He didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by the lights going in and out.
“Do you know what it feels like to be hungry?” I asked him in a quiet, strangled voice. “To be starving and open the refrigerator only to find it empty save for a half empty carton of spoiled milk, beer and, if you’re lucky, a slice of cheese for you to eat. The freezer’s only got Vodka and ice trays in it. The cupboards are bare. What do you do? What do you do, Addison? Do you wake up your mom to ask her for money so you can go to the store and get something to eat? I’ll warn you, she’s naked and will be extremely hungover when you wake her up. And, as an added bonus, the same will go for the dude she brought home with her. Neither will be happy to see you. So, I ask again, what do you do, Addison?”
He stood with his shoulder propped against the door frame and his arms crossed over his chest. His body looked carved from stone, one little crack and the entire image would crumble, and he’d be reduced to a pile of rubble on the carpet.
A muscle in his jaw ticked as he ground out through clenched teeth, “Did that happen to you a lot?”
He was angry on my behalf. Oh, he was so very angry. Anger was okay, but he didn’t answer my question and I think he didn’t answer it because he couldn’t. He had no idea what being hungry, really hungry, felt like. I hoped he never had to find out.
“You don’t wake her up and you don’t ask her for anything,” I whispered, and the trembling stopped. I hadn’t calmed down, the storm still raged inside me, I’d simply silenced it on the surface. “You go to sleep hungry. You get up hungry, and you go to school hungry. You don’t get to eat until lunch time rolls around and you get a tray of food provided to you by the school because your family is poor. Then, when you go home at the end of the day, you might have to do it all over again. Unless you’re lucky. If you’re lucky, your mother will have picked up some packets of Ramen and a box of Saltine Crackers for you.”
He straightened, moving away from the doorway and took a step in my direction.
Holding the dress out in front of me like a shield, I barked, “Stop.”
Immediately, he stopped moving forward.
Looking pained, and sounding exactly how he looked, he whispered, “You’re not ever going to have to go through anything like that ever again. I can promise you that. You’ll not ever have to go hungry again and you sure as shit won’t be eating Ramen and crackers every day, or ever again. This is exactly what I’m talking about, why you need a fresh start and need to get rid of all this,” his arm swept out, waving around the closet, indicating all of my mother’s belongings, “shit. We need to throw it all in the fucking garbage.”
When he stopped speaking he took another step in my direction but stopped when I took a step back, away from him.
I wasn’t backing up because I was afraid of him. I backed up because I wanted to make my point clear before he got close to me and made me think of something else.
“You’re missing the point,” I said as I glared at him.
“And what is the point?”
Good question.
What was the point? What was my point in sharing all this garbage from my past with him?
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and searched inside myself for some bravery. There was a whole lot in there, just sitting around waiting for me to use it.
“I have never, not once, owned clothes that had not been worn by someone else before me, not until I moved in with Mr. Cole. He gave my mother money and a credit card. When he did that, she threw out all my things and made me buy all new things online. Before moving here, I had only ever owned one new pair of shoes, and they had been a gift from one of the men in her life. I have lived my whole life wearing second-hand goods, someone else’s castoffs. Old, worn and used things. Things people should have probably thrown in the trash. Those were my things, my belongings. I don’t even want to consider what my mother would have dressed me in if weren’t for places like the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I wouldn’t have had a winter coat or boots to wear in the cold. I would have been dressed in rags. Do you get my point now?”
Yes, I sounded like a bitch at the end of my little speech, but I didn’t care. This was something I felt strongly about.
“No,” he ground out. “No, I do not fucking get your point. Explain it to me.”
That’s what I was trying to do.
A sound escaped me, laughter. It was bitter, and not at all friendly.
For the first time since having me the lot of them, I felt a tiny sliver of resentment. We were so different. I know some of them had struggled in their lives, I’d only heard snippets and never gotten the full story on any of them yet. But they had all grown up with money. With nice things and nice clothes and food in their bellies. I didn’t hate them for it, I didn’t have room for hate in my heart. But they would likely n
ever fully understand me because none of them had any idea what it was like to be me.
“My point, Addison, is, that all this stuff that you are insisting on throwing away could make a whole world of a difference for someone else, someone in need. You don’t get it because you’ve never been that person before, that person who desperately needed something and not been able to afford it. You don’t know what it’s like and if you did, you wouldn’t be alright with simply throwing all of this stuff away. I’m not okay with it, though. I am so far from being okay with it, it isn’t even funny. You don’t get it because you have no idea what the other side looks like. I can understand that, really, I can. But I’m not going to change my mind about it, and I’m not going to throw this stuff in the garbage. I asked you and your brother to come over and help because I don’t want to do this by myself and I missed you, but if you’re going to keep up this nonsense then you are going to have to leave and I will apologize to you for wasting your time while you are on your way out the door. I’m not trying to be-”
“Shut up, Ariel,” he said, rudely cutting me off, his voice thick with emotion.
He took another step towards me and when I didn’t back away from him, he kept on coming.
I dropped the dress to the floor and held my arms out, waiting for him to reach me. His big, thick arms wrapped around me, engulfing me. I was pulled into his wide chest and he pressed his face into my hair.
“Not to be mean, pretty girl, but I don’t think I want to hear about how you grew up anymore. It’s sad and awful and it makes me angry.”
I nodded, my cheek brushing across the soft fabric of his t-shirt. I didn’t want to make him feel bad and I didn’t want to make him sad and angry. I wouldn’t be sharing with him anymore, not if it made him feel that way.