Marlena
She sits there at the window, picking at a spot on her chin, grimacing in the sunlight when I walk in. She stands up quickly, but gracefully and practiced, putting on a huge smile. This, rather than making the room glow brighter, creates a cool fakeness about her, and seems to block out even the sun. Leaving only this woman, who I felt more close to watching from afar.
She has dark hair that is cut short with bangs, and put up into an itsy bitsy little ponytail. I find it rather cute on her, and I am sure that it is meant to be so.
"You must be Mariah," she says, and only that. With no tone or particular volume, just a voice that comes from somewhere in her throat. But I am practiced, and I smile as well.
"Yes," I say, imitating her monotone. As sad and as silly as my smile is, she takes it as she would any other response I would give her and stores it in the notebook in her head, for later reflection. She motions for me to sit down in a cool black chair, and I do so, looking right into her eyes. They are empty eyes, at least temporarily, empty of all emotion, of everything. But my eyes penetrate something deeper in her, something locked up. She coughs deep in her throat and looks away.
"So, tell me why you are here,” she continues on, her speech one of comfort, of welcome. But I don’t say anything for a while, looking as though I am contemplating it.
"No," I say simply, and she does not reply with the laugh I know she has ready to give, as though I am making some big joke. Instead she falls silent, in what I believe is disappointment. For I feel she feeds on the tears that her clients shed. Letting all of them soak into her pores, letting them swim in her mind till they rest comfortably on a shelf in the back of her head. But I will not give them to her. I refuse to give her the pleasure of my tears and thoughts. It is strange for her to think that I would give them all up to her when I have kept them inside me all this time. For my thoughts are beasts, imprisoned by chains in my heart. And the only way that they would have to escape is if a flood ran through my mind, sweeping them up and carrying them through my eyes and onto my face. But my whole life I have been fighting the chains, and now she is telling me to let them loose? Why should I? They are mine to have, not hers. I will not allow my tears to become her little pets, adding to her growing pride. So that when she takes them from me, and locks them in the prison of her heart, she can revel in the fact that they have never once escaped through her eyes.
I stand up, and she doesn’t move, even if everything in her body is telling her to. "I've decided no," I repeat, and leave. And when I do I leave some of myself behind with her, a part of me that she wants more than she can even explain to herself, a part she cannot have. She tries to pass the wanting off as hunger, picks up an apple, and takes a bite. Lost in hunger, in wanting, in a thirst that will never be quenched, but instead forgotten, ripped out of the notebook inside her head.
Since her, I have not been to any of the other sadistic women my father seems to want to set me up with. I have no doubt that he knows how pointless these little sessions would be, but still there is some part of me that wants to please him. He knows he needs to do something about me, god only knows how many people have told him so. But he is obviously completely lost as to what to do. So he does things that he thinks need to be done, in some hope that he will at least be able to justify his parenting to himself in the end. So occasionally I do his little tasks in the hope that, when I leave as I know I will, he will feel as though he tried. He will be able to blame it all on me, because it really is all my fault that things are so fucked up. And I know it. But I don’t really want to think about all the things I am sorry about. Wallowing in sorries is what people who can think of no solution do. And though I in fact cannot think of any solution, I would prefer not to think about it. So instead, I go and eat pancakes.
Harry's is a wonderful place to eat in my opinion, even if all the cups are dirty, and the bar is greasy, and the only man who works there drinks as much as he works. I have been eating there ever since I tried to run away from home when I was nine years old. I was not really running away, just escaping for a while, getting a taste of being away from home, away from everything. I was walking aimlessly down the street, having climbed out of my bedroom window. But just as I was starting to feel foolish, I spotted Harry’s. There was a sign in front saying "bar and restaurant: breakfast served all day". The thought of pancakes popped in my mind when I read the word “breakfast”. It stirred in me some desire; normal families (at least in my mind) would go out to eat pancakes on Friday nights like this. So I stopped in and met Harry. He was only in his late teens then, for it was actually Harry senior who started the place. Harry Junior was a tall boy of 16, with black hair that seemed wild to me somehow, and a square chin. He was not particularly nice to me the first time I met him. Although, come to think of it, one couldn’t call anything Harry ever did “particularly nice”. But he seemed to have some attachment to me ever since I walked in, bleary eyed, taking out three dollars mostly in change. He took my order, and my three dollars, and when he served me my pancakes and eggs, he sat across from me and talked to me like any other person who had walked into his bar. He drank whiskey, and offered me some, which I refused.
"You should never drink," he told me, taking a swig himself. "Girls get silly when they drink, and stupid. Men can stay calm and serious".
I laughed and told him my daddy said that men and women were really the same inside and should be treated the same, but he just laughed at this.
"That," he said, "is one of the most told lies, and an important one at that." he sent me home with a handshake and a promise to give me free pancakes for the rest of my life, as long as I promised never to get stupid. Since then I have never touched alcohol, because he still gives me free pancakes.
So that is where I went after my appointment with the psychologist. And that is where I went, one year later, on Friday, May 25th, when I was 14 years old. I left school at 3:00; I ironically even did my homework in the library before leaving. I went home, and picked up a bag sitting on the table right inside the front door, then walked down to Harry’s. "Back again sweetheart?" he said, "when I said I would give you free pancakes, I expected you to come back twice tops, not every Friday for the rest of your fucking life." this is how Harry greeted me every single time I walked in the door.
"Don’t expect me next Friday" I replied, "I am leaving".
He rolled his eyes, "you have been saying that ever since you walked in here 5 years ago," he laughed, whacking me, not so lightly, on the side of the head.
"I mean it this time". I lifted my bag up and put it on the counter, "I've even packed my stuff." he looked down into the bag.
"You have only done that a couple of times," he frowned. “You know I would miss you if you left".
I sigh, "Somehow I think you will survive, an attractive 22 year old, losing a 14 year old friend," I raised an eyebrow. He gave me a look and served another costumer. I ate my pancakes quickly, and kissed his cheek goodbye. He waved me out the door saying, "See you again next Friday?" I smiled. I haven’t seen him for 8 years.
It so happens that I did leave that Friday, the reason for doing so I have forgotten, mixed up in my head with all the memories that I have of that place. All that I remember is that I left, and I have not gone back for eight years. According to Dana, who is my only connection up to a couple years ago to my hometown, my father never went looking for me, and Harry still waited for me every Friday for years, until he gave up and started dating dozens of people, boys and girls, to get his mind off of me. I may have been much too young for him to be in love with me, but he still loved me more than he had loved anyone else. I think he still does in a sense. I can just feel in my bones that he is out there somewhere, loving me, and that he always will be.
I left by train, one that I caught in the larger city only a couple of miles away. I walked the fifteen miles to the other city, and consequently slept almost all of the train ride. The train took me some place I had never heard of, which is mainly why I took it. The place, I learned by looking it up in some old book in the library the day I bought the ticket, was a very rich one. It was out in the country, full of families who inherited most of their money, and no longer had to work. It wasn’t really a very small town surprisingly, much bigger than mine anyways. And it was surrounded by nicely bustling neighbor towns, where the children went to school, and the servants did the shopping. Upon reading the word “servants” in the book I looked this all up in, I was filled with a feeling of shock mixed with anger but also dash of amusement, and a whole steaming pot full of curiosity and excitement. I could think of no job more fun than one in which I was able to snoop into others lives. I left the next day with absolutely no fear of what was facing me. It wasn’t from confidence that I sidestepped the usual apprehension, but from apathy. I didn’t particularly care if it all went “wrong”. I believed that nothing could be "wrong" for me as long as I never had to come back.
I woke up half way through the train ride to see a young man a year or two younger than me, sitting in the seat directly across, and reading a newspaper. He had glasses, but they looked like they were only for reading, and he had light brown hair that formed into a perfectly soft little wave at the top of his head. He took out a pocket watch and checked the time, noticing only then that I was awake. I smiled amusedly at him, because he was acting like some posh old gentleman, when he could not be a day over thirteen. He did not smile back. So I fell back asleep.
She has dark hair that is cut short with bangs, and put up into an itsy bitsy little ponytail. I find it rather cute on her, and I am sure that it is meant to be so.
"You must be Mariah," she says, and only that. With no tone or particular volume, just a voice that comes from somewhere in her throat. But I am practiced, and I smile as well.
"Yes," I say, imitating her monotone. As sad and as silly as my smile is, she takes it as she would any other response I would give her and stores it in the notebook in her head, for later reflection. She motions for me to sit down in a cool black chair, and I do so, looking right into her eyes. They are empty eyes, at least temporarily, empty of all emotion, of everything. But my eyes penetrate something deeper in her, something locked up. She coughs deep in her throat and looks away.
"So, tell me why you are here,” she continues on, her speech one of comfort, of welcome. But I don’t say anything for a while, looking as though I am contemplating it.
"No," I say simply, and she does not reply with the laugh I know she has ready to give, as though I am making some big joke. Instead she falls silent, in what I believe is disappointment. For I feel she feeds on the tears that her clients shed. Letting all of them soak into her pores, letting them swim in her mind till they rest comfortably on a shelf in the back of her head. But I will not give them to her. I refuse to give her the pleasure of my tears and thoughts. It is strange for her to think that I would give them all up to her when I have kept them inside me all this time. For my thoughts are beasts, imprisoned by chains in my heart. And the only way that they would have to escape is if a flood ran through my mind, sweeping them up and carrying them through my eyes and onto my face. But my whole life I have been fighting the chains, and now she is telling me to let them loose? Why should I? They are mine to have, not hers. I will not allow my tears to become her little pets, adding to her growing pride. So that when she takes them from me, and locks them in the prison of her heart, she can revel in the fact that they have never once escaped through her eyes.
I stand up, and she doesn’t move, even if everything in her body is telling her to. "I've decided no," I repeat, and leave. And when I do I leave some of myself behind with her, a part of me that she wants more than she can even explain to herself, a part she cannot have. She tries to pass the wanting off as hunger, picks up an apple, and takes a bite. Lost in hunger, in wanting, in a thirst that will never be quenched, but instead forgotten, ripped out of the notebook inside her head.
Since her, I have not been to any of the other sadistic women my father seems to want to set me up with. I have no doubt that he knows how pointless these little sessions would be, but still there is some part of me that wants to please him. He knows he needs to do something about me, god only knows how many people have told him so. But he is obviously completely lost as to what to do. So he does things that he thinks need to be done, in some hope that he will at least be able to justify his parenting to himself in the end. So occasionally I do his little tasks in the hope that, when I leave as I know I will, he will feel as though he tried. He will be able to blame it all on me, because it really is all my fault that things are so fucked up. And I know it. But I don’t really want to think about all the things I am sorry about. Wallowing in sorries is what people who can think of no solution do. And though I in fact cannot think of any solution, I would prefer not to think about it. So instead, I go and eat pancakes.
Harry's is a wonderful place to eat in my opinion, even if all the cups are dirty, and the bar is greasy, and the only man who works there drinks as much as he works. I have been eating there ever since I tried to run away from home when I was nine years old. I was not really running away, just escaping for a while, getting a taste of being away from home, away from everything. I was walking aimlessly down the street, having climbed out of my bedroom window. But just as I was starting to feel foolish, I spotted Harry’s. There was a sign in front saying "bar and restaurant: breakfast served all day". The thought of pancakes popped in my mind when I read the word “breakfast”. It stirred in me some desire; normal families (at least in my mind) would go out to eat pancakes on Friday nights like this. So I stopped in and met Harry. He was only in his late teens then, for it was actually Harry senior who started the place. Harry Junior was a tall boy of 16, with black hair that seemed wild to me somehow, and a square chin. He was not particularly nice to me the first time I met him. Although, come to think of it, one couldn’t call anything Harry ever did “particularly nice”. But he seemed to have some attachment to me ever since I walked in, bleary eyed, taking out three dollars mostly in change. He took my order, and my three dollars, and when he served me my pancakes and eggs, he sat across from me and talked to me like any other person who had walked into his bar. He drank whiskey, and offered me some, which I refused.
"You should never drink," he told me, taking a swig himself. "Girls get silly when they drink, and stupid. Men can stay calm and serious".
I laughed and told him my daddy said that men and women were really the same inside and should be treated the same, but he just laughed at this.
"That," he said, "is one of the most told lies, and an important one at that." he sent me home with a handshake and a promise to give me free pancakes for the rest of my life, as long as I promised never to get stupid. Since then I have never touched alcohol, because he still gives me free pancakes.
So that is where I went after my appointment with the psychologist. And that is where I went, one year later, on Friday, May 25th, when I was 14 years old. I left school at 3:00; I ironically even did my homework in the library before leaving. I went home, and picked up a bag sitting on the table right inside the front door, then walked down to Harry’s. "Back again sweetheart?" he said, "when I said I would give you free pancakes, I expected you to come back twice tops, not every Friday for the rest of your fucking life." this is how Harry greeted me every single time I walked in the door.
"Don’t expect me next Friday" I replied, "I am leaving".
He rolled his eyes, "you have been saying that ever since you walked in here 5 years ago," he laughed, whacking me, not so lightly, on the side of the head.
"I mean it this time". I lifted my bag up and put it on the counter, "I've even packed my stuff." he looked down into the bag.
"You have only done that a couple of times," he frowned. “You know I would miss you if you left".
I sigh, "Somehow I think you will survive, an attractive 22 year old, losing a 14 year old friend," I raised an eyebrow. He gave me a look and served another costumer. I ate my pancakes quickly, and kissed his cheek goodbye. He waved me out the door saying, "See you again next Friday?" I smiled. I haven’t seen him for 8 years.
It so happens that I did leave that Friday, the reason for doing so I have forgotten, mixed up in my head with all the memories that I have of that place. All that I remember is that I left, and I have not gone back for eight years. According to Dana, who is my only connection up to a couple years ago to my hometown, my father never went looking for me, and Harry still waited for me every Friday for years, until he gave up and started dating dozens of people, boys and girls, to get his mind off of me. I may have been much too young for him to be in love with me, but he still loved me more than he had loved anyone else. I think he still does in a sense. I can just feel in my bones that he is out there somewhere, loving me, and that he always will be.
I left by train, one that I caught in the larger city only a couple of miles away. I walked the fifteen miles to the other city, and consequently slept almost all of the train ride. The train took me some place I had never heard of, which is mainly why I took it. The place, I learned by looking it up in some old book in the library the day I bought the ticket, was a very rich one. It was out in the country, full of families who inherited most of their money, and no longer had to work. It wasn’t really a very small town surprisingly, much bigger than mine anyways. And it was surrounded by nicely bustling neighbor towns, where the children went to school, and the servants did the shopping. Upon reading the word “servants” in the book I looked this all up in, I was filled with a feeling of shock mixed with anger but also dash of amusement, and a whole steaming pot full of curiosity and excitement. I could think of no job more fun than one in which I was able to snoop into others lives. I left the next day with absolutely no fear of what was facing me. It wasn’t from confidence that I sidestepped the usual apprehension, but from apathy. I didn’t particularly care if it all went “wrong”. I believed that nothing could be "wrong" for me as long as I never had to come back.
I woke up half way through the train ride to see a young man a year or two younger than me, sitting in the seat directly across, and reading a newspaper. He had glasses, but they looked like they were only for reading, and he had light brown hair that formed into a perfectly soft little wave at the top of his head. He took out a pocket watch and checked the time, noticing only then that I was awake. I smiled amusedly at him, because he was acting like some posh old gentleman, when he could not be a day over thirteen. He did not smile back. So I fell back asleep.
posted by Anonymous Bitch at 5:33 PM
0 comments
