Your name is Stella DuBois
Kowalski
and the day has finally ended.



The night had fallen suddenly from its soft turquoise to harsh midnight. The easy murmurs and shouts of a long game had long settled, leaving behind a flimsy dining table that you swear day in and day out gets worn from the fists pounding against it, the loud voices reverberating off of it. The smatter-bang of your sister’s bag hitting the table, clunking down the front steps, and dropping into the trunk of the awaiting car with a dull thud was only a weary echo in your head. Your little apartment was quiet now. You could practically hear your sad heartbeat in your ears.


Even the streets had turned silent, seemingly in the midst of the day’s events. Your home’s silence, rare and soft with the absence of the man, was only interrupted by the soles of your bare feet dragging on the linoleum kitchen flooring and the small murmurs from a child in the other room.


“I’m here,” you’d murmur to the baby whenever you got close enough, whenever you had to make another round of cleaning the next layer of the kitchen. He wouldn’t respond back except for a flicker of his eyes. Sometimes he also shook a little fist, and you took the gesture endearingly.


After making some number of rounds around the small kitchen, between cleaning up the man’s mess and cooing at your little child, you grew tired. The time was far past one in the morning, and the baby had fallen asleep.
Some time had passed between you slumping in a dining chair and watching the child from afar before you decided it was high time to go to bed. You would finish the mess in the later morning. Stanley might throw a fit, but it would be nothing you hadn’t handled before. Besides, with Blanche gone, his mood had seemed more forgiving, and you hoped it would last for just a little longer.


As you swaddled the baby snugger and turned on a light, softened by a crumpled paper lantern that you had haphazardly tugged back over the naked bulb, you noticed tiny things out of the corner of your eye; shadows of items left behind by Blanche, made huge and dominating by the light. An empty perfume bottle or two, or three, used up on some man she’ll never see again and dates she’ll over-romanticize in her delirious mind, stood stoically beside a broken hand mirror, where plates of glass hardly held on. Strings of costume necklaces had piled on the vanity’s top, snapped during what Blanche claimed to be Stanley’s attack on her.


You turn off the light. The costume beads stop sparkling in your eyes, and the shadows of your sister’s absence shrink and fade away. You unfold the thin summer blanket from over the pillows and crawl in.


The only noise you can hear is your heartbeat in your ears, frustrated and upset. That, and the sleepy breathing of your child, startled slightly by the opening door. Heavy feet clunk clumsily into the kitchen, and you could feel the presence of your husband. You close your eyes and pretend to sleep.


“Chris’, what a damn mess…”


He chuckles. You sink into bed a little lower, eyes fluttering in an attempt to keep them shut. As he draws the portiere back, the outdoor lights catch the beads for only a moment, and you notice them sparkle on the ends of your eyelashes briefly, like little stars.


“My sleepin’ man,” he coos quietly, which makes your tongue taste something odd. The curtain closes behind him, and the little stars on your eyelashes go away. His kicks his shoes off, banging against the bedside, and continues to undress slowly and drunkenly.


Every night since Blanche came to you in nervous hysterics and blathering her mouth away, you had been wary to sleep beside him. This thought startled you, that you would even think to push away from his lazy embrace, to nudge his feet away from yours, little by little as the nights passed along. You were almost certain that Blanche could have been truthful—oh, but how many outrageous lies had she told during her stay…


Still. Still, you were wary to sleep so close beside your husband. And as he crawled into bed beside you, facing your back and mumbling incoherent love words, you let out a long breath. This causes a sleepy chuckle to emerge from his chest pressed against your back.


“Stell…”


You can feel your ribs rattle from the tremor of his voice.


A heavy hand lands on the curve of your waist, then slides forward, and he holds you loosely to him. You squeeze your eyes shut tighter to force your brain into sleep, and you try to focus on the darkness behind your eyelids rather than the made-up shadows and the weary echos.


He falls asleep before you do. He turns in his sleep, his back facing your back, and you let out another long breath. You would do anything to get your mind off of him. You would clean the rest of the kitchen at three in the morning to get your mind off of him. You would leave your little home with your little baby to get your mind off of him. Maybe even bowl, or go out for drinks. With the people that stay out at three in the morning.


You would do all of this if you weren’t such a coward.


Instead, you stay quiet and faithful to his slumber. You listen to his breathing, heavy and slow, out of sync with your child’s soft, whispering breaths. Your heartbeat still drums in your ears, and you try to slow your breathing in an attempt to sleep. You’re to wake in five hours. To make breakfast for this man, to clean up after this man, to slave your day away again for this man.

Your name is Stella Kowalski
and the day is only beginning
all over again.