I'm Not Bulletproof

“Mom, we’re home,” Alexi yells as we walk through the door.

“I hope she isn’t too much of a problem,” I hear an all too familiar voice say; it was my mother. I guess this was the visit she was talking about a few days ago.

Alexi glances at me and gives me a look of concern. He must have read the journal entry about my mother. Great…

I sigh and walk my way over to the living room.

“Triinu!” my youngest sisters chant and run towards me. I hug them both.

“I missed you guys so much!” I say in Estonian. I don’t even think they speak Finnish. And I know for a fact that they don’t speak English, Russian or Swedish like I and the rest of my family does.

Yeah, as you can see we moved a lot during my life.

“Triinu, we need to speak privately,” my mother says.

What great things is she going to say now?

“I hope you’re mot causing any trouble,”

“No ma’am, I have barely said a word,” I say nervously. I don’t want her knowing what happened the other night. She probably would want to know what I wrote.

She leads me back into the living room where and all too happy Mrs. Laiho was sitting, Alexi sitting right next to her. His face read of confusion.

“Annette, Triinu sang at one of the coffee houses last night, she did so well,” Mrs. Laiho says.

“I may not be into the whole music scene, but my daughter is going to be big someday. I support her in every way,” my mother lie.

There is no way in hell that she will ever support my decision to sing. She ridicules me daily for it. How dare her lie like that.

Whenever I lie, she says something demeaning to me. She is such a fucking hypocrite.

I guess being with Alexi has gotten my potty mouth going.

My sister Eveliina walks up to me and grabs my hand. She tries to get my attention but my mind is focused on my lying mother. How disrespectful…

“Triinu look! I made you this!” my sister tugs on my shirt to get my attention.

I look down and it was a piece of notebook paper still with the frayed edges. It had pictures of bats, ghosts and a cat on it. I can guarantee that when she is older, she is going to be an artist like me. She has the creative gene too.

“Thank you Eveliina,” I say while taking the paper in my hand.

“Well, I just wanted to check up on Triinu and Katerzyna, I should get going,” my mother says.

She walks past me as our eyes meet. I give her a glare of pure hatred. I’ve lost all respect for my mother years ago, but it seems as if I lose more and more respect every day.

She takes my sisters by their hands and drags them to the care. I didn’t even get a change to say goodbye to them.

I hear footsteps walk slowly to the doorway to where I am standing.

I already knew who it is.

“Dude, I didn’t know you had kids,” Alexi says. I drop what I had in my hands.

“What?” he asks. Is he serious?

“I should be asking you the same,”

“I didn’t know you were a mom,”

“I’m not!” I raise my voice a little.

“Aren’t those your kids?!”

“No!” I yell this time, “Those are my sisters!”

I can understand someone can think they are related to me, but my daughters?!

“You all look exactly alike!” Alexi says.

“I know, it’s called genetics,”

“Are you lying?”

“No! Do most people have children at the age of eleven?”

“…no,”

“Exactly,”

Is Alexi seriously stupid enough to think that Eeva and Eveliina are my daughters?

Even Katerzyna, being as unintelligent as she is, could figure something like that out.

Seriously?

I walk upstairs and collapse on the bed. I’m still pissed at my mother. She’ll regret her words someday. I’ll make sure if it.

“Hey Triinu,” Alexi raises his voice slightly, “you are in my bed.”

I honestly didn’t realize I was in his bed. Both of them have the same blankets.

“How come yours is more comfortable” I say smiling.

“Because,” he starts to push me off, “get up.”

I pause, “I’ll think of it.”

“Triinu!” he says. There goes that smile again. I feel the inside of my body start to warm up in amusement. Making Alexi mad is kind of fun.

“What about my bed?” I say.

“Yes, what about your bed? Go in it!” he says with a slight laugh in his voice.

I mutter a ‘your mom’ joke in Estonian.

“Hah hah, very funny,” he says.

I gasp, “you speak Estonian?”

“No, Finnish is similar and your brother cracked the same joke,” Alexi says.

“I’m still not getting up,”

“Fine,” Alexi gets into the bed with me.

Awkward much?

“Your bed is little,” I say.

“No shit, it’s a one person bed,”

“You never did play some songs from your band,” I say.

“Later,”

“You’re mean,”

“Yes, but I can be nice sometimes,” he says, “but from what you wrote in your journal, I’m pretty cold,” Alexi finishes with an angry tone in his voice.

Why must he ruin the moment? We were getting along so well before he brought this up.

Now I have to defend myself. Make up a lie or something.

Before I can respond, he gets rises from his bed and walks out of the door. A second later I hear the bathroom door slam loudly.

Great, now I pissed him off.

Now I feel like the asshole.

But I did nothing wrong.

It was my journal and my thoughts.

My sister ripped out the pages and pasted them on the walls. I had no control over that.

And Alexi didn’t have to read and what seems like memorized everything, down to the punctuation marks.

I am innocent, but why do I feel so guilty?