Post #171 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
All Things Labor — Memoir Contest – First Place Story, Labor Day Category
Women’s Memoirs is pleased to publish the First Place prize winner in our September 2011 Memoir Writing Contest, Labor Day Category.
Keryn Rose’s story just might take you back to your first love with all its emotional turmoil.
Congratulations Keryn.
We invite you to leave Keryn a note in the Comments section below her story.
Memoir Contest First Place, Labor Day
LABOR DAY PAINS
by Keryn Rose
Dawn was threatening in the distance. Just the tiniest traces of light settled into the ridge of the horizon. Sorrow crept into my throat and sat there. The engine of my car had been humming for the past 10 minutes, waiting for me to leave, but I couldn’t budge. We sat, hands piled together, looking out into the distance, beyond the windshield and into our future. Our breath met in synchrony. We had run out of things to say.
“How long does it take to get there?” he asked again.
“About four hours” I sighed.
Labor Day weekend would be our last together. I should have been excited to leave for college. To go away from home for the very first time. But I couldn’t move past the heartache. The horror of being away from someone I loved like I had never loved before in my life. I put my head on his shoulder and tried to ignore the slow warning of time.
“What are you going to do today?”
I whispered my inane question into the silence of the moment. He laughed sarcastically and shook his head. We had been together for a whole year. Falling in love quickly. From the first time we met. That first party where he shone in rainbow colors against the pale treachery of the party crowd. His gentleness. Kindness. He was soothing. He held me over and over again. Looking at me with those orange eyes. Promising me I was wonderful through mere suggestion. In his stillness, I felt rooted deeply. He was an old soul. Wise and unnoticed. Smart and gifted, he wrote poetry in the form of lyrics and would occasionally write for me, binding me to him in a way he could never guess. With him I felt a strength of love I had never felt.
“Sorry.” I took back my question. The thought of everything began to swell out of control, flooding me with emotions that came spilling over suddenly. I looked into Ricardo’s concerned face.
“I don’t want to leave you!” came bursting forth, crashing over the moment in waves. Sobs flying as he held my face against his neck. I couldn’t stop. I clenched onto him tightly. And then I felt his body cave in above mine. Shaking just as mine was. Heaving with grief. Truth wrapping around truth. I heard his quiet cries cradle my own. His end to my beginning. An affectionate spooning echo. My sadness was his and his mine. I had never seen him cry before. Not even close. We stayed wrapped up together until our tears began to simmer and steam settled into a kiss. Our lips, wet and salty, drenched with every emotion possible. Worlds full of meaning. Something completely our own. I looked at him with strength then with weakness. Unable to move, I would have never left. He jerked himself out of the car and rushed off. Almost angrily. I cried again. An aftershock of tears before I drove back home in the new light of dawn.
Two hundred and fifty miles of distance was a mere speedbump in the world of plans I had laid out for us both. At 17 years old, I was certain that Ricardo was the man for me. I made scrap books romanticizing each moment of our history, love tapes of ‘our songs.’ We spent hours curled up by the phone. Letter after letter I sent, thought after thought, plan after plan for when we’d be together. I was hyper-focused. Thinking of little outside my plan (maybe an occasional game of spades and memorizing every word of the new Nas album). Indeed, I was going to be the momentary breadwinner. The one pulling in the money for our little unit until he was able to parlay his talent for lyrics into an actual career in the rap industry. I believed in him. Faithfully. Religiously. And I knew we could do it. I was so inspired by this notion, that it drove me to succeed in school. I pulled out a 4.0 my first year, a firm foundation for us to build on. I figured since I was the one with the opportunity for higher education, I was going to seize it… milk it… for all of it was worth.
But something began to tilt just a bit. A very subtle lean. A slow angle that either opened or closed, shifting movement into a certain direction. Calls were fewer. Excuses more. Words turned dry. My voice was stretching. Bland with repetition. Love stretched thin becomes desperation. I could hear the sound of my own voice trailing. Sickened by the pitch of cliché…. “Where were you? Why didn’t you call?” Battle cries for others. Not for us. What was this becoming? Had I missed the signs on the door? I started to think back. Little words suddenly became big. Little side gestures now grown into the forefront of my mind. That time he said “College is like the next chapter… you should enjoy it.” Something about the word enjoy was painted differently in hindsight. Something stale about his posture throughout his last visit. I ignored it all like a champion, and was left confused, flailing in its sudden depth.
But despite the cold sum of all of his subtleties, one day in particular, things really took a nose dive. I came up spitting up blood and venom. Another layer of freshness and hope viciously stripped away. The sucking fondness of nature. And so it started with a simple phone call. And a simple gut instinct. I had paged Ricardo on his beeper three times the night before with no return call (‘beeper’… wow, what a throwback). I was on my fourth try of the next day and was going a bit crazy. He had been slow to return calls, but had never completely missed a day. I decided I had no choice but to call his mother.
“Hey Mom… how you doing?”
I barely bothered to phase out the sadness and dejection growing comfortable in my voice.
“I’m good baby. How are you? How’s school?” she was warm and welcoming as always.
“It’s fine. Listen, have you seen Ricardo? I was paging him last night and I haven’t heard from him.”
“Oh…. Well, he came home last night, but I haven’t really seen him today. He left early. He didn’t call you back?”
“No…”
Silence. And that’s when I knew something was up. The gaping hole in that damn silence.
“Well don’t go worrying, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. You worry about school, you hear?”
“Okay.”
And the day went by without a call. His lack of calling was evident in each second throughout the day. Matter of fact, if I was a country committing holidays to my calendar, that day would be one of the first to make the page. I took the whole day off, could do nothing but dedicate the fullness of time to his non-call. I celebrated it in each falling minute of the clock. Happy absolutely no phone call from Ricardo day! Whoo hoo! I strangled myself with it’s presence. Set off fireworks inside of my gut. It was a day that would never end. And so finally I had to share. Driven by impulse to find the source of it all. They day wouldn’t end without it’s beginning, after all…
It didn’t take much digging to find dirt. I called good old Misty from high school.
“I saw your boy the other day, you guys aren’t together anymore?” she asked before I had even mentioned his name. Way before.
Key, ignition, rev heart, pulsing motor in ears. What to say? Swallowed hard. Gas fumes. Don’t go yet.
“Well…”
That’s enough, let it come.
“The new girl is busss- ted! Well, no that’s not true, she’s kinda cute in the face, but chubby. Kinda young too…”
Young? I was 17 already being left for a younger girl? Kinda cute? Chubby? There was another girl in existence? A girl? The words hit at me altogether, jumbled, like the assaults of angry cops in an anxious mob. I had never even considered the possibility of another girl….Not once! I had been shakily concerned with his abandonment to his own life, his own independence, his own stubborn intentions, NOT to another girl!
“Young?”
All I could say was the last thing she said.
“Whatever. She was wack.”
“Wack?”
This couldn’t be happening. My breath left me. Just disappeared. And not in the glittery way that something disappears, leaving behind a magical fog. There was just suddenly no breath in my body. No air. No pulse. No thought. No nerve endings. No sensory response. No emotion. Nothing went in or out. I was dead. Suspended inside of a moment. Wedged within a rubbery angle of time that was pulling me back. Back. Back. As far back as tugging spirits could pull. HEAVE HEAVE HEAVE, HO! They released me, catapulting into darkness. Bursting into another dimension I had never imagined before. Everything came streaming back with new intensity. New force. It was as if my veins had been directly injected with the purest form of emotional steroids. Something new, ripe and green. Jealousy. I had never felt it like this before. More potent than heroin. It overtook my body. I can’t nearly recall how the phone call ended, I must have made some excuse to go. Nowhere. To crash into my room, now a prisoner. Fuming, foaming at the mouth. A mad dog in a cage, I ripped notes off the wall. Tore up posters. Broke things I didn’t know were even in my room. Screamed blasphemies to the high heavens. Hot tears condensing against the cold fury in my face. What could I do? What to do? I had felt fear before, anger and sadness too. But not this. This was a new monster.
Although unbelievable at the time was the lesson in time about time’s ability to dissipate and heal. To teach and reveal. The Labor Day pains turned stained memory led to ultimate growth and more mature realizations about the nature of love and life. I’m glad that almost 20 years later, I can recall with a smile.
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