This Instant of an Instant

"Mia," Consuela whispers as I turn over and ignore her. 

 

She plunks her fat ass on the bed.  I try to kick her away, but she is too heavy.  We struggle for a moment before she manages to grab hold of my leg from under the blanket and pin it down.

 

"Yers iz nots beings nice!" She snarls at me as I grab a pillow and place it over my head. 

 

"Go away," I mumble as I drift back to sleep.

 

"MeeeeeeeeYAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" She screeches while at the same time karate chopping the back of my knee.  The blow strikes a nerve and I am instantly sucked away from any hope of sleeping in.

 

I sit up. 

 

It takes a second to wipe my mangled hair away from my eyes, but eventually I have a clear view of that which woke me.

 

"Wha-a-at do you wa-a-ant?" I wine as I readjust my tank top to cover my protruding belly.

 

"Yers is has to wakes up now," she tells me as she shuffles closer to me on the bed.

 

"But, why?" I say.  "Can't you see that I'm so tired?"  I tell her as I readjust the pillows behind me and lean back.

 

"But yers cants be tiredz," she tells me with the certainty of a tarot-card reader yearning to get paid.

 

"Why nots," I snarl.  She doesn't seem to notice that I'm making fun of the way she talks and so I choose to continue talking like her for my own entertainment.

 

"Mia, yers cants be tiredz becuz deys is wantings to talks wis you," she tells me as she heads over to my closet and pulls out an outfit.

 

"Who is theys?" I ask and shake my head 'no'.  I hate that top.

 

"Theys, de peoples.  Theys iz wants to talks to you." She tells me and then pulls out a halter top that I haven't seen in years.

 

I shake my head 'no' again.

 

"But I don't want to talk to thems," I say. 

 

I've now lost interest in talking like her.

 

Consuela digs through my closet before deciding on a blazer to go over an embellished tank.  It's cute, but I'm just not in the mood to talk to anyone just yet.

 

"But yers haz to talks to sem," she tells me as she tries to shove the outfit in my face.

 

I push it away.

 

"Can't you see that today is not a good day?" I say matter-of-fact whilst slinking back under the covers.

 

I freeze there with the blanket over my face hoping, like a small child, that the monster will go away.

 

She doesn't.

 

A moment passes. 

I feel the blanket being dragged away from my face.

 

"Wh-ah-ah-at," I whine.  Fatigue disallows me from sitting up again, and so I stare straight up into the ceiling -- grateful to have Consuela out of view. 

 

As if cued, she pops her head right above me.  My solace bursts.

 

"But yers has to talks wis dem," she tells me softly hoping to coax me into submission.

 

She stands there looking sombre, and so in an effort to clear her from my room I simply nod and tell her that I'll be down in a minute.  I assume from her lack of ability to describe who it is that it's probably some sort of technician that she doesn't know how to deal with.

 

In any case, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and give my poor tired heart a second to pump life into them.   As I sit there waiting for my legs to stir I start to reflect on how exhausting my life really is -- dealing with the outside world and Consuela all at the same time. 

 

I put on the outfit that Consuela suggests and start to wonder just what would life be like if there were no people -- and blissfully, no Consuela?

 

I imagine, as I run a brush through my twisted mane, that it would be very lonely.

 

And scary.

 

And dark.

 

And so I take comfort in Consuela and all her charms, for somewhere -- in some other universe, there could very well be another version of me. 

And maybe that version has no one. 

 

For a brief moment, before I head downstairs to talk to whomever Consuela has deemed so urgent, I start to have a bit of empathy for that alternate version of me. 

 

For a brief second I feel intensely connected to her. Her struggles.  Her pains.  In this instant of an instant she is real -- and so, I whisper "You'll be ok," for no good reason  other than to appease my conscious.

 

And with that, I leave the room.