Autumn

Autumn is gone. It’s Wintertime. I’ve always enjoyed this time of year. The snowfall has been lighter than normal. Only a bit of dusting every once and a while. But by the midday sun, it melts into puddles then evaporates, floating off into the sky to be snow another day. Even though the weather hasn’t been bad, the town seems quieter. Like everyone else was snowed in, couldn’t get their cars out of their driveways. Or like everyone is mourning something. Why should the mourn anything? Their lives are fine. Nothing happened to them.

I get weird looks at the grocery store. The shoppers won’t meet my eye. When they do, I see the pity behind their eyes as they smile at me. Then I start to check out. The cashier always has to ask how I’m doing. Do I need anything? Can they help with sorting or cleaning? When I decline, they always, without fail, say “Well we’re always here for you Poppy.”  It just makes me so mad! Can’t everybody get over it? Do they have to bring it up every time? I am fine! I have always been fine! I am fine!

Every Saturday morning, without fail, the Henderson’s show up at my door with a basket full of food. Well, at least Freida Henderson does. Her husband, the man with more cars the Colonel has chicken wings, sits in the driver seat. Her two kids sitting in the back stare out the front window gaping at me and their mother. It’s like every time they come it’s the first time.

“I tried out a new recipe,” Mrs. Henderson says. She’d only used that excuse two other times. “Tell me what you think, okay?”

“Sure. I enjoy your cooking.” I say to her, my eyes glazed over, staring at her bottle blond hair.

She turns to leave but stops halfway down my red wood steps. She looks at me and says, “Poppy, we’re only a hop, skip, and a jump away. Feel free to come by anytime. Alright?”

I stifle my groan. Politely, I squeeze out, “Yes, Freida, I appreciate that.” And I watch her get back into her car and they drive away after a quick wave from all four of them. I go back into the house and set the basket on the table.

Why did that phrase prick me so badly? It just annoyed me to death. ‘Hop, skip, and a jump.’ I was much farther away from the Henderson house than that. It was more like a trek through three acres of forest covered in pine trees, wild blackberries, and rabies-filled coons. Couldn’t she just say, we’re right down the road. Or not too far. Or really anything else. Arg! It just really made me irritated. Such a small thing too.

Isn’t that weird. Just the smallest thing can tick a person off. That the tiniest thing that no one would even think of could just make a person’s blood boil. Without any reason whatsoever.

Hm. I suppose that actually I do have a reason for that saying making my blood boil. Oh, how dad loves to say that. Or maybe he doesn’t anymore. But either way he passed that saying on down to my sister. Ugh! She always said that. Just to make me irritated. Oh, how she knew that made me mad. How that little saying made absolutely no sense to me. She started off with just joking around. Just being silly. But then she started hanging around with dad too much. Two peas in a pod, them troublemakers. She started using that saying all the time.

“Don’t worry mom,” She said one day, perching on her bike at the end of the steps. “The stores just hop, skip, and jump away. I’ll be back in a jiffy.!” She rode off, doing anything but going to the store. “Darnn!” She would say after being gone for hours. “I just ran into some of my friends, they were going to the library, and I thought it’d be nice to join them. We got to reading and talking. I totally forgot what I was going to the store for. Sorry for missing dinner mom.” She kissed mom’s cheek and walked off.

Mom sighed and watched my sister run down the hall. I was waiting for her in her bedroom. “What Poppy?” She asked.

“Where you been?” I asked her.

She scoffed. “You heard what I told mom, Pops.”

“Sure.” I got up and tapped her nose. “Might wanna look in the mirror. I think it’s growing.” After that, she ramped up the whole, ‘using that stupid saying to annoy me’. So, I started to call her Toy.

I had always wanted her and I to get along. Afterall, twins were supposed to be like pretty much the same person, right? Like they were connected somehow. Yet she and I never connected. We fell apart. Actually, I’m not sure if you can say we fell apart since we never really were together. So, I supposed it was more like we were repelled farther apart, like opposite ends of magnets.

Still though, I did hold out a bit of hope when mom died. I thought that maybe she and I, since we still lived under the same roof, would be able to pull out of the cycle of funk she and I were into. That since both of us were grieving our mother we would, for some reason, be pulled together. But that was a pipe dream. More wounds were opened. It was worse than ever before. Living in the same house was like being locked in an underwater tank with a shark. With a shark though, killing it wouldn’t be considered murder. And last time I checked, murder is very, very illegal. And wrong of course. Very wrong.

Point that I’m making is that my sister only caused trouble. For me, my mom, and even her friends. She ended up lonelier than ever. I want to forget her. Forget her forever. Not only did every time her thieving little face pop into my head that I remembered the biggest trouble she’d ever caused, but I also heard my mother’s voice. “Be patient, Poppy. Your sister has got a good heart. She just needs some help bringing it out.” Mom would always say that when she was particularly irritating to me. “Patience, Poppy. She does have her fathers’ genes.”

 I never had the heart to tell mom that my patience had run thin.

The Henderson’s left hours ago. I made me a cup of hot chocolate and bundled up in mom’s favorite sweater. I sat on the back porch, rocking back and forth slowly like an old woman thinking about the past. I was thinking about the past of course. My mind was wandering very far into the distance. Way past the now dead flowers my mother so passionately worked on. Far off into the woods. Life fluttered through the tree branches. Birds with brightly colored plumage landing on trees singing their beautiful songs. Squirrels ran up and down tress, across the forest floor, scared at every little noise. Ever so alert. Ever so alive.

And that’s what I missed. That feeling, the feeling of being alive. Anything that made me happy in the past was overshadowed by my sisters’ shenanigans. And anything that made me rejoice when I finally turned the blessed and so grown up age of eighteen soon was weighted with responsibility. My mother getting sick. My father trying to come back into our lives. My sister not helping me take care of our mom but instead seeking more troublemaking thrills with our father.

It was the stress that killed her. My mom. I will believe that down to my grave. That the stress of everything she shouldn’t have had to deal with was what killed her.

The cloudy sky was comforting to me. The grey blanket that enveloped the blueness that was usually painted across the sky was a mirror to my soul. I rocked back and forth, watching the steam from my mug and the breath from my lungs escape. Frowning, cold tears dripped from my eyes. If only there was a way to forget it all. To rid myself of memories that clouded my mind and kept me from making new ones. And my eyes turned to the fire pit around which sat wooden chairs. Cold, charred wood sat as ghosts among the ashes. A chill ran down my spine.

“I could go for a fire.” I said aloud.

I sat in one of those old wooden chairs. Smoke billowed out of a burning fire pit. Pictures curled as they were consumed by the fire. And the gasoline that covered the clothing I had chucked in was doing its job just fine. The flames rose higher. From a box beside me, I picked out a jacket. One my sister forgot to bring with her when she stole all the money and valuables I had to my name. Embroidered on the jacket, besides skulls and symbols my mother taught us to never use, wrote a name that I grew to hate. Autumn. And with a grin on my face, I tossed it and the box into the fire, sending the burning flames into a flurry before they wrapped their deadly grip around them. I sighed in contentment and sat back in the chair.

Autumn is gone. Now so is her memory.