Stain (Stain #1)(5)
“Aylee, Mom said to tell you breakfast is getting cold!” The sound of the voice followed by the rapid knocks on the door is a blessed interruption in the flow of memories. Blinking several times to regain lucidity, I hear the retreating hooves of my demons as they drag my secrets back with them to the abyss. For now. It’s always a temporary reprieve, however. They always come back.
I grab the cardigan, slide into it, and without too much hesitation, head to the door to open it. The person on the other side is someone I’m always happy to see. Sarah crosses over the threshold and enters my room. She’s all gangly legs and arms, only eleven and yet she nearly towers over my 5’5 frame. The height is all her father but the thick strawberry blond hair, dark blue eyes, and oval face is all Rachel. Sarah is the child Rachel and Tim wanted but never had until a year after they took me in. Their biological child. My adoptive sister. But she feels like a real sister, because despite the fact that we aren’t related, we have a lot in common. Like the books she’s now perusing on the tall bookshelf by my bed. It’s taken me nearly eighteen years to cultivate my small library of literature, but I’m all too willing to share it with this avid little reader. And it makes me happy knowing that rather than children’s books, Sarah is able to appreciate the likes of Salinger, Steinbeck, and Orwell. I love the moments when I sit with her after she’s done with a book so we can discuss it. She’s a brilliant little girl. She appears happy…well-adjusted. But then an ugly thought creeps into my mind as I watch her. My eyes analytically trail down a coltish frame covered by an ankle-length dress her mother undoubtedly picked out for her, and despite myself I wonder if the happiness she exudes is just a fabricated one. A fa?ade that rivals my own. Are there secrets germinating beneath her freckle-covered skin? Is she just as infested as I am?
It’s not the first time these thoughts have come to mind. I’ve often wondered if the darkness brought the devil to her doorway, too. I was, after all, only a year younger than her when he first visited me. But then I realize I’m not his flesh and blood. I’m just the little girl they adopted. His blooming little flower, even now at the age of eighteen.
“Are you finished with The Great Gatsby?” I ask as a distraction from the visual of my last brief thought continues to conjure in my mind. With my hair still damp, I wonder if it’s worth returning to the vanity to dry it with the blow-dryer that’s plugged in the only convenient outlet in the room. I’ll be forced to look at myself, at my reflection, and though it’s something I want to avoid at all costs, I know Rachel will say something if I go down with damp hair. I want to circumvent any sort of altercation if I can help it.
She turns to me with a dimpled smile, and says, “Almost. But I want to get started on that book you said I’d like.”
“Pride and Prejudice, bottom shelf,” I reply, and cross over to the other side of the room and take hold of the black blow-dryer from the vanity table. “It’s one of my favorites,” I say, mildly.
It seems almost inevitable my eyes should flick across the mirror, forcing me to catch a glimpse of myself. Mismatched eyes; one light blue, the other brownish-green, stare back at me from a dull, oval face, further proof of just how odd I am. I wonder briefly from which parent I inherited these eyes. It’s nothing new. I occasionally think about them, especially times like these when their likeness is reflected back at me through the mirror. The lightness of my skin originates from their combined Creole blood and I’m sure that’s the main reason why Rachel and Tim adopted me. I look like them. My fair skin tone is the closest to theirs. And so it makes things easier for them. Comfortable. More palatable. Never mind that my birth mother was of Cape Verde and Creole descent while my father was a light-skin black man from Louisiana. We don’t talk about these things. Just like we don’t speak of my birth parents’ abandonment, or if they’re dead or alive. My blackness is something they want to pretend doesn’t exist.
I’m not sure how my parents met, but they’d had me young and aside from that I knew nothing else about them. I only learned about their background and my own strictly by accident when I was fourteen. My case file had been hidden in a box in the back of Rachel and Tim’s closet. I’d been helping her clean it out when I found the box. I remember opening it without much thought only to find a small bit of my history and background on the yellowing sheets of papers inside.
Shaking away my thoughts, I find my reflection again. I hate looking at myself because I fear facing the girl staring back. This fragile, spineless ghost of a girl taught to be afraid of her own reflection. I see her now in those heterochromatic eyes. Bronzed brows set just above those eyes, framed by full, black lashes. A small, slightly upturned nose gives the illusion that I think myself better than the world, when in actuality I don’t think very much of myself at all. My mouth forms a grimace at the thought, my self-esteem at an all-time low.
“Got it. Can I take these two also?” Sarah rescues me again from the quagmire of my thoughts and I gratefully turn to her with what I hope is a warm smile. Along with Pride and Prejudice, she holds up another Jane Austen book, Sense and Sensibility.
“Yes, of course. We’ll talk about it when you’re done.”
She smiles brightly, and when she lingers, I realize she’s waiting for me to go downstairs. “You go down first. I’ll be right there, I just have to dry my hair and grab my scriptures.”