Chapter 1: Catch Me If You Can
I sigh heavily and almost tiredly if the news hadn't struck me clean from all the negativity, today is my day and my day only. If it hadn't been for my hard work I wouldn't have landed myself in such a small hole of possibilities.
And well, mortality.
Long gone are the days of me having to brush past my fatigued mother hunched over the kitchen table, bills hugging her from all sides as if trying to take over every last bit of hope. Long gone are the weeks that I'd spend in my room hugging my poor cat, Miles so dearly like he had been the cure for millions suffering from the very same satanic disease.
Cancer.
It's tiring.
Having to explain to everyone through awkward silence following the slur that their pity does nothing to help me. It was settled. The word being nothing but bad, no one faces its perks.
The free food, the excessive amount of attention, the pitiful stares followed by me hopefully leaving class and skipping tests automatically passing under Mrs. Dirani's watch.
No one understood that other than Natasha, my best friend in the entire universe.
Natasha, she always stood out to me with her irrational fear of the outside world, just about anything that moves makes her shake in her crocs. Like that one time she passed out because a squirrel touched her food, she was so sure it carried rabies as a spider did to its babies.
She met me in the cancer ward drenched head-to-toe in a caramel latte, I remember it like yesterday when it first sunk in how this could really impact my life. No one was bothered, or really around to care for me, the girl who will have 10 inches of 4c curls she so desperately tried to grow out now get amputated.
Natasha understood that as she had faced this battle from a different perspective, her mother had lost to cancer, she had told me in a very heated argument, 'I can't lose you too'. I vividly remember me being so relaxed with the idea of the death only a few weeks into knowing her history with the lethal fate I had coming.
Then like a wrecking ball of ecstatic god-like strength that pulled me out of the bed, change the sheets into sweet-scented ones, collect every piece of trash my room settled with for weeks. The fetid room was cleaner than my mothers, I would break down and call Natasha.
Only to see her with freshly done braids with a crown-shaped dreadlock cuff every few inches of hair, different colors would be associated with her clothing and shoes at times. She had the right to feel beautiful of course, I just wanted to taste the sweetness of that beauty a regular African American woman is allowed to feel.
The feel of braids getting tightened, pulled against my will, only to have the outcome worth the pain.
That's what I have come to learn this past year, my one year anniversary of beating cancer. Five years of having to hope that not a single cell in my body is wishing upon my death, luckily they weren't.
The best part surely was the little scruff that skimmed my scalp, thickening over the course of the season, and my auntie's ridiculous magic coconut oil.
Today as I hurriedly got ready the few inches of thickened hair felt heavier than ever, and I accepted the weight gladly. The little picture of me in a hospital gown hung up on the mirror yelled at me to go do something with my non-bald self. Only if she knew she was just as beautiful.
"Viola! Help me!" Tommy, my four-year-old brother burst into my room giggling on the way screeched.
Then followed him, Nathan, sprinting just as fast as the toddler only to come to a halt when he noticed my fingers skimming the borders of the polaroid. He lets out a breath of fresh air followed by a soft whisper of my name, "Viola,"
I glance towards the kid hiding behind me and urged him to pass Nathan as he wasn't paying attention. Tommy took the opportunity to stumble past the swarthy boy.
I stared harder into the mirror listening to Tommy's final words to be heard between the rampage going down in the kitchen, "Catch me if you can!" his voice drowns.
My equally dark complexion made my eyes stay afloat and shine brighter with happiness than any other born star, I was a star and today is my day to explode to a billion others.
"Viola," Nathan calls again.
I sigh and push past him, I don't have time to lose my sanity in those hazel eyes that make me drift into my comfort zone, easily spilling any secrets I might have. Natasha had exceptionally lengthened her talk about how siblings are off-limits, and I mean I understand. Which is why when he did attempt to use his power, his end of the scale, he lost to me pulling away.
Today is my day, my family cheered my name as I enter the fully decorated living room, a sign mistaken for a birthday and sweet treats everywhere, that was a story for another day.
— New chapter is coming soon — Write a review