I hold my breath once I’m aware of the sunlight streaming into the small bedroom. Maybe this time, when I open my eyes and see the cramped back bedroom in my grandparents’ house, with its twin beds and one insufficiently curtained window that opens to the east, I’ll get up, walk down the low-ceilinged, narrow hall that opens into the living room, through the dining room, into the kitchen, where my grandfather will sit at the head of the table, impatiently waiting for my grandmother to fix his coffee. He’ll see me, and, with one giant hand, work hardened and age worn, motion for me to sit at his side on the bench under their picture window. He’ll pat the hands I twine together on the tabletop and ask gruffly about the boyfriend I no longer have.
I’ll tell him I don’t have a boyfriend, and he’ll say ‘Good, you don’t need one.’ He’ll look at me for a moment while we sit in companionable silence before telling me I’m pretty, and I’ll smile up at him, his big, brown, calf-like eyes that can’t see worth anything mirrored back at him.
I open my eyes with a smile on my lips, getting up with care for my older sister trying to sleep in the other bed, her arm slung over her eyes for a respite from the rising sun. I want to fly down that narrow hall, tear through their conjoined living room and dining room, but a knot in my heart stops me. I take on careful step after another, unwinding the fear, the insecurity, the pain, assuring myself that everything is perfectly well. I turn into the living room, bound through the dining room, into the kitchen, where I see...
My grandfather at the wrong end of the table. He sits in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask loose on his face, my grandmother preparing his medicine for the morning. He sees me and holds out his hand. I take it and sit down beside him, petting his hand gently with my fingertips. He looks up at me, into my eyes, and I blink tears away, smiling gently for him, trying to ignore the fact that my eyes are no longer his, that his eyes are blue. He tries to smile at me, but doesn’t manage, like he hasn’t managed to in months, and says a name, so assuredly, to get my attention. My mother’s name echoes in my ears as I answer to it, doing as he asks before moving for my grandmother to feed him.
Watching her feed him because he can’t hold a fork, listening attentively for, not mine, but my mother’s name, my heart breaks just a little more, like it does every morning I wake up just to have my nightmare be true. My daydream, the one I have every morning, crumbles to dust.
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