A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE- MOTHER!

Sandy was seated on the rocky chair swinging back and forth, and with each V shaped move, tear drops emerged from the corner of her eyes and hang there dangerously on her lower eye lashes. Each tear anticipating to drop and flood the tiny 21 feet by 14 feet cubicle I was renting.

I was as helpless as she was, not that I was going through her rough patch but I wasn’t able to give her the comfort she deserved. I imagined telling her how sorry I was but the conversation in my head kept stagnating at a rather unsympathetic phrase. There, there it’s alright. You’re not the first in the world. I knew better to not pronounce none of that. My nerdy brain cells were basically baked and fried on matters emotion. From the day I met Sandy I had secretly been taking classes on to improve my humane instincts and reading of emotions. I felt her every inch of sadness, and my own tears were welling up my eyes and I had the urge to run out of the room. Impulsively Sandy started whimpering and by each second, the whimpers grew louder.

Hug her, no! maybe not.

Pat her back, no?

Well heck, do something, blockhead!

I decided to hold her hands and they slipped into mine like they were meant to be there eternally.

Get it together nitwit! My palms were sweaty but my companion didn’t seem to notice. I suppose that’s how pain makes you feel, numb of all little things that once annoyed you. Sandy in her usual self wouldn’t touch a finger on me, she would jokingly say I sweated like her grandma’s personal gym partner and that she found it gross because the man was 67 years old.

I know not how to take advantage of people. Born and raised that way, it wasn’t about to change because of this situation and had no plans on emotionally preying on poor Sandy. I liked Sandy from the first day I had an encounter with her.

My eyes caught Sandy’s through the open louvre of the library’s shelf. Those big brown eyes still make me shudder every single time, at the thought of them. Her round full lips had curled up upon seeing me, and I later realized she smiled this way to all first time strangers. On that day I was a lucky duck.

 “What are you looking for,” her gaze prompted me to ask. I was standing in for the librarian on her sick day, out of request at Sydney’s local library and because I did not mind being there. It was practically my second home. Books are sweethearts.

“A Jack Gilbert poetry collection.” She replied quickly.

“Ooh, that’s a weird taste of book for somebody like you.” I had said without second guessing my placement of words.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she quizzically looked at me.

“I think you’re pretty and popular and most of those kinds don’t read anything.” She gave be a look that seemed to say; I dare your guts, stranger!

“Not that ugly girls like books, I mean I don’t think… anyone is ugl…”

“But you just called be pretty, meaning you believe others as ugly?”

“I didn’t …you’re pretty… I don’t know...well you are pretty, in a good way.”

“Huh you don’t say,” she calmly replied.

“If I’d walk up to you and state your ugliness in that hideous librarian coat, you wouldn’t be pleased," she simply stated. "Plus, don’t call me pretty, am not flowers vendors pluck from a garden."

"That is quite judgmental, my bad am sorry. ok"

The book? She asked.

"Oh the book."

She grabbed it off of my grip and went to an empty table nearby.

Her dark hair flowed around her neck and stopped just at her shoulders and with every step she made, they seemed like they flowed with every fiber of her body movement. She had square jaws that made her seem like she had candy stuffed in her cheeks and a rather small perfect nose. Watching her from the librarian’s desk, Sandy’s manner of movement was like that of a wild dandelion caught up in a slight summer evening breeze, not to swift neither too slow. I brushed my sweaty palms on my coat and walk up to her.

“Hi.” I said in an awkward high pitched voice. She looked up and her eyes warned me to retreat. I sat down opposite her.

"Hi am a nerd hence socially awkward. I think flowers are pretty and I like them." I said.

She hysterically started laughing. I thought of silencing her but wasn’t worth it because there wasn’t nobody else in the library considering it was a Sunday afternoon, and her white teeth looked like sweet white candy and my nerdy brain fed on the thought of them perhaps breaking and falling and I picking and stuffing them in my own mouth that was roughed up in braces, once she stopped laughing.

“Just so you know, I don’t like flowers, I could tell you why but it will waste both our times.”

“You do not know how to hold conversations do you?” Said she.

“On the contrary yes, it’s happening now, with you. Am Jason, nice to meet you.”

“Is it though, I haven’t been nice this whole time.” Sandy snorted.

“Well it’s something normal people say and am trying normal people way."

“So you’re not normal?”

“No, I am weird, a good weird.”

“Alright, I got it. Sandmire is the name. don’t ask why it’s an unusual.”

“No I like it, I shall call you Sandy, like the grains found on long beach, perfectly tanned.”

Sandy was the first woman I ever met who did not like flowers. She had instantly become more attractive and I had wanted to be her friend.

I would hold her hands as long as she wanted to let out her emotions. And I knelt by that rocky chair gazing into her wet face and ruined make up, but yet she still was beautiful. I handed her my handkerchief and still knelt there even though my knees felt numb.

“My mom is at it again,” she had said when she had shoved my door open 3 hrs. earlier. She had paced up and down for 30 minutes before sinking into the fluffy cushion of my rocking chair, yapping to me about all her troubles. Whether she was speaking out of joy or sadness, the speed of her words would reach a certain crescendo where her lips would hardly touch each other, and it often looked like a slight tough of a brush on a fine art masterpiece by a professional artist except in this scenario Sandy was the professional and I was the on looker who had trouble concentrating on her life’s woes or her beautiful manner of speech.

Get it together, Jason!

“She brought back a man last night and he tried to get his way with me.” I had felt sorry for not being present at that very moment.

“She blamed me for it! She said I was the worst thing that ever happened in her life, can you believe that!”

“Am sorry, really I am.”

 Sandy’s mother had been a problem since I had known her, and as much as Sandy herself would joke about it as just being a mammy syndrome, it had been a dead serious situation and a couple of times Mrs. Walker had been jailed for offences on drugs and property damage.

"I clearly see why my father divorced her." Sandy never seized to miss her father as he was the best she ever had but he had moved to another town 500 miles away, married to another woman and had adopted 3 other kids, all older to sandy by 1 year, she was 20.

"I want out!" She said amidst sobs.

She got up from the rocking chair and stood by the window and I lost balance and sat on the floor weary of so much kneeling.

“I want out of living with my mother!”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

I had always wanted to confront Mrs. Walker, just for dear Sandy and if it happened that her crazy mother was to throw a hammer or hot water at me and if I did die, then I would leave behind an ocean of my blood in Sandmire eyes, for there I dwelt in every second of my being. 

“Of course I am sure!” she squeaked. “I am going to my father’s.”

Having heard of the tale tells of Sandy’s father and his current situation, it wouldn’t be easy for her to fit in, but it was something she was willing to try.

“I shall disown my mother.” Coming from a point of want for parental affection Sandy sounded desperate, and even though she felt dejection, she wasn’t the kind to openly admit it. This was her way of venting back to the tantrums life had thrown her way, and the most I had done so far was get caught in the middle of it all.

 “Yes, Jason, no kidding. This weekend.” She sat back in the chair.

“This weekend?”

You can’t allow her to just leave. “Sure alright, I shall give you my help…that’s what a good friend does.”

Tell her how you feel Jason

“You ok with that?” she asked swinging out of the chair.

I am not ok. “Yes sure am fantastic.” I said.

“It’s settled then? She asked.

“It is.”