1999 - The Red-Headed Monster & Her Mother
When I was about ten years old, my niece - my half-brother's daughter - slept in my room for part of a year. She had a crib or small bed of her own, but one night, I came into my room and she was asleep in the middle of my bed. I felt incredibly angry - how dare she be in my bed!
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But I knew she would cry or make a fuss if I woke her, and then I would be in trouble. So I grasped the mattress that was stored under my bed with all of my might and pulled. It was exhausting and hurt my hands to grip its slippery, synthetic surface. Only a corner of the mattress emerged.
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I curled up on the corner of the blue, sheetless mattress, unwilling to get into my own bed beside my three-year-old niece. I was cold and cramped, but too tired to try to pull it out further. I felt helpless and trapped within my own bedroom.
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I woke feeling incredibly tired and poorly rested.
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Not long into the day I was in the kitchen with my mother. "Did you see how I slept last night?" I demanded.
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"Yes," she said, nonchalant - uncaring.
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"Why was kitten in my bed?" I demanded.
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My mother gave me a perfectly reasonable-sounding answer, something like: "She fell asleep there while I was reading to her, and I didn't want to wake her."
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"But it's my bed," I said, growing more and more angry as my mother showed no sympathy or concern.
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"You could have curled up next to her, or carried her to her own bed," my mother suggested, beginning to sound exasperated.
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"No I couldn't," I said, incredulous, the pitch of my voice rising. "She was right in the middle of it!"
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"She's only three. She doesn't take up that much space," my mother said.
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I imagined curling up with my niece. She's disgusting. She makes me angry. She's rude. I hate her. There was no way I could have slept next to her, I thought angrily. I couldn't say those things. I fought back tears.
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"I had to sleep on that uncomfortable corner of a mattress," I said, trying again for sympathy.
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"Look Nuria, it isn't my fault you didn't pull it out further," my mother said.
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"I was trying to be quiet!" I said. And my hands hurt, and it was hard to pull it out as far as I did. Why doesn't she care?
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My mother threw up her hands.
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I knew I didn't want a little sister, I thought. It would have been just like this. I knew I didn't want to share my room. I knew it. I felt like my mother had taken Kitten's side ever since my brother, his wife and their daughter had moved in with us. My brother, Sheep, was sometimes fun, and I liked his humor. But his wife, a slender strawberry-blond, lived up to what my mother said about "thin people."
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"They tend to be less friendly," she'd said. "Less approachable, less understanding."
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Yes, Sheep's wife fit the bill. She considered me a brat and treated me like one, using a condescending tone with me almost every time she spoke to me.
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One night I had a dream concerning Sheep and his relationship with Nika. During the day, I was in my mother's maroon and cream living room, and Sheep's wife, Nika, was there. Nobody else was home. Nika was looking at a magazine. I was repeatedly pulling back the large green curtain and peering out the window, waiting for mom to get home.
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"I had a dream with Sheep in it last night," I said idly.
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"Oh?" Nika said, not particularly interested.
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"In the dream Sheep went with another woman," I said.
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Nika looked at me, her blue eyes wide. She might have been hurt, or afraid, but all I saw at the age of ten was her anger. "Nuria," she said, her tone biting, "Why would you say such a thing?"
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"I don't know," I said, my voice sounding small and afraid, "It was just a dream."
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"Why would you tell me?" she demanded.
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"I - I . . . I don't know," I stammered.
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She eventually went back to looking at her magazine. Later, in the car with my mother, I told mom what had happened.
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"You shouldn't have told Nika," my mother said. "You really shouldn't have."
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"I didn't know," I said. Why am I always in trouble for what I say? I thought.
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Living with Sheep, Nika and Kitten was entirely unpleasant. There were very few benefits to my mind. I had to share my room with Kitten, which I hated. It meant I had to keep all my dolls on high shelves where she couldn't reach them or risk them being broken. It made me feel like playing was impossible - I had to find places to play where she wasn't going to see me or find me, otherwise she would try to join me.
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Nika watched television a lot, making the living room entirely inhospitable to the quiet games I enjoyed playing with myself. I couldn't play pretend, or build a castle out of wooden blocks, or pull out board games to play with their miniatures.
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Still, despite how much I dislike the situation, I admired Nika. She was slender and beautiful. She walked on her treadmill thirty minutes each day. She claimed she would "get fat" if she didn't. She kept her hair neat, and always wore mascara. Her make-up was subtle, but it brought out her bright blue eyes. I doubted I would ever be so beautiful.
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One day I was at the top of the back stairs and I heard Nika moving around in the dining room. Something caused me to peer into the dining room without stepping into it. Nika was reading a letter. Suddenly she began to cry. She continued reading, but continued crying as she did. Finally, she flung the letter onto the table. She grabbed one of my mother's dining room chairs - an ugly bit of wood and puce-pink viynl - and lifted it above her head. With a cry she flung it down to the floor where it splintered, breaking in multiple places. She lifted it again and crashed it to the ground a second time, completely destroying it. She began to cry harder then, sinking to the floor.
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I felt paralyzed. There was no warmth between Nika and I. I never felt like she was really family. I hardly felt like Sheep was really my brother. She was a beautiful, mysterious alien that gave birth to a red-headed monster that I had to put up with. But despite the distance between us, part of me longed to go to her. She was in so much pain, and I hadn't a clue why.
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Another part of me was afraid. She'd just broken a chair quiet violently, and I didn't know what she would do next. I didn't go to her, or say anything. I slowly crept away, as I usually did when a situation distressed me.
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My mother didn't tell me at first. But a week or two later, my mother told me that Sheep was not coming back from the south. He'd decided he was done with Snowland, and done with Nika. He wanted to see Kitten on some occasions, but he was opting out of his family. Considering he'd already left one wife and child behind him before Nika, this, perhaps, should have been less shocking.
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I was baffled. Sheep didn't want Nika and Kitten anymore? And what about his hamsters? Nobody looked after the hamsters without Sheep there. Nika was in grief, my mother was in grief, Kitten was a child, and my mother had enough to deal with. It didn't cross anyone's mind that the hamsters were not being fed. I'd never been shown how to feed them, and it didn't occur to me either - at first.
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But then, one day when I went to go look at the hamsters, one of them was dead. My mother pulled it out, and perhaps they were fed at that point.
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It seemed that another hamster would be singled out and killed by the others each night for a week or two until we only had a couple left.
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"Why are the hamsters killing each other?" I asked my mother, distraught.
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"Sheep isn't here to take care of them," my mother said, simultaneously snapping and sounding remorseful. "I told him it was a bad idea to get them when he was too often distracted or irresponsible."
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The last few hamsters didn't last long. It was as if the despair of the household killed them all.
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Nika didn't take too long about moving out. It didn't seem terribly long before she found a new man either. From then on, I hardly saw Kitten. Sometimes Nika would drop her off at dinners where she could see her half-brother - Sheep's son by another woman. Kitten continued to be a spoiled, unhappy brat. People often said the same about me, but it seemed patently obvious to me that I was a more mature and smart brat, whereas she was just a little monster.
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With Sheep, Nika, Kitten, and their hamsters gone, the large old house was mine again. I was happier that way, and thankful to have my parents all to myself.