticipated, which was good, but a little disappointing as I realized I didn’t really have to dread and procrastinate all those hours. As I washed, squeezing suds from the damp sponge in one hand and holding each dish upright with the other, I became hypnotized again in my own thought.

My mind is rather good at time travel. Sometimes, when it should be focusing on driving, it jumps back into yesterday. It crawls up to the door of my parent’s house and slithers inside. It finds a comfortable spot in the family room and props it’s legs up on the arm of the my mother’s grey chair, lighting a cigarette. And then it watches the fight that she and I had yesterday. It watches us yell at each other and tries to jump in front of me warning me not to say that.

And sometimes, when I should be focusing on paying the water bill, my mind teleports into the future! It jumps into the year 2014. It sees me sitting on the same couch, but in a different house, trying to pay a bill via the internet. It sees my two-year-old bothering me while I try to find some peace, and watches me wishing I had something more to show for all of my hard work, or at least for all of my hard dreaming.

But right then, while I was cleaning those nasty, saucy, coke-sticky dishes, my mind jumped back to this morning and watched the conversation I had with Angelina. Sweet, erratic, sister and best friend, Angelina. Our relationship had been somewhat strained since I got back, which was painfully dissimilar to what either of us were used to in each other's presence.

We had sat alone in my parent’s house for several hours, talking, finally back in rapport. And as the water was running over my hands and I scrubbed clumps of tomatoes off of the plastic green plates, I couldn’t get my mind off of one topic in particular that we had discussed that morning about the future.

I had told Angelina that despite what I had previously thought, I felt like she would be the first of the family to have children, even though I was the oldest. To my unforeseen surprise, she agreed, and further proceeded to tell me her life plan.

Yes. There I was, 19 years old, and in life limbo. Graduated and standing still, holding a diploma in one hand and lease in the other, while my 15 year old sister babbled endlessly about the road she was on, unable to see a stop sign for hundreds and hundreds miles.

In harmless jealousy, I listened to her map out the next 5 years to me in simple but erudite detail.

1. Finish high school.


2. Apply to and attend 2-4 years of junior college, as a technicality.


3. Get married to long-time boyfriend, AJ.


4. Have children. And then..


5. She won’t work. She will stay home with her kids. She won’t…work.


6. That’s it.

That’s it. That’s really all she wants to do. She barely wants to go to college. She doesn’t want to learn how to do anything or have a profession. She doesn't have to write letters to the school or apply for financial aid. She doesn’t have to pick a major. She doesn’t want to get a job.

She wants to be a mom. She only wants to be a mom. She doesn’t want to travel anywhere, she doesn’t want to see any place else, she doesn’t want to move anywhere. She just wants to get married and be a mom.

I felt a slight twinge of pain somewhere in my heart at the thought of a life like that, and then fanatical confusion as to how anyone could be okay with that. Could want that. The confusion became even more radical as I thought that a person of those desires could have the same DNA as me, the same blood rolling inside their veins. The same blood that I had. The same burning, ravenous, wanderlusting, angry-with-unfulfilled-desires-shade-of-red-colored blood ablaze inside the veins, like mine. It couldn't be the same.

I couldn't, still can't, decide which of us is dangerously juvenile. Am I so naive and immature to want to travel to different places and complete my studies in other countries, regardless of the cost, the time away from home, the language barrier, or the danger? Am I ridiculous that the only thing I want in life is to see the world? That I have no set-in-stone technical fool-proof plan? Am I losing it?

 Or is she so childish to want to hardly continue her education and to never work?! To only want to raise children and never do anything else! To not indulge in life, the Earth and the people living on it. To not want to see what they see. Just be home. -Enter twinge of pain-

Who here is completely off their rocker?

I very quietly envied  my sister’s gratification with having such a simple life. To be satisfied with the easiest things to come upon, it would be such a relief. But I didn’t have such a luxury. There I sat, cursed with an insatiable desire to see and do it all! Thirsting and aching to learn everything there is to know and see everything there is to see, on top of the fear of becoming a mother and wife far too late in life.

And all the while nodding and smiling, assuring everyone else: “Don’t worry. I got it all figured out.”

Physical Damage Inflicted Upon My Lips Due to the Attack of My Thoughts

     I could nearly taste the blood inside my mouth as I was writing down table 221’s drink order. The skin on the inside of my lips was wedged between my teeth and I could feel it breaking little by little. It hurt, but it hurt a good hurt. I couldn’t stop biting the skin. I presumed it was the habitually nervous result of my trying to handle a large combination of unpleasant elements that were gnawing at my insides.

     And I was failing pathetically.

     My mind was so distant from the spot I was standing in. Physically, I was in the restaurant. I was in my dirty jeans and black t-shirt, standing before a table of two people, a man and a woman in their 30’s, holding a notebook and a pen. My feet were grounded hard against the floor and I subtly shifted back and forth to ease the pain that my own weight was bearing upon me. Physically, I was trying to look pleasant. And wholesome. Physically, I was speaking in a voice that became additionally high pitched as I had to fake more and more my congeniality.

      But mentally. Emotionally. I was out in a field someplace, not even sure myself quite where I was, but I was floating around out there, physically a little lighter than I am now, but bearing more weight. Mentally, emotionally, I was half running from and half fighting back to all the thoughts that were violently attacking me.

     And I was failing pathetically.

     For one, there were all the awful things going on in my at-home life. On top of the struggles of desperately needing to get a new car, pay bills, rent, and hold onto my wages, I was also thinking about my 20th birthday which was vastly approaching, and how badly I did not want to see it come. I was thinking about Paul, how he had wanted to call it quits for awhile and then changed his mind. That was really throwing me off. And my mom and I not speaking after that atrocious argument over the phone several days ago.

      I felt very lonely. I felt a major hole where my support handles normally were and it was not doing wonders for my at-work-attitude.

     Then of course, my boss had been breathing down my neck for the last several days. After being shopped at 85%, all the years and years of hard work, dedication, and loyalty I had put towards the company clearly meant peanuts to him. I tried to explain to him that there was no chance that it had really taken me 5 minutes to greet those guests like they wrote in the report, but he refused to take my side. And although I wasn’t punished like previous servers had been in the past for such a low score, it was humiliating (in a way that I didn’t make public) when he called me out like that in front of everyone.

     Finally, I was dealing with a very large number of grouchy customers tonight, old folk mostly, and all of them ready and anticipating my every error.

     It was all I could do to resist the strong temptation burning inside me to rip my hair out, cry at the top of my lungs and throw something just to hear it shatter. The bite marks in my lips were just a literal translation of how much I was ‘biting my tongue’ throughout the night. A translation of how I was swallowing my frustration and covering it up with the mandatory smile.

     I burst into the ladies room when I finally had a spare minute and locked myself into the handicapped stall, intentionally to cry. But I didn’t cry. I pressed my back to the wall and stared blankly for some amount of time that I didn’t really keep measure of. Just stared. When I realized that my mentality was still in work mode, one that was too robust for tears at the time, I pulled my phone out of my apron. I flipped it open and to my unfazed disappointment, I hadn’t missed any calls and no text messages were going unanswered. Perhaps the most unpleasant feeling I felt all night shivered through my veins. So I pushed myself up and glowered into the mirror.

     I stared some more.

     I was still biting my lip and my expression was more glum than I intended to look. My top lip was pursed and curled in, so it looked like I almost didn’t have one, and the right corner of my lip was pulled in towards the center of my mouth. It made the whole lower part of my face look slightly crooked. My eyebrows pulled together in a very subtle but disturbed-looking way and the expression in my eyes was a tired cross between frustrated and dead. It was the face I made when I was focused hard on something that was bothering me. This face didn’t normally attend work..

      It was clean though, and unlike most nights the make-up still stuck, which was a surprise because I felt like I had been working doubly as hard to do the work that was normally half as easy on most days. Seeing that my make-up hadn’t smudged meant that I was probably not getting too much done. Pity.

     My hair was pulled back in a low maintenance ponytail and the newly-chopped layers felt light against my face. I liked them because they covered the gigantic bruise that was (for the time being) my left cheekbone and it quieted the interrogations of  “What‘s that?! What happened to your face?”
At least for awhile.

      And it didn’t so much bother me that people really didn’t believe I had run into a tray, it was more the horror of realizing how scripted and pitiful I sounded when I was really telling the truth this time.

      It brought back the memories of those days when they pointed it out and when they stared, and I knew now that no one probably ever believed my stories back then, no matter how much I tried to.

      I realized that I had failed pathetically.

    I shook the thoughts away, angry that I had even let them enter at all, and washed my hands for some amount of time that was too long. I dried them beneath four paper towels, gave a dirty look into the mirror and pushed on back to work.