So I'm in a fiction class right now and thought I'd post something from class. This is the beginning to the second story I'm working on now. I'll post again on Halloween for sure with Sadie and Chandler. Until then happy reading!!
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They come every afternoon. Never twice in a row, with words and stories that they feel like I should know. And I can't remember. No matter how many times I hear about breaking my arm when I fell out of a tree. Or the silly made-up award I got during a choir banquet. I can't remember anything since the accident. My childhood, my adolescence, some of my adult life, gone.
I know the stories told and the people who come now. I just can't remember the events or who the people use to be to me.
***
It's Tuesday. Lunch today is turkey on wheat with applesauce and a snack-sized bag of potato chips that are mostly crumbs. Edna is here too. She always brings a thermos of hot cocoa. It's old with a red plaid design on the outside and a matching red cup on top. She says that it had been Jack's, my grandfather. Edna always tells me when she pulls out the thermos from her knitting bag. I just nod. I've heard it so many times that I know she's going to say it. Edna will tell me how Jack took it with him on every camping and fishing trip, how when I was younger I would always carry it out to him before he would drive off in that old, rusty pick-up of his.
I think it breaks her heart when I call her Edna. She always insists on me calling her “Gammy” but I can't. I feel no connection to this woman. Sometimes it breaks my heart too. But I don't understand the love that Edna is always trying to give me and she leaves, the thermos back in her knitting bag along with her stories of myself and Jack.
***
Friday, the day of my discharge. Jamie and Dean are here to pick me up and take me back to their place. The doctor says that familiar places might trigger my memories. So I'm going home. That's what Jamie and Dean are saying anyways, that they are taking me home. I imagine that they'll show me pictures that were once meant for photo albums with smiles on their faces that hold false hope. And I'll look with blank eyes and try to comprehend. But their stories make me tired and their house makes me feel out of place.
***
“I don't like raspberries.”
A glass drops. It must have slipped through Jamie's fingers. “Tessa, what is it sweetheart? What did you say?” She's next to me now, her light green eyes searching mine. It's uncomfortable.
I shrug and nudge the plate in front of me with the assortment of fruit. “I don't like raspberries.” I concentrate on my fingers, the index and middle finger are bound together, they must have broken in the accident.
Jamie's breathe catches and I can feel her hands tremble on the armrests of the wooden kitchen chair I'm sitting in. “And the others?”
I pick up a slice of a pear, the skin is a yellowish-green, and take a bite. “I'm allergic to peaches, I think.” I mumble around the meat of the fruit and pop the other half into my mouth, reaching out for a piece of an orange next.
Jamie places her arms around me, her whole upper body is trembling now, and hugs me. I turn my head away from her and see the broken glass. Jamie had poured milk into it before it hit the floor. A pool of watery white liquid runs across the tan-tilled floor.
***
It's been four months since I was discharged from the hospital. I'm remembering more now. How the mini-van had run the red-light, causing me to t-bone my motorcycle into it, helmet flying off after I first hit the ground, and me flipping over the trashed hunk of metal. That the EMT's had to cut me out of my favorite pair of light-washed jeans. That Nora, a young woman that had stopped visiting my second week in the hospital, had been my girlfriend of three months. My guess is that she couldn't handle me not remembering her.
I can recall breaking my arm now, how Dean had cursed up a storm in the ER. I know my vocabulary expanded that day and that Jamie wouldn't have cared for her eight year old little girl to know so many new four-lettered words.
I can even remember trivial things. That my favorite flowers are violet freesias. That I love cereal so much I know I could eat it for a month straight. That I prefer blue pens over black. My guilty pleasure before the accident had been Cake Boss. And I can remember that when I was younger I did want to be a legitimate princess with a stable full of ponies and a pretty golden crown.
I tell Jamie and Dean everything when I remember and write it down. Jamie always calls Edna to let her know what I'm learning about myself. Sometimes I overhear their conversation. How they both wish that I could remember more, remember them and that they're my family.
***
It's a Saturday, there's a cookout happening outside with no chance of rain. I keep to myself, wanting to stay away from the vaguely familiar people who shove their sweaty palms into mine. “Tessa, darling, please.” Dean says to me as he grabs the hotdogs and patted out hamburgers from the refrigerator for the barbeque. “Just try, for your mom's sake.”
I stir the macaroni salad, making sure to mix the onion, tomato, and cucumber cubes in with the noodles. “Dad, I can't...” I start, my spoon stopping mid-stir after the words are out of my mouth. I glance over at Dad and I can see a smile pulling at his bearded cheeks. “Alright, maybe it won't be so bad.”
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