The Clean Up

Photo by murat esibatir from Pexels

The apartment will feel like you are being suffocated. It is best to open the windows and allow sunlight to penetrate the corners of your bedroom that were missed all this time. Grab your broom and mop and get to work as if this space is not for you, but someone else. Maybe the new you. You’ve been ignoring your mother’s calls for days, but still applaud yourself for making it out of bed today.

While you clean, remind yourself of Lady Lazarus, a woman back from the dead. But you do not feel like magic again yet. This is for the best. Remember when you did feel like magic and how you dressed according to your moods and wore bright reds, yellows, and gold hoops. Your mother prayed for you because you had barely eaten anything in two weeks. It was magic all right.

Wipe down the mirrors while your mother’s voice echoes in your head.

“Ou kwe se maji mezanmi?” Oh my goodness, could it be voodoo? Your mother exclaimed with her arms stretched to the heavens, her muumuu rising with her shoulders. She was speaking to no one but God. You hadn’t slept in days and food felt too heavy for your system, so you drank water and tea and went to the bathroom often. She’d made several calls to Haiti and put fresh chamomile in the pockets of her muumuu for you, wondering who would want to hurt you.

Have a piece of bread while the Ajax and bleach sets in your tub, sink, and toilet. You are eating again and wondering how you had enough energy to randomly wake up and run three miles. You told tourists who came to your shop about selfish lovers you’d had while they shopped for trinkets to take back home to their families in The States. The shame you feel right now is normal.

The psychiatrist told you that you had bipolar disorder after you answered all his questions earnestly and your mother did not believe it. She thought the devil had gotten a hold of you and it was because you had stopped going to church and praying.

“You don’t know my prayers,” you told her. Still, when you started to come back down to earth, you sat in the tub and waited for her to boil the prayer she’d written in blue ink on a white sheet of paper. When the water cooled, she poured it over your head while singing one of her Chants D'Esperance. You hummed along to ease her fears. Even though your mother poured prayers over you and had you drink chamomile tea to calm your body down, you still took your lithium. There was so much lithium.

Now that your body has been calm for this long, you long to feel some of that magic again. But it is a trap. No one should feel that good for so long. Instead settle for coffee and cigarettes for breakfast and finally picking up your mother’s phone call.