Page 6 of Bad Like Me

5

Ray

What wasI doing with my life? It was an issue I faced each day as I laid in bed and then begrudgingly forced myself to rise out of it. Some days were harder than others, but I tried to remember this wasn’t what dad would want for me. It wasn’t what I wanted for myself either, but my self-preservation wasn’t exactly at a high point right now. For the first few days, I didn’t make it further than the bathroom and when absolutely necessary, down to the kitchen for food. Even though I didn’t have an appetite, I generally pushed something into my body, understanding I had to be semi-healthy to take care of Mom. I’d promised to essentially take Dad’s place, so that required being here, even if each time my lungs flattened upon exhalation, the wish for death tried a little more to overpower me.

I missed my dad so much, it physically hurt. I didn’t know until he passed that sadness could be something tangible. It was an emotion everyone person was capable of, only some chose to fight it, while others wallowed in the depths of its tides. At least that was how I thought people dealt with the emotion before we lost Dad. I was noticeably wrong all those years; it wasn’t a choice at all. On occasion, people were just sad. That fact didn’t change because a person willed it to be so. It was putting a boat into capricious waters on a clear day, only to capsize minutes later by the white caps that emerged unexpectedly. A person couldn’t prepare for true, gut-wrenching misery. It was abrupt and tended to overstay its welcome in their life.

I’d wake from happy dreams of things that happened during my childhood, like when Dad taught me how to bait a hook, only to wake up with the stupid fucking knowledge that he was no longer here. Other times, I had nightmares of him being trapped, and I couldn’t save him. It didn’t matter what my subconscious chose to slap on the projector at night, eventually, my heart always broke all over again. It was as if each day, I lost him for the first time, and my heart was bound with such power that each constriction brought more anguish than the earlier one. All I wanted to do was lay on the mattress and waste away. I really had no purpose.

It’d been two weeks since Dad’s funeral, and the highlight of my days was playing scrabble with the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Flowers. I was going stir-crazy and had to do something to occupy my wandering mind, so board games with her was better than merely doing nothing to pass my time. It was a very welcomed distraction that kept me busy and freed my mind from the treacherous cloud that begged to submerge me entirely into mourning. I couldn’t give myself credit for the idea, she pushed it on me, offering to play every time she saw me. Eventually, I gave in to her plan and just let the rest of the world melt away. I should have been doing something more constructive with my time, like looking for a job, but I wasn’t ready to reassemble all those broken pieces. My mind had filled with guilt after the funeral, and I knew right then, I wouldn’t be breaking the promises I’d made Dad. Not only would I not move back to Kentucky, but I would also settle here for a while to keep my word to him. None of that would happen anytime soon, though. I simply couldn’t go on pretending the world was the same without him because it wasn’t, at least not for me. A very key part of my life was gone, and I didn’t know how to fill the void.

Mom hadn’t been home too much. She immersed herself in volunteer work at the hospital against my better judgment. Neither of us needed to be there; its halls were filled with the lingering ghost of Dad’s memories. Nothing I said changed her mind, though; this was where she wanted to pass her time.

“Penis for the win,” Mrs. Flowers chuckled as she dropped the letters one wooden tile at a time onto the board. My mouth fell open, and I didn’t bother looking at the letters she’d played at all.

“I can’t…”

“Good grief, girl. I said penis. I didn’t say dick.” She shook her head and took a sip from her cup, which I was questioning if it actually contained tea as she had said. My nostrils flared as I inhaled, expecting to be knocked down with the scent of liquor, and my curiosity piqued when I didn’t find it.

My entire childhood was filled with memories of Mrs. Flowers, none of which had she ever said anything remotely close to anything she had today. Baking cookies or patching up my scrapes and scratches with a Snoopy band-aid, yes, those were the things I remembered. Yet, when she said penis and then dick, I couldn’t help except wonder what she said when I hadn’t heard her.

“Rachel, you’re old enough to hear these words.” She set her teacup onto the wobbly table beside the game board and crossed her legs. I nodded in response unable to muster much more of a reply.

“Please tell me this isn’t the first time you’ve heard them.” She smirked and lifted her mocha-colored hand to her face, trying to hide her amusement. “Do we need to have the talk? Girl, I can tell you some stories. Speaking of…” She held up one finger and pulled a book from the shelf of the table. “Here. This will do the explaining for me and then some.”

My eyes roamed the very familiar cover of the paperback copy of an erotic novel, and I stifled the giggles boiling out of my body. I had read the entire series at least five times and could probably quote more excerpts than most. I’d been an avid romance reader since the ripe age of thirteen, and from there, I spiraled into the erotica genre several years later.

“Just read it, okay?”

I rolled my shoulders and bit my lip, trying to gain some semblance of composure before I nodded in agreement. The thought of her reading books in this category both made me question a lot of things she’d said to me during my childhood and appreciate them a lot more. She had dropped hints about sex all through my teenage years, and I’d often asked myself if they had a hidden innuendo but shut those thoughts down fast. It was Mrs. Flowers for crying out loud. Apparently, I had been right all along. She was a dirty old woman and wasn’t as innocent as I believed. I guess she figured I was older and there was little point to hide anything from me now.

“Thank you,” I politely said, shoving the book underneath my arm as I stood to excuse myself.

“Leaving already?”

“I have some reading to do, right?”

“Yes. Educate yourself, and maybe the next game, you won’t choke when I play the one-eyed snake.”

I plugged one ear and then the other with the tip of one of my fingers, wondering if I had actually heard her correctly. “Doubtful,” I barely spat out of my lips and ran toward Mom and Dad’s house in shock, my body teetering on exploding with laughter and assuming a fetal position with the new knowledge I’d been given. I didn’t look back at her to see her reaction because I couldn’t. She had a wonderful sense of humor, this much I was aware of, but apparently, I had only scratched the surface.

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