Clean Up On Aisle 16

Due Date: 3/5/23

Prompt

Genre: TBC

It has been a long day. I was hoping for a short night. Anna and I have been fighting again, we never seem to stop. She had accused me of not listening. I had accused her of selfishness, of being a liar. Her retort had been that I have the emotional range of a robot. She was wrong. She always was. Not for lack of trying on her part, but Anna was a dirty fighter and an even dirtier human being. When we fought, she did not hold back using everything I had ever shared with her in a cocktail of hurt that brought up every single one of my past traumas. That was my fault. Anna was my best friend and I told her everything. Everything about my family, my friends, work. Once I started I could not stop. 

My period started when I turned fifteen, the year I met Anna. She had transferred to our school. Telling everyone that her family had been killed in a car accident. Their Range Rover wrapped around a eucalyptus tree like a macabre piece of origami. She had been asleep when it happened. Waking up to her mother’s mortal scream, “Stev…!” She had pointed out how very in character for her mother’s last words to be a scolding of her father. She had awoken just as her mother hit the last note, and as her mother’s airbag deployed, cutting off her final 'Steven'. She had tried to yell out a warning, but everything was moving so fast, the glass splintering and glistening in the moonlight. Pieces of sharp bark flying through the now open windscreen, blood that hosed out of the side of her father’s neck as a piece of glass slashed through his throat. His bulging eyes turned toward his wife.

The impact of the wood snapped his head back against his seat, it broke on impact. The sound of bones cracking  swallowed by Anna’s heartbroken screams. 

“It was seeing my father dead beside my mother that made me faint, he didn’t look like him anymore. There was so much blood and glass in him. But his eyes… they had always twinkled and laughed. Seeing them half out of his head bulging in an almost cartoon fashion. Well, I couldn’t bear it.” She whispered the last bit. Her lips quivering slightly as a silent tear trickled down her cheek. 

How many times had she had to recount this story, repeatedly too? First to the paramedics who arrived on the scene. Then, to the fat little officer with the tight braids. To the funeral director, the family lawyer, and her grandmother. She had finally clamped up when her aunt had arrived in all her fine linen and perfumery all the way from Dubai. She couldn’t bear to break her heart with so much detail. Instead, she had burrowed her head into her aunt’s finely perfumed bosom and wept as her heart broke over again. The fat little officer had had to break the news to her aunt. Explaining how her father had swerved the car, lost control and steered their very expensive luxury car into the tree. This was an important detail for her aunt to know. Before, just before her and Anna's now-dead mother would spend hours on the phone with her very much alive aunt bragging about their latest luxury, expensive purchases. 

“Mary!!!” Her aunt let out a loud wail, pulling Anna further into her heavy breasts. Anna had to fight to breathe then as her aunt pulled her further into herself as if to plug the hole her sister had lost. 

My heart broke.

I would learn later that the way she saw it, changing schools midway through the year would be a hard sell. Friendships had been formed. Loyalties assigned. To avoid the risk of loneliness (being alone was something she tried to avoid if she could) she had decided to appeal to the hearts of the kids in our grade. It worked. The story spread like wildfire. With each consequent retelling new tears were shed. New arms opened for Anna to press herself into.

 “ It’s not like I killed my parents or anything, the words sought of flew out of my mouth before I could catch them.” 

“But you cried…” I admonished needlessly, there was no getting through to her, there never was. 

‘Of course I cried, just think, I was telling the story of my parent’s death. Only a monster could get through that without crying.”

“Anna your parents are not dead” I tried again, my tone dropping conciliatory. Presenting a contrarian opinion to Anna was always a gamble. She had a specific set of rules that she lived by. It wasn’t always clear what they were, you pieced them together with each subsequent word that flew from her mouth. Saliva usually accompanied her defensive salvo. Each passionate plea is always followed by a well-aimed spittle. the reason why I bought a handkerchief.

“Look Charity, Kids are sympathetic to orphans, babies, abuse, baby animals and rainbows. I had to think fast. An orphan seemed right.”

I rolled my eyes turning sharply around to go and get the spaghetti. The final item on our list.

 I didn’t see her coming, the old lady. her arms piled high with groceries, probably Sunday dinner. I walked straight into her and she fell back onto her bum, her arms flying out to catch her fall. Groceries flying everywhere as I stood there.

“Oh gosh I am so sorry,” belatedly reaching out to her

She let out an ommf and waved her hands a disgusted expression on her face as she watched  eggs dripping from her hands, not looking up even as I stood over her so close. I looked behind me for Anna, she was gone. Annoyed, I turned back to the old lady now breathing heavily, wiping her hands on a pink poplin house coat. 

“I’ll get help. Get you all cleaned up.” She didn’t look up even then, shaking her head in confusion. I moved through the aisles, the till station was located next to the produce section. I placed my groceries at the till. “There’s a mess in aisle 16,” I said to the till operator. His dark eyes darted across my face and then past my