New Beginnings: Stories from Beauville

Chapter 1-1

1

“Seriously, sis, you need to wash your a*s. You smell like a dead skunk.”

“Chanty,” Anna hisses, “that’s rude as fuck.”

“No, what’s rude is the smell. f*****g offensive,” I hear my sister, Chantelle, say. She must be standing at the door because I know for a fact, she wouldn’t say that s**t to my face.

“If I smell, so the f**k what? It’s my life. I can do what I want when I want. At least I ate something. Worry about your own smelly a*s, Chanty.”

My sister laughs, “Oh, b***h, you got jokes.”

“Y’all need to leave her a*s alone,” Lola says from behind Chantelle.

“Why for, Lo? She’s been like this for weeks. How much longer you gonna lie there, huh, Indy? I mean, we feel your pain, we all get it. But you gotta move,” Chantelle insists.

Or what? I don’t want to move. I barely want to breathe. My body won’t listen to my heart. I want to die, and I’m not being dramatic. It’s a brutal truth I face every damn day. I’m on autopilot. Eat, sleep, piss, and s**t. I barely do that.

So. The. f**k. What.

It’s my life.

I don’t move when Chantelle walks over to my bed and pulls the blanket off my body. She makes a noise in the back of her throat, and I know what she thinks. I don’t care. It’s true, twins have a secret communication system that only we understand, and right now she’s telling me I stink to high heaven and if I don’t get up, she’s going to pour bleach all over my body.

“If you don’t get your stank a*s out of bed, I’m dousing you in bleach.”

See? I was right.

Twin powers ignite.

“Honey? Indy? Come on, can you please get up? I’ll even help you into the shower. We all miss you, sweetie. Please?” Anna, my cousin, tries to go for sweet. But she can be just as vicious as Chantelle and is as sneaky as Lola.

“Y’all, she doesn’t want to get out of bed. Leave her be. I’ll come back around and clean up her stuff later. Right after I get a hazmat suit and some cleaning supplies that will burn the hair off the balls of a sperm whale.”

“Whales don’t have balls, Lo, be serious,” Chanty argues.

“Shut up, Chantelle. We’re leaving, Indy, but I’ll be back. There isn’t anything you can do about that, and you know when I come back, I won’t be nice about it, either.”

As the girls leave my house, I can hear them all voicing their concerns about me. I’m surprised they haven’t tried to get me committed. It’s probably something I need. But I don’t care. When I hear the door shut, I roll to my side. My bladder protests and I seriously need to pee, but I don’t move. I wait until the last possible moment before I finally get out of bed and trudge to my bathroom. I don’t even lift my dress. I just sit on the toilet and pee. I sit here for long minutes. There is no toilet paper, but I don’t need it. I use the dress to wipe and stand. I’m a ghost. I don’t know what Chantelle was talking about because I smell nothing. Nope.

My eyes are unfocused as I stand in front of the mirror and attempt to make out the figure in front of me. My skin is sallow-looking. I’m a zombie. My eyes are puffy and bloodshot. My skin will probably slough right off if I wipe at it hard enough.

Hey, I figured out the best diet ever.

Death.

Death of the person or persons you love the most. I could tell someone about the pain, but they wouldn’t understand. I’m swimming in a type of despair I can never escape from. How can I ever be happy again?

I can’t.

I won’t.

I’m still in the dress I wore that day. My hair is a matted mess of clumps that feel more like a Brillo pad than anything else. Beneath my feet are clothes I tossed here and there. I couldn’t decide what to wear that day, and instead of putting them back, I tossed them haphazardly around. A pair of jeans hangs off the shower door.

Aah. The shower. I should probably take one.

But I don’t. Why should I? I don’t want anyone to come near me. And for some f****d-up reason, folks thought that walking up to me and apologizing would somehow ease the ache inside my chest. They were so wrong.

I don’t bother looking at the reflection that stares back at me. I walk to the bedroom, and littered trash crunches and slides beneath my feet. I may have even stepped on an old banana peel. Wonder when I ate that.

Who cares?

I clutch my belly and fall back on the bed that’s littered with empty cartons of ramen, chicken, and a moldy paper plate.

I had precious cargo once.

Listened to their hearts. Felt their kicks.

I even waited, no, longed for their cries, but in the end, they greeted me with silence.

The silence that chills you to your very core. A person can’t recover from that type of silence. It’s eerie and evil. I lost Zion before I even lost Zoe. He just couldn’t make it past week fourteen. But he was still a person. Still my son.

My babies are not here, and there is nothing I can do about it except die. I bury my face in the mattress and let out a silent scream as I curl into a ball and clutch my stomach. Silently, I beg for death. I welcome it. I hold my breath until my chest burns and my skin stretches tight. I’m close to suffocating. The only thing I can hear is the beating of my dying heart. It’s fast at first, and as time passes, it slows. Blackness seeps into the corner of my mind, and I feel dizzy. Lightheaded. It may work this time.

Is that a light up ahead?

No. It’s darkness. Cold, unforgiving darkness. But off in the distance, I swear I can hear their sweet voices calling out to me. Waiting for me. They need me. Who else is going to care for them like I can? How dare fate be such a cunt and take life from me. What the f**k did I ever do to her?

The sounds get louder, and I swear I smile. My babies have waited long enough. I swore Zoe was going to make it. Come out all smiles and cries in the end. I even felt her move the day before I lost her. I carried her all the way to the end. Even if I couldn’t help her brother, I promised to be there for her. My Zoe.

I’m here. Right here.

My body jolts and pain rushes across my entire body. The pain intensifies until I gasp for air.

“f*****g b***h. You’re not gonna die on my watch,” Lola says above me.

My eyes pop open to see my cousin standing over me, her hand raised, and her chest rising and falling with each violent breath she takes.

“You want to die? Really? That’s the punk-a*s move you want to pull, b***h! You only get one shot at this life. So, you received a shitty hand. Zoe and Zion will not be waiting for you on the other side because you decide to be a wimp. Fight. If not for yourself, you live for Zoe. She may be gone, but she and Zion won’t be forgotten. You dishonor her, and your family, if you take the sissy way out. And although Zion didn’t get his shot at life, he still has a soul. He’s going to see to Zoe’s safe return to where she came. And if the Creator is willing, she and her brother will get a second shot at life.”

Lola yanks on my wrist, almost pulling my arm out of its socket. She tosses ice water on me, and against my will, I jump up startled. I glare in Lola’s direction. Everything on my body hurts.

“That’s right, b***h. Use that anger and go get your a*s in the shower.” I don’t move, but Lola isn’t someone who will take no for an answer. She grabs me again and pushes me forward and shoves me into the scalding hot spray of the water. “I said, wash your ass.”