Paper

We’re in the kitchen
Mom is making grape leaves,
a Lebanese meal
with rice and meat rolled in a leaf.
It’s a big deal when someone in the family makes them
because the job isn’t easy
and all four of us go crazy for them.
Melanie is on the phone debating
about what summer camp will be like this year.

Dad is on his laptop typing up some report.
I still don’t really know what he does.
I just know he wakes up at five every morning,
gets home at seven,
and drinks until he decides it’s time
to end the day
by falling asleep watching the nightly News.
I write an essay for Psych
about the detrimental effects of apathy.

We sit to eat and she asks how everyone’s day was.
We take turns,
moving clockwise, starting with Dad,
explaining the monotony of our last twenty-four hours.
We run out of “oh”s and “ahuh”s
and we retire the conversation.
Leaving us with the one option of staring
at white wallpaper filled with millions of little black flowers
that covers each wall.
Everyone agrees to silently hate it,
but nobody ever bothers to take it down.
They’re almost afraid the vines would strangles them
if they tried.

We’re in the kitchen
Mom is making spaghetti,
which we like enough to swallow.
Melanie is texting someone,
maybe one of the boys
she has suddenly taken an interest in;
they no longer have cooties.
Dad is on the phone trying to defend himself for something.
Eventually, he walks off,
lowering his voice.
I’m working on college essays.
Everyone at school
talks about schools in New York and Boston,
about internships and SAT scores.
I am applying only to schools Dad’s job can afford,
and Mom doesn’t want me out of Illinois,
or in Chicago.
But I write as if my words
can get me out of this town.

I write about the conventionalism of suburban life,
focusing my eyes on the black and white wallpaper,
and how the edges are starting to peel,
and how no one is talking about the water damage
from last week’s storm
that makes lumps in some of the flowers.
I switch off staring at the paper and my computer screen,
shoving pasta down my throat,
Dad still on that call.
Melanie’s eyes still glued to her phone.
Mom stares straight into the depths of black vines.

Mom and I are in the kitchen.
She sits, waiting for the pizza man.
Melanie sits in her room,
crying
about some boy she’s only liked for a week.
Dad is at a bar, we’re guessing.
Mom doesn’t tell us he got laid off,
but the cheap pizza with cheese detached from the dough
fills in the blanks.

And I, I just stare at the splots of black on the wall,
hoping the chaos of the scene
will sober me from the case of beer I stole into my room
after hearing about Cheryl getting into Harvard,
and figuring out,
I’m stuck with community college.
I tell Mom and my empty stomach
I’m not hungry.
Mom is too tired to protest.
She just puts another slice on her plate,
and hands me the rest of the box to bring to Melanie.

We’re in the kitchen.
Mom tells us we’re moving
to the other side of town,
leaving out the words have to.
I like to believe
the water has sunk behind the paper
and created some sort of toxin.
Even if I’m wrong,
I know poison thrives in these walls,
feeding off the remnants of this family’s corpse.
We skip dinner.

We’re in the kitchen.
Mom’s biting her nails.
Melanie is staring at the floor.
I’m waiting.
Dad’s not here.

Mom’s voice is hollow
when she says there’s been an accident,
and Dad won’t be home for dinner.

We’re in the kitchen,
and so are the neighbors
and family members I didn’t know I had.
Mom made grape leaves,
and everyone picks at them,
using their quality
as the sole conservational piece.
I say I’m not hungry.

Aunt Janet tells us
what nice wallpaper you have.
I nod, as I envision the walls
up in flames.

Mom and Melanie
are on the porch, going out to the car.
I’m in the kitchen,
staring at the pores of this paper.
I know it’s not at fault.
It’s not the root of our mistakes.
But for 20 years,
All it’s served
is the purpose of a mocking bird.

So standing on a stool,
I find the worst of the peeling corners.
I shred the flowers,
the vines,
the black and white
and watch it crumble.

Stepping down,
I admire my work.
And I think,
about the cookie-cutter conversations,
the Hallmark birthday cards with nothing more than a signature,
the way I was always told you can do better but never
it’ll get better,
the absence of our tears at my father’s funeral.
All we mourned,
was a placeholder.

And we,
are as thin and torn
as the scraps in front of me.

Megan Froehlich is a twenty-year-old Music Business Student at Berklee Online living in New Jersey. She loves the simple things like getting coffee but also knows it can be the simple things sometimes that feel really hard, like getting out of bed or getting a slightly lower grade than expected. Through all her struggles, she finds comfort in spending time with loved ones and writing. So far, she has been published in Coffee People Zine and Bridge Ink but looks forward to publishing her novel soon.