by Hana Sor
Isabella Lovestory, her head leaning against a window, woke up on a hospital bed. She opened her eyes. They felt glued shut to her like scotch tape. She did not know for how long she had slept. Edith Piaf’s La Vie En Rose filtered in from the hallway, and a strong scent of antiseptic hit her nose, making her eyes close once again.
She was sitting on this hospital bed, a fruit cup to her right and an odd stuffed bunny sitting atop her knees. It was a white bunny with red eyes that looked at her curiously. Its fur stuck up a bit, and she reached out to feel its ears. They were long and flat against her skin. Amid all the sickness that was no doubt outside of this room, she felt that this bunny was quite nice, almost sweetly encouraging her to get better. She wasn’t ill, or so she had thought when she first came to the emergency room. She had called her only friend Marjorie, because quite frankly, she felt alone. She told her that she had had a fever for a few days and that she needed a ride. Now, she found herself in a hospital room with a window that was so stained that the only thing visible was the cedar tree that would sway every now and then when the wind blew.
Marjorie agreed to her request to be taken to a place that wasn’t so isolating, and now, sunlight was streaming in through the window of a white room she had never been in before. She turned 78 yesterday. She had just remembered this, and saw a note on her lap that said Happy Birthday Isabella! With a Biscoff on top of a napkin. Days of food were left uneaten on the table next to her, and Marjorie had fallen asleep on the chair next to her, a crossword puzzle slipping from her hands. She turned around. C'est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie, Edith sang. She wanted to get closer. She would remember the song playing on the radio when she was a child, the soft hum of the fan her parents brought out in the summer all coming back to her. This was the sound that held her in her arms, that sound that permeated the air and made her big heart swell.
She lifted herself up off the bed, her body feeling different. She was big. She always knew this, and people would tell her every time they saw her, all in their own ways. “Hippo”, “Belt-breaker”, “Porky”. As a child her parents would take her to the doctor and every single time, they would walk out with a new sheet of instructions detailing foods, liquids, and medication she needed to take to get slimmer. She never really knew what she was eating; her parents never trusted her and always knew what was best. Now, however, she saw herself thinner. Not thin, but thinner. Her jowls dangled like ornaments. Her hands looked smaller, her fingers more slender, her one lone silver band hanging loosely on her middle finger. Her skin was a mass that traveled over her muscles, sitting in all the wrong places, making her clothes fit like a shapeless mound every time.
She walked over to the door, its hinges squeaking loudly, but Marjorie couldn't hear very well so on she went, dozing off, her head tipping back every now and then when the radiator would pause.
Isabella stepped out, the automatic doors sliding and the fresh April breeze hit her face, a touch of warmth making her nose scrunch with unknown optimism. Her feet squelched against the wet grass. It must have been raining the day before, she thought to herself as she walked along the sidewalk, a shirtless boy skateboarding on the opposite side.
She had lived her whole life in this town, but she didn’t go outside much. Her parents would never let her, and even as an adult, their words stayed with her, running after her, always behind even when she turned around. From an early age they had decided who she was, who she would be, and how she would die. Her life was a planning book, a calendar counting down days. As a child she would not be allowed to leave unless it was for school or extracurricular activities, which they always thought to be a nuisance, but they didn't want her to look like more of an outcast than she already was. Every time she would wake up in the morning, she would log her weight in a notebook after weighing herself on a scale. She didn’t remember much, and every time she thought of her childhood she saw washes of gray and white, slanted, italicized figures talking at her. She was never given sweets. She would see her other classmates receive stockings full of candy canes, chocolates that melted in your mouth and stuck to the corners , licorice that got stuck in your teeth, gum that got stuck in your hair.
She received spandex that stuck to her thighs.
She lived her whole life like this, stuck in her own childhood. She had never tried a sweet. Her mother said that they were sinful, especially chocolate, because chocolate meant sex and sex meant that you were worth shit. She never thought to ask her mother about what she did to have her. She never even thought to question the box of Turtles her parents would have every night after they waved her off to bed. She would always hear them through the thin walls, gleefully finishing off chocolates with red wine. And always, like clockwork, when she got up to get a glass of water long after they had fallen asleep, she would see the whole table scraped of any remnants of that sickly sweet, sinful dessert.
She had never married, had never had a boyfriend, none that she had arranged anyway.
They would always turn her around, give her a pat on the back, and tell her that there was someone out there for her, always somewhere, but they were looking for something else, and she didn’t have that. She always knew what it was. She didn’t blame them. She remembered a long time ago, back when it was her 20th birthday, and she got set up on a blind date with Jorge Ramon, a tall, lean man with a pudgy nose who lived right across the street. He would always blow kisses at her from afar, and she would shut the door so tightly, a small grin appearing on her face every time. She didn’t eat for three days before the date. She wore her best dress, a scoop neckline with red draping down her legs. She was still big, but she had cinched as much as she could, and she was too overcome with excitement to care. All dinner he talked to her, his eyes never leaving hers. She didn’t know what to expect, nor how she felt. All she could focus on was declining when the waiter would suggest appetizers. After he walked her home, he asked if he could come inside. Her parents weren’t home, so she had agreed. When they came to her bedroom, he had asked her to take off her clothes. She turned off the light, but he had stopped her, reassuring her that he thought she was beautiful. She turned on the light shamfeully. He never called her the next day.
She had never really done anything memorable. She had never seen a play that made her cry, had never given herself a haircut she later regretted, gone to the zoo, fallen in love, worn something risque. She had never traveled to another country. She had never experimented with what she liked, never been kissed, never felt pleasure nor heartache.
As she walked, she passed by mannequins waving in form-fitting wedding gowns and bustiers that made them look like pinup dolls. She saw herself in the reflection. A clerk caught her looking, and, ashamed, she turned around, back onto the sidewalk.
Isabella felt herself getting lightheaded, and her hospital gown blew this way and that. She sat down on a bench that looked across the neighborhood she had always lived in. The same man sold newspapers beside the corn nut stand, and the same group of seniors were walking hand in hand to their yoga classes. The sky was dotted with clouds, and a bluebird perched herself on a lamppost.
She felt a figure plop down next to her on the bench, and when she slowly looked to her left, a small girl, no more than six years old, wearing a baby pink shift dress with a ribbon in her hair, was opening a box, a box she knew all too well. They were Turtles.
She had a small smile on her face, her short brown hair tangled from playing, and she carefully pulled the chocolates out of their encasing. The little girl looked up at her, a thoughtful gaze coasting across her eyes. She stretched out her short arm, a Turtle on top of her palm, gesturing to Isabella. “Wanth one?”, she asked, her mouth full with sticky caramel. Isabella stared down at the chocolate, her brown eyes matching the color of the sweet. She smiled at the girl, taking the chocolate carefully from her grasp. “They’re my favorite.”, Isabella said, opening her mouth to take a bite. Her eyes closed.
The next morning, Isabella was back in her bed, unmoving. Marjorie was in the bathroom calling her nephew, and the trees blew all the same outside. Nurses frantically checked her diagnostics, and time slowed down. Isabella was drifting away, to a place with chocolates and love and little girls who would offer her sweets from their small hands. She couldn’t hear the nurses, all she could do was look down at her hands and wait. She thought about her parents. She thought about Jorge Ramon, and about the little girl with the pink shift dress. And even now, sitting limp on this hospital bed, she thought of Turtles. A nurse waved in her face, then resumed her work with her heart monitor. She closed her eyes. And then suddenly, hidden in her molar, almost imperceptible, she found a piece of caramel stuck to her teeth.
Hana Sor is a high schooler and creative fiction writer attending Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. When she is not writing, she enjoys watching films, collecting body lotions, and listening to Lana Del Rey. Hana is assistant literary editor of her schools literary magazine.