Stinkerbell

I can still remember my older sister’s eleventh birthday party. She and her little preteen friends sitting smushed together in a circle on the bench seats of my grandma’s barely functioning jacuzzi. Now, this was in the middle of my notable Tinkerbell phase, so I was hopping in circles in the center of the tub like a fairy rearing to send my five-year-old self into one of these girls’ laps. I don’t know whether it was because it was her birthday or because she was my sister, but I kept leaping into only her lap.

But that isn’t what this story’s about; five is a bit young to discover your “authentic self”. Let’s try nine. We boarded a cruise ship that Spring Break (a shitty one, mind you, we weren’t and aren’t the most well-off family), and this was a big splurge for us. It was four days on the open ocean, and three on those beaches in Mexico, those ones where it’s this mass of clear water and untouched sands with no flip-flop prints in it, but two hundred feet down the coastline seabirds waddle around entrapped by the plastic rings that hold Gatorade bottles together. The beaches don’t matter either, it’s those rocky waves that do. It was those waves, I’m sure of it, that thronged my family on that ship. Or possibly it was Trevor.

Trevor. He was a fifteen-year-old ‘bad boy’ that my sister, Celine, had met in the ‘teens-only’ room on the cruise. The ‘teens-only’ room had to be a pubescent boys’ wet dream, with girls in just their bathing suits walking in and out and parents or any adults for that matter strictly forbidden. I had only gotten a glimpse, of course, as I was nine at the time. Trevor and Celine had an immediate romance, as he was a misogynistic redneck who shouted, “Damn girl”, or something of the sort at an insecure girl in a bikini who had recently gotten into a messy break-up with her middle school boyfriend.

And so their Harley Quinn-Joker forbidden romance ensued, at least that’s what their whacked-out hormonal minds thought it was. We didn’t see Celine for much of that trip, not even when my dad had a little… accident. Restating the fact that we were on a shitty cruise might help you understand what I’m going to say a bit better. My brother, Mikey, and I had gotten a free pizza every day on the cruise. It was this beautiful and novel thing; a pizza and for what? Existing? We didn’t really understand the concept of prepaying for something just yet as we were only nine and twelve. Celine wasn’t picking up the walkie-talkie my mom had bought for Celine when she realized she would be off doing whatever shenanigans with Trevor for the majority of the trip.

We, Mikey and I, had scampered to bed, and we had left the pizza on the counter. My mom flitted out the exit of our room, lit up by a little green sign, on a manhunt for Celine. My dad tasted some of our pizza; it was yucky, but when you’re a bit buzzed things just seem to slide by. Half an hour passed, and I noticed the green reflection of the exit sign glowing my dad's flushed skin. My eyes dazedly closed.

I woke up to a scream and a jostling. My mom had burst into the room Celine-less and frazzled, and she noticed my dad's completely blue face. I guess green can fade to blue like that. She called in the cruise ship’s doctor, and my dad ended up being fine. Though a PA system had called a notice of an emergency in room 6229, our room, Celine hadn't shown up.

That’s not what matters either. Sorry, I promise I’ll get to it, but you have to hear about this first. Firstly, Trevor’s dad was a mysterious figure; Trevor had boarded the ship with his nana and no one else. Of course, nine-year-old me wouldn’t know this, but in hindsight, that’s a good thing. Trevor’s dad was part of a little organization dubbed the Aryan Brotherhood, you might’ve heard of it. It’s like the Mafia but Irish and way, way less cool. Not saying the Mafia is cool, but in comparison, the Aryan Brotherhood is simply less lustrous. The second thing you need to know is that my sister and he stayed together for months after the cruise ended. It turned out he lived just an hour south of us. Normally, that’s out of the question for some fledgling relationship, but when a mentally unstable daughter has just one string from ending it, a parent will care for that string like a baby.

Thirdly, and I promise we’re getting there. After my parents had unearthed the whole Aryan Brotherhood thing about six months after the end of Spring Break, they had sent my sister to live with my grandma about four hours away, where that sweet, sweet jacuzzi tub was. I think it was probably for the best; years later Celine still has a problem with returning to where we still reside. But this story doesn’t take place now, so back to six months after the cruise.

My tender mother was staying with my sister in the new city for a few weeks while she settled in. They had gotten her a used Volkswagen Beetle for her sixteenth birthday, and she had gotten a job at some artisan popcorn place just down the street. My dad was home with Mikey and me, struggling to make adequate dinner every day. He usually settled with Instant Potatoes and snow peas.

We’re not there yet. Almost, I promise. I was awoken one night by my brother shaking me awake. He was totally frantic. He explained that my sister had taken her new-used Beetle and was headed towards us, speeding on highways with her fresh license. My dad was headed her way in the opposite direction, trying to find her and somehow stop her on the road. Apparently, Trevor was going to hit up our house, break-in, and pack a bag for Celine. Maybe they were going to run off to those beaches in Mexico, I’m not sure, but I was supposed to follow Mikey into his room to stay in.

I think the thing I remember most was how brown it was. Despite my brother’s room being in the pitch black of night, as it was maybe 4 AM, it was so brown. Flooding my vision. I was hidden under the covers, stashed away like some One-Two merchandise. I was like Tinkerbell. Craving comfort from Peter Pan, my sister. Or maybe with all that mucky poo brown, I was just Stinkerbell.

I blocked my entire field of vision with the comforter on Mikey’s bed. I was wrapped like a cocoon, so I’m sure he didn’t have any covers. God. They say in moments of panic your true self shows through. Is this really it? Am I just a scared little girl, stealing her brother’s blankets to shield herself from all turmoil that may stain her little world that gross brown?

No, that’s not it. If it were, I wouldn’t be writing about it. That’s not even what matters in this story. See, I told you I’d get to it. I can finally realize the moral of my own story; you see, I was brainstorming for this story, and I knew there had to be a bit more to my narrative. And so, those flashbacks came to me from my sister’s eleventh birthday. Jumping into her lap from the cold-hot tub, holding onto her neck for just that small bit of warmth. Waiting for her under the covers for her to come out from her new-old Volkswagen. I am a little girl still, but I am one that loves that warmth and can feel it when it’s so, so far away, hurtling down a highway at a hundred miles an hour.

Trevor didn’t show up at our house that night, and I wasn’t sure how or when they found Celine. That wasn’t the last time we had a run-in with Trevor, or white supremacists, or even shitty cruises, but it was the last time that I was ever stuck in that gross, mucky brown.