Issue 5 - October 2020
Valentine
By Chaja Jamie Marie What was the neighborhood like? It was always cloudy. Not just the sky but the landscape itself. The grass was always grey, the houses were too pale and pastel to be anything but grey. I’d sit on the porch swing and just watch. Ms. Hernz in her yard catering to these grey daffodils, her husband wearing all grey and their daughter wearing all grey dresses. Not only was the neighborhood grey but so was the mood of everyone else. Grey and nosy. I’d go to the park with my parents and they’d stare at us, idolize my parents, their eyes would tell me how lucky I was they adopted me, people would come over and ask my parents how they managed it. How they adopted a little girl from the ghetto and made her into a respectable young lady. They’d praise my big sister for being such a team player and taking me in after 16 years of being an only child and getting everything she wanted. Truth was, she never talked to me behind closed doors. Wouldn’t bother with me at all unless she wanted me to get out of the shower. Your sister was suffering from an eating disorder… how did you feel when you found out about it? I found out before my parents did, I woke up one night— I was about 13 at that time— and I really needed to pee. So I walked into the bathroom– I hadn’t heard her yet in my sleepy daze. So I flicked on the bathroom light and she was there, hunched over the toilet, absolutely spilling her lunch into the bowl. And all I could do was wonder why she was throwing up with the lights off. She noticed I came in two seconds after, she just got up, washed her face in the sink without looking at her reflection which confused me. I was wondering if she was going to tell our parents that she was sick. I didn’t hear anything the next morning. I didn’t say anything. It got worse? Mhm. The second time I walked in on her throwing up was Saturday of that same week. And I was a smart kid so I immediately realized that something wasn’t right. Either it was the fact that her fingers were down her throat or that she was immediately doing this after eating yogurt for lunch. This time she didn’t push me away, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve, which made me want to gag, and beckoned me over. My legs led me over to her and she spoke to me for the first time in two weeks. “Hold my hair?” She asked.
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And I nodded, because to me this was my big sister trying to bond with me, this was my big sister being a big sister for the first time since I arrived here when I was seven. At that time I just wanted to be closer to my sister and so I held back her hair for her while she stuck her fingers down her throat and vomited.
