Marigene Willson's Writing Workshop

WA 7, Draft 1

Regina peered with a certain, deep gaze from underneath her bedspread. It was early in the morning, and while everyone else was sleeping, her mind was racing at an increasingly accelerated pace as every molecule of air was absorbed into her bloodstream. On this particular morning, she was planning out what the day would bring, down to the very last second. She had gone to bed at exactly 10:36 pm the night before, and according to her calculations, she had gotten precisely 7 hours and 21 minutes of sleep. Which made it exactly 5:57 am on Tuesday, December 2nd. In the two-thousand-and-first year after the death of our Lord. Now, Regina was not a particularly religious person, but she had taken to measuring time this way because she liked to count back from things. In any case, she thought that this day was going to be special. Why, and how, she was not quite sure, but, she had noticed and very straight crack in the dry-wall portion of her ceiling right above her bed. She had taken a decided liking to this crack, and because everything had a certain significance to Regina, this signified that the day would be in some way special. Therefore, at the exact moment that the clock read 5:59 (as was her daily rising time) she sat up straight with her feet over the side of her bed, wiggled her toes for no more or less than seven seconds, and yawned once. She took the 13 measured steps across her room, to the bathroom, starting with her left foot and ending on her right. She realised that she had an intense need to urinate, but resisted the urge, because it was on on the schedule until after she brushed her teeth. The distinct gurgling sound of water running up the pipes rushed into her ears as a toliet across the hall flushed. She deduced from this that her mother, whom she called Lydia, was awake. Somehow, it gave her an uneasy feeling. But then she saw that her laundry had been stacked outside her door in height descending, colour coded piles, which reinforced her initial waking thought, that today would be special. This thought also helped her to calm the sudden urge she had to bite her knuckles and rock back and forward until the strange feeling in her stomach went away. But, as she counted the steps that she took down the hallway, toward the kitchen and past the bathroom, she noticed that light switches, which could be controlled from several different plates, were not all in the down direction, but went in a pattern of 'down', 'down', 'up', 'down'. Which was a distinctly bad turn of events in Regina's morning. At this point, she sat on the floor, closed her eyes, bit her knuckle and made a small, low noise from the back of her throat, until she heard footsteps come down the hall. It was Lydia, and although this seemed to be a daily routine, she was wondering what she possibly could have done to upset Regina already, this early in the morning. She was within about 4 feet of Regina at this point, which she knew was the closest that was safe in this state. It was so goddamned early. Lydia felt a bit more than a twinge of guilt pull at the back of her mind when she thought (for the trillionth time in the 15 years she had been raising Regina) that this was not what she had bargained for when the strip had turned pink. Focusing not on events of the past, though, she held out her palm, fingers spread apart, to signify to Regina that she was listening and wanted to know what had upset her. She looked at the direction that Regina's direct gaze was facing, and realized that she had forgotten to adjust the light switches before she had gone to bed.
"Look, Regina, I cannot deal with this kind of behavior this morning." Lydia crossed the room, and adjusted the light switches. "There, the switches are fixed, I'm going to go make breakfast." She felt guilty, knewing that using a phrase such as "this behavior" implied that Regina could control it, so she immediately trod, stocking-footed, into the kitchen. She began making breakfast to distract herself. Scrambled eggs with red food dye, the dark pink meat of a grapefruit, and 1% milk, strawberry flavoured. Regina only ate Pink things in the morning. The detached, unpredictable way that Regina was, coupled with Lydia's young, single motherhood, and affectionate, tempered personality made a very hard match. She spent every day trying to calm the sudden outbursts when three red cars passed in a row, or when her laundry was not piled quite right. She hated herself for becoming so frustrated at Regina's bandaged knuckles or the report from school that she had spent all day sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth with her hands over her knees. But she could accept a little bit of self hatred. What was more and more unsettling to Lydia was the immediate reaction that everyone took when they realised that Regina was not quite normal. To most, the term retard would spring to mind. Lydia (as frustrated as she did get with regina) boiled over with anger at the mere thought of this, not only because it was a sincerely ignorant assumption to make, but also because it was distinctly wrong. To be honest, sometimes Lydia wondered what practical things she could do without Regina. For example, Regina calculated every item placed in the basket at the grocery store, including tax, and came up with the exact total, often correcting the cashier. She had probably saved then hundreds of dollars while shopping. Lydia had learned to appreciate these things; to overlook the fact that over the years, Regina had become increasingly particular about the way things were done, to the point of, what Lydia had thought, was anal retentive. Usually Lydia wasn't this thoughful in the morning, and in breaking free from her thought, cursed the eggs that she had just burned, and started a new batch.
Regina, for all of the strange looks that she had gotten throughout her lifetime, had never considered her behaviour abnormal. Counting steps was a sacred ritual, and the sudden urge to tap her nose with any sort of writing utensil 3 times before using it was completely normal. But at this moment, she smelled eggs burning. She counted the seconds before she heard her mother swear, and the fire alarm start. There was something soothing about the pulsating sound of the alarm, like white noise, and Regina decided that todaywas going to be special, and in some way acceptably unusual.

posted by Marigene Willson @ 4:33 PM