What's Wrong
By Ella Wainwright
“Nothing,” I say out loud, but I think of the time I went to my uncle’s house and didn’t go past the doorway. I remember it like it’s happening. I creep up the crumbling front steps, the ever-growing pile of leaves crunching under my sneakers. The roar of a football game on the T.V. inside drowns out the soft idling of the car behind me. My shivering hands clutch at the warm squash casserole, drawing it closer to my nose. It’s not nearly enough to cover the stench of nicotine. My grandmother waves from the car with her free hand—the other one still holds her cellphone to her ear—as I reach up to knock. A booming voice calls for me to come in, not my uncle’s, but his friend’s. The screen door creaks open at only a slight touch. My dad fixed the T.V. that lays against the wall; it bathes the room in the flashing lights of cheering fans. My uncle asks who it is, tilting his head towards me, but his eyes stay glued to the T.V. A cigarette flares at his lips, held by his girlfriend, who taps her foot on the carpet restlessly. Her constantly glazed eyes dart around in a dazed pattern. Mother of two, and leaving soon.
I explain that “Nana sent food” and hold up the pan as if anyone is paying me a lick of attention. With an arm that tossed five-year-old me playfully in the air only a decade ago, he gestures to the card table by the door and tells me to place it down. Crinkling my nose, I push aside a full ashtray and two empty beer bottles to set down the pan. I linger for only a second, but the football game continues with blank stares from its audience. With bounding steps, I reach the car much quicker than it took me to get to the door, and I slide into the passenger seat. Nana is off her phone, so I tell her that they said thank you for the food. As we drive away, I hope selfishly to not have to go back again.
My uncle is not the only one like this; there are an unlimited number of people who treat life and people just as carelessly. I used to know a boy, very different from my uncle in many ways, but with the same attitude. His actions left a still-healing wound on my heart. Unlike now, I was quick to tell him what was wrong, despite that he didn’t ask. I called him with tears already in my eyes and a list of transgressions typed out in bullet points on my phone. I am brought back there, to that other phone call, the sun setting outside my window. I can hear his car engine growling in the background of the call. It doesn’t take long for me to get through my list, and half of the time is taken by me wiping at my tears in order to see the blurring screen. Writing the list took me double the time.
I finish talking with a sniff. He sighs. My heart sits vulnerable in the connection between our phones. He tells me he’ll take care of it, that it won’t ever happen again, but I don’t want him to fix things. I want him to care. I want him to reach out despite the miles between us and hug me. In the end, his promises shattered like glass in a fire; he couldn’t fix anything by keeping secrets. I regret giving him my heart, and I wonder how much of him was a lie.
“Ella, what’s wrong?” he asks again. I want to push him away, but his question is an outstretched hand and I want nothing more than to take it. He knows people like my uncle too, so I tell him:
“Everything.” Yet I can’t help but think back to my grandmother’s car. I still see it; it sits in front of my uncle’s house every afternoon, with incredibly few exceptions. The car’s shiny, white paint reflects the setting sun, a stark rainbow of contrast to the rust-colored walls of his house. She shuffles inside with a fresh dish of food and leaves with a basket overflowing with laundry. The days she’s sick, our phone rings, and she asks my father to do menial tasks around the house. I don’t understand why she continues helping him, but she does. Day after day, no matter how much his house smells like lingering cigarette smoke.
Everything feels wrong, but people like my grandmother still exist, still persevere, still love. My boy is one of those people, and I think of him. I see the same strength in him everyday. He sits on the other side of the phone now, and waits for me to answer. A sheen of tears shades my eyes. I hesitate to let them fall, thinking of the danger of making my heart vulnerable again. But this is not the same. He has given his heart equally to me; open, bare, and honest. I remember seeing him cry for the first time—the only time I’ve seen him cry despite the tragedies that I know weigh heavy on his shoulders. Each tear that slipped down his face that day held oceans of promises—of reassurances—of love. Our tears mixed as we held tight to one another, not knowing if we could make it. But we got through that moment together, and every one since then. His resilience gives me hope for the future, for happiness, and for my own resilience.
He asks me what’s wrong, and I think of love and loss and joy and heartbreak and laughter and pain and peace and grief. It’s all way too much to answer the question, and it’s not enough at all.
“Will you please tell me what’s wrong?” His tone is soft, sweet, and peaceful, like what I thought lying in the clouds would be like as a kid.
I pause. I know he will understand. He’s seen what’s wrong with the world too. “I’m worried about my sister,” I confess in a whisper. “I got a call.” I got a call, and I’ll continue to get calls like these my entire life. Calls of someone dying, someone dead, someone lying, or someone fled. I know that whenever I get them, he will be the next person I call, no matter what’s wrong.
Ella Wainwright is a graduate of Regent University with a bachelor’s in English. She has been writing stories since she was a little girl, but this is her first submission. She hopes to one day publish further works of poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction. Her dream is to one day publish a novel of her own.
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