day four continued: you are my sunshine

i got home late, or is it early, all the same thing, i suppose. just before nicky turned on the cartoons, saturday morning delights. my mother is asleep on the couch. she doesn't hear me, or maybe she is pretending not to. she ignores the messages on our answering machine asking where i have been, explainging how i've missed two weeks of classes. sam can forge an excuse for me. we've always been the masters of each other’s parental signatures. i can even pull off her mother's voice on the phone when needed. i had refined the art of troy’s, too, when he needed excuses for missed p.e. classes. i would up lies why he couldn’t dress out, or be out in the sun; fabricated skin conditions that we had looked up in the back of the library after an afternoon matinee.

i'm lying in bed, trying hard not to move. if i'm still enough will it just all fade away? my mother has slept in here recently. i can smell her on my pillow, that forever mother smell that never goes away. i remember as a kid, when i would fall down, skin my knees, and she would hold me close as she kissed my forehead. she would squirt bactine on what ever hurt, and i would make that face; and she would blow on it, softly, promising a shared bottle of coke afterwards, from the machine.

i can hear her breathing in there, heavy, dream sleep heavy, i want to crawl inside that afghan, next to her, close. i want her to blow on the spots that hurt, promise me a drink, promise me that the pain will go away. i don’t move, though. i can’t convince my body to move.

robert promised me he would tell no one, promised me that it would be between us. actually it was more of a bargain then a promise. i had to go back to school. i had to eat. i had to take care of myself. i nodded to all of them in silent agreement. he didn’t see my fingers crossed, that i was sitting on my hands to hide them. i don’t want to break them, promises. but i honestly don’t know how to take care of me anymore.

i did return to school, though. today. one promise upheld. i spent two hours in the bathroom sitting on the floor in front of the long mirror, trying to cover things up with make-up and trying to focus; trying on the mask of sanity, of safety, of who i used to be once upon a time. i perfected a slight smile to impose an i’m really just fine please don’t ask me again. i keep trying to breathe. in and out. in and out. in and out. every time I stood up i felt everything spin and shake, the room, my insides, my head.

i’m wearing that dress that troy helped me pick out, with the long green sleeves and the mismatched patchwork bits of velvet sewn together. it is the best out of my closet to cover as much of my body, as possible. i keep my hair down and slide on sam’s black boots that she left here somtime last winter. i’m finally ready, i think i’m ready, maybe i'll just go back to bed. i hear his car in the drive-way, though.

i walk to the door, remind myself to keep moving. robert’s car is parked in the drive-way. he has hot cocoa and a donut, my favorite kind, old fashioned without any glaze, plain. i can’t remember when i told him i used to love those when i was five. riding beside my grandfather, in his tow truck, feeling so big with my hot drink between my knees. grandpa called those donuts “grown-up” and i held my hands up to him, a smile wide across my face. he always smelled of old spice, that white bottle with the ship drawn on. i pictured him a sailor, before he met my grandmother. that she brought him to shore, and then it was trucks that took him over. but he still wanted to smell of the sea. some days he would put some on the insides of my wrists, and i would hold them close to my nose, breathe him into me.

“good morning, my janie jones. have breakfast with me?” he was all bright and beautiful, sunshine in the body of a boy, smiling. he was my safety, my hand to hold. if i could love him more than right now i just can’t fathom it. i bite my lip and try not to cry. the cracked spots opening, and bleeding again. keep moving, janie; hold it together for him.