by Cat Mann
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My name is Ava Baio. I am seventeen years old. Until very recently, I lived in an old, two-story brownstone in Chicago with my mother, Lucy and before Chicago, I grew up in Montréal in Quebec, Canada.
The one-time random comment from my mom about my father's eyes gave credence to my assumption that I got my looks from my dad. I don’t know what he looked like; he died the same day I was born. But I do know I look nothing like my beautiful mother had. Her eyes had been big and brown; mine are shocking green. She had had pale, clear skin, but I am a soft, creamy tan even without being in the sun. (I do have three freckles – one is right above my lip; a second one, very tiny, is on one of my middle toes … and the third is well hidden. It will never be seen by anyone. Ever.) My mom was tall and graceful; I am neither noticeably tall nor overly short. My mother’s hair was of a light honey color and totally straight. Mine is wavy and dark brown; I wear it down to my waist.
Baio, my mom’s maiden name, came from her adoptive parents, Margaux and Perry Baio. Margaux is a well-known fashion designer and I have never seen her in anything other than stiletto heels and an “uptown” dress. In my seventeen years as her grandchild she has managed to stay exactly the same – timeless, classically beautiful and, in my opinion, the meanest grandmother on the face of the earth. She always looks at me with contempt and her comments about my hair, nails, or intellect are condescending and filled with disdain. She hates me and that’s fine because I’ve learned to hate her, too. In fact, I now love to hate her – it is a rather entertaining hobby of mine. Unfortunately for me, as of a week ago, Margaux is now my legal guardian.
Margaux’s stores, baio designs, can be found wherever serious money is spent. She was a nurse before she pursued her dreams of design, and from what my mother once told me, Margaux was very dedicated to her patients. I don’t know what made her change, but to me she seems to be dedicated only to herself. How she pulls herself away from the mirror in the morning, I will never know. The only plus side I can think of to being related to her is the fact that each season she sends me, without fail, the sample clothes from her new lines.
Margaux’s husband, Perry, my grandfather, had been her complete opposite. I’ll never understand how he stood being married to such a witch. In life he was a rock. There hasn’t been a day that has gone by since my grandfather’s death that I have not thought about him. His death and the dream I had before he died haunt me. And now, my mother is gone too and I have been left alone with my may-as-well-be-the-devil-grandmother, Margaux. I know if Perry were still alive, he would fight for me. He would let me finish my last year of high school back in Chicago, back with my best friend, Mia and my boyfriend, Michael. Instead, Margaux has pulled me away from everything I know and love and plans to ship me off after the weekend to a boarding school in southern California. I hate her now more than ever.
Never have I ever been accused of being a people person, warm and approachable. A rather large space bubble hovers over me and I am uncomfortable when people hug me or try to hold my hand. My thoughts are my own. I don’t speak about myself much. Some people have accused me of being a brat, born with a silver spoon in my mouth, yet while I have been raised as a fortunate child, my mother made me work for everything I wanted. She and I spent our Saturday mornings helping at a soup kitchen and we worked closely with families at a woman’s crisis center back home in Chicago. Although I am uncomfortable around people, I still have a large and compassionate heart. A large and compassionate heart, but a careful one that insists on very few friends rather than a bunch of strangers I pretend to see as friends.
Relentless nightmares haunt me and emphasize a feeling I have had my whole life, a feeling of being very different than most people. Okay, I know many people have self-image problems. But I have truly always felt as though people avoid me, as if sensing that there is something not good in me. My logic tells me this is not true, of course. I am quiet at times and I keep mostly to myself, but there is no evil in my heart, just sometimes a shadow of darkness.
I do not speak of my dreams to anyone, nor of the sense of waiting and anxiety that constantly assail me. My mind churns on and on. It never stops. I mull over the same thoughts again and again, like a dog working over a shank bone. The brain activity irritates and then angers me. I cannot remember ever having an at-peace brain.
When the three-ring circus of thoughts fills my head and there is nowhere to store the overflow, I become irritated and then angry. At some point in my younger years, my mom, a pediatrician, took me to a friend of hers, a psychologist, who spent some time talking with me and then announced (big surprise) that I have an anxiety issue. She suggested medication to slow down the churning in my head, but I said no, no pills for this girl, not unless I have malaria or viral pneumonia. Her second suggestion was to take up running, and she told me of a patient with anxiety problems who, in order to avoid medication, tried running and found that a quick three miles along the run trail controlled his panic just fine. Well, hell, I can run. I can run fast. So now, I do, and for the most part, it works.