Her Smile
ASHLEY runs into the locker room looking around searching for something and settles in the corner next to a locker and a poster advertising: “Celebrating Women in Literature! Key Note Speaker: Maya De Costa” She looks at the poster exasperated and exhales.
ASHLEY
No tengo miedo… I have no fear.
The storm is coming in, the clouds are dark and the rush of hot air hits my face. I’m holding the oars and she’s laying back, her face up to the sky. I think we should go in (pushes on the locker which makes a sound that resembles thunder).
The thunder starts. I feel the rumble in my chest . We need to get back to shore. I tell her this and she looks up at me and she’s smiling. Not the comforting or loving kind of smile. This smile is because I’m scared and she has a lesson to teach me.
The storm is coming. Images come to my mind, images of the things that could happen; lightening strikes this pathetic little white boat and the electricity cuts through my entire body, my blood boiling, smell of burning hair, a wave capsizes us and I am plunged into the water filling my lungs as I try to scream and I can’t make it to the surface in time for air (pushes up against the locker creating the thunder sound again)
My palms are sweaty and I can’t really manoeuvre the oars. She starts laughing, laughing at my panic. “You are never going to get anywhere if you are always running for cover,” she tells me as she runs her hands through her long black hair. She stands up quickly and my stomach flips; she raises her hands and looks up to the sky. “No tengo miedo” she screams and then jumps into the water.
MOM! Mom! All I can see is my distorted reflection as I look for her and she is no where in sight. At this moment I know that I am going to die; that she is dead and I am alone to meet the same fate.
I’ve told this story to Jack and he thinks its funny; me at eleven years old deciding that I am going to die with my insane mother deep under water.
But it is not funny. There is no other kind of feeling like this one…the sense that you are going to die…that you are truly going to die.
She surfaces, splashing me, and climbs back into the boat. She is laughing because she lost one of her shoes. I cry so hard I can’t speak. She tries to touch me with her wet hands and I scream. She rows back to shore, hot tears running down my face, the winds getting harder, the thunder getting louder, I just hold on to the edge and pray for land. She’s got that fucking smile on her face. We get to shore and I run to the car we rented. It begins to rain but she’s still standing on the shore. I see her bend down to pick something up.
I haven’t seen her in three years. There is nothing I want to see about her; the drinking, the fighting with my dad, the divorce, days of her locked in her room typing, or worse days of her locked in her room crying. Then there was the time I walked in on her having sex with the gardener.
This woman is cliché. Therefore she makes my problems cliché and the way I deal with them cliché: rich girl whose mother is a deranged fiction writer. Therefore to be different, rebellious, I run away. Join Greenpeace. Date the older man, get the tongue pierced, skydive, base jump, anything to feel alive, and to get away. But I still live off the trust fund. Cliché.
She’s here to give one of her “speeches”. She talks about truth and beauty but instead of her talking, I think its time for her to listen, for her to listen to me… for me to tell her the truth.
Looks at the poster advertising her mother’s speech
She is not special, or unique or “free spirited”. She is a fake and a liar, and just because she wrote a couple good stories does not mean she is someone to look up to… It’s been three years, but it’s like I saw her yesterday: her smile, that fucking smile. It’s tattooed on my brain and I just need to get her out.
The last time I saw her, it was three weeks after graduation from high school and she’s been in her room for days, crying this time. I walk by but I don’t hear anything. I walk in and her bed is empty but I can hear the tap, the tap of the sink is running in her bathroom. She’s on the floor, vomit all around her, empty pill cases on the counter…she’s wearing a pink silk robe. I look down at her and I am not surprised, not alarmed, not even scared. It was all just so fucking cliché. She didn’t take enough and her stomach was pumped, put in the psych ward and got more than enough material for another book.
While she’s in the hospital, I read the suicide note she left. The note is cliché. (mocking tone) “I’m sorry. I love you. The world is too much for me.”
She also leaves me this.
Ashley opens her hand to reveal a necklace with a sea shell dangling on it .
I saw her pick something off the shore and when she finally comes up to the car she tries to give me the sea shell she found. I scream that I hate her. I scream that I don’t love her. I scream and she just stands there.
She keeps this stupid shell that I wouldn’t take and decides to give it to me with her suicide note. I took it – and left. Didn’t scream, didn’t yell, just left.
“No tengo miedo! No tengo miedo! I have no fear!” she screams, “I have no fear!”
She knows that I know she is here and she thinks I am too afraid to see her, but I’m here to show her that I am not fucking afraid.
Ashley runs out of the room
