We Are No One

As I awoke, the sky was a shade of grey I’ve never known. The air was foggy of pollution, and buildings were being deteriorated because of acid rain. I’ve never seen anything so sad, I thought as I sat up straight. The road we were traveling upon was getting narrower, until it turned into a small cement driveway. This was one of those cities that were called ‘cities’, but they actually are just highly populated suburban neighborhoods. Go figure. As I stepped out of the van, my legs buckled and I had to grab on to a steady tree that just happened to be there. It was the only one I’d seen in the whole town, and to be honest, it wasn’t very big. Where I used to live, we owned an apple orchard right by our house. There were rows of trees with beautiful rubies clung to the branches. Here, we had cement ranches with houses lined up five feet away from each other, and a Starbucks on every street corner.
As I leaned against the old midget tree, Mamma stepped out of the front seat with her Luis Vuitton handbag swung around her shoulder. She was very pretty, and everyone always told me how lucky I was to have her as a mother. She used to be a model for some famous brand, but then she decided she wanted to do something more fun and went back to college and switched to a substitute teacher. She wasn’t real smart, and talked with one of them Texas accents, like the one George Bush has. Everyone forgot her lack of knowledge because she was so damn pretty. She had deep sea blue eyes, like the way they describe the ocean near Aruba. She was tall and thin with an hourglass figure, and everyone either loved her or was jealous of her, and she always got her way. Everyone always told me that they wanted me to grow up to look like her, to be exactly like her. There was no way I wanted to be her, look like her, or even could. We aren’t amoebas, we don’t perform binary fission. Human offspring don’t have the same DNA as their parents, unlike microorganisms. We are individuals, one of a kind people with their own minds and decisions, not little handcrafted porcelain dolls.
I followed Mamma’s footsteps to the front door of the average suburban house. Well, I guess it was now our average suburban house. Her nails dug a little silver key out of her black pea coat pocket, and pushed its sharp edges into the small keyhole. Her hair swayed behind her, tied in a little satin ribbon as she allowed the door to open. The house seemed inviting, but I didn’t feel at home at all. It seemed to yell “STRANGER” at me. That’s when I realized, I wish I could go back. I didn’t want a nicely furnished two story house next to another that looked just like it. I wanted the little cottage in the middle of nowhere that took about three million miles to get anywhere.
As I thought deeply about how much fun life was going to be here in this little big city town, I felt something brush against my leg as I decided to go inside. I was too scared to look down, and the suitcases were too heavy to carry up the steps to look forward. Whatever it was, that furry thing, decided to wrap itself around my leg as I pulled myself up the stairs. When I reached the 55th step, (yes, I counted) I came across a small room. It had four dark blue walls, and in the middle one across from the bed was one of those old fashion glass windows, like you see in church. Not that I know much what church is like. It was colorful and cracked in every direction, but had originally been a picture of a flower, or so I thought. I sat my two bags up on the mahogany bookcase that sat by the window, and curled up into a ball in the corner of the bed.
And I dreamt…
I dreamt about that summer, the one that changed my life. It was an oddly cool July morning, July 5th to be exact. It was raining, and Dad was up and ready at five in the morning. Dad was a member of all those weird organizations, like PETA. He wore flannel shirts and ripped jeans, grew his hair out long, and according to all my friends, he was the Texas Hippie. He made our family become vegans because he felt bad for the animals, like chicks, who weren’t born yet and we ate them. Anyway, he was on his way to meet up with a friend from Oregon who had been staying at the motel a few towns over to go protest something. Honestly, I don’t know where he was going, but that’s what he told us. I was lying down as he hugged me, and before I knew it I heard his little red pickup truck engine turn on and fade away. Fading, fading, lower, gone.
We never heard from him after that. We all realized, after we checked, his belongings were all gone. Nothing left but a computer filled with failed writing. You see, my dad was an author. People told us that he was probably sprawled out on some dead-end road where no one would find his mangled body, ‘cause apparently “That’s what happens when you run from beauty, it tears you apart limb by limb.” Or, at least that’s what Joey Freara, the fisherman by the lake always said. I would hate to imagine that, beauty being able to get revenge. I didn’t worry too much, but decided to move on. It’s like, just forgive and forget. If you don’t let life move on, it changes without you.
Mamma knew that too. She put the house on the market as soon as she could. No one wanted a house in the middle of nowhere, but we knew someone would show up. To tell you the truth, someone did. A little old lady showed up. Her name was Gertrude Eleanor. She used to work at the library a few miles out of town. I went to school with her granddaughter Elizabeth. I knew Elizabeth was mean, but she was always nice to me. To my face. Gertrude wasn’t sure she wanted the house, which gave us a few weeks to find a house. Mamma searched frantically, and found a “Temporary house” in New York to house us until we could afford or find a nice Texan home. I don’t know, maybe she wanted to be in New York, since she grew up there.
Gertrude didn’t actually buy the house until mid August. As Mamma discussed the plans with her, the doorbell echoed. I looked out through that little hole thing that you look through. Honestly, I have no idea what the hell you’d call that. I peered out again. He was our average policeman, you know, like the kind that likes coffee and donuts? Yeah. He came up to our door and tapped at it with his cane. “Can I speak wif yer mam?” he said. Mamma walked up behind me. “Gertrude hold on…” she whispered and put her on hold. “I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re husband…he was found on the side of a highway traveling out of Texas. Someone noticed he was on the missing list and reported his body. I’m very sorry ma’am.” As he walked away, Mamma just stood there. She didn’t even cry. She just packed, and told Gertrude the house was hers for how much ever she had. It was time to get out.
Everything after that was fuzzy, sounds and muffles. I don’t really remember the three months we spent at my aunt’s ranch. I remember starting school with a bunch of kids I didn’t know, and crying in the girl’s bathroom. Everything else is just as memorable as what I had for breakfast last week.
My eyes opened and I felt dizzy. I didn’t know where I was. Suddenly I came back to my senses, I was in New York. I looked at my arm. It was red with little liquid scarlet dashes. I sat up, and looked at the matching design on my bleeding leg. I turned my head, and saw a purring black cat at my side. Go figure.