I’ll Be Waiting

To whom it may concern: I am going to die.

I don’t mean in the way you would die. No, not the way everyone else does. I was meant to die from the beginning. It’s only a matter of time.

I didn’t know it until I was seven. Until I finally mustered up the courage to ask my dad why all the other girls got to go shopping with their mothers. Why they all had cute new clothes and dolls, why they all had mothers that made up their faces for their dance recitals, why they brought packed lunches complete with homemade cupcakes and sweet vanilla frosting.

You might be wondering why I didn’t ask him sooner. How it could take seven years for a girl to ask about the one that birthed them, to realize the hole that her absence put in my life. But how could I miss something that was never there? The only thing I could do is see something that others had and wish I had it too.

For context, I could read at four, but didn’t speak until six. Sure I might have made grunts and yelled and cried before then, but I didn’t talk. I can’t remember if that’s because I didn’t want to talk or didn’t know how. Maybe I just had no one to talk to. My brothers and I got along fine. One two years my senior, the other four. When they got tired of me they gave me books and stuffed me in a corner.

Maybe I didn’t speak until I was six because it’s your parents that are supposed to teach you how to talk. My dad barely talked to me, and when he did it was just to tell me what to do. He seemed fun around my brothers, but whenever he sensed my presence, he tensed up. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I actually talked. I bet he knew I could, he just didn’t care to hear me, and I didn’t care to say anything.

Even though I didn’t have parents to teach me how to talk, I had books. They taught me what they could: how to read. So I read. It helped the time go by faster. I only occasionally wished I had a mom. I knew I never would, I just never knew why. That is, until I was seven.

It was a little girl skipping by her mothers side, coming out of Walmart, that finally gave me enough courage. She had a new blonde Barbie in one arm, and her mom’s hand in the other. I watched solemnly as I helped my dad and two brothers unload our groceries.

“What happened to my mother?”

The word was foreign to me. Mother. It didn’t seem right coming off my tongue. All the girls called their mother “mommy” or “mom”. But those titles belonged to people. This mother I spoke of was merely an idea. An empty space waiting to be filled.

When I asked dad, he stopped putting the groceries in the trunk. So did my brothers. He motioned for them to get back to work, and pulled me to the car. It was the most he had ever touched or interacted with me, save for when I couldn’t do things on my own.

We just sat in the car for a while. Him in the driver’s seat and me behind him. Like I was a stranger, who had a face he didn’t want to look at. For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer. I still wonder what would have happened if he stayed silent.

But eventually he let out an exhale and plainly said, “You killed her. She was not your mother. She was never yours. Any person who might have passed her by and seen her eyes would belong to her more than you ever could. At least they would know what she looked like, and could have seen her smile. That image of her could never disappear. The only thing you have of hers is her blood. The same blood she lost giving birth to you. And that blood, it will disappear, just as she did. You will die, and in that moment, and only then when your blood is spilling out of you, you might consider her your mother."

It took me a while to piece my voice together, of course. I still wasn’t used to talking to him, and this was a rough way to start. I took so long to talk that my brothers were done with the groceries and had warily entered the car again. So you could imagine when I finally was strong enough to ask, “What was her name?” and he said nothing more, I swore not to speak to him again. Not until mother was mine. It was only a matter of time.

But I did. I was doing fine avoiding and not talking to him up until recently, when I talked to him two days ago, when my brother died.

Lucas was always the man of the house, no matter what dad wanted to make us kids believe. It might have been dad that changed and bathed me when I was too young to walk, but it was Lucas who gave me my first book, who taught me how to write, who would drive me to middle and high school when dad decided his room was better than being in a car with me.

Lucas was smart. He got into two ivies and an ivy plus. But he never got to outweigh the pros and cons of each, and decide which one to go to. No, he stayed local to keep an eye on his younger siblings. Alex and I begged him to go, that he couldn’t be trapped here forever with us, that anything was better than that.

We didn’t mean for him to die.

Alex goes to a local college now, and I’m a senior in high school. We’re old enough to take care of ourselves.

That’s the same thing we told Lucas three days ago. When he finally relented, and bought a plane ticket, I was happy for him. I shouldn’t have been, I should’ve known it wouldn’t last, nothing does, especially not happiness. His plane to California didn’t bring him to Stanford; it brought him to his death.

Only a matter of time.

Yesterday, Alex talked to me. He doesn’t talk much, which I admire, but that might be the only thing we have in common. He has always loved watching movies and playing sports. But I still don’t get it, even if it’s a distraction to him like my reading is to me. I don’t get why he spoke. I didn’t think there was anything to say. Apparently, he did.

“Dad’s worried about you.”

I was tempted to walk away, but Alex didn’t deserve that. He lost the same brother I did.

“Your dad doesn’t have to worry about me. Tell him that if he was more involved in our lives, Lucas would have been a senior at Stanford right now.” I don't think I meant what I said. How would I know that Lucas leaving four years prior wouldn’t have just made his death come sooner?

At that I started to cry, and Alex looked at me. He looked at me like I was a person, his sister even. Not the monster his dad had been blaming for killing his mom as long as he could remember.

“You have her eyes.” Alex spoke softly, as if he knew that those words spoken any louder would’ve broken me. He might as well have yelled them, though, because I was broken a long time ago.

As I got ready for school this morning, everything was in the same place. Father in his room, Alex watching TV.

“Good morning.”

The words were loud. I couldn’t believe they came from the same Alex who understood me yesterday. Good. How could anything be good? Nothing was ever good. And if it was, we both knew that it could never last.

I went to school anyway. In the school’s library I read a book. I can’t turn the pages fast enough to get sucked into another world like I normally do. No, I’m stuck here.

So I finally decided that I’d had enough. I went to tell my two friends, Jenn and Crystal and boyfriend, Matt, as much. It was hard to say it, I’m not good with words.They didn’t take it well.

Only when I’m with Jenn, Crystal, or Matt, and even then for no more than a few hours at a time, I can imagine I’m a normal senior girl with a gorgeous boyfriend and great friends, with everything to live for. But it doesn’t last, because nothing does.

Nevertheless, I drove off in the middle of the school day, speeding back home as if I thought the faster I went, the more time would warp, and I could see mother and brother again.

It was when I got home that I got the call. The call that Matt had died in a crash, trying to speed after me earlier today.

How could that have been today?

It was also today that I was screaming so loud that Alex stopped his movie and dad came out of his room, on a call.

It was today that they brought me to this asylum, for people like me. People who don’t have anything or anyone. But dad was wrong, they’re all wrong; I do have something. Mother is mine. My death. And so is Lucas and so is Matthew. It was never a matter of time. They’re mine now and always have been, whether I liked it or not. However they lived, their lives all ended the same, death brought on by me.

I doubt my mother’s eyes, apparently the same eyes that I see when I look into the glass that keeps me in my room, could have been more memorable than the deaths. The deaths I didn’t see but see every day. The deaths I caused. The deaths that will last with me forever.

I don’t belong here.

It was today that I knew I was in a place where no one would let me die.

It was today that I realized I was wrong. I am not going to die. No time soon.

It was never a matter of time.

Now I learned I’m just a vessel for death.

To whom it may concern: I know I’m going to be locked up in this room, but I fear that won’t stop death. But death won’t take me, it only wants to see me suffer.

You think we’d be friends after all this time.

So to whoever is reading this, please try to get me out. Not just this asylum, but this world where death has left its blood red mark on me. I don’t know where I want to go. Just anywhere but here. I’ll be waiting. Please. Please. Please… I’ll be waiting..