So I have this writing assignment for class and it is to recall a memory from
any time of your life that will never escape your mind.
I read it to my friend right before I found out I have to read it to all of my classmates. I want input on it before it's due, help me and give me feedback!
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I will remember before I forget, forget that. The music that boomed in my ears and the lyrics that swam through my thoughts were interrupted quickly. When the telephone in the kitchen rang this loudly, I usually just drowned the annoying tone out by turning my music up louder. When the ringing stopped and I heard my mother’s voice answer the person on the other line, I sunk back into the online game I had been playing every day of this summer.
Until, I felt my mother’s grip on my shoulder with a somewhat confused glance. She held the small, black, cordless phone to me and I assumed she was surprised I had a phone call. I was rather surprised, myself. I’d just moved to this new town about two weeks before this summer began and hadn’t heard from my ‘friends’ since. Stubborn and somewhat depressed about the abandonment of my ‘friends’, I made no attempt to meet new people. Hence, sleeping until three o’clock in the afternoon and the zombie gaze I held onto my monitor until three o’clock in the morning.
I plucked the headphones from my ears and looked up to my mother, then to the phone. I mouthed the words, ‘Who is it?’ and her response was a simple shrug as she turned on her heel back to the kitchen. I sat there in my chair, staring clueless at the phone I now held in my hand for about half a minute before I actually put it to my ear and spoke.
“Hello?” I spoke quietly into the phone, spinning my chair back to face my monitor. And right as I reached for the mouse of my computer, I heard a grown woman’s voice call my full name in response.
“Cortney? Cortney Analisa (I have my real names here)?” I froze, questioning why a fully grown woman would ask for me, the teenager of the house. It couldn’t be a telemarketer because; they don’t know your middle names. I felt my face growing red; not out of anger or embarrassment but out of fear and hope. In a very strange way, I was sure I already knew who this was. I swallowed hard.
“Hey Cortney,” Her southern accent was deep and it turned from a questioning and wondering tone, to a friendly, familiar tone. I could tell she thought she knew me but when I moved from Florida, I only knew my family and the kids down the street. “It’s Analisa.” Her voice interrupted my thoughts as she said my middle name like it was her own.
“Yeah,” I paused, stopping myself to refrain from saying something rude. “Who?” I asked even though I knew perfectly well what she had just said.
“Your aunt,” She replied quickly, laughing to herself. “Your father’s sister.” As those words flowed so freely and quickly through her lips, I was surprised at how sudden that was. And at the same time, I wanted to scream in her ear, hang up on her or just drop the phone. I felt my throat tense until it was hard to breath; my face grew as hot as it had always been when I spent all day at the beach with no sunscreen. And I couldn’t say anything at all, even though there were so many words rushing through my mind and trying to pry my dry lips open.
“Take it,” I told my mom, who had sat down next to me right before this woman had told me she was my father’s sister. My mother parted her lips to speak but I repeated what I’d just said, not meaning for it to be so loud. Without hesitation, my mother took the phone from me as I dropped it, with no care if she would’ve taken it or not. I tried taking deep breaths as my heart beat as quickly as it had when I’d found out I had brothers and sisters I’d never met.
This woman, my thoughts curled into one large string,
can hold the secret to where my father has been. She can tell me why he hasn’t called, why he left so soon, why he- “Who is this?” My mother demanded into the phone and I watched her, standing up and pacing the living room. My vision blurred as tears stung through my eyes as they raced each other down the slope of my cheeks and only made my face grow warmer. So many emotions ran through my body. I felt a sting of pain, a stab through the heart, undeniable joy, bouncing excitement and emotions that probably don’t even have a name. My mother looked to me, sitting on the staircase that led upstairs as I stared at her blankly, chewing my lower lip and forgetting for a moment that tears were streaking my face. They fell freely now, I kept wiping my face and surprisingly found salty water on my sleeve every time. I breathed heavily, my throat making a weird wheezing sound as if I was hyperventilating.
After a few minutes, I was still breathing heavily but in a pattern I’d gotten used to. I reached my hand out, asking my mother for the phone again so I could return to my aunt, the woman I was named after. The woman in my baby book that I don’t remember ever meeting, the woman that I’m claimed to look like. My mother knew that if I stood, I might fall so; she stood from her chair and moved quickly through the living room to the staircase, slipping the phone into my grip.
“H-hey.” I laughed nervously, afraid I may have frightened her away. To my luck, she was still on the other line, laughing with me.
“So how’ve you been?” She asked and I laughed again, not out of nervousness but because it was such a funny question to ask. Out of these 14 years, the first question she asks is ‘how’ve you been’. I answer her and her next question was what I expected, what I was pushed down by hope for. “So, would you like to know about your father?”
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