STAGGER

I called Sheri today. For those of you unknowing folk, Sheri is the woman I spawned out of. That’s what she would call me, her spawn. To family, friends, colleagues. She was shameless about it- dropping that title like the words “daughter” or “child” or “Ilana” would singe her lips on the way out. Sometimes, she referred to me as the spawn of Satan, depending on how angry I made her. One time, I said, “Wouldn’t that technically make you Satan?”

She made me sit out in the rain and pray with my knees in the wet gravel for three hours after that comment.

She was an atheist.

Sheri and I have a complicated relationship. Imagine that- the most simple relationship, natured and nurtured, is a mother-child relationship. And she can’t even get that right. It’s like both of our hands are on a hot, steaming iron, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of a plain, cotton napkin, but she’s tugging at the hems, pulling this way and pushing that way, and all we end up with are wrinkles we can’t iron back out, lines permanently creased, buckling the fabric up and down. As soon as her hands would let off the iron, she’d tell me what a mess I’ve made of it.

I called Sheri today, I was that desperate for… answers? Or an ounce of comfort. Or a speck of normalcy. Three things she’s never had for me since I was spawned from her. I was that desperate.

My mornings usually go like this- I get woken up by the trill of my alarm, a synthesized trill that goes from suggestion to demand from a little orange and green cube strobing a fifteen-hundred lumen bell icon. I can tell I’ve slept well if I’m peeling my saliva-crusted cheek and hair from the cotton weave of my floral pillowcase. You can guess why I opted for floral. It hides the evidence of my Ambien-induced coma. That’s beside the point.

Anyways, I always let the weight of my right arm roll my body over while I stretch, wrist tracing over the arc of my headboard, a rainbow leading to the leprechaun screaming at me from the nightstand, the light already searing my retinas through the thin veil of my eyelids. I ball my fist and let gravity hammer straight on the snooze button, always snooze just in case the Ambien isn’t done flirting under the covers with me. Then I hit the reset alarm button on the back. I can proudly say the snooze affair doesn’t happen to me often, but the risk of a seizure from the strobing can train that temptation out of you.

Once I throw my body up and my legs over the edge of the bed, I have to say, “Autopilot, engage,” to myself, out loud, with a robotic British accent. It sounds absurd, but if I don’t engage my mental autopilot, I become too aware of my exhaustion and it ruins the rest of my routine.

The rest of my routine goes as follows: brush my teeth, wash my face, put on my makeup, get dressed, grab a granola bar, and head to work. Nothing fancy in the rest of my routine. It’s the first twenty seconds of my day that have to be nailed down or the rest is ruined.

I called Sheri because I could not nail it down. My metaphorical hammer dropped claw-side-down and the nail was a shard of glass that turned to a million fibers on contact.

My alarm didn’t trill up. It trilled down. When I tell you, I almost pissed my nice, satin sleep shorts at the jolt of that sound, a decibel I’ve never made it to considering my usual tone took at least a minute to get to half this level by the time I shut it off. The strobing light turned to a dim pulse only a fraction of what my heart was thumping out. I damn near broke the banshee box when I palmed the button. The sting from ripping my cheek from my pillowcase caught up to me as I sat up, but it was higher. On the print of a white flower petal, a gray blotch was sprinkled with little black grains. I was crying in my sleep.

The rest of my morning was fine. No hiccups, no hurdles. My tights went on without a run and my electric blue dress zipped up without a snag. Before I left, I flipped the clock to find the manufacturer’s label on the bottom, hoping to find the brand’s website on my walk to work, but the text was washed away from the tea I spilled on my night stand a few months back. I wondered, too, if that was the cause of the glitch this morning. A delayed response. Maybe a tea particle finally found its way into a component. Maybe it got a caffeine buzz from it.

I had the elevator to myself this morning. I relished in that, thanked the same god my mom made me pray to, and took advantage of the moment to prim myself in the mirrored box, scraping granola chunks out of my molars with my fingernail. I was digging in my purse for something to run between my teeth when I noticed that the music was off. Not actually off, but it almost sounded like the faint bass track was half a beat behind. I stood there, brows furled and breath held, ears perked so hard, my own hairs tickled insides of my canals.

♪ Let the (Bass enters) good times roll ♪

Half a second behind.

The elevator doors drew open, flooding the box with the sound of chatter and erratic tik-taks of clacking high heels snapping against marbled floors. I crossed the threshold to the faint breeze that came in through the eight sets of doors, pairs of glass rectangles never nesting back in their metal trims during the morning rush, bodies funneling out into the city, bodies moving in to retrieve forgotten lunch boxes and paperwork.

My feet set out to match the tik-taks of heels now on concrete, clinging to the brick faces of the blocks towering around the marching human colony. I made my right toward my morning pit stop, a coffee shop with a mess of neon signs and mismatched tables and chairs in the front.

A couple sat at a table nearest to my path, a middle aged man and woman with their fingers laced together, ears suctioned to their shoulders as they batted their lashes to each other. I couldn’t help but fix my eyes on them. I’m a romantic. I love love. I love body language that speaks love. And as their bodies moved in for an embrace, I smiled, glancing at my feet to grant the strangers a bit of public privacy.

As my eyes flicked back up at them, their faces were still together, but moving erratically. I slowed my steps to grant another bit of privacy, but they were really going in. As I got closer, I noticed they weren’t kissing. They were breathing on each other. All over each other. Their mouths were wide open, chests inflating and deflating hot air on their cheeks, their noses, their eyes. A small moan slipped from the woman’s mouth onto the receding hairline of the man, his mouth so agape to the bottom of her chin, I can see the granola stuck in his molars. I veered to the left of the table to lay a gap between us, the couple panting on each other like rabid dogs in heat. A strand of drool dropped from the man’s mouth. He caught it, with his napkin, blushed, and the session was over.

I passed on the coffee.

I slipped into the lobby of my office building, shaking off the scene I just witnessed. A pair of arms raised from the security desk, fingers dancing.

“Ilana,” my favorite security guy sang. “♪ Good morning, my sweet peach! ♪”

“Good morning, Greggy!”

I tucked my purse behind my back as I reached for the coffee station next to him.

“Going for the company’s coffee today?” He leaned his hip on the edge of the counter. “You know they say the stuff they get is mostly ground up roaches.”

“Added protein,” the spout squeezed out half a cup before it sputtered itself empty. “That’s how you got those biceps, huh?” I nodded to the matching paper cup in his hand.

“Gotta stay fit for the job.”

“I’d have a latte in my hand if my morning wasn’t so weird.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll have to fill you in later.”

“You know where I’ll be,” he rounded back to his chair. “Hope it gets better!”

I snapped the lid on the cup and looked up to bid a salutation. His arms were back up, fingers back in their sporadic dance. This time, he was blinking. Fast. And hard. I saw an eyelash fall into his open coffee cup.

I forced out a crooked smile, assuming this was a new bit for him. He dropped his arms on his desk and looked at me like I spat on his shoes. He turned back to the entry doors before he started singing “♪ Doleful Birthday to you ♪” in a minor key to Miranda from my office, watching her awkwardly sway her way to his station as I stepped into the silent elevator. The song wasn’t weird at all. Miranda was, in fact, a goth. I figured it was their own inside joke. 

I sipped the gritty brew as the elevator doors snuffed out the song, looking forward to the taste of birthday cake to wash it down.

I shouldered the sleek, oak door open. The other receptionist, Kelly, was two steps in front of me. She turned around and blinked fast at me. I don’t know why I blinked back, but I didn’t want to feel left out of a new running joke. So I did. After the last blink, I saw her eye me up and down. She looked at me like I spat on her shoes.

“You know it’s Miranda’s birthday today?”

“Yeah, she should be right behind us.”

“Why are you wearing that?”

I looked down at myself, dressed in blue, then back at her, dressed in black. This was nothing new. The receptionists always wore black dresses or pantsuits to match the sleek branding of the pharmaceutical sales firm we so proudly worked at. Where I got my Ambien for free.

“What do you mean?”

She hushed herself and leaned into my ear, “Where are your mourning clothes?”

“My what?”

She rolled her eyes and went to wait at the door for Miranda, her darkly dressed figure and long, silver beaded goddess braids twinkling in the frosted glass.

I rushed to set my stuff down on my desk to catch up with the crew making their way to the door, all adorned in pressed black slacks, flowing black gowns. It was cute to me, how supportive all of these straight laced colleagues were to her gothic lifestyle. Mesh black veils sat on top of the accounting department’s heads, all women that typically wore beige sweater dresses and chunky velvet headbands.

Kelly hushed everybody, hand pushing down on the knob, and slowly pulled the door. As soon as Miranda’s face came into view, everybody’s mouths opened, so I opened mine on cue and yelled, “Happy birthday!”

Everybody jerked their heads to me, jaws still open, chests swollen with their inhaled breaths, and looked at me like I hawked a coffee-grounded spit wad on each patent leather shoe. One of the accounting girls broke the silence with a sob. A heavy, loud sob, as another accounting head lifted a tissue to her nose.

Kelly turned to Miranda and grabbed her hand, slowly guiding her in, a tissue in her other hand, ready to sop up the saltwater from her eyes. Everybody moved themselves into an aisle, shoulders touching to form walls of shadow, heads bowed. I stood behind the wall of mourners to hide the bright red of my cheeks. I could feel the heat of my own face bouncing back from the suit jackets in front of me.

I fell behind the quietly shuffling feet into the break room. Kelly dimmed the lights down until they were off as another accounting girl clicked a kitchen lighter. I stood on my toes to follow the flame down to a candle. No cake. Just a single, red candle.

“We are here to mourn another passing year of Miranda Colley, our beloved colleague, friend, and a hell of a marketing director.”

Next to me, Bradley the finance manager bowed his head back down.

“This is so cute,” I whispered to him, bumping my arm to his. His brow furled as his eyes shot wide.

“Cute? There is nothing cute about this, Ilana,” he spoke to me through his teeth.

“A goth birthday?”

“Ilana, she’s closer to death.”

“Where’s the cake?”

Bradley spat on my shoes.

I backed out of the break room and scooped my purse from my desk, fast pacing to the door. I pulled it open to see our boss, his gaping mouth breathing on the temple of his wife. They both whipped their bodies to me.

“Oh, good morning, Ilana,” they said in unison, blinking fast and hard, her red manicure twittering in front of her face.

His wife stood on her toes and gave one last, forced breath to his chin before her stilettos clacked back down.

I brushed past them, my own heels tik-takking down the hallway, the echoes half a beat behind each other, all the way to the vending room. I slammed the door shut and scrolled to Sheri (Spawner) on my phone. I paced around the small, round table, toes scraping over the metal chair legs until she picked up.

“What,” my mom’s raspy voice coughed like she just woke up.

I stood frozen at the sound of her voice, not knowing which greeting to voice through the receiver before I started on about my day. I’ve never told her about my days.

“...Yes? You there?”

“Yeah,” I pulled a chair and slumped into the plastic bucket seat.

“... What’s going on?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. Something’s not right.”

“... Uh huh.”

“The alarm,” I scratched my neck. “My alarm clock.”

“Uh huh.”

“And then I left and I went to get coffee.”

“Uh huh.”

“And there was this couple at a table. Outside.”

“Uh huh.”

“And the music in the-”

“Uh huh.”

“Elevator.”

“Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.”

“... Sheri?”

“Uh HUH. Uh huh. UH-”

“Mom…?”

“UH HUH. UH HUH. UH-”

I dropped my phone on the table, still hearing her through the speaker, the rasps in her voice, clearing mucous with every HUH. I scrambled to pick it back up, and felt a pain stab the tip of my finger. I dropped the phone back onto the melamine.

I held my finger close to my eye. A shard of glass stood erect in the center wave of my finger print, a droplet of red coating the translucent fragment. Sheri’s voice was still going as I looked up at the rectangular window pane in the door, Greg's face bordered by the metal trim. He was smiling and blinking at me.

I blinked back. I didn’t know what else to do.

Greg coughed out a “HUH. UH HUH. UH HUH.” Half a beat behind.

I kept blinking, blinking until a tear dropped from my eye, grains of mascara splashing down with it onto the table. Blinking until my eyelids fell to a tired close.

I shut my eyes tight, still hearing the jumble of their voices in my red-hot ears, hairs tickling each canal. I felt spots of heat dancing around my face- my puckered eyelids, my veiny temples, my mouth with gritted teeth behind my pursed lips. Every muscle in my body froze me so solid, I was afraid I’d shatter and join the fragments on the table. My fingertip was still throbbing, my heart half a beat behind.

My muscles started to twitch, my fingertips started to dance.

I threw my head away from the sounds.

My cheek stung.