It was about 6:00pm when Nia slid her key into the tired lock of her apartment door. The hall was small, quiet, while the gray carpet and off-white walls made her feel safe deep inside. Nia cast a regretful look at the doors of her neighbors. Each one was colorfully decorated with some kind of Christmas display; a small string of lights, a paper Santa Claus, some garland, and most bore a handmade paper decoration, no doubt cut-and-pasted with joy by a small child. Her own door was bare save the number, 514, which was tarnished, and starting to fall off.
Nia pushed open the door and threw her purse down on the battered brown chair positioned in front of the small television. The apartment was humble, though not an inch of space had been wasted. A couch against the wall was framed by two narrow, black bookcases. Linoleum flooring announced that one had entered the kitchen area, with the fridge, oven, cabinets, a counter, and a tiny window over the sink, which was over-flowing with dirty dishes.
She passed through the door into to her modest room, then into the bathroom in the back. Without giving a glance to the mirror, she opened the medicine chest and searched through its haphazard contents, finally finding a bottle of aspirin. Nia kicked off her shoes and padded into the kitchen, pills in hand. An inspection of the fridge revealed two six-packs of Cherry Coke, Chinese take-out from the night before, a bag of salad greens, a bundle of carrots, leftover pizza, a gallon of milk, and a wedge of cheese.
Uninspired, Nia grabbed a can of soda, and opened it, taking a deep swig, then taking one of the aspirins. She took a pan out of the cabinet under the sink, filled it, then started the water boiling on the stove. Sipping at the Coke, Nia turned on the television, clicked to the news, and increased the volume so she could hear it in the kitchen. She unwrapped a packet of freeze-dried noodles, adding them and the contents of a flavor pouch into the rapidly boiling water. The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Good evening, this is your AT&T phone representative. Are you pleased with your present long-distance service?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Allow me to explain to you how much you would save a year if you signed up for our new program…”
“No, that’s OK, really.”
“But with the new Dialing For Dollars, you rates will…”
“I said no! Thank you and go away.”
Nia hung up the phone swiftly. One of the minor pleasures that she allowed herself was being rude to telemarketers who were presumptuous enough to call during dinner, or at least, any time when she didn’t feel like talking to them.
The soup steamed, filling the apartment with the thick scent of chicken broth and noodles. Nia got a chipped bowl from one of the upper cabinets, a fork from the silverware drawer, turned off the heat under the pan, and heaped forkfuls of the pasta onto her dish. The meal was an unimpressive one, and cheap, the noodle packet had only cost 50 cents on sale at the Stop n’ Shop. Still, Nia liked it, and taking her dinner, threw herself down on the brown chair to watch the news.
The anchorman was reading the story of a group of local teenagers concerned in making their school drug free. Nia watched with interest, eating her noodles one by one, savoring the taste. A petite man who looked a bit like a weasel came on to do the weather, displaying typical adult anxiety at the coming winter storm.
This pleased Nia greatly; she had always loved giant snow-and-ice storms, and was amused by the reactions of stuffy people who complained about the bad driving conditions. True, she took subway everywhere, but in the city, with little residential parking, vandalism, and even outright theft, it was much easier to take public transit. Deep inside, Nia was still that little girl who went to bed hoping for the Mother Of All Snow Storms to happen in the night; the child who rose early the next morning praying that school had been closed by a blizzard or glacier.
The news shifted to the Health and Medicine section, and a chipper young anchorwoman revealed the results of a new study on obesity. Nia stopped eating.
“One out of every four Americans is grossly overweight, and the study shows, as a nation, we’re getting heavier. Many children are making their diet one of only junk food, and it seems as though many parents have relaxed their standards of nutrition.”
This monologue was accompanied by footage of terribly corpulent citizens walking down the street or eating in restaurants, and pudgy little children stuffing themselves with food. The segment ended, bring on the sports guy, Coach someone-or-other, who started complaining about the latest NFL scores. Nia put her bowl down on the floor and reached for the simple remote.
She flipped quickly through the channels, stopping finally on a game show, but soon, it went to a commercial.
“I’ll be honest; I never wanted to look in the mirror, get into a bathing suit, or try on anything even remotely fashionable. I was fat. It was amazing, I lost fifty pounds in the last two months, and I am STYLING! The guys are just popping up all around me, and I owe it all to Weight-Off, with their new offer of just-“
Nia turned off the TV. Rising slowly, almost without purpose, she wandered into her bathroom, and stared deeply at her reflection in the mirror. Her brown hair and amber brown eyes stood out from her trim face and high cheekbones, and a thin neck led to narrow shoulders and a slim figure. Truly, Nia was the stereotypical girl with good looks. She shuddered in disgust, and returned to the kitchen.
On the dingy fridge were magnets made out of photographs, and from them shone a younger, significantly heavier version of her. It was that fat face, not her own, that Nia saw looking back at her from the mirror. Her weight was not dangerous; at 120, she filled out her 5’3” frame perfectly. Yet, every mouthful reminded her of her failing, and she ran two miles a day to keep in shape.
Words suddenly filled the small apartment; lingering in the air, but them plummeting to the floor like stones. They twisted in and out of the kitchen, some drifting into the bedroom, while others smashed against the dirty window above the sink. It took Nia a few moments to realize that she was speaking out loud. She sighed, but kept speaking, slowly and more softly now. Finally, silence descended like a wet blanket, sucking up all sound into its thick vortex of nothingness.
Wistfully, Nia drifted over to the phone. It was an old, gray one attached to the kitchen wall, and its too-long cord curled and twisted along its length. She picked up the receiver and thought for a moment. Her hand hovered over it, but did not dial. She hung up the phone, but ran her fingertips over the soft, gray, slightly-warm buttons. They were shiny, like little candies.
Nia flopped down against the wall, then slumped over to lay on her side. On eye level with the floor, she spied her discarded bowl of noodles. Inching her way over across the gray carpet, she discovered them cold, but ate ravenously. Nia was lying on the floor, on her stomach, slurping the wet, cold noodles like a dog. She didn’t know when she finished, but soon she was lapping at the bottom of the bowl.
Within minutes, the guilt from her binge rushed in, and Nia curled up as her stomach burned in response. All of her being throbbed. Within moments she was rocking violently from side to side, like a mother would rock a sick or tired child. Nia was forced, then, to be her own mother and comfort herself. She was cold, bitterly cold. Shivering, she drew a shoulder close to her head and nuzzled it with her cheek. There was no one else there to hug.
When she was in high school, Nia had never had a boyfriend, or anything even close. She still saw the guys, still thought about them and had crushes, but knew that she was invisible to them. All the same, all her friends went out with guys, and things like dances and Valentine’s Day had always plunged her into deep bouts of depression and self-loathing.
The words spun around her now as the tears cascaded down her face to soak into the thick carpet. What were those words? Who was speaking them? Nia had no answers. Time wore on, and the relentless thunder of words slowed and then stopped. The only sounds were those of the frozen rain pellets hitting the kitchen window.
Stiffly, Nia rose, and walked into the kitchen. It had been hours since she’d eaten; the clock read 11:42pm. Had she really spent that long lying on the floor? Outside, the city thrummed with night sounds. Things were happening out there, life was going on.
The girl hefted herself onto the counter, then moved all the dishes out of the way, sitting on the window sill with her feet in the sink. Nia rested her face against the freezing, smooth glass. In the streets below, the headlights of cars lit the icy asphalt, and the night shift came out. People, almost too minuscule to be seen, all walked down the sidewalks, got in and out of cars, fussed with umbrellas; their humanity flowing universally through both the city and the world.
Who were those people down there? Each car held them, each building full of them, and each had a life, a story to tell. Was there someone out there thinking the same thing in that lonely city? All this, the words wondered, and the empty questions floated down to the rest over the pavement.
It was 2:11am when Nia jumped down from the window sill. Reaching for the bottle of aspirin and her now-warm soda, she took two more pills, and, cradling her throbbing head, fell into the brown chair and flicked on the television. Infomercials and ads for dirty phone lines filled every channel. Finally, Nia settled for watching a talk show on MTV.
Mercifully, the show ended, and was followed by music videos. An old one played first, it had come out the summer before Nia’s senior year. It was about a bunch of guys telling a girl that it didn’t matter who she was, what she did, or how she looked, as long as she loved them. Nia stood and paced around for the duration of the song. Her words betrayed her thoughts, but no one was listening. In her heart, she hated the hypocrisy and fallacies of the lyrics.
The music videos kept playing, interrupted here and there by commercials and shows. Nia kept pacing. The words had grown thick now, taking up space and using up the oxygen. When the girl fought them to get into the kitchen, it was 4:27am, and she retreated into her bedroom.
Undressing so quickly and silently, it seemed purposeless, Nia stepped into the shower, filling the bathroom with cleansing steam. The hot water brought a strong feeling of security, but for some reason, squared the loneliness. The apartment was empty, save her, the city dreary with people she didn’t know, and would never meet. Far away, all Nia’s old friends were living their own lives, and everyone she ever had known would one day, as she, be dead.
Drying off, ignoring the hollow ring of the long-ago said words, Nia wished she could see some of the old crew again, but they had all gone their own ways. She dressed, and while putting on her shoes, started crying for want of a friend; simple human companionship. Nia hugged herself, remembering how her old friends hugged each other. The words now died in her throat unsaid.
The kitchen clock read 5:43am when she went in to start the coffee. It’s scent made her empty stomach rumble, but Nia ate no breakfast. The girl drank the hot liquid with no expression. After grabbing her purse, she turned off all the lights, and opened the door. Fatigue pulled at her from all sides, and she knew that more nights like the last one would kill her. Still, there was no rest, no sanctuary. It was 6:00am when Nia slipped the key out of the tired lock of her apartment door.
