Love letters and apple trees
1999
«Let’s never fight again!»
«Okay.»
And we never really did. I did memorize this event, though.
I was sick at home with some terrible gut-emptying flu and fever. At some point, I thought the moon had entered my room through a broken window. But it was just a fever dream. My mom quickly measured my temperature again and put some mustard paper stickers on my chest. It was not as disgusting as it sounds. The warm compress from sheep’s ass fat was. The smell never really left you, no matter how many times you showered afterward.
We agreed not to fight when we made peace—it was my first walk outside after that horrible sickness, but I did keep in mind those notes she left me. I did not know what I did wrong exactly. All I know is that she wrote “SLAT!”, “HO,” and “Pigg!” I read it exactly as it was meant to be read despite all the mistakes. It was her handwriting too—she had written me about 20 cards in total on New Year’s, my birthday, and the 8th of March.
«Why did you leave me all these notes, though?»
She blushed.
«What notes?! It wasn’t me!»
«You know what I’m talking about. You are my only friend in this courtyard, so I have no other choice. I forgive you. But I know you wrote them!»
She was about to cry, I saw that. I immediately felt guilty.
«Or maybe it was Ainura… I don’t know, actually. Let’s go to the other side of the kindergarten? Do you think the apples are already there? I didn’t see any flowers anymore from my balcony.»
«Yes, let’s!» Her green eyes lit up with hope and joy. I felt somehow responsible for whatever I did to cause this hate mail. But I was all filled with wanderlust and not planning to spend my first afternoon outside alone, leaving my crying, angry friend on the bench.
The kindergarten had two gates. We entered one and walked toward the other end, where the apple trees had just finished blooming, as I discovered this morning, when my mom finally allowed me to leave the house.
Askar was hanging out with some other boys from our courtyard near the trees.
«MALIKA!» he screamed. He ran toward me and hugged me, almost crushing my bones. I was afraid I still smelled like sheep’s ass fat. He then blushed too, took a step back, and said, «The apple trees finished blooming, but I saved some flowers for you at home. I pressed them inside a big book… You could put them in your album!»
I started jumping on one leg to hide my excitement and said, «Oh, I see, thanks.» Like, no big deal.
Then, out of nowhere, a huge mud ball landed on my new pink shoes I was about to wear to kindergarten tomorrow morning. My white socks soaked with rainwater and dirt.
«PIG! SLUT!» she screamed. Sobbing, she ran away, wiping her dirty hands on her green dress.
I rushed to follow her, only to find out that chasing my friend was really uncomfortable with all this dirt in my right shoe.
«IDIOT!» I screamed at Askar, wiping tears angrily off my cheeks.
7 billion roommates
2011
The urge to chase this feeling of being cozy at home must be something that was given to us at birth, thought Malika. We catch her walking aimlessly around campus. It’s 22:30—curfew is in 30 minutes. But she doesn’t want to rush toward her building and her three other roommates. She’s coming back from an intriguing, but overall quite boring, date. They talked about the new Wolverine movie. He smelled nice. Not Wolverine-level nice, though. They drank coffee drinks so sweet that all she could think about afterward was not kissing him, but reuniting with her toothbrush and irrigator, ASAP.
Malika slept over at her friend’s room tonight. Both girls enjoyed pointless, long talks about death, hell, suicide, love, family, and their bright future outside this bleak dorm.
“I never feel at home here.”
“Yeah, me neither. Don’t know if I ever felt at home since my mom left for China and never came back.”
“You’re making it sound like she left you.”
“Cancer is not an excuse. She did leave me. In a way.”
“What would it take for us to feel at home here?”
“Well, a deep cleaning would be a first step. No black mold. Some nicer furniture. A separate shower.”
“We’re not getting that, forget it. Something realistic.”
“We could switch roommates at least. You could move in with me and no longer depend on Asya’s disgusting one-night stands to talk to me.”
“Dorms will never feel like home. Nothing will ever feel like home. Home is home.”
“You know, we all do have a home, though. We are home.”
“Are you starting with your ‘home within yourself’ nonsense again?”
“No and yes. I mean, yes, we all live together. This is our house. We are all roommates.”
“Yeah, even if there are 7 billion roommates, there’s still one shower for all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we have one shower room here, and not one of us can avoid the purgatory of it all. So if we’re all roommates here, then the final inevitable shower is like this place where everyone is naked and stripped of all their masks and layers. Waiting to move on.”
“This sounds so deep and fake at the same time I could throw up.” “Please don’t. I still can’t get over last Friday.”
“So, what about the Wolverine guy? S?”
“Too sweet.”
“As all of them are, of course.”
“If all of us are indeed roommates and brothers and sisters… It’s kinda gross going out with any one of them.”
“Don’t complicate things. You like him. He likes you.”
“I honestly don’t think so. He likes what I like. And I’m just homesick. I would hug or kiss anyone remotely nice, so I feel kinda whorish just giving it all away.”
“You will eventually. At some point, you will meet a guy—or guys, maybe not all 3.5 billion, but at least 100—that you’ll want to kiss, just to forget you’re not home for a moment.”
“And the moment they leave, I’m alone again.”
“Yes. And no. Again—we are all roommates. You are never truly alone.”
“Okay. I wanna sleep now, before this turns into a Flanagan-y dialogue.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Good night! We have an early lecture tomorrow. In two hours, to be precise.”
“Yeah… Okay.”
To-do list
2021
It was my fifth reel sent to her when she finally responded with a heart emoji. I know for a fact she didn’t open it. I tried to call too. She probably had set her phone on “Do Not Disturb,” because it went to voicemail after 2 rings.
I texted her that whenever she feels ready and energized enough, we can meet, or call, and go through everything she has to do one by one. She won’t have to deal with it alone. Heart emoji again.
She replied in 4 days. I knew she was okay because I saw her location, so I didn’t send any more reels and annoying, empowering, and encouraging texts.
“Hey, yeah. So let’s meet tonight at Sherri’s. I need a beer.”
“So happy to hear that, boo. Let’s do it.”
She was pale, even though I noticed an attempt at cat-eye makeup and peachy lipstick. Doesn’t really go with her skin color, but it’s a good sign. The patient shows signs of life.
I brought our notebook with all the planning and to-dos we’d been tirelessly working on this whole summer, but I left it in my purse, in case this unpleasant topic wasn’t brought up at all.
“So… beer?”
“Beer.”
After 3 pints of beer—her simple light beer of a generic German brand, and my hefeweizen—we were both done with discussing all the political news, series we watched, and books we attempted to read lately. We both knew that not so much time had passed for us to be completely out of touch, but still not enough to watch and hear so much to discuss it the whole evening. Every quote from Fleabag hurt like hell, so I decided not to bring up Hill House and especially Bly Manor.
“I think I’m ready,” she suddenly said after a long chug that finished her third pint. She looked somewhere above my shoulder, so I didn’t understand immediately if she was talking to me or just saying something to move the conversation forward.
“You sure? I have everything with me.”
“Yeah, I have to. Half of it is under my card, and some of it is refundable. Let’s do it. I might need all of that money soon.”
So we opened the hateful notebook. The hotel reservation had been dealt with by me that evening—I knew the honeymoon suite didn’t have a 100% refund, so I had to act fast. Catering, salon, tailor, photographer, videographers, printing, gift shops. We basically went through everything we’d already paid for and what’s left to claim back. It took us 20 minutes.
“I will call all of them first thing tomorrow morning. Thank you for asking them to postpone it. Don’t know why I even waited so long. Could have been easier to cancel everything at once.”
“This is not your fault!”
It was the way he framed it. Something always came up. New job, family issues, now this. It felt wrong to hate him, but it felt worse to see her wait.
“I don’t even know if he has it in him to call and cancel everything himself. I think he’s feeling guilty on top of everything that’s happening… No, don’t. Don’t make me hate him, it won’t happen.”
So I shut my mouth. I wanted to object to something, but there was nothing I could say. She was right. He was right to postpone too. You can’t be mad at a family loss. You can’t reason with death and say, “But I want my wedding now!” They’re both right to wait. But would they ever recover from this?
I watched her get into a taxi, waving her hands and smiling at me, tipsy and relaxed. As soon as the car left, I started crying, mourning my friend’s dream.
