The Red

She remembers the way the tiny patch of sunlight always hit the left corner of the garden, as if that one piece of earth would always be happy, even when goodbyes furiously shook the household like an earthquake. She remembers waking up to milky-way chocolates but is beginning to forget the idiosyncrasies of your breathing, the melodic in-and-out of the living slipping away. On Thursday it was her birthday and she sat in the kitchen running her bare feet over the yellow tiles and was reminded of the night she slept on the kitchen floor to keep the pastries company.

“Sabrina Tanham” she answers in monotone, her dull blue eyes staring blankly at the bank teller. His eyes slightly widen, encapsulated by her beauty; she seems not to take notice as she stares emptily into his brown pupils waiting for her cash.

“Are you sure you want 1000 dollars, honey?” he jokes lightly. She wakes up for a moment, nods slowly and then settles back into her thoughts.

“Well here you have it, now be good!” he smiles, making one last effort with the girl as she slips the money into a black purse.

She remembers the way you pronounced the word “drawer”, and how it always reminded her of her high school drawing class, the teacher screaming “draw” “draw” “draw” as the students rapidly scratched away in their notepads. She remembers the August rainstorm, the dog crying in the bathroom as the thunder clapped, the red light in the bathroom flickering and the ice cream melting.

She speeds down 280, the only exit going westbound, and stops at her grandmother’s grave in Madison. The moans of speeding cars from the parkway rustle the pathetic bushes secluding the property. She lays an old lotto ticket and a half eaten turkey sandwich next to the grave and hums an old gospel her church choir used to sing. When she feels whole, she drives away.

In Conway she stops for a drink at an Irish tavern, flirting with the bartender as the beer sloshes in her stomach, carbonation settling. She burps periodically and giggles, covers her mouth and bats her eyes as she leans further and further over the counter. He briefly wonders why she’s here in this lonely town, lonely girl on a Tuesday night talking to the fat red bartender with a prickly beard.

She remembers the purple bedspread she had to have from Pottery Barn, how it did not match anything in the bedroom but you bought it anyway when she begged you because you knew inside that it would always be her house, not yours. She remembers planting sixteen roses in the garden along sixteen sunflowers because red and yellow were her favorite colors and sixteen was her favorite number. You hate yellow. You hated being sixteen. It reminds you of school buses and vomit.

She is verging on drunk and stumbles to the bathroom, promising the bartender that after one more drink she will drive home. He scratches his beard and wonders where home is. When she returns he points her to the hotel across and street and she begins to cry, something about a purple bedspread and feeding the dog.

It was a morning in April when the sky crashed and flamed red; she could almost hear the neighbors screaming as the asteroids crashed into their homes, cars. She remembers standing at the counter, hands over her ears. She was yelling and you covered her mouth, shushed her like a baby and brought her to the bedroom. You watched the sky turned from red to black as you pet her hair. When the Milky-Way shone, as you promised it would, you made midnight breakfast, ketchup and eggs.

She wakes up groggy in a hotel bed, the itchy wool blanket wrapped around her tiny body.  The tired vanilla walls graying with dust slowly enclose her as she begins to nod off. They look sad. She decides to sleep until they are happy again.