Broken Mirrors

Chapter 8

Crystal l held her breath most of the way home hoping that Sophia would be there and she wasn’t making some colossal mistake in trusting that the girl wasn’t going to make another break for it. She’d seen her head out to meet the bus that morning, her back pack thrown over her shoulder, and she’d briefly checked her room afterwards just to make sure that the suitcase was there. She didn’t want to look in it, not wanting to invade the girl’s privacy, but she had lifted it enough to see that it had some weight to it and the girl hadn’t simply taken what she couldn’t leave behind and packed it into the bag.

She had felt, most of the day at work, like the girl had at least gone to school, and maybe she was really willing to give this a go.

Crystal had lie in bed, her book open, the night before without reading a word of it. Over and over in her mind she turned the idea of keeping Sophia there for at least a month. She would go through ebbs and flows of emotion. At one moment she felt as though she was going to make some great impact on the girl…that things might work…that she might actually be able to be good at this “parenting” thing. Then the old voice…mostly Mike’s voice…would ring into her head, taunting her and reminding her of everything that she’d failed at so far. Sophia wasn’t going to stay. She was going to end up suffering from whatever time she did spend there. Crystal had nothing to offer her.

As Crystal neared the house, though, she could already hear the hum of the lawnmower. As she pulled into the drive she almost screamed at herself seeing Sophia cutting the grass with the push lawnmower she’d rolled out of the shed for her before work. The girl was still here. She’d gone to school and she’d come back, and now she was keeping up with her end of the bargain, doing her time for having run away.

Crystal tried not to be too excited by the progress. It could be that the girl was just afraid of what she believed to be the end of the line at child services. She might just be biding some time. At least, though, for the time being, she was putting forth some kind of effort.

Crystal got out of the car and crossed the lawn toward the girl.

“Sophia?” She called. She had to repeat it two or three times before Sophia killed the engine on the lawnmower and stopped to look at her.

“What do you want?” Sophia asked, shading her eyes with her hand.

“Did you eat anything?” Crystal asked.

Sophia crinkled her face at her and shook her head.

“I’m going to make you a snack, then,” Crystal said. “I’ll leave it on the table and you can get it when you want. I’m going to find your bathroom mirror.”

Sophia nodded and Crystal went inside.

She didn’t know what in the world to feed teenagers. She hoped that graham crackers and peanut butter weren’t too juvenile. She lathered some peanut butter on several crackers on a plate and put it on the table. She figured that Sophia could get something out of the fridge to drink and she didn’t want it to be hot or anything when the girl decided it was time for a break. For good measure she put a bag of chips in the middle of the table in case the crackers didn’t look like a decent meal offering to an angry teen.

Crystal took one of the crackers and ate it as she started through the house. She promised Sophia a mirror, and though she didn’t exactly relish the thought of going up into the attic where they were stored, along with most everything she’d boxed up that was left behind of her life with Mike, she intended to keep her end of the bargain as well.

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Sophia didn’t mind cutting the grass. Cutting grass was monotonous and repetitive and everything else, but it didn’t require Sophia to think about anything really in particular and gave her all the time to consider what she wanted to focus on.

She’d felt strange lying in bed the night before. She knew that this so called deal was going to last a month. Then they were going to talk about it, see if it worked or not. The strangest thing about it, though, was knowing that it was going to last a month.

Most everywhere else she’d been, her view of how long things would last had been different. In the very beginning, when she’d gone to her first maybe two foster homes, she’d still been living in some kind of stupid world where she thought that happily ever after wasn’t just the ending to corny ass books. She’d thought that foster life was about happily ever afters. She still remembered her first family. She’d gone to stay with them about four months after she went into the system. They were the Johansen family.

She remembered them well, actually, almost better than she remembered her real parents at this point. She painted in her mind a picture of what the hell the Johansen family would be. The mother had long brown hair and she was a little on the heavier side. She’d insisted that Sophia call her mom. The dad had been the All American kind of dad and probably played high school football once upon a time.

She could remember their little f*****g storybook house too. Everything in it was damn near perfect. They didn’t have any other kids. They were waiting on their precious little foster child. Sophia remembered being so damn excited at the thought that she almost couldn’t believe it. She’d already heard some of the older kids she’d come into contact with telling her that she was too old to be any good to anyone, but the Johansen family was different. They were waiting, after all, for their foster child.

Her room had been like some kind of child to a pretty pink princess, and even though she didn’t care much for the color pink and the toys were for a child much, much younger than she was, she would have done anything when she got there to be their little pink princess. She was staying with them forever. They wanted her, after all, they’d been waiting on her.

Sophia had never really understood what had gone wrong with the Johansen family. They’d been the first ones to teach her that she was refundable. They’d gotten their money back or upgraded her or something. She hadn’t ever really understood the whole thing. Then, a little heartbroken, she’d found her second family. She’d halfheartedly tried to believe they were forever too, but she was less surprised when something went wrong there.

She just messed up…that’s what always happened. Somewhere something went wrong. She did something wrong because she didn’t know how to do things right. Or maybe it was just because she wasn’t ever meant to be one of those kids with the stupid family vacation s**t.

After that, though, she’d realized that happily ever after was just the load of s**t that the others said it was. There wasn’t any happily ever after, there was just killing time until they figured out you were defective. There was hanging out until one of your many f**k ups was just one f**k up too many.

The good families returned you quickly and the ones that turned out to be a nightmare took a little longer, but eventually they’d trade you in. Done and done.

So a new house meant more or less wondering how long it would be exactly before the shoe fell. How long until it was out the door and back to the starting line. Sophia had pretty much started expecting her departure from the moment she arrived. She could tell from how her room was decorated exactly what the expectation was too. If she got there and the room was ready for someone who couldn’t see out of the windows, the stay was much, much shorter and it came with more tension than she could bear.

Here, though, she knew she had a month. At least she had that amount of time to figure out her next move and to figure out what she’d do to get as far away from the social workers as possible. She may be disposable, but at least this time she had an expiration date to let her know exactly how comfortable she could get.

Sophia had almost finished the front lawn. It wasn’t as bad as she thought either. The back, however, that was going to be at least a two day affair, probably. It looked like some kind of jungle back there and she wondered if Crystal had cut the grass anytime in the last century.

Sophia killed the engine and decided it was time to go in and see what the hell kind of snack she was supposed to eat. She could use a cigarette too, and the rules didn’t stipulate that she finish the yard immediately. She had a month to do it in, at least that was the way she saw it.

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Crystal came into the attic and looked around for a few minutes. She pulled at the string hanging down and the fluorescent bulb burned to life. She was surprised, actually. She hadn’t been up there in years and she thought the thing wasn’t likely to still burn, but it did.

The attic was crowded, and she decided immediately that if she were looking for some kind of project to kill time in the near future it probably needed to be dragging half the s**t out of there that she could get down the ladder without breaking her neck, and loading it out on the lawn. Even if she sold everything in there for fifty cents an item she’d probably make a decent chunk of pocket change.

The mirrors were right where she left them. They were leaned one against the other in a massive pile in the corner of the attic. They were covered with several dirty sheets that she’d kept, for whatever hoarding inclination was deep inside her, since the day they’d moved into the house. Happy newlyweds and all that bullshit.

Crystal shuddered. The entire attic was like some testament to her failed marriage. It was a space packed full of all the cobweb covered crap that reminded her of her pathetic life thus far. The things she cleaned out of her parents’ house after their death, everything that didn’t sell and she didn’t have the heart to throw out. Everything she had acquired while married to Mike and tucked up there for safe keeping until she decided what to do with it. She hated the space, and though she couldn’t even remember half of what was probably piled up there, she hated everything that was in there.

But today she was on a mission, and it wasn’t to clean out all the stuff she had piled up. Today her mission was simply to dig through the pile of mirrors and find the one that fit over the bathroom sink in the upstairs bathroom. It was a simple enough thing to accomplish.

Crystal took a deep breath and walked over to the pile. She wasn’t sure, exactly, why her heart felt like it was going to pound out of her chest, but it did. She blamed her lack of breath on the thick air in the space and the dust from having never cleaned up there.

Crystal pulled the sheet back and revealed the mirrors, innocent as they were supposed to be, piled up. She closed her eyes, wishing she could do this blind. It would be easier if she could simply grab the top one and go, but she’d put them up there willy nilly and she needed to look at them to make sure she had the one that would fit in the space that Sophia wanted it in.

Crystal moved one or two of the mirrors out of the way, the smaller ones. She sat on her knees on the floor trying not to look at anything more than the frames and trying to think about where some of them had come from. When she had to move, though, the large one that had hung on the back of the bedroom door to get to the thicker framed bathroom mirror that was hiding behind it, the one that she wanted, she froze just as her fingers curled around the frame.

Just touching that frame brought the nightmares flooding back to her. She closed her eyes a moment, she wasn’t going to look into it. She couldn’t look into it. Just touching it and feeling the grain of the wood under her palms made her shudder. She knew the damn thing far too well. Her breath shortened a little and she could hear loud and clear Mike’s voice ringing around in her head.

Look at yourself. Open your f*****g eyes and get a good look at yourself! See what the hell I have to see…you think anyone would want to look at that? You’re too damn ugly for anyone to look at. You can’t even look at yourself. You’re pissed about that eye? Improving the quality of your f*****g face. You’d be a w***e except no one would have you. You’d have to pay them, ugly b***h. Open your f*****g eyes and look at what the f**k I have to see. So damn ugly you almost break the damn mirror and you think you could do better than me…

So many times the humiliation went on and on. Her brain replayed it for her over and over, episode after episode. It was stuck like a hellish rerun. She couldn’t even stand to look at herself while she showered or got dressed. She didn’t want to see herself naked at all. She hated shaving even because she had to look at her legs. Her ugly ass, skinny, bird legs every time she did it. She had to look at the cellulite on her thighs…at the scars.

Crystal shuttered as the voice continued its taunting. She could feel the tears burning her eyes against her will, running down her face and her breath coming shallower. She didn’t know quite what boiled up inside her or what made her do it, but she did what she wanted to do all those times before. She slung hated mirror and its despicable frame.

The mirror crashed down beside her, shattering from the force with which she’d flung it toward the floor, the glass busting out in it and showering down around her, piece of it ricocheting off of her. She sat still for a moment, calmed a little by the loud crash of one physical source of her nightmares. She should have broken the thing years ago. She should have never even moved it to the attic. The voice wasn’t gone, but at least the mirror couldn’t taunt her now.

“What was that?” She heard a voice calling from the hallway below. Crystal was snatched back into reality for the moment. The present day where Mike’svoice didn’t come from anywhere but inside her brain. Sophia was in the house. She’d thought she’d be outside, but she’d heard the crash. “Hello? Are you alive?” Sophia’s voice called, getting closer to the entrance to the attic.

“I’m fine,” Crystal called out, finding her own voice shaky. “Don’t come up here, Sophia, there’s glass everywhere.”

“What happened? Are you OK?” Sophia’s voice answered back.

Crystal tried not to give into her shaking nerves and sob.

“I’m fine, Sophia. I just dropped something, don’t come up here,” she said. Crystal scrambled, trying to gain her feet quickly. Glass was all around her and she felt the tiny shards biting into her, the slight sting of them catching her attention for a second. She put her hand down on a piece, not seeing it before she did and picked it up, wincing at the shard stuck in her palm. She picked it out quickly with her fingertips and pulled herself to her feet, crying out when she realized a larger piece must have cut into her shin.

“What the hell is happening up there?” Sophia called from below the ladder.

“It’s OK,” Crystal called. “I’m going to pass you down the mirror, can you take it?”

“Sure…” Sophia sounded hesitant about the whole ordeal, but Crystal picked up the bathroom mirror that had been hiding behind the full sized one that was now shattered around the floor. She eased the mirror through the hole and Sophia took it. Crystal started down the ladder after Sophia moved away. She needed to clean up the cuts and get the little splinters of glass out of the way and then she could sweep up what was left of the mirror. It would sting to wash the cuts out with alcohol, but at least it was the last time that mirror would hurt her…and she was sure that the cuts would be the least of the pain it had caused.

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Crystal sat on the side of the bathtub in her underwear, having shucked her pants to sew up the gash in her shin. It was too big to ignore and too small to worry about in her opinion. She had her “kit” as she called it open on the edge with her and she was just beginning to put in the few stitches it needed when she heard footsteps. She froze and looked to see Sophia standing in the doorway.

“I’m not dressed,” Crystal said. She wasn’t exactly undressed, but she was in her underwear. Sophia didn’t seem deterred, though. She didn’t say anything but walked closer.

“Christ!” Sophia spat. “Are you sewing your leg up?”

Carol nodded.

“It’s not bad,” she said. “Just probably won’t close on its own.”

Sophia’s face was crinkled up and she leaned against the wall, her eyes still locked on the gash. Crystal turned her attention back to it assuming that the girl was inviting herself to stay for her home surgery. She’d learned, over the years, to tend a good number of wounds. Mike wasn’t exactly fond of the idea of taking her to the doctor or the hospital for things that happened. If it could be handled in the bathroom, then it was better she figure out how to do it herself. She usually paid, in some way, for anything that got out of control enough to send her to medical personnel. They liked to ask questions, and they liked to give looks, and all that bothered Mike. If she didn’t want a busted lip or a black eye to go with her stitches or burn care, she figured out how to handle it.

This cut really wasn’t anything to be concerned about. She figured four or five stitches and it would be almost as good as before. It would scar, but scars she had, another wouldn’t exactly be something tragic.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Sophia asked, not moving from her position.

Crystal shrugged a little, finishing up her handiwork and putting a bandage over it to match the other smaller bandages she’d put over the one or two cuts that would heal on their own.

“It’s not so bad,” Crystal said. She looked at Sophia and the girl was looking at her strangely. After a minute she stepped forward.

“You’ve got a little one,” Sophia said, pointing to her cheek. Crystal got up and glanced quickly into the mirror. On her cheek there was a little scratch from a piece of something…she’d probably never have noticed it until one day she scratched the tiny grain of a scab off that would have formed there. She picked up one of the cotton balls and dabbed at it.

“Thanks,” she said.

Sophia didn’t offer to leave the room and Crystal figured at this point the girl was not bothered by her lack of pants. She cleaned up quickly and tucked the kit back under the sink where she kept it. She went for clean pants in her bedroom, Sophia quietly following behind her.

Crystal unfolded a pair of jeans and slipped into them.

“Have you lost weight?” Sophia asked.

“What?” Crystal responded.

Sophia narrowed her eyes at her, almost hugging the wall.

“Have you lost weight? Your clothes don’t fit,” Sophia said. “Did you used to weigh more?”

Crystal hadn’t paid much attention to her clothes at any point since she’d married Mike. She needed clothes to keep her covered and that was about it. She was overweight, poorly built, and there was nothing there to showcase. Mike had a fit about her clothes as it was, always getting mad about the fit of one thing or another. She’d taken to trying to hide her body as much as possible, from him, from everyone else, and from herself. The better they hid things, the better they fit, that was her opinion on the matter.

Crystal shrugged a little, suddenly terribly uncomfortable under the girl’s gaze. She cleared her throat.

“They’re fine. I have to clean the attic. Did you finish the grass?” She asked. She suddenly just wanted Sophia not to be staring at her the way she had been.

“I didn’t finish,” Sophia said. “I was eating when you broke the mirror…”

“Could you go and finish, please?” Crystal asked. She smiled as warmly as she could force herself to smile, trying to cover up the way she was feeling all of a sudden.

Sophia looked a little struck, her eyebrows creasing together.

“Yeah…” she said, a little hesitantly. She disappeared out of the room and Crystal turned around for a moment resting her elbows on her dresser and resting her head in her hands. She stayed there for a moment until she felt calmer. She needed to get the broom and dustpan and she needed to sweep up the remnants of that hated mirror that now lie scattered over the attic floor.

Once it was out of the house, out of her life forever, she could start cooking dinner. Sophia would need something to eat, especially after mowing the lawn, and it was starting to get late. She’d spent enough hours today with Mike..and she knew well enough to know that having spent so much time with him meant that he’d be visiting her again when she finally closed her eyes. He was always there when she closed her eyes