Jessica was small girl, barely stood 5'2 in tennis shoes. She was gangly, and thin, but never really thought about her size, unless she was with her best friend, Angel, eating peanut butter sandwiches on Angel's porch.
"Do you want some
more?" she asked Jessica, while spreading her fifth piece of
bread.
Jessica's stomach felt like
a stone. "No thanks, I've had enough."
Angel shrugged.
"Whatever," she replied through a mouth full of peanut
butter.
Jessica looked at her
friend, who's pants could fit three of her in. "Do you ever
feel...." She paused.
"What?" Angel
replied.
"I dunno. Do you ever
feel like you were born into the wrong family?" Jessica picked
at her scabby knee.
Angel laughed as a mouthful
of chewed up bread fell out onto her lap, that she quickly slapped
away. "Are you joking? Every damn day of my life. Why you
ask?" She began spreading the peanut butter on another piece.
"Because."
Her friend rolled her eyes.
"Because why, silly?"
"Because. I might
look like my mom. And I might have my dad's eyes. But I am nothing
like them."
Angel giggled. "That's
for sure."
She poked her in the ribs.
"Well, geez. Don't hold back or anything."
"I mean it,"
Angel continued. "Your dad is mean. Your mom is mean. And
you're my best friend. And I don't like mean people. Simple as
that."
"You forgot, my
grandma is mean, too." Jessica looked down at a stick and
picked it up. She drew circles in the dirt around her holey shoes.
Angel's face became solemn.
"Oh yeah. Didn't she lock you in a closet or something when
you were crying?"
"A room. She locked
me in with a key so my mom couldn't open the door to get me."
She drew Mickey Mouse ears on the sides of her shoes in the dirt.
"Yeah. What a bitch."
"What I don't get was
why we had to continuously go back to her house every year, when she
did that kind of stuff to me."
"Well, at least now
you know where your mom gets her bubbly personality, right?"
Angel snorted as she licked some peanut butter off her finger.
She rubbed the drawings
from the dirt with her foot and looked her best friend in the eyes.
"Something happened, Angel. Actually something has been
happening for a long time."
Angel dropped her bread
onto the ground. "Did someone hurt you? I swear to god!"
"No no no, don't get
upset. It's nothing like that. It's my dad. He's been....."
The blonde hair that was
stuck to her friend's forehead in sweat was gathering dirt from the
girl's face and now was a muddy shade of brown. "He's been
what??!"
Jessica wanted to throw up.
She didn't want to admit this to her friend. She didn't want to
admit this to anyone, ever! But she knew if she didn't, and soon, it
would eat her up inside like a dirty disease that was reserved for
dirty secret keepers.
"He....he's been
cheating on my mom."
Angel's face softened. She
reached out to Jessica and placed her hand on her shoulder. "I
know."
Jessica jumped to her feet.
"WHAT?!" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her
friend knew? How did she know? She wanted to scream.
Angel slid the few pieces
of bread left from her loaf onto the porch and put the lid on the
peanut butter. "We all know. Everyone knows. This is a small
town, Jessica. You can't fart without the grocer knowing what you
ate for dinner."
Angel's was famous for her
"one liners".
Jessica was wanted to hide.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Her friend shrugged, once
again. "I thought you knew, but didn't want to talk about it. I
wasn't going to embarrass you by bringing it up."
Tears welled up in her eyes
and spilled down her porcelain-colored cheeks.
Angel pulled her close in a
bear hug. "I didn't mean to upset you! I am so sorry."
"No, no, it's not
that," she choked through her tears. She could feel the redness
welling up inside of her, as she always did when she was angry or
upset, and spread across her chest and face. "It's not that he
cheats on her and everyone knew about it. It's the fact he uses me
to do it."
Her friend pushed her back.
"What? What do you mean?"
She wiped her eyes and
cheeks, smearing dirt across her face like brown on snow. "I
mean he uses me. He tells my mom we are going somewhere together and
leaves me in the backseat to go meet women. And I am not allowed to
tell my mother anything. Or else." Tears were spilling over
again. "What can I do, Angel? What can I do?"
Angel reached down to a
piece of bread, popped the lid off the creamy spread, and prepared a
piece to hand to Jessica. "Eat. That's what I do. Eat, it
will make you feel better. I find when you can't fix your problems
and there's no answer, you eat. And either," she held up a
finger,"A, it calms you down enough so you can think of an idea
or," another finger went up, "B, you feel so full you don't
care anymore."
Jessica looked at the piece
of white bread filled with peanut butter. She wasn't hungry, but
Angel did have a point. If I feel sick from eating, I can't think
about what bothers me, she convinced herself and reached for the
piece of bread.
And she ate. She ate until
there was no more bread left to eat, and her belly was full and
overloaded with with fullness and pain. Then she stuck her fingers
into the peanut butter jar and ate until that was gone, too.
She sat there, next to her
best friend in the hot summer sun, and gripped her belly from
sickness, hoping she didn't puke. But Angel was right: she didn't
feel sad anymore. She felt nothing but nausea. But below that sick
feeling, there was an undercurrent of...What was that?, she wondered.
She almost didn't recognize it, but then it dawned on her: it was
contentment. She felt satiated and whole. The food had filled the
jagged rips where her father's actions had tore her apart.
She looked at the empty
jar, still in her hand, and smiled. "Thank you, Angel."
Her friend smiled as she
went in to retrieve more bread and perhaps something different to put
on it. "Anytime," she replied, as the screen door slammed
shut.
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