Disconnected

by Lisa M. Cronkhite

  I look down at my stained hand and run to the bathroom to wash it off. I can’t believe I was out there so long. Thank God my wound clotted, or I could have bled to death—I mean, well maybe, but still.

  I run my hands under the faucet and watch the sink fill with red. It reminds me of the droplets of blood in the fountain. It isn’t as deep as I thought. Shoulda tried harder, Milly, Amelia slithers out.

  I look up into the mirror and straight through her eyes. I can see how much she hates me. I feel like she could jump out from the other side and scratch my own eyes out for even looking at her. And the worst part of it all is that I don’t really hate her, like I thought I did. Right now, I feel sorry for her, that she’s locked up inside my head, just waiting and wanting so badly to get out. But I fear that if she does, she will hurt me to the point that I’ll die because of it.

  “You can’t keep me here forever,” she says with my lips.

  “Why do you hate me so much? What have I ever done to you?” I say back to her.

  “Just look at yourself. You’re ugly, Milly. Sick, sad, and just plain ugly. No one will ever want you,” Amelia uses my hands to touch my face, and uses them to dig into my skin.

  “Just stop! Please stop!”

  My hands then release off my face and gravitate to the mirror. We are both touching hands now. I watch the red marks on my cheeks flare up. “See? See what you’ve done now?” I say to her.

  Luckily it isn’t deep enough to leave any marks, but my cheeks are still blushed.

  “Milly? You home?” Aunt Rachel yells from downstairs.

  “We’ll continue this later,” Amelia says through the mirror.

  I look at myself in disgust. She is ruining my life and controlling me as much as she can. How do I get myself out of this madness?

  I rub my cheeks again, trying to get the sting out, open the door and yell back to Aunt Rachel, “Yes, I’m home, I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Quickly I compose myself, taking a few deep breaths, and head downstairs. As I enter the kitchen, I see Grandpa George cutting up some onions while Aunt Rachel does the dishes.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Aunt Rachel says, turning her head toward me as she stands there by the sink.

  “Yeah? What is it?” I’m hoping it has nothing to do with me taking her diary. I want to read more of it.

  “Grandpa George and I were thinking of getting you a pet,” she says out of the blue. “Maybe a cat. Would you be interested?” She stands there awkwardly shifting back and forth, like she’s uneasy about what she said.

  At first I think, awesome, then Amelia whispers through my mind. She wants something from you. You think she’s doing this out of the kindness of her heart? There’s gotta be a reason. But why? I think to myself.

  “Umm…yeah, I guess,” I say to her, not really sure what reply she wants to hear. But after she tells me I can use some company “in this big old house of mine” as she puts it, I figure she thinks I’m that much of a loser. I mean, how is a tiny little animal going to make any difference?

  “Plus it will be good for you. You need that,” she continues.

  What’s that supposed to mean? It will be good for me? Why? Does it look like I need a friend that badly? Does she know how much I’m struggling right now? Although I must admit, the idea does sound inviting. Maybe it would be good for me.

  “Yeah, Aunt Rachel, that’s does sound like a great idea, thanks.” I perk up more and more at the thought of it.

  “Just don’t pick out a black cat. Aren’t they supposed to be unlucky or something?” Grandpa George says, as he continues to chop the onions.

  “Well I don’t know about that, Dad. But I thought we could go down to Animal Welfare and pick one out. Whatever Amelia wants.”

  The words sting me like salt to a wound and wake Amelia up in my mind. Whatever Amelia wants—hear that, Milly? It’s my choice, not yours. I have control over everything, you have nothing and are nothing. And after hearing her chant you’re nothing several times, I start to get sick, my stomach is literally a tornado of pain. I ask to excuse myself.

  “Sure. Is everything all right?” Aunt Rachel asks.

  “Oh, umm, yeah, it’s okay. Just gonna head upstairs now.”

  “Okay but, Milly…?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like to go tonight for the cat?”

  “Sure.”

  I then walk out of the kitchen and into the front room, trotting up the steps, and head straight for my room. I really do need a good friend. Maybe Aunt Rachel is right. Maybe a cat would help me.

  Once I get to my room, I have this sudden urge to read Aunt Rachel’s diary again, a little more in depth this time.

  Closing the door behind me, making sure it’s locked, I go to the queen-size bed, lift up the mattress and slide my hand in between the slits to reach for her diary. I seem to hide it in a different place each time. I pull it out.

  For a moment or two, I gaze at the thick embroidered cover, then I turn to the beginning.

  I started noticing a change when you began to hide up in your room. I wanted to ask you what was wrong, but I was never sure how to approach it. You went from spontaneous and carefree to quiet and withdrawn. Everyone in the house seemed to change too. Then, when you came to me and finally told me, I didn’t believe you.

  Is this about my grandmother? My mother? What secret?

  I read on.

  I understand now, that was the only way you could cope. I just wish you had reached out to me sooner. Then again, would I have reacted differently? Dear God, I could have helped you. Maybe you’d still be here if I had. Never in my life have I felt so helpless. I didn’t want to believe it. How could I? What was happening affected me too.

  What was happening? It doesn’t say. It’s not specific. There are no names or anything. I have no idea what she was writing. It could just be a character sketch for a novel. But I can’t help but read further.

  I was hurt, angry, confused. Most of the time, I just blocked it out of my mind. I thought you did it for attention. I was convinced you were making it all up. Then—when you were gone I had to run away. It was easier to just bury everything deep. So deep I forced myself to forget. For a long time I hated you. I admit it. I hated what happened. And I hated what was created in the aftermath.

  Pages and pages of this, and yet there’s no clear indication of who the woman was or what actually happened. But deep in my heart, I know this is no novel; this is about someone very close to Aunt Rachel. Someone she can cannot speak about; she can only write about. I sincerely wish my Aunt Rachel would open up to me more. I yearn to hear about her life—not only the life she had with my grandmother, but the life she had with my mother too. I would love to have a close bond with her. Not to fill the role of my mother, but to fill whatever void that stands between us, Aunt Rachel and me.

  Chapter Eleven

  It’s now a little after eight in the evening. I’m doing some homework when I hear a knock at the door.

  “Milly, you ready to go now?” Aunt Rachel says through the door.

  “Umm…yeah, just putting my English book away, be right out.”

  “Okay then, I’ll be waiting in the car.” I hear her keys jingle as if she’s ready to open my door with them.

  “Yeah, be right out,” I repeat, just to make sure she doesn’t in fact do that.

  I wait and listen to hear her leave. The jingling of keys and the creaking of the floor get softer and softer until I can no longer hear them.

  I stuff my papers into my ripped-up book bag and think of my journal again. I wonder if Blake is reading it now. Milly, he’s gonna tell everyone you’re a psycho bitch that knows nothing. You’re gonna get locked up and everything. Amelia never seems to miss a moment to say something negative to me. I wrestle with her pessimism as I clean up my desk. I double-check to see if Aunt Rachel’s diary is safely hidden under my mattress, which it is.

  After I’m done straightening my room and p
utting everything in order, I head downstairs and out the door to the driveway where Aunt Rachel’s waiting in the car. As I hop inside, heat blasts my face. Aunt Rachel tells me how excited she is to be doing this with me. She mentions to me that she had a cat once, but it wound up disappearing on her after she started letting it go outside. She almost starts to cry when she says, “I just hope she didn’t get hit by a car or something.”

  I’ve never heard her talk this way before. It reminds me of the way she was talking about that person in her diary, with such emotion. It seems Aunt Rachel can be caring if she wants to be, at least from a distance.

  I continue to let Aunt Rachel chatter away about her pet experience, but Amelia suddenly steps into my thoughts and begins to chant about all my worries. Blake’s reading you right now. He’s laughing and talking to all his buddies about what a nut you are. And let’s not forget about Aunt Rachel’s diary. God only knows what she’ll do to you when she finds out you stole it. You’re totally screwed right now. Over and over she says things that are the same things, but in different ways until Aunt Rachel cuts into her blabbering.

  “Okay, we’re here. You ready?” she asks, putting the gearshift into park and taking off her seatbelt.

  “Yeah, let’s do this.”

  We both get up, out of the car and walk up to the Animal Welfare building. As we open the doors, a foul stench wafts through my nostrils, with ammonia smells on top of it. It seems whatever cleaning products they’re using for this place aren’t enough to cover the stink. Dogs are barking as a crowd of people walk through the halls.

  “I know it smells in here,” Aunt Rachel says, as if reading my mind. “But try to overlook that. Here, let’s go in here. This is where they keep the cats.” She opens the glass door and already I am heartbroken that there are so many. White ones, black ones, spotted ones; small baby newborn kittens to older cats. Most are meowing and pacing inside their cages. They all look the same to me, even though each one is quite different. It isn’t until I get to the end of the room that I see him.

  He’s alone and all curled up in a ball. When I get to his cage, he looks at me with his soulful eyes—one jade and one brown. He is beautiful with different shades of gray stripes intertwined with white. He almost looks fake in a way—something you’d maybe see in a children’s picture book. On his cage there’s a little tag that says: Gray Tabby, Male, 3 years old, neutered. No name, just that.

  “Want to take a closer look?” Aunt Rachel asks.

  “Okay.” Suddenly, I’m eager to touch him, to hold him for the first time, but instead I hesitate as Amelia mumbles something about getting bitten.

  Aunt Rachel goes to get one of the animal helpers. He’s in the corner, mopping the pissed-up floors.

  The guy comes over and unlocks the cage. For a few seconds, the cat stays curled, then he looks at me again and gets up. He takes a few sniffs of my face and suddenly leaps onto my left shoulder.

  “Wow, he seems to like you already, Milly,” Aunt Rachel says with a smile.

  “I guess so.”

  I keep a steady stance for him to balance himself. With much love and affection, he curls around the back of my neck, sits down and purrs heavily in my ear. All my worried thoughts of getting bit are washed away as he continues to purr in rhythmic harmony. It is music to my ears.

  “So what are you going to name him?” Aunt Rachel asks, knowing full well that he is the one.

  “Jinks.”

  ***

  In just a couple of days, Jinks and I have bonded closely. Since his arrival I haven’t been so down in the dumps over all that’s been happening. I’m really starting to enjoy the moments I have with him, giving him the caressing massages that he so longed for when he was boxed in.

  As I lie in bed, Jinks hops up on my chest, waking me up with his meowing. He must be hungry. When I get out of bed, he wraps himself around my feet, brushing up against me, and then runs to my closet door.

  It’s a joy not to hear Amelia for a while. Maybe she likes him too; who knows?

  I follow him to the door and open it for him. Gracefully, he checks all the scents and smells, clearly enjoying the fact that he is out and about and not in a cage. Who knows how long he’d been there at the Animal Welfare?

  He goes into the closet, purring and rubbing on something in the back, then pawing and scratching it, whatever it is. I crawl inside too, hoping he’ll stop carving the inner walls of the closet, afraid Aunt Rachel would want to take him back if he did.

  As I sneak further inside, he starts to meow again. What is it this time? I follow him and realize the closet is a lot longer and deeper than I thought. It’s pretty dark, so when I hear Jinks scratching again, I turn on the light. To my amazement, there’s a little door inside, in the back wall.

  “What are you scratching at, Jinks? Smell something?” I say to him softly.

  As he continues to purr and rub the little inner closet door, I examine it to figure out how it opens. It’s flat, without any handles, but I can see that the hinges are on the right side, so I dig my fingers on the other side and crack it open.

  It’s a little cubby hole full of goodies, boxes of pictures and books, and little trinkets of jewelry. My mother’s things, I guess, since this was her room.

  “Wow Jinks, look at all this stuff.” I don’t know what to pull out or look at first.

  As I enter inside the cubbyhole, I see a small red shoebox. Something inside me is screaming to me to open it, like it’s Christmas time and it’s my turn to open up a gift. To my surprise, inside is my cell phone, and in perfect condition too. Amelia must have put it there. Or maybe I hid it here and couldn’t remember. But why on earth would I hide it from myself?

  I press my phone on. There’s only one bar left and it’s blinking on low battery.

  I scroll down my call records list and notice a lot of missed calls from a number that’s not familiar to me. I wonder whose it could be. Whoever it is, they’ve been trying to get ahold of me for days now.

  I get to the text messages and I see only one that’s unread—sent just yesterday. I open it up to read: You haven’t answered my calls. Please get back to me when you can.

  Then zap. The phone shuts off, completely out of juice. I take the cord out of the shoebox, retreat to my room and plug it into the outlet near the closet door.

  Chapter Twelve

  The room is pitch-black as I lie in bed. I must have drifted off to sleep. I wonder why it’s so horribly dark. Usually you can see the moonlight peering through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, but not now. Something seems wrong, yet I don’t know what it is.

  I get up off the bed and feel my way around as if I’m a blind person and eventually come to a wall—and luckily without stepping on anything either. I feel around for a light switch and as I’m feeling my fingers run across some kind of border in the middle of the wall. Finally I feel the switch and flick it on. Dear God, not again!

  It’s the same toddler’s room I dreamt about a few nights ago. So am I dreaming now? How could I be? It feels so real.

  I look at the rainbow border and suddenly feel woozy from either the lines in the wallpaper or because I am so boxed in without any windows. I go to the door, open it and again hear people downstairs. But this time, it sounds like a party since music’s playing and people are laughing.

  At the other end of the room, someone is standing with her back turned to me. I don’t know if it’s my mom or someone else, not sure. They have something draped over their head—similar to the hooded man I’ve seen before. Could it be him?

  I start to walk down the steps when all of a sudden, Amelia stops me. Don’t go, Milly, don’t do it. He’s going to hurt you.

  I’m not quite sure why she would say something like that. I begin to think she’s right this time, unlike so many other times before.

  I take a step back, there in the middle of the stairwell.

  “Amelia, where are you?” It’s my father, groping to find his way through
the smoke. He’s coughing up blood and his face is all covered in soot.

  Scared and shocked, I turn around and run down the hall. But I am not running, I am floating and moving slower than I would like. I feel stuck, like I’m moving in quicksand.

  I run into an empty room, curl up into a ball in the corner and put my head down to close my eyes. But I can still hear someone coming as the creaking of the floor gets closer and closer.

  “Please dear God, let me wake up,” I chant to myself. “Please wake me.”

  I repeat that over and over as if it’s going to break this spellbinding nightmare. But when I look up, I’m still trapped in this horrible dream. Someone is standing over me. My father? No. It’s the hooded man.

  “Take my hand,” he says. “Come with me, Milly. We need to hurry.”

  He knows my name and yet I haven’t a clue as to who he is. And just when I reach for his hand, I see that it’s my father again.

  “Don’t be afraid, Amelia.”

  And just as he leans in to grab me, I feel a pressing on my chest. Fur is in my mouth.

  I open my eyes to see Jinks is on top of me, trying to wake me up.

  “Okay buddy, I’m up. And it’s a good thing too.”

  He purrs and head-butts me gently as if saying, “Glad to see you again too.”

  I think of the dream and wonder what it could have meant. Then Amelia interrupts my thoughts. Milly, how stupid could you be? Don’t you remember anything?

  ***

  Hours have passed and I am wide awake. As I stare at the ceiling fan twirling at low speed, my mind wanders in an abyss of wondering. Why am I having these dreams like this? What really happened to my father and my mother? Why don’t I remember any details about the car crash?

  My mind searches endlessly, and—Amelia being dead silent—my thoughts shift to my journal again. I have so many things written in that thing, but even I am not sure what they are. Usually I don’t read much of what I write. Why not? Because writing it down is like another form of release. And when I am through, I forget about it and feel better. It’s like venting on paper. The pages of my journal hold secret things, things I’ve never shared with anyone else. Amelia often forbids me to read it once I’ve written something down. Like she wants to punish me in some way, whatever way she can. But now lying here in bed I’m thinking maybe I should read it. It would help me remember the things that happened to me in the past. I will just have to will myself to read it and suffer the consequences Amelia has for me. I must read that journal. Once I find it, that is.