Alyssa Duran- Week 5- Story Eight

There Was No More

It was noon in the garden and the ice sculptures were beginning to melt. It was cold in the morning. The party had been set up the night before, the caterers set up in the morning, moving in with their vans, silently setting chairs and tables, flower vases, steak for lunch, bread rolls in silver platters, while carrying metal tongs to keep their food sanitary. They waited there, dressed in black slacks and white shirts with cream colored aprons smeared with grease, but no one came. At 11:30, they packed their tables and chairs, left the food on the floor in anger, carried off their silver platters and metal tongs and drove away.
Sheila waited in her room, watching from the second floor window at the scene occurring in her backyard. It wasn’t her job to say hello, it wasn’t her job to control the little workers down stairs as they busied themselves in their black slacks and white shirts and grease caked aprons. She drooled when they threw their food on the ground. She wondered if they would still ask for money for the food they threw on the ground. But her father, Robert, had already left, and here she was locked on the second floor of the bedroom looking down at the workers in their black slacks angry with a party that never happened; banging on the door that no one could answer because no one was there and Sheila was locked in the second floor loft where no one could see or hear her.
Robert had left. He had taken his daughter by the wrists and pulled her off her feet and contorted her body until she was limp over his shoulder and threw her on the bed in the second floor loft. Sobbing and disoriented, she heard the door close and the switch lock and she sat on the bed with no sheets until she fell asleep and awoke the next morning to remember she was locked in the second floor loft. She pounded on the door, screamed, and kicked, but no one answered. Her party dress was downstairs, she needed to change, it was her birthday, people were waiting, and then the workers came in their black slacks and white shirts and grease stained aprons and worked until 11:30 when they got so upset that they threw the food on the floor and left. No one could hear Sheila, she was locked upstairs and her father was gone and she wasn’t quite sure where her mother was, but she was hungry and the food on the floor made her mouth water. She threw herself against the window, but no one looked up. They were too upset at their effort for no pay and no one to appreciate them. She appreciated them, they had food, but she was locked upstairs and no one could hear her and she wondered where her mother was.
She remembered the day before her birthday when her mother took her to the store and they spent hours picking out a cute little party dress that was light blue and swirled when she twirled and she felt like a princess. She was going to be a ten-year-old princess, and her mother had said she was proud. Sheila was a happy girl. Tomorrow there was going to be a big party, there would be many people: her cousins, her aunts, her uncles, and her three best friends from school. Her mother liked these outdoor garden parties, her mother liked more that she was born in the late spring which was a perfect excuse for outdoor garden parties. Her mother had planned for weeks. She had invited all the guests by making personal invitations with pictures in the corner drawn and colored by Sheila.
It was a perfect day. She wished her birthday had been yesterday. She was unhappy today. She wanted the food but it was on the floor, in the dirt, two floors below, and her father was gone and she was locked in, and she didn’t know where her mother was. What had happened with all the shouting the night before was something Sheila could not explain. Her parents fought often, her father was an angry man and now he was gone and he had locked her in a room without food, without air, the heat was getting to her and she laid on the bed thinking about the food on the floor and wondering where her mother was.
What had they been fighting about, money? Had her party cost too much? She wanted food. It was on the floor two stories down and she needed to get this door unlocked. There was no one to hear her screams but she was too tired to scream anyway. She couldn’t pound, the hunger hurt her head. The room was spinning. She was panicking. Where was her mother? Why couldn’t she have food? Why did her father leave? There were no more crisp black slacks and white shirts on the workers who threw the food. She went to the window and stared out once more, out onto the horizon, the dozens of trees that lined the wide backyard and garden area. Her family was not one in need of charity. She looked at the food with the flies swarming and licked her lips and the sun was going down and there was still no one home. Her eyes scanned the ground, the new dirt her father dug out last night, and the shovel that lay by the new patch of little white flowers that she had not noticed before. Her eyes squinted against the sun that came through her window. The dirt patch was eerie. She felt uncomfortable looking at it. Her eyes swept back to the food, now a clump, a fly ridden mess, easily fortified by the tiny flying creatures because there was no one in their path to stop them, no black slacks and white shirts and stained aprons, no father, for he was gone.
The night came over the little room quickly and Sheila lay on the bed, her hunger making her stomach rip apart with each growl. She had cried hard as the night approached, she sat with the moonlight in her window, no lights to turn on, no phone to call out, no black slacks or white shirts whose attention could have been gotten, no father for he was gone, no mother for she was under the shovel and white flowers, no more arguing, no more party dress, just the moonlight and the stomach growling and the fly-ridden food and Sheila who lay sleeping in the moonlight, the ice sculptures long since melted into air.