E. G. Scribe

Might as well start somewhere so here’s a short story I wrote for a creative writing class in undergrad.

Nights, sometimes, I lie awake thinking. Not always about anything in particular. Sometimes I think about things that happened during the day; like the night we had to put my dog to sleep. I didn’t cry at all during the day and feared the tears would come gushing out once I got to bed, but they didn’t, I just lay awake for hours replaying every memory I had of my dog, over and over in my head until they felt as engraved into my psyche as the faces are on Mount Rushmore. Another night I lay on my stomach with my chin in thrust in the grooves of my arms, staring at the dents in the paint on the wall and wondering why my mother had hit me at lunch.

Sometimes, I lie awake thinking about what my little brother is going to do when he gets out of school. That won’t be happening for at least five years. If not more. The doctors say his tiny, alien-shaped head will never grow leaving him with this little baby melon thing teetering on his expanding shoulders  until he reaches middle age or he dies, whichever came first, but once he reaches middle age he dies anyway, they say, as if it doesn’t matter, and maybe it doesn’t, to them, but it does to me, because I like seeing his weird small alien head at the dinner table and playing endlessly games that would bore five-year-olds because he never gets tired of racecars and flashcards and picture books because that’s all he can fit in his head right now and I’m the only one that loves him.

I lie awake thinking about how he’s going to cope once he reaches what my mom calls the real world. I think about how I’m going to cope. My mother made me stop going to school so I could clean the house while she’s at work because she works all day and most nights and all she wants to do when she gets back is drink beer and watch dating shows, smirking and jeering as if she knows anything about healthy relationships. When my little brother comes back from school he screams too loud and I have to shush him, pressing my ungainly hand to his miniature mouth and pulling him slowly into the kitchen before our mom rouses herself from her stupor long enough to remember she has kids. I watch my brother eat cheese and crackers as he babbles about his day and then wash the dishes. If I’m done with everything that day we go into the bedroom to play. If not my brother traces mazes in the imaginary dust on the wall and I continue checking off the pretend list my mom never gave me but somehow assumes I’ve memorized.

Sometimes I lie awake thinking and it gets me in trouble. Once when I lay awake thinking I started thinking about how I could ignore the list that didn’t exist and just walk out of the house one day and visit my friends I hadn’t seen since I had to stop school. My mom wouldn’t be back until three, and she’d only have two hours to kill before her next shift. She would never know. If I wasn’t in the house to make it dirty I wouldn’t have to clean it.

I lay awake thinking about plans for my great temporary escape. I plotted it all to the detail. How long I would wait after she was gone. How slowly I would walk out the door. Whose house I’d dash to first.

I lay awake thinking about what my mom would do to me if she found out, and how I would recover from such scolding or make up for it somehow in extra chores later. Or breakfast in bed. I remember when we used to make mom breakfast in bed every mother’s day. Remember scraping off the black scales on steaming pieces of french toast and lumps of egg on the floor my dog would lick up before we could drag her away. Remembered running outside to find the biggest dandylions to stick in my little brother’s plastic Blues Clues cup and cramming it all into my arms because I didn’t trust him not to drop or spill. Us tiptoeing into the room where she pretended to be asleep and jumping onto the bed screaming happy mother’s day, spreading out a picnic on the faded tie quilt and spending much longer on breakfast than what was necessary, bouncing occasionally to make her laugh.

Some nights I lie awake thinking and wondering where that woman went and where my mom came from.

Some nights I lie awake regretting the day I snuck out.

Regret waiting in the kitchen for the sound of the front door closing. The eighteen footsteps to the car. The crunch of the car door. The gurgle of the engine. The sound fading away. Then five minutes of ticking and tocking and nothing else. Ten minutes. Fifteen. I may have waited two hours in dead silence making sure she wouldn’t come back.

Some nights I lie awake and wonder what might have happened if I’d simply run to Lacey’s house instead of Ginger’s. Both I knew were home sick that day and safe to visit. At Lacey’s house we might have baked cookies in her own kitchen because she probably wouldn’t have been out of flour. Ginger’s mom was out of flour. My mom was not.

There was flour all over the kitchen when my mom came back. Some nights I wonder if Ginger would still be my friend if she hadn’t seen my mom hit me.

Some nights I lie awake hating my mother. Some nights I lie awake hating myself. Nights, sometimes, I lie awake thinking and wondering what I’ll do if my little brother dies before I go to college. If I’ll ever go to college. If I’ll get married. If I’ll have kids. If my daughter will ever lie awake thinking, nights, and wonder why I hit her.