March 31, Zero Days to Deadline
Monday afternoon, Dawn crept through the front door of her home. Everything was quiet and the lamp above the front porch flickered on as she stepped through to the hallway. The two large ice bags in her arms made it hard for her to carry the rest of the groceries she’d bought, so she put them down and wandered into the kitchen to put all of the food away. She stacked several frozen meals into the freezer and slammed the door shut with a suctioning snap.
Wandering back to the hallway, Dawn spotted the bags of ice and attempted to pick them up. The biting pain of the ice clinging to her arms was overwhelming, so she dropped them onto the foyer floor and dragged them across the linoleum and into the bathroom. The bags left a trail of water she’d have to clean up later.
She quickly emptied the bags into her small tub. Her hand wound the shower handle halfway and cold water spilled out onto the frozen chunks.
After she undressed completely, she stepped in. Her limbs settled in slowly, adjusting to the nipping ice cubes. She lowered herself into the freezing cold water, the tip of her nose the last thing to dip beneath the bath.
As the water swirled above her, she fell deep into memories of her mother’s funeral.
She was thirteen years old, just barely on the verge of pretty. The day was clear and warmer than any other day that year so far. Dawn and her dad stood towards the front of a small crowd of their family around her mother’s casket as it disappeared out of view and into the ground.
The thing was huge and shining. It made her think of her mother as larger than she actually was, some giant, unmoving object. In reality, her mother was petite and shrill as a cicada in summer. Even when she whispered, her words jettisoned into the air and spread out across a room. This is what made people like her, the feeling she emanated that the whole world was in on the joke with her.
Dawn’s dress was incredibly itchy. Her mother had thrifted it for her. The inseam pinched at her ribs and scratched up her thighs. Her father cried loudly over the casket, eventually kneeling to the fresh dirt at his feet. Dawn felt her cheeks go red as onlookers watched the display.
“Hold my hand, Papa.” She reached out to her father who was now lying still with both hands strained and red around the edges of the plot of dirt. He let go so that they could clasp each other’s hands.
The rest of the service blurred by quickly and ended in Dawn’s aunt’s house. Her Aunt Kay was her mother’s sister and bore only a slight resemblance to her mother’s tiny frame and boisterous air. Dawn found her stirring something on the stove, pulling spoons and forks from various drawers around the room.
She spotted Dawn out of the corner of her eye and stopped abruptly. She dropped the utensils and they pulled each other into a tight hug.
They held on for a long time, each not letting the other breathe.
“Your mother was all the family your father had. You be kind. Be easy for him, okay?” Kay muffled into Dawn’s then shoulder-length hair.
“I know he’s been a little all over the place lately, but it’s okay. You just be easy.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do Aunt Kay.”
“If he ever gets in one of those manic states and disappears on you, you just call me, okay?” Dawn knew she wouldn’t but nodded anyway. She’d always been this stubborn, wanting to deal with things on her own no matter how bad they got. When she was a kid, her step-siblings were too old to care for her or even be around so she’d had to rely on herself. The isolation had turned into a righteous obstinance she couldn’t shake.
Somewhere off in the distance, a voice shouted, “Dawn. Dawn!” Dawn couldn’t place it, and her memories of that day started to go blurry and dissipate.
“Dawn! Dawn!!” Dawn suddenly emerged from the ice-cold bath and was startled to hear her father’s voice coming from the living room.
“Dawn!” She gasped for air and shuddered at the chill of the bathroom.
Her father continued to shout as she whipped the towel down from the door hook and attempted to wrap it around her body. She stood quickly to dry off and clumsily darted to the living room, freezing water dripping down her face and legs.
Her dad sat yelling her name until she appeared in the doorway. He was slumped over in the dust-brown armchair watching late-night infomercials for products no one was buying. The small, folding table beside the sofa shook under the weight of a stack of books and dirty dishes.
“Did you make dinner?” he asked, looking up at her as he spoke.
Dawn stood in her towel, dark brown hair soaked and curled around her face. She shivered against the emptiness of the room and felt her toes sinking into the puddle she’d created in the shallow shag carpet.
“Papa, don’t scare me like that.” Her father looked away, seemingly forgetting what he’d just asked for.
“I’ll have it ready in a second, okay?” Her father didn’t respond, but instead turned back to watching the television.
“Did you like the little patty things last time? They were on sale, so I got some more.”
“Uh huh. The juice too.” He looked at Dawn for a long time. He seemed to be trying to grasp a thought that was floating too high above his head. His voice quivered and dropped to a whisper above the muffled commercials buzzing through the room.
“I’m sorry about the store. I don’t really know what happened.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
Dawn walked to the kitchen and grabbed a meal out of the freezer. The TV dinner made its way around the dimly lit microwave turntable as she stood with her elbows on the counter, her hands over her eyes.
She wasn’t going to cry. She couldn’t anymore, her body wouldn’t let her.
There was too much to do. She hadn’t been to school in days and her assignments were starting to catch up with her. Her NYU acceptance sat unreplied to in her email inbox. Dawn hadn’t opened up her laptop to edit footage for the documentary. She felt like a mess, not because of the situation with her father, but because of what it meant for her life—that she came from a messed-up place. That no one would want to love her in a meaningful way because she was heavy with baggage she couldn’t let go of. That she didn’t deserve the love she wanted.
The microwave dinged and Dawn pulled out the now steaming meal as the edges seared her fingertips with plasticky heat.
The seat beside her father was dingy, but she sat gracefully. She fed her father the dinner as his eyes blankly stared at the television set. There was a woman on screen selling him and Dawn a better, skinnier life.