Talk Vomit

By Leyelle

When I was twelve years old, I switched countries with my mother and younger siblings, from our old home to the islands.

I spent my first night in a new world on a dirty mattress in an abandoned building.

I wasn’t weak then. I couldn’t be. But I cried. I cried because nothing was as it should have been.

But that was okay. Cry a little, then stand up taller and grow — from “little girl” to woman in a few years that felt like an instant. 

It got harder in some ways and easier in others. 

We got a better place to stay, but not great. The paint peeled on the walls, and we had to keep my little sister from eating it. The power would go out, and the water, and you had to buy drinking water.

The grocery stores were far away. Mom had to take a bus because we didn’t have a car. Shopping for the necessities took up half her day, and I was the woman of the house when she was gone.

Be strong. Be responsible. Grow up.

Nobody said it, but Life did, the world itself.

Heaven poured rain and burned sunshine until I grew. And I grew quickly —  to bear fruit and provide shade and protection — to be strong enough to protect myself because there was no one to protect me.

To not need support when there was none. There was none.

I was a little woman at twelve.

We moved a lot. “Better” in air quotes, and then a whole lot worse again. Worse. Worse.

The holes in the walls were just the beginning. The rats on the beams and in the walls were everywhere, and bigger than the kitten we had to fight them off.

The stream was the only source of water and the town was miles away, through the jungle, across a river. Not that there was much of anything there but a “colmado,” a convenience store that didn’t sell much in the way of food unless you count crackers and boxed juice.

There was no electricity in the house, not at the beginning, and no stove. We cooked over a fire, choking on smoke for hours just to get one meal.

The bathroom window, with no glass in it or even a shutter, let rain in.

And oh, it rained, melting hills into muddy rivers that poured between the slats in the shoddy walls and flooded the floor. We moved our clothing, all in bags like the homeless. We squeegeed the mud out of the house. We’d be fine.

The world around us gave way but we didn’t.

The rain…it only dampened, only made things dark, only made things harder, it didn’t kill. 

Again, we moved.

Worse? Better? Who’s even comparing at this point? Why bother?

The walls were better, and no rats, only mice, sometimes, and roaches. And it was colder than anything — but that was okay.

At least we had water, running water, most of the time. 

But then it was only sometimes, and we had to haul water from the neighbors’ houses, if they had it, sometimes all the way from the river, a quarter mile away.

The neighbor boys called me a mule.

What did it matter? As long as we could wash dishes and do the laundry, all by hand. As long as we had water. Who cares about boys?

Who has the time to care, when the money’s running out and Daddy doesn’t have a job? And Mom is always yelling or crying.

Don’t even mention when the old men try to mess with me. I can shake it off. 

When the girls around town are jerks. When the soldier brandishes his gun because I ignore his catcalling. I could take it. 

I was 13.

I can take it when my world turns upside down. When the gas runs out and the money runs out and the love, if there ever was any, disappears like my brother wasting away from starvation. And the water…

Pours under the gap between the door and the floor and gets inside.

And it rained. It rained.

It rained and rained and rained.

And the floor cracked and the walls crumbled bit by bit.

But I didn’t.

And I’m still here.