Vignette: Susie

It was starting to get dark again. Billowing clouds obscured the dawn, filtering the light as if through a muddy lens. Inside the house, Susie stared straight ahead, her eyes focusing on two – no, three –nails embedded in the hard, unyielding stone. They showed signs of age. One of them was curved in a wilting arc, and she tilted her head slightly to match its tenuous curve. Two gray eyes swung back and forth along the grayed surface of these stalwart soldiers. There were frayed strings clinging to the old, tarnished bits of metal, the sole remnants of what these nails once held. They had been empty for years.

In the background, Susie could hear the shuffling of feet, shortly followed by the clinking of coffee mugs and the clicks of an old gas stove. She should join the others, this much she knew, but the very idea of company was abhorrent and had been so for some time now. This room was her refuge, and she could sequester herself there for hours at a time. When anyone asked, she said that she needed the time to think – and she meant it – but when her feet met the grayed carpeting, her thoughts became scattered, her mind reduced to that of a child. Nobody questioned Susie’s enforced silence, though they exchanged worried glances when they believed she wasn’t paying attention. On some level, they had already come to accept the simpleton that had replaced the woman whom they knew and loved.

"None of them know what I'm going through," she would mumble to herself as she lay alone in bed at night. One day bled into the next, and she allowed her body to pull itself from place to place without her presence. Lucidity only returned for brief moments late in the evening, and only long enough for her to realize her own absence from life. Everything had become shrouded in the numbness that accompanied her as she smiled, frowned, and laughed on command. Rudimentary facial expressions and weak, hollow sound.

"Susie, would you like some breakfast?"

She turned around to see a familiar, stout body blocking off part of the doorway. "Yes, Mother," she replied, following the woman into the kitchen. There was a chill in the air that morning, and the lingering heat from the stove was an unwelcome assault against the ice her bones had become. She sat down stiffly, her mind vaguely registering the food on her plate. Canadian bacon and waffles. They had been her favorites, once. Now the sight of them made her ill. She rose and stumbled her way to the pantry, gagging as she pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt further down her wrists.

Fruity Pebbles. Lucky Charms. Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Nary a hint of oatmeal or granola to be found. Her movements quickly became frantic, almost spastic in their speed. The oversized sweatshirt rippled violently, exaggerating her activity as she pushed and pulled items carelessly along the wiry shelves. Boxes fell to the floor, eventually followed by a sack of flour that saturated the air in one decided puff. It was shortly joined by canned peaches and some strawberry jam.

Susie’s mother stiffened in alarm as the innocuously dull thuds were replaced by harsh, metallic clangs and the distinct tinkling of broken glass. She inched towards the source of the noise, almost afraid of what she might find. Would there be blood this time? Bruising? Vomit? Five feet from her destination, the matron froze, dumbfounded by the wreckage separating her from her daughter. Amidst the chaos, she could hear a shriek finally emerge: “Why isn’t there anything to eat in this place?”

There was a loud thump and Susie’s body fell to the floor. In the past few minutes, the flour had become paste on her cheeks, watered by a combination of perspiration and tears. She stared, unseeing, at the pile of ruined groceries before her. Multicolored liquid crawled across the dingy tiles, soaking into the grout and staining it shades of blue and red. Years ago, she would have been the first to stand up and reach for cleaning supplies. Now, there no longer seemed to be a point.

Clucking her tongue, Susie’s mother set about clearing a path to the broken figure slumped against the far wall. She tried to ignore the vacancy in the eyes before her, the ones that once twinkled in mirth. Now, they barely noticed their owner’s surroundings as the dented cans and broken boxes were removed one by one. She missed the moment when everything changed.

Susie’s eyes swiftly zoomed in on the pieces of broken jars that her mother was carefully plucking from the mess. Her mind unwillingly flew to a different pair of hands, a different set of fingers, wrapped around the neck of a bottle as they lifted the glassine vessel repeatedly towards a bearded mouth. Shaking slightly, Susie felt around the base of her finger, searching for the old reassurance, that sense of peace that used to come when she touched the warm circle of platinum.

Her trembling became convulsive. Attracted by the hullaballoo, the rest of her family rushed into the kitchen, still pajama-clad and half awake. They hovered about the entrance to the pantry, wholly uncertain of what should be done. Stymied by indecision, they stood by helplessly, almost mesmerized by the sight of the formerly catatonic woman flailing about the floor, sobbing and moaning and screaming all at once. Trepidation seized her mother’s heart as her aching body gasped for air, every nerve ending exploding as she immersed herself in repressed emotion for the first time in months.

It was over, and she had nothing left.

(c) 2011 Alice Yi-Li Yeh