Family secrets. Underneath the bones. I wake up from a dream. A unborn twin with blond hair. He reaches out to me. I neglected him in the dream world. He felt like a stranger.
I swallow blue pills and it reminds me of my father’s addiction to Xanax. My mother enabling him for years. I remember the time she gave me a few in a small Altoids red tin box. They jangled with the powder residue left over from the mints. I remember swallowing them in the bathroom, the cool porcelain sink under my palms, my cheeks flushed pink. Blue tile underneath my feet. It was only in bathrooms where I felt safest to cry.
I flew out to New Jersey for Christmas to spend time with his Italian mother from Queens. Petite, dark hair and dark eyes. His two sisters did not like me, nor did his mother really. She told me I didn’t know how to dance when salsa music played on the stereo in the kitchen. His grandfather was an ancient puff who reminisced about his early days and run ins with the mob. He made me crave salami.
I remember his Slavic friend Sasha and how we drove to New York City to dance in a dark club covered in sweat. How he would grab me when we danced, dipping me back with his tan and chiseled arms. Black eyes, black spikey hair. Too much gel again.
I remember getting my eyebrows threaded in the mall by an Indian woman. My hair was a short bob. I had cut most of it off. I remember when I came back to the apartment he held in his breath. He preferred my long hair.
I remember not knowing much but enjoying the feeling of sex and our bodies merging in our North Hollywood apartment with the white walls and white carpet. I remember the building was a sick green looking color. There was Beth from Chicago who lived downstairs. A short red bob haircut who smoked cigarettes and was a die hard fan of Robert Palmer. I remember the homeless man who sometimes would sleep in my parking spot and I would have to get Dan to come down the stairs to make sure I made it okay inside.
The screens that covered the windows.
It wasn’t the first time I had taken Xanax in a bathroom. It started again when we got back from Jersey. I hated his family, how they made me felt and he knew it.