It’s 12:00 noon and I’m still here in the kitchen. I estimate I’ve been sitting at this wooden table for about 2 hours. My pencil-thin thighs are stuck to the vinyl, floral cushions that accompany each dinner chair and the whimsical sounds of a Wheel of Fortune re-run echo from the living room into the kitchen, which now feels like a jail cell. I unleash my thighs from their sticky state and scoot my butt to the end of my chair to peer into the living room, careful not to let my grandma see.
She’s nose-deep in a crossword puzzle and drinking her third cup of coffee, ensuring her breath to smell of stale coffee beans all day. Past her tiny head patched with random tufts of thin curls, I see my sister. Brightly colored notebooks and crisp loose-leaf paper are neatly arranged on the cream carpeting, scissors and markers are carefully organized on the tray table next to them, children’s books are delicately stacked on top of one another — she is playing “school” without me.
I look back down at my plate and it seems as though two of the raisins in my cinnamon raisin toast have arranged themselves into eyes and have begun mocking me. A cinnamon swirl has curved into a smirk, laughing at my pain. I make a face at the toast and pout. Loudly. I have tried this tactic two times this morning and it has not yet yielded me results, but the third time is the charm. Grandma mutters something and angrily shuffles her worn-out, pink slippers across the floor and into her bedroom. I slump back down into the hard-backed chair and begin contemplating how long it will take until this chair and I become one. For an instant, I believe I really will be stuck in this chair forever, staring at a decomposing piece of cinnamon raisin toast, my legs turning into vestigial structures from lack of use. As my eyes shut to refrain from crying big fat tears, I hear a crinkle and a loud crunch and the sound of the glass plate reverberating on the table. My sister has torn my toast into two unequal parts, wadded up each of them in her fists, and shoved them into both cheeks. Her face looks like a chipmunk storing up nuts for the winter. She didn’t say anything to me; she just took a dangerously large swallow of scratchy toast and darted back to her makeshift school setup seconds before grandma emerged from her room back into the living room. I show her my clean plate and she stares at me, checking every possible place I could hide my toast until she realizes it’s truly gone and is forced to set me free.
At 5 o’clock sharp, my mom comes through the front door to get us. As usual, my grandma fills her in on all of the day’s activities, not forgetting to mention the toast debacle. She lectures my mom about how I need more discipline, but what she really means is that I need to be more like
Sarah:
Quiet.
Contained.
Obedient.
Controlled.
Instead, I’m a:
Riot.
Untamed.
Devious.
Bold.
“She loved you,” my mom tells me one afternoon on a car ride back from college.
“I know, but she loved Sarah more,” I say. She exhales and ponders this for a moment.
“That’s not true, she just loved rules and Sarah followed the rules.”
I’m more of my Aunt Ruth, my mom tells me, my grandma’s sister.
The one who took Spanish classes for fun and went to Julio Iglesias concerts.
The one who made her husband sleep on the couch for getting her a vacuum for Christmas one year.
The one who wore a Hillary Clinton t-shirt amongst a family of Republicans.
The one who was the wild one.
Author: Andrea Ares
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: Recent Mass Media and Spanish graduate from the University of Missouri. Cuban feminist with a love for creative nonfiction and screenwriting….. and cats & donuts!
Link to social media or website: https://www.instagram.com/andreaares6/
