Still at Your Door: A
Fictional Memoir
by Emma Eden Ramos
by Emma Eden Ramos
Genre: YA/Contemporary
Publisher: Writers AMuse Me
Publishing
Published: February 22nd,
2014
YA — Sabrina “Bri” Gibbons has only a few short minutes to
pack her things and help her sisters pack theirs before running with their
mother to the bus that will whisk them away from Butler, Pennsylvania, an
abusive relationship, and a secret that none of them wish to acknowledge. She
was not prepared, though, for her mother to drop them on the streets of New
York with the promise that she would be right back. Haunted by the sight of her
mother running back to the cab, Bri, with Missy and Grace in tow, settles in
with their grandparents. Thoughts of her present and her future collide with
memories of her past, her dead father, and her mother’s bizarre episodes. She
watches her sisters struggle with school and acceptance, all the while knowing
the lack of any sense of security will make it impossible for them to carry on
as ‘normal’ children. She finally lets her guard down enough to allow someone
else in and sees a faint glimmer that her dreams might be attainable. Disaster
strikes again, this time targeting her sister. Is it possible for Bri to find
that balance between her dreams and her family’s realities?
About the Author
Emma Eden Ramos is a writer
and student from New York City. Her middle grade novella, The Realm of the
Lost, was recently published by MuseItUp Publishing. Her short stories have
appeared in Stories for Children Magazine, The Storyteller Tymes, BlazeVOX
Journal, and other journals. Ramos’ novelette, Where the Children Play, is
included in Resilience: Stories, Poems, Essays, Words for LGBT Teens, edited by
Eric Nguyen. Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems (Heavy Hands
Ink, 2011), Ramos’ first poetry chapbook, was shortlisted for the 2011
Independent Literary Award in Poetry. Emma studies psychology at Marymount
Manhattan College. When she isn’t writing or studying, Emma can usually be
found drinking green tea and reading on her kindle.
Website: http://emmaedenramos.weebly.com
Twitter: emmaedenramos
Excerpt:
They are broken into sections.
You may use what you would like.
Jagged
I hold tight to my memories of the
solid years. Each one is a crystal vase filled to the brim with brightly
colored petals. Summer, ‘99: Missy is five, I’m six. We’re vacationing at
Virginia Beach with Mom and Dad. Mom wears a black one-piece, a white sun hat
and no sunscreen. Her lanky, bronzed legs shimmer under the fiery rays, but
it’s all well and good. “Gypsy skin,” she explains, lathering up my little
sister. “You and I have it.” She winks at me. “Missy here’s more like Daddy.”
In front of us, Dad talks to a blonde boy with a surfboard. He turns to us and
beckons. I jump to my feet, eager to hit the waves. “Sabrina.” Mom presses her
leathery palms against my cheeks. “Bri-bear.” She kisses my nose. “Go on.” I
grab Missy’s hand and we scamper toward the giant salt pond, ready for Dad to
scoop us up and wade us through.
Another summer, many years later,
Missy and I come across what looks like a secret stash of sea glass. We collect
the emerald green fragments just as a mother-sized wave unfurls to scoop them
back up. The edges have been smoothed over, calmed. I slide my index finger
across one side of the largest piece. Missy stands next to me, peering out
toward the horizon. I turn to her, the glass held tightly in my fist. Before I
can begin, she says, “Water life is easier.”
“Huh?” I stare down at the rushing
waves. A thick clump of seaweed tickles my ankle.
Missy seizes a shard from her stash
and flings it. The water swallows the glass whole. There’s no resistance on
either side. “It wasn’t ready.” She shakes her head.
“What does that mean?” I ask. “How is water life easier?”
“I don’t know. I guess… you go in
jagged. You’re jagged when you go in but smooth when you come out.”
Trying to understand, I scrutinize my
sister’s profile. I recognize our mother in her pronounced cheekbones, her long
black lashes.
“But not us.” Missy speaks to the
open water. I just happen to be standing by. “We come in soft, without edges.
Those come later.”
“You mean we get jagged with age?”
“Yes.” Missy’s eyes grow big. She
cocks her head to one side, then turns to meet my gaze. “That’s what happens to
us.”
Chapter
One
From our second floor bedroom, I hear
the old red Ford sputter. Brrr, brrr,
brrr. The brief silence is followed by aclang
and a fuck!
“What the hell?” Missy’s bed creaks.
“What’s going on?”
My bed is closest to the window. I
get up and tiptoe over. “Shush,” I whisper. “You’ll wake Gracie.” Looking back,
I see my little half-sister sprawled over her sheets, her thin brown hair
dangling in front of her face. She’ll be eight in a little over a week.
Outside, the young January frost
stings at our tiny four-paned window. By March the glass will be splattered
with white grime, and no one will bother to clean it. Mom’s car wheezes thick
puffs of smoke, but she is nowhere in sight. I search for her, notice Jim’s
truck is gone from its spot, then jump, startled as the front door slams, its
metal chimes making a racket against the wood and glass.
“Huh?” Grace sits up, wide-eyed.
“What’s wrong?”
As I head over to Grace’s bed, the
sound of Mom’s heels rattle up the stairs and through the rickety hallway. All
three of us freeze, waiting for her to reach our door.
“Come on! Come on!” Bursting into the
bedroom, two packed pocketbooks slung over one shoulder, Mom fumbles around for
the light switch. I shudder as the bulb flicks the room into candescent
disruption. The fluorescent glare gives her a grotesque glow, and I wince at
her mismatched outfit, caked-on foundation and crooked maraschino-cherry-red
lipstick. She jerks from one side to the other, as though trying to latch on to
some invisible thought strand. “Come on, girls,” she manages, before rushing to
the window. “Get up. Get! Goodness, how did I produce such lazy… let me open
this window. It’s New York time. Get your clothes on. The car has to… no time
for breakfast. Let’s go!”
“What?” Missy and I start at once.
Grace just stares blankly, her mouth hung open like an untended puppet’s.
“We’re going to New York, Babies!”
Mom dances across the room, smiling. I notice a dark ring under her eye. The
purple skin pokes out beneath a thick layer of pale foundation.
“Where’s Jim?” I turn to Grace. Her
knees pressed against her forehead, she rocks back and forth, whispering
something I can’t make out.
“The bus leaves in an hour.” Mom
jiggles the almost unhinged doorknob before exiting. “We’re done with this
place for good.”
As the door slams shut, I whirl
around on the balls of my feet. The floor resists my calloused pads, firing
splinters into the softer areas of my toes. Missy meets my stare with a scowl.
“Fuck this shit!” she snaps, tossing her sheets to the floor. I don’t respond
because there is nothing to say. It’s been a while, but we’ve made this move
before. Sure, the details vary slightly each time, but we’ve got the gist down
pat: four sets of clothes each, Grace’s stuffed dolphin she calls Daisy Girl,
toiletries, a few books, my ten-year-old denim knapsack and my new journal with
the words The Sky’s the Limit written
in cursive on the cover. Missy grumbles, stepping into her jeans from the day before.
“Will we have real school in New
York?” Grace stands next to me, two fingers lodged between her lips.
“Yes,” I nod, stopping to yank her
hand from her mouth. “You wanna look like a rabbit when you’re my age?”
She pulls Daisy Girl from the pile
I’ve arranged on the floor. “No.” She hugs the stuffed animal to her chest.
“We’ll actually go there? To school?”
“Uh-huh. Remember?” It’s true. In New
York City, when we stay with Grandma Marta and Grandpa Kal, school is not Mom
gathering us into the kitchen at midnight to help her learn the lines to a play
she hopes to star in some day. It isn’t me yelling at Missy because she’s
filled out Grace’s state administered home exam in her own fifteen-year-old
handwriting. School, when we live with Grandma Marta and Grandpa Kal, is that
place we go and, for six hours each day, pretend that we are normal girls…
girls who know very ordinary lives.
~~~~
The engine rumbles beneath us as we
say goodbye to the gray ramshackle we’ve come to accept as our home. Grace taps
her fingernail against the chilled car window. She blows warm breath on the
glass and, before the moisture can evaporate, draws a tiny heart with a smiley
face in the middle. Missy sits with her legs up, her forehead pressed against
her knees, the music from her headphones competing with the asthmatic car
engine.
“Mom?” I whisper, reaching across the
cup holder where an opened twenty-four ounce can of beer has been sitting for
almost a month. As I brush Mom’s cheek, sticky residue from her foundation
sinks between the cracks on my index finger.
She turns to me and smiles. “Yes,
Bear?” I see she is only ten miles above the speed limit.
“What do you want me to tell Grandma
and Grandpa?”
“About what?” Her eyes are level with
mine, but I know she isn’t really looking at me. I’m more like a blank screen,
something stable and empty for her to project on to. Once again, I point to the
purple ring under her eye.
“Oh.” She pauses and, for a moment,
reverts back to the road. “Remember when I played Blanche? You remember, in A Streetcar Named Desire, back when we
lived in Roanoke.”
“Yes,” I nod. “I remember.”
“Grandma and Grandpa came to see me then.
They sat with you and Missy right up there in the front row.” Tilting her head
back, Mom shuts her eyes as if to hold the memory still: keep it in present
time. “Your daddy carried Missy backstage afterwards. I don’t know if she ever
got to see my final fight with Stanley, but you, Bear, you stayed awake for the
whole show! That’s why we’re going to New York now.” Mom takes hold of my hand,
her bony fingers disappearing into the spaces between mine. I try not to flinch
as the tips of her nails dig into my palm. “All we need’s a little time and
money, Bri.” She pauses, then swivels, looking back at Grace and Missy. Both
have dozed off. “Time and money.”
Feet up on the dashboard, I take my
journal out from my beat-up knapsack. I’m fifty pages into this one already –
fifty pages of thoughts, hopes, stories, some real, some made up. New York, I
write in sprawling letters. New
beginnings?
The Giveaway:
1 paperback copy US only
1 ebook copy any format
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