Footie

Rosa’s mother always hid them on the floor that had only two rooms. After a few hours, Rosa’s brother would leave. He’d always come back before it was time to go.

Today he left his pajamas behind. They were laying in a heap on his side of the bed, covered in sweat. So much sweat that they were heavy in Rosa’s hand as she picked them up.

Rosa was drenched too. She had woken up feeling weighed down to the mattress. When she sat up, seeing her brother gone, the cold air in the room just about froze her in place.

How long her brother had been gone was anyone’s guess. She forgot to look at the digital clock on the side table before she left. Carrying her brother’s pajamas in one hand, down the long hallway outside their room.

After a while she wasn’t sure how long she had been walking.

It had been long enough that when she looked back, she could no longer see the door to their room. But she still didn't see the sign for the stairwell or the elevator yet. 

This was also the only floor that had no windows. Not even in their hotel room. From the outside it looked like someone had painted a single stroke of yellow around the middle of the gray building.

Whenever they drove into the parking lot, Rosa stared and thought, ‘That’s where we’ll be.’

From the time Rosa and her brother were very small they understood two things. That their mother gave them her full attention when they were sick and that getting sick was easy.

In daycare they would drink from other kids’ juice boxes. They would "forget" to wash their hands all the time. When they were older, Rosa’s brother would chew the gum under the desks. Rosa would see other children cough and put her face in front of them. They’d pick their noses until they bled.

After it worked, they would try to prolong the sickness for as long as they could. 

Licking the windows of their bedroom or the bathroom sink, but not the toilet seat. They would cough extra hard to force up more mucus. Sometimes it didn’t work, and then they would resort to crying extra hard.

Mother would rush into the bedroom and rock them. She’d bathe them while singing softly. She would massage their backs, feet, legs, and bellies until they went to sleep. When they were awake she would talk to them.

Lately the siblings discovered they were at that age where not only was it harder to get sick, but their mother was starting to expect more from them. 

She began to leave the medicine on the side table of the bedroom, rather than hold their heads as they drank from the little plastic cups. She would draw them baths but not run the sponge over their backs. She would stay for half a day, not the full day. 

This last round they had gone all out to catch the flu, but ended up with some other virus that wasn’t as severe. Take what you can get, they believed. Especially because it was good enough for there to be a return to form for two days. Mother had stayed home with them.

But it didn't last. Early that morning they had been woken up and told to get dressed because their mother couldn’t miss more work this week.

“You two are wearing that?” Mother had asked, seeing the footie pajamas.

They didn’t answer. Their heads were so hot that flames were on the edges of their vision. Their bodies swayed, they held onto each other as Mother looked them up and down. All they could do was stare back.

They hoped they looked pitiful, like babies. They hoped their mother would remember they were her babies, her sick babies who needed to be tended to.

But no such luck. They had been bustled into the car. 

Unlike the other times they had been brought to the hotel, the parking lot was empty today. Mother said that it was the time of year where barely anyone came by. That’s why today they went inside through the front door.

There was another woman at the front desk that Mother introduced them to before explaining the, “Situation I’m in today.”

Rosa’s face was already flushed from the fever, but she got that sinking feeling in her gut. She looked down at the feet of her pajamas, wondering if they might turn into her regular shoes if she tried hard enough to imagine them so. 

The pink feet with cartoon cats printed all over them, all over the whole of her pajamas, like the dinosaurs printed on her brother’s set, seemed stupid now. She wasn’t sure why they were there.

Mother hurried them into the elevator, then to the usual room to tuck them into bed. 

All the other times they had been here Rosa could hear the guests. No windows, but she could hear them below. She couldn’t hear them clearly enough to understand what they were saying, only that they were there. 

So the silence kept her from sleeping. Not even her brother was talking to her. She laid there in a haze while the headache and fever pushed against each other, until finally she fell asleep.

Only now, with all this walking, Rosa realized that while the headache was gone, the fever hadn’t left her. It just sank to the bottom of her. 

Her feet were unbearably hot. All over and inside. She could hear the squelching as she walked and could feel the moist sweat between her toes, on the bottom of her feet.

She imagined the rubbery material under the fabric of the pajama feet deteriorating until the bottoms were all gone.

She glanced at her brother’s set in her hands. His pajamas were no longer heavy with sweat, but they stunk. Musty, stale, and a little medicine-like. Rosa blushed as she admitted to herself that the smell was probably coming from her too.

Her brother had held on to these pajamas since he was little. All over were bits of old shirts he had used to try and cover the rips from where his shoulders had broadened, or his legs grew too long. He cut off the feet of them a long time ago and sewed a pair of socks on the end.

Rosa had bought new ones over the years that were for people her size and age.

But even still, she was growing tall. All the parts of her that had started to take the shape of an adult had been stressing the seams. This latest set she had, very quickly she had begun to stretch out the fabric, making the pajamas look awkward and ill-fitted as she moved in them.

But she still wore them. A lot of people wore pajamas to school, so at least Rosa and her brother never did that. Some kids even wore footie ones and no one made them stop. No one cared. 

Everyone was trying to not grow up. But could you blame anyone for that? Rosa didn’t think so. It wasn’t like her mother’s time, where something was waiting for you on the other end of it.

Rosa believed people when they said that these were the best years of her life. 

They weren’t very fun so far, but compared to what she saw waiting in adulthood, they were undoubtedly the best. Next to the years she had been in elementary school maybe.

Rosa moved her toes around, and could feel the very end of the fabric inside start to move. She could easily rip it with her big toe. 

It was so hot, burning, and cramped. She could feel it more and more with each step.

She sat down against the wall, and saw next to her on the floor was a pair of scissors. Without thinking she took them and cut at the ankle of her pajamas.

When she was done Rosa got up. The carpet was stale, rough, but she could feel it drying the soles of her feet off. She pressed down hard to stretch all her toes, to flex them. The joints, the tension as she began to walk, melted away. 

She saw the exit sign up ahead.