These Walls are Worlds between Us

I noticed the cuts on her wrist as we were pulling away from our trailer. She had slept late again, and I was driving her to school for what seemed to be the millionth time that semester. We sat in the car, the inside stiff with the Mississippi sun that had already heated the dash. She pushed back her sleeves, and that's when I saw them. I knew she felt my eyes on her, and she looked away nervously. She pulled the sleeves back down on her windbreaker, despite the fact that it was close to 80 degrees that day. There wasn't a day that went by that she didn't wear that navy jacket. I hadn't given it too much thought. She had always been insecure, and I just figured it was a security blanket for her. “How did you cut your wrists?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant. She darted her eyes, as if she were scanning some invisible checklist in the air in front of her. She pretended not to hear me. I had turned the radio on, and she tried to hide behind the lyrics. I reached over and turned down the dial. “Angela...how did you cut your wrists?” I saw her wince at my tone, the tone I could never really perfect to sound nurturing. Instead, it always came out shrill and annoying. “I...I was climbing a tree. I fell, and it scraped the side of my wrist.” I knew she was lying. It wasn't something that surprised me. She had been lying to me for quite some time.
I took the job at Winn Dixie bakery because I couldn't find a position as a Social Worker on the coast. I thought I had made a good decision moving us from the rigid wintry state of Illinois to the South. The beach was fifteen miles from our home, and it reminded me of my parents. I wanted more for Angela. She wasn't making friends at her school. They saw to it that they teased her for her clothing and thick glasses. I couldn't afford to give her what the other mothers had given their daughters, and because of my inability, she was punished. I vowed I would make things different for her. So, on a whim only supported by the location of my brother, we packed our things and moved into a two bedroom trailer just off of Highway 53. It was light green with dark green shutters; we had picked the colors out ourselves. Ashley's favorite color was green, just like her father's. He had died of heart failure fourteen years prior, and I still hadn't gotten used to his absence. But he was always there. Every time Angela smiled, her lopsided grin was identical to his. Her dark chocolate eyes were shaped the same as his had been, and she had the same sweet spirit. I didn't realize that bringing her here would erase that from her.
She began to withdraw about two years later. I worked until six most nights, and when I came home, she was usually locked in her room. I had been through this with her sister and brother, and I wasn't about to admit that there were any problems with her. She had always had it together, and it was simply a phase she would grow out of. I just knew it. She blasted music the same way her brother had when he was younger. Her Korn was his Kiss. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes, she would stare blankly as I talked to her, as if she were listening to someone behind me. I passed it all off as normal teenage behavior. That was all I could do not to locate any problems I couldn't deal with. I was lucky to even get home safely each day. My body was wearied from long hours at the bakery, and I would usually plop down in my chair as soon as I got home. Back problems from an accident left me hurting all the time, and my patience was always on the fringes of compromise.
The friends she brought to the house were definitely not the type I would have expected her to have. Of course, this was around the time that she had started changing so much. She wore baggy clothes and hung her hair in her face. She talked little to me but would stay on the phone with those friends until three in the morning. I knew this because even when I would tell her I didn't want her on the phone, she would sneak the cordless into her bedroom at night. I had to take the phone out of the wall and keep it in my room to prevent this. That always made her the angriest. When she looked at me in those moments, her dark chocolate eyes had changed from her father's to someone I didn't know at all. Her friends were into witchcraft, and it worried me slightly. But I was so busy trying to keep us from filing bankruptcy that I couldn't worry about the changes that were taking place in her life. She had friends like she always wanted, and that was my goal when we moved to Mississippi. I considered my job well done.
After I dropped her off at school that day, the marks on her arm were fresh wounds in my mind. I hadn't bought her story, not for one second. I knew she had been cutting herself. I tried to piece together all of the warning signs that had preceded this event. Little by little, I connected the distant dots and realized what had been occurring all those months I had been so worried about our finances. She was slipping away from me, and the reason why was simply that I didn't know why.
I tried to make things better. I thought of all the things that had made her happy as a child, and I quickly began throwing them at her depression. One day we would go shopping; the next day to a movie. But throughout all of this, she still remained disconnected. I watched a movie on Lifetime about a girl who would cut herself. My efforts were exasperated, and I called her in to watch it with me. “Do you want to be like this girl?!” I screamed at her. I screamed a lot these days. I never wanted to be a screamer. She gave me a murderous scowl, and returned to the cave she dwelt in. I cried that night, and I wished that her father was there at my bedside. He would know what to do.
The school called me the next day. I had just finished putting a tray of cinnamon buns on the cooling rack when the phone was handed to me. An unfamiliar voice occupied the other line. It explained to me that Angela had brought alcohol to school and would be expelled for the remainder of the year. I gripped the phone, hoping that if I squeezed it hard enough, it would disintegrate into dream dust, and I would wake up from this horrible nightmare. But it only left my arthritic hand aching more. I remember crying harder than I had in a long time, and I'm sure it echoed throughout the store. That drive was one of the longest I had ever made. As I walked into the office, Angela's face was tear-streaked and swollen. She explained to me that she was sorry, but I could barely look at her. The disappointment I felt overcame my ability to offer comfort.
The drive home was silent and stabbing. She sucked her breath in between sobs, pulling at the sleeves of her jacket. We pulled up to the trailer, and instead of walking ahead of me like she had normally done, she waited for me to go inside first. I could feel her eyes on me, but I ignored her. I wished there had been music playing so there would be more of reason as to why I was ignoring her. When she finally gave up on locking eyes with me, she retreated to her bedroom. She slowly edged the door from its position and I turned my back from her. When I felt she had entered her room, I turned around. I saw something I hadn't seen in two years. The door wasn't closed. The crack hung in the air, illuminating the doorframe.