Door Slam

“Tap, tap, tap.”

“And so gently she came rapping,” I muttered to myself. This was the third time this week and I sighed. It was Sunday so at least I was prepared with coffee and cookies in the oven. And by ‘prepared’ I meant only technically, mentally I could never be prepared for this shit. I had come to dread the sound of those taps on my door. My cozy little apartment, my place of solitude and peace, so suddenly turning to a prison of torment by just two feet shuffling their way across the threshold of my door. It wasn’t the big things, there weren’t big things she did that I could point to and say ‘this is why’. No it was more insidious than that, it was a bunch of little things piling up, death by a thousand cuts.

I didn’t want to make my way to the door, I wanted to hide, to pretend that I wasn’t home. But that would never work, she knew better. And if she didn’t know better she would call mom and ask where I was and mom would call and I couldn’t ignore her call or she would freak out. So I was stuck, like a caged rat. Just a little bit of a comb through the hair, because if there weren’t comments, there would at least be judging looks. I let out one last huff and turned the knob.

“Hi, how are you?” she said.

“Fine,” I muttered. I didn’t invite her in, I didn’t even move out of her way, she just pushed past me and walked into my bubble of happiness just to burst it.

“What are you doing? Is that cookies?” she asked heading for the kitchenette. I rolled my eyes and looked at the clock, not that it mattered. Who knew how long this would last, if it were up to her it probably would never end.

“Yea, peanut butter,” I said, they were her favorite, or at least I thought they were because the last time I made some and took them to mom’s she had eaten almost all of them and several people didn’t get to try them.

She stopped and looked at me, “what?”

“Peanut Butter cookies,” I said.

“Why would you make those, you know I hate them,” she said stomping her foot, she was older than me by a lot but acted much younger.

“Since when?” I asked.

“Always, you only made that kind because you knew I hated them,” she said and opened the fridge, I kept my favorite cookies in there, they were French macarons and very expensive. She grabbed the box and took them to the table.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I will just eat these since you made the kind I hate on purpose,” she said getting my favorite flavor out of the box and shoving the whole thing in her mouth, then chewing with her mouth open. I wanted to shout at her to get out of my house but I didn’t. I could buy more besides I did like peanut butter cookies a lot. I got up and got a mug to get myself some coffee and she hopped up quick and pulled a huge mug out of her bag. It was giant, and she filled it with the coffee I’d made for cookies, leaving just barely half a cup in the carafe for me.

I watched her and she looked at me with a smirk, “what?” she was daring me to get mad, she did this a lot. I would get mad and blow up eventually and she would run to all my family members and tell them what all I had said leaving out anything she had done.

“Nothing,” I said with a sigh. I would just make more when she left and have coffee and cookies alone with a good book. It would be better that way anyway.

“What are you doing today?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, because if I told her my real plans, she would find some way to ruin them.

“Has that guy called?” she asked.

“Yea,” I said.

“Oh, what did he talk about?” she asked.

“Just stuff,” I said.

“Did you see that poem Suzie wrote on Facebook?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“It’s so good, she’s so good with words,” she said. No, she wasn’t, she was horrible at it. So, I rolled my eyes. “What?” she asked, smirking again.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Do YOU think she is?” she asked.

“I haven’t read it,” I said, trying to get out of bashing someone she could run and stir shit with and make us hate one another. The sad thing was, Suzie was terrible and probably in a way that couldn’t be fixed because the talent just wasn’t there, but she also needed someone to teach her the most basic skills and grammar, I didn’t have time for it but I could have tried. She would have hated it and taken it as an insult if I offered help, so she could go ahead and suck at it for all I cared. But she didn’t even care about the craft, she just wanted to pretend to be something she wasn’t like all the other things she pretended to be. My sister and Suzie were two peas in a pod like that. And all of that could have been fine with me if they left me alone about it. It was when I had to endure excruciating conversations like this one that it got to me. Let me be, you both can be lame on your own time. What it was is that both of them had the wrong idea, I could tell. If they were getting on my nerves with their lameness, they could lie to themselves that I was jealous. It made them feel good about themselves, if they could read my mind it would be the opposite.

The truth is I didn’t want to speak to either of them, I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to be able to see my own friends with out one or both of them there hassling me. I tried, I really tried a lot to get along with them. But neither of them would allow it. There were always backbiting comments and looks and vibes. I could feel the hatred for me radiating off of both of them. I didn’t mind it, I just wanted to be away from it, they could waste their own free time hating me and stop wasting mine.

“Are those cookies done?” she asked.

“I thought you hated them,” I said.

“Well if there’s nothing else, I’ll eat them,” she said. Of course she would, she would eat most of them and touch all of them so I would have to throw the rest away. Not that I wouldn’t do that if anyone touched them, but I was currently watching her shove her finger all the way up her nose. She wouldn’t wash it, she would use that specific finger to touch all the cookies she could so I couldn’t have them. I wasn’t paranoid, it was experience. This was my entire childhood and most of my adult life. Cakes made by my parents were left in the pan and eaten with a fork. Not cut into squares, just chunks taken with a fork so that me nor either of my parents could have any. She would eat it or we’d throw it away. All of us were funny about eating after other people, including her. Blocks of cheese in the fridge that was meant for the whole family wasn’t cut or sliced, it would be found with bite marks all around it. Not that if they were just on one side it would make a difference. You couldn’t cut the piece off that was bitten from and use the rest because it would be mostly opened packages and we knew the unwashed hands would have been touching the exposed pieces. It wasn’t carelessness, it was deliberate power moves. A desperate attempt to exert dominance in pathetic and silly ways. She thought she was controlling and manipulating everyone, but most people were just annoyed. People let her get away with it out of pity because she was so pathetic about it and most people have more important things to worry about than someone colonizing their cheese.

That was a normal day of it, a good day. On the bad days there were death threats. Me making any kind of cookie she claimed she hated when I know she didn’t could end up with her threatening to kill me or burn my apartment down. Using my phone or laptop was a nightmare because if things didn’t go right on the website she went to, she was trying to break my device, whatever it may be. This was normal to the people who saw it for some reason. To me it was out of control. It was enabled behavior by most because they didn’t hear it from me, I didn’t talk about it. I just let them like her because I knew she’d already made them distrust me. Screw them, I will just wait until she cracks in front of everyone some day. It will happen, the truth will be revealed one day. That’s how I cope. That was then, now it's been a year. When the cookies started being people in my life. I stopped going to the door when I heard the tapping. And now, it has stopped. No more opening that door.