The last day of the month is always the worst. My sister, Janice, although I know she loves me deep inside somewhere, she doesn't understand me. She can't understand a simple "No." How hard is it for her to understand that I feel frail and sick? That I would rather stay home?

"What's wrong with you?" she asks me every single time she comes.

And it mutilates me every single time. Not because she presumes that I'm insane, but because I don't even know what’s wrong with me. How does someone not know what's wrong with them? We fight every time, but like a kid with their parents, she always wins. You have no idea how painful and humiliating it is to compare myself as a kid and her as my mother. As soon as I dodder out the door, I can feel the poisoning air. Its humid and claustrophobic touch makes me tug at my shirt hoping the cool air, if there is any, will calm me. I can sense their eyes watching me, but just as I'm about to run back inside, she grabs my arm. She drags me to the riotous and crowded Swift-Mart. Once we’re inside my windpipe shuts close, and my breaths turn scarcer every time. I can feel them watching me. Why can't we just leave? My sister points at a stranded thong in the fruit aisle.

"You left something." she teases sensing the tension building up inside of me and hoping to lessen it.

A kid’s face begins to contort and turn bright scarlet. Piercing wails erupt, bouncing around in my head. An older woman reaches up from her motorized shopping cart and drops a peach can. The metal clashing against the rock-hard cement impels my pulse to rise. A tall sullen faced woman with a long shopping list prowls and pushes past me. The slight graze of shoulders makes me flinch and cower close to the pushcart.
Everything is so loud, but it starts to drown out getting quieter and quieter. Darker and darker.

I must be knocked out. No, I’m not. I can see a blur, but it’s slowly starting to clear up. It looks like a face, a familiar one. My mind starts to process it, taking in any miniscule details, as if I was a starving kid devouring crumbs of molded bread. She has a pallid skin tone with blotches of red scattered across her cheeks. Why is she embarrassed? She isn’t the one who just fainted in the middle of the fruit aisle. But then I look closer. Her light blonde eyebrows are furrowed and her bright red skin seems to be seeping through them. Her light blue eyes seem to haze and set themselves upon me. Her two slivers of pale pink lips form one line across her face. Her face. It looks so angry and familiar. It hits me; it’s the lady from Swift-Mart who pushed past me.

I try to shelter myself pushing and digging myself deeper into the dark. Why am I so afraid of her? I grab for a blanket. You know, when you’re scared at night and how just covering yourself with a blanket makes you feel better and safer? But the only thing my hand grasps a hold of is the cold, frigid air surrounding me. I meet her eyes dead on, and get this horrible feeling. You know that sensation you get when you’re at the top of the roller coaster and you know what’s coming next? It was all so eerily familiar. She looks so much like her. My mother. Just the thought of her makes my arms flail wildly. I can feel my legs pushing and kicking, and my nails clawing. At what? At nothing, but I don’t care. A sharp pain takes hold of the side of my abdomen and I can feel my throat start to go dry and hoarse. Barely I can make out a glowing light and an unimaginable relief washes over me. I look back, but she’s still there as deathly close to me as before.

“Jess! Jess! Oh God Jess! ” my sister kept repeating. She threw herself onto me and kept embracing me. After a few minutes she regained her posture. Her eyes looked sympathetic and worried as she asked me in a hushed whisper, “Jess? What happened?”

I lock my eyes onto hers as I try to pronounce the words. In a low and terrified voice I repeated the same words that had been so perpetually playing in my mind, “It’s her.”