Chocolate Strawberry

Mama hasn’t been home in days and I’m starting to get worried and hungry. She left me with a box of Cheerios and half a loaf of bread. The Cheerios were finished yesterday and the bread the day before that. My stomach rumbles, begging for something to fill it but I know that I will go to bed just as I did last night: Hungry. 

My stomach is still howling when I curl up in Mama’s bed with my tattered baby blanket. Her mattress smells like cigarette smoke and sweat. The wine stains on her pillow cases are soon joined with tears as sobs shake my tiny body. Loneliness isn’t a new feeling for me. When daddy died last year,  Mama started coming home from work less and less. It was then that loneliness took hold of my heart and decided we would be friends. 

A sharp knock at the door startles me and I shoot strait up. Mama has always told me to never answer thee door or leave the house if she isn’t at home. She says that if I do, I could be taken away and never be able to come back home. My stomach growls at the thought of one of the only people who knocks on the front door: the pizza man. Has Mama ordered me a pizza? 

Slowly, I crept out of Mamas room. My bare feet collected the layers of grime on the floor as I shuffled quietly towards the front door. My heart beats loudly in my chest, the sound that only I can hear deafens me. As I approach the door, hand outstretched towards the knob, I feel a new emotion coursing through my body. Defiance. 

Why should I listen to Mama? She does bad things all the time. Why can’t I? 

The door is opened before I realise I’ve actually opened it. The face that greets me isn’t the pizza man and my stomach contracts with disappointment. No, not the pizza man but a boy about my age. He wears a wild smile on his face and the fading remenants of a black eye. My mind drifts to the thought of the black eye that I had a few months ago. Mama threw her heel at me and never apologized for it. I never even got mad at her for not saying sorry. You’re always supposed to say sorry. 

Noticing that I’m not speaking, he waves a hand in front of my face and introduces himself. 

“Hi! I'm Tommy. My brother threw our frisbee over your fence and I was wondering if it’s ok if we go back and get it?” He laughs as he speaks and his eyes dart over to another boy standing in the front lawn. The other boy is older and where Tommy is dark haired, he is blonde. 

Unable to find my voice, I simply nod and earn another bright smile from the dark haired boy. 

“Thanks!,” He responds brightly and turns to leave, “Come on Wes! I want to show you that trick Uncle Rex taught me last week!” 

Just as he reaches the third step of the dirty porch, my stomach contracted sharply and my vision turned fuzzy. The floor swayed beneath me. The last thing I saw before the darkness consumed me was his wide eyed, innocent face. 

Waking up, I find myself somewhere completely unfamiliar. Everything in the room is bathed in white from the walls to the blankets covering my legs. The only abstract colors come from an abstract painting on the wall and the red blouse of the woman sitting at my bedside. 

“Finally,” She said, a soft smile spreading over her glossy lips, “I was starting to wonder if Tommy actually scared you to death like he said he did.” 

“Wheres Mama?” I thought out loud. My head feels like it weighs a million pounds but surprisingly, my stomach feels full. 

“A friend of mine is trying to figure that out baby.” Her voice sounds sad as she responds and she fiddles lightly with the silver cross around her neck. 

“Who are you?” I wonder aloud. 

“My name is Louise. Louise Whitlock.” 

“Are you Tommy’s Mama?” I respond sadly. Wishing that Mama was with me and not her. 

“I am. He carried you all the way here, you know.” She said, beaming with pride for her son. 

“He had some help Ma!” The blonde boy, Wes?,  announced as he entered the room. As he approaches his mother, she smacks him lightly on arm. A brown, grease stained, bag hangs from his hand. 

“Don’t listen to him!” Tommy announced, strolling into the room, with a carrier of milkshakes in his grasp. He stuck his tongue out as he passed Wes and deposited the milkshakes in his brother arms  approaching my bedside. 

“I totally didn’t mean to scare you!” He exclaims as he plants himself directly beside me in the hospital bed, “And I’m really sorry you fell and hit your head.” 

“You didn’t scare me,” I respond, immediately annoyed because I’m not a scaredy cat, but found that I couldn’t produce a reason why I had fallen, “I-I… don’t know what happened.” 

Louise shot from her chair then and plucked the bag of food and a milkshake from Wes’s arms. 

“Here baby,” She says, extending a foil wrapped burger and a milkshake towards me, “You need to eat and my boys need to mind their manners.” She glares at Wes and Tommy as she speaks the last part but doesn’t raise a hand to either of them. This surprises me. When Mama sounds like that,  I ready my body for a slap or worse. The boys simply laugh, as if her anger is a joke to them. 

She catches my gaze and smiles warmly. Reaching out to take my hand in her own and rub her beautifully manicured fingers over the back of my cold hand. 

“Eat baby,” She whispers softly, so low that only I could hear, “And don’t worry. There’s plenty more where that came from.” 

I dig into my food greedily, forgetting the small semblance of manners I had ever been taught, but my eyes never strayed far from the strangers sitting around me. Louise ate delicately, wiping her long manicured fingers of grease ever so often. Wes leaned back dangerously in his chair, careening his neck towards the door every time a pretty nurse squeaked by. However, when my eyes sought Tommy, I found him staring directly at me. A dribble of strawberry milkshake slowly making its decent from his chin to his light blue shirt. 

“Do you want to trade?” He asked hopefully while raising a hand to catch the pinkish dribble on his face. 

I looked down at my own chocolate milkshake, topped with whipped cream and the prettiest red cherry I had ever seen in my life. In that moment, I wanted that chocolate milkshake more than anything. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been given something sweet like chocolate. 

“Let our new friend enjoy her food baby.” Louise gently chastised her son from her chair next to the bed. 

Friend? The word felt so foreign in my mind. When I was in school, nobody wanted to be my friend. The other kids told me my clothes smelt too funny. My hair was greasy and untamed. I was too quiet. Too weird. Did they really want to be my friends? Did Tommy want to be friends? 

I felt a new emotion for the second time today; Acceptance. 

Slowly, I set my burger down and reached over to the delicious dessert on my bedside table and turned back to the kind boy next to me. Immediately, the most brilliant smile spread across his face as I slipped his milkshake from his hand and replaced it with my own. 

“Thank you!” He beamed before taking a small sip and plucking the cherry off the top and placing it on top of my own. Then, ever so softly, as if he were afraid of frightening me again, he bumped the sides of our shakes together. 

“Friends?” I whispered, so lowly, afraid to hear his response. 

“Friends?” He chuckled back, a trickle of ice cream trickling out from the corner of his wide grin, mixing the strawberry.