"You done yet?" Liz called out from behind the door.
"Just gimme a second!" I shouted while in the bathroom.
It was that time of the day again.
A glass bowl of vomit sat on the floor.
It reeked.
"One quick gulp, get it done already!" she said.
I'd been doing this every day for a whole month and it still hadn't got any easier.
First, you needed to pour some of it on the injured leg.
The wounds frothed like it was being sterilized. The sting stayed the same as well, but that much I could handle.
What I could never get used to was the god-forsaken stench of vomit.
It was like someone went to the toilet, ate their feces, threw up and ate it again, then repeated the process seven more times.
Days like this made me wish I'd never been born with a sense of smell at all. Hell, I wished I'd never had eyes, either. Even when I shut both your mouth and nostrils, somehow I could still scent the puke just by looking.
"You know what—" she barged into the room.
"Aaahhhh!!!"
"Why are you screaming? I'm not gonna molest you."
"Five more minutes. I promise—"
She picked up the bowl and shoved it in my face. The white ceramic clicked on my top front teeth and pushed against my tongue.
It's been two hours, she said.
Gulp. Gulp.
I imagined cockroaches were clogging up the back of my throat and stomach. Just like how it had felt the first time I did it.
Sometimes you needed that extra push to get the job done.
"Get out!"
She banged the door behind me.
And this was her idea.
Since the "medicine" hadn't worked the first time, Liz suggested trying it out again a couple more times to make sure. So I tried it for a week. And then that week turned into two weeks, and then a month.
It surprised me that she was wholeheartedly behind the idea, even though she'd been dead set against it a while ago.
The stench lingered on my tongue. I went for the jug of milk waiting by the bathroom door.
That was odd. It usually went away after the milk!
"Awa gaha atta hahr." Imma getting out of here, was what I was trying to say if my tongue hadn't become paralyzed.
"I do not care. Go wherever you want." She yelled from behind the door.
A trip to the market downtown would help take my mind off the stench.
We already had plenty of knives at home—more than enough to carry us through the end of next month, but we could always get some more just in case.
It would also make her feel more at ease, since she wasn't done with her session for today. Usually she'd vomit for about two or three minutes, but every now and again the digestive fluid burned its way back up.
I felt like a dickhead for stalling since she'd been patient enough to sit and twiddle her thumbs in the living room for two hours.
Seeing the streets being busier than usual made me gag uncontrollably. The crowd only meant more unwanted attention, which only meant trouble.
Surprisingly enough, not many people seemed to notice when they saw me limping on the sidewalk today—at least they didn't look like they cared too much when they were in front of me. Maybe the ones who were curious were decent enough that they only looked from behind.
I wheeled my shopping cart down the frozen section in the grocery store. Frozen pizzas of fifteen different kinds of toppings were stacked on first row. Breakfast pizza with omelet, sausage, bacon. Mashed potato and sour cream. Pasta and molten cheese. Steak and blue cheese. Cashew and chicken.
If Liz was here, she'd catch me drooling. She'd also tell me to put some of them in the basket for dinner. The last times we'd been to the grocery store, she gave me a full lecture on how life was short and you should do whatever you wanted as long as it would make you happy.
I was also the one paying, after all.
What she wouldn't admit was that she couldn't eat any of this stuff without retching up something vile. The grease made her vomit ten times worse. And more painful. Natural laws dictated that if it tasted good it was most likely bad for you. In her case, the effect would only be ten times over.
She didn't look like she enjoyed eating them, either.
If she didn't like any of this stuff, why'd she tell me to buy them? Was she some kind of masochist?
Maybe she'd enjoy the one with green beans and vegetables—no. I was making excuses to buy them for myself.
Let's just stick with bell pepper and mushrooms like usual. Her stomach seemed to handle them pretty well.
Maybe a packet of Oreo or two while I was at it. She was always eyeing the sweets but never bought them, saying she didn't like sugar. Too bad she couldn't stop calling out names in her sleep.
Oreo. Oreo.
Who the hell was Oreo?
Whatever. Maybe I was being presumptuous for buying this, acting like a know-it-all, as if I knew what she did and didn't want. I'd just pretend like I bought it for myself, then.
A butcher was cutting pork fillets in the meat section. A small silver-haired girl stood nearby and watched him behind a row of freezers with beef arrayed behind foggy glass. The skirt she was wearing was all black and reached her shins.
The room was very quiet.
I came closer to take a look at the meat on display.
"You're buying some?" she asked, her eyes following the movement of the butcher's knife.
I was the only one in the meat room so I assumed she was talking to me.
"Uh, not today," I said.
"What a waste. This is really good meat."
The girl was still looking at the butcher's knife slicing a leg open. She must be talking about the beef in the fridge.
"They're all right," I said, somewhat impressed that a kid her age would know how to pick meat. I checked out the beef put on display. Tenderloin, top loin, T-eye. The color was bright red. They were moist but not wet. No liquids at the bottom of the tray. The cuts were clean, no tears. They were like any other standard beef.
"No, sir," she finally looked away from the knife and pointed at a swathe of meat. Her long uncut nail clicking on the glass faintly echoed across the room. "That one is the best. If you hold it, you'll see how firm it is."
She could tell the firmness just by looking. There was no lid. I was almost tempted to ask the butcher to take it out for me just to test her claim.
"You know quite a lot about beef for your age. How old are you?" I asked with a warm smile.
She was attentively watching the butcher work.
I suddenly could hear the ventilation in the distance.
When you were waiting for something, and you really paid attention, you'd find that a room that was already quiet very often would get even quieter.
A chill ran down my spine when I heard she said it.
"How old is the universe?"
As a cripple, I couldn't have asked for a better response. Kids would be kids at the end of the day. At least she'd still called me sir a couple of seconds ago.
I slowly turned around and left the freezer room.