#ririwrites

It started with her fingernails. When she was six, her mother had gotten into an accident, drove through her green light too early and gotten smashed by someone speeding. Morgan’s mother and the offending car melded together, killing them both. Morgan's booster seat had been flung sideways, and her head hit the window. There's a faint scar in her hairline where the glass cracked.

Afterward she learned from her aunt Sofia that the glass spread every time she got an inch closer to death. It runs in the family, skipping some people she said. Morgan’s fingers have been glass for years now. She thought she could feel with them, almost like phantom fingers, almost normal, but even so it was a reminder of her physical relationship with death.

Sofia said that her great-grandmother used to cry glass tears. They're strung around Morgan's neck. Morgan does not cry glass tears, but she wished she did. She could make and sell charms. She cries enough for that.

Earlier, she cried because Jamie slept on her shoulder and she heard him snore. It sounded like a pot whistling. Now he sits on her knee; she's curled up on the couch talking to Sofia, who's telling her how to make ceviche. Morgan always makes it too sour. The fish would fall apart in the citrus juice. She marinates it for too long, but it’s a little scary eating raw fish. She lets herself believe that the citrus will kill 99.9% of the bacteria.

Jamie grinds his beak contentedly, feathers recently preened and fluffed. Morgan never liked the sound of grinding teeth, or beaks. She felt the sound behind her eyes and in the joints of her neck. But she didn't stop Jamie, since it was a positive expression for birds.

Sofia's voice picks up to yell at the dogs that were running over the old couch. The springs creak and the couch dips very easily. Morgan could hear them barking through the phone. Jamie could too and gives her phone a stink eye. He flies across the room to his cage and patters inside. He chirps softly, calling for food. Morgan leaves her mother to talk to the dogs on the couch and replenishes Jamie's food trough.

"Mamá is pretty mad at the dogs. I'm glad you're not a hassle." Morgan ruffles his neck feathers briefly and goes back to her phone. Sofia stopped screaming by then.

"Mamá, I got the instructions, but it would be nice for you to show me how. Do you want to come for dinner?" Her apartment is lonely.

"Sure, I'll get your brother to watch the dogs. He's studying for exams anyway. I'm on my way. Thaw some fish."

It would take at least forty-five minutes for the commute. Morgan opens her freezer to get some fish ready for her whirlwind aunt. She looks at the clock on her oven. It’s four in the afternoon, and the fish needs about three hours to marinate, so they would be finished cooking and chatting by eight. Sofia would take most of it home, to feed the rest. Morgan drops some frozen tilapia in a bowl of room temperature water and goes to organize some paperwork before Sofia comes.

Her desk is a mess of invoices and website templates. Her headset rests on her 24 inch monitor and the wires hang, tangled. Morgan picks at the knot, her fingers clinking together and sending pleasant shivers down her spine. She ties up the wire with a stray hairband and leaves it on her monitor. Morgan shuffles her papers into a folder and turns her monitor off. Sofia doesn’t need to see the mess of CS code on the screen.

Jamie flies from his cage to Morgan’s head. He stays as she cleans up a stray shoe from under the couch, some bowls, and instant noodles. But he escapes to his cage and shuts the door when she pulls the mini vacuum out of the closet. Morgan cleans up the bird seed in efficient strokes, trying to minimize the time she needs to have the vacuum on.

Her hands are passing over the bite marks that Jamie has given the vacuum cord when Sofia knocks on the door. Morgan shoves the vacuum in the closet without finishing coiling the cord and answers the door. Sofia will talk first. She always does.

“Morgan, hello! It’s been too long.” She pulls Morgan down for a hug. Morgan buries her face in Sofia’s neck, an earring presses against her brow bone.

“Three weeks is hardly a long time Mamá.”

She pulls back and strokes Morgan’s hair, tucks it behind her ear. She cut it recently and donated 14 inches. “Three weeks is too long for me. Did you cut the fish?”

Morgan shakes her head. “It’s still thawing.”

Sofia clapped her hands. “Then let’s get to work.”

 Sofia cut the fish into cubes, ignoring the slight ice in the center, while Morgan mixed citrus juices. That would be her only job for the night, since Sofia would talk her ears off. The café was going well, the college students looked dead, Old Man Joe was still a nuisance, Eduardo was failing physics, and the dogs missed Morgan. Jamie emerges from his cage and flies to the dinner table. It’s a small one, big enough for four. His claws tap on the table, dancing for some food. Morgan smiles and breaks some bread for him.

Sofia digs around Morgan’s pantry and brings out an onion. “So Morgan, when was the last time you left the apartment?”

Morgan breaks off another piece of bread for Jamie, even though he hadn’t finished he first bit. “I got groceries yesterday.”

She peels the onion skin back. “I meant for leisure.”

Morgan rips some more bread for Jamie. “I got lunch last week.”

Sofia’s mouth forms a line, onion in one hand, knife in the other. “That was a luncheon with a client. It doesn’t count.” Another piece of bread falls to the table. “When was the last time you saw someone that doesn’t pay you?”

Jamie looks up at Morgan with his head cocked. He ruffles his feathers and patters to her hands. “It’s been a while. I can’t remember.”

Sofia cuts through the onion viciously, angry. Jamie gets scared and flaps his wings. They haven’t been trimmed since the last time a stranger visited. He flies up, up, up, brushes the ceiling and lands on the fridge. Sofia is still cutting the onion.

“Can you put him in his cage? We’re cooking.”

Morgan looks from Jamie to Sofia. Her eyes water. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Her eyes burn. Sofia sniffs. Jamie sneezes.

“Mamá, can you stop cutting for a moment? The onion is irritating Jamie.” Morgan’s throat is clear. She is not crying.

Sofia put down the knife and pulls a tissue from her pocket. “How will you get him down?”

Morgan smiles and onion-induced tears fall. She sniffs. Sofia blows her nose. Morgan calls Jamie, clicking her tongue softly. He scratches at the fridge door.

“Jamie, come here.” She lifts her hand up, fingers forming a perch. He whistles at her but stays put. “It’s not the time to play games. Come here, Jamie.” He dances a bit.

“That’ll never work, just grab him,” Sofia says. It’s well-meaning, but it would hurt Jamie. She turns and continues cutting the onion.

Morgan is irritated, but says nothing. She tries calling Jamie again, putting her hand at the top of the fridge. He pecks at her fingers, so she moves them away. This startles him; he flaps, and falls. Jamie swoops and passes over the onion, aiming frighteningly close to the knife.

“Mamá, watch out!”

Sofia reaches toward him and he shrieks. Morgan can see what’s going to happen, but she’s already crossed her small kitchen, her hand already closing around the knife. The knife will slip and slice Sofia’s arm. Jamie will lose feathers and hide behind her mug tree. Morgan will bruise her forehead on Sofia’s forehead. Terrible, but repairable.

Morgan did not anticipate breaking three of her fingers.

The knife sliced Sofia’s arm, onion juice forcing a violent reaction, slamming the knife and Morgan’s hand into the counter. Brown glass falls from her hand in chunks. It doesn’t hurt. Morgan feels like it should hurt. Sofia grabs her sliced arm and applies pressure. Jamie chirps loudly.

The tears fall.

Morgan stands there, sobbing, one hand on the counter, the other muffling her mouth and hiding the sliding mucus, while Sofia patches herself up. Runs cold water on her injury, wraps it in gauze that Morgan keeps in the bathroom. Jamie trills softly, staring at Morgan’s face. Sofia comes back from the bathroom and picks up the pieces of onion that flew, throwing the bloody ones away. The knife clatters in the sink. The onions are now in a bowl. Morgan is still crying and Sofia is picking up the pieces of finger. The blood is spreading, the shards in a neat pile. They glitter fantastically.  

Sofia pulls another tissue from her pocket and hands it to Morgan, who takes it and blows her nose.

“I’m sorry, Mamá,” her voice breaks, “I didn’t mean to –”

“Shh,” Sofia rubs her back. “It’s not your fault.”

Morgan is talking through hiccups, the speech is almost unrecognizable. Sofia gets her a glass of water. She gulps it down, but still hiccups.

“Breathe, and then talk.” Sofia’s hands are shaking; she’s worried, but detached. Her arm still stings. Morgan takes a few steadying breaths, but still can’t get a coherent sentence out. Her hand is still limp on the counter. She hasn’t moved it since the initial impact.

Efficiency is cold, but Sofia softens the edge by rubbing Morgan’s back. “I know this is scary, but you need to get your bird back into his cage so we can clean up the glass.”

Morgan forces out a whisper, “Terrifying,” and goes back to sobbing. Sofia holds back a sigh and pulls Morgan back to her chest. Jamie walks out from behind the mug tree and chirps. Morgan doesn’t respond so he walks toward the shards of finger. He leans as if to bite them, but Sofia waves him off. He flaps away, back to his cage and sits on top, dropping a load into his drinking water.

They stay like that for a while, until Morgan depletes her reservoirs. She sniffs and Sofia hands her another napkin, this time from the counter. Morgan blows her nose with one hand. It’s scratchy.

“Now what?” she croaks.

Sofia nudges the glass, blood shifts. “We put you back together.”

Morgan looks at the pile of glass on the counter and the jagged edges of her fingers. “How can we fix this?”

“Glue.”

“Mamá, if my fingers couldn’t handle this while whole, they wouldn’t even be able to hold Jamie’s weight if we use glue.”

Sofia turns one of the largest shards between her fingers. It decorates her with red patterns. Her other hand is clenched.

“Mamá?”

“I don’t know how to help you here. I didn’t know the first time, and I don’t know now. I’m sorry.”

Morgan looks at her shattered hand again. Her thumb is fine but her index finger is noticeably chipped. Her other three fingers are obliterated. Her pinky doesn’t even have a stub; it’s broken down to the seam. She looks into her hand, trying to see if she could find veins or flesh. It’s all brown. She can’t discern any textbook-worthy anatomy.

Sofia’s shoulders are shaking but she still speaks. “Is this why you never leave?”

Morgan puts her whole hand on Sofia’s shoulder and wiggles the other. She can see the tendons in her palm moving, the stubs responding. It looks gross, alien, so she stops.

“Morgan?”

She blinks and puts her hand down. “Yes.”

Sofia looks up at her with red eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“I know, but I should have told you, when the glass breaks, it breaks. It’s useless to try and stop it.

Morgan takes a step back. The skin on her face pulls tight, tear tracks cracking. “What are you talking about?”

Sofia turns back to the shards. “Your mother had glass toes. They broke off because she was trying to be too careful.” She smiles, remembering. “She always wore at least three pairs of socks. ‘For padding’ she said.” Sofia gives Morgan a sad smirk. “They never matched. She would stay indoors, walk only on carpet.”

Morgan takes a step forward. “What happened?”

Sofia looks down. “One day she took off her socks, and her toes had fallen off. Just like that. They’d grown brittle from the lack of use.” Sofia looks at Morgan with earnest eyes. “Take a pottery class. Come home and work in the garden. Use your hands because once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

Morgan shakes her head, hair getting caught in her eyelashes. “If I leave the apartment, I might die. You’ll have to bury my shards. They’ll be so small you can’t tell if it’s me or a car window. ” She squeezes her arm with her good hand. She doesn’t want to be crushed to a million pieces. But it’s too late, she’s been shattered.

Sofia pats Morgan’s arm, allowing her to release the pressure. “And you might die here. You might die anywhere.”

Morgan blinks three times and shakes her head a little bit. “But Mamí –”

“Learned this after her toes fell off. Do what you want. That’s what she did.” She smiles, her eyes still watery.

Morgan looks at her fingers and turns around. Jamie peeks from around the corner and chirps. Morgan smiles, but focuses her attention to her balcony. The assortment of pots sit, organized by how much water they need. This is her garden. All she needs to do is water them and pluck out dead leaves. It’s low maintenance, but Morgan always wished to be able to get on her hands and knees in the dirt.  

She looks at her hands, broken and not broken. They’ve never tilled soil.  They’ve never molded a pot. They’ve never kneaded dough. They’ve never cooked over a large vat of stew.

She turns back to Sofia. “But how can I do these things with one and a half hands?”

Sofia says, “Your mother lived without her toes. You can function without three fingers.”

Morgan is quiet for a beat. “Did Mamí try fixing her toes?”

Sofia shakes her head. “She screamed so loud that the neighbor’s dog howled. She couldn’t even look at her toes.”

Morgan nods, contemplating. Glass can be melted, molded, or blown. She could fix her fingers. She just needed window lead. She also needed to clean Sofia’s blood off of them. She wiggled her stubs again. She didn’t know how durable that kind of repair would be.

“Maybe you should break off the jagged parts of your fingers. For safety.” Sofia was holding her injured arm.  

“I – oh.” Morgan doesn’t own an oven mitt, having never used the oven. So she wraps her hand with a towel. She looks back at Sofia, who is still holding her arm. The blood has seeped through the bandage. She blinks quickly and glances at the knife in the sink. The blood is visibly dry on  the blade.

“Mamá! How deep is your cut?”

Sofia releases her arm and wipes her hands on her pants. “It’s not bad, I’ve had worse.” Her face pulls tight, holding back a wince.

Morgan turns and grabs a plastic bag, sweeps her broken fingers into it. Blood streaks across the counter and patterns the plastic bag. She zips it tight and walked over to Jamie’s cage, clicking her tongue again, and coaxes him inside with promises of fresh spray millet.

“What are you doing?”

“We are going to get you to a hospital, and then I am going to look for a local glass warehouse.” Morgan locks the cage. Jamie climbs the door and bites he latch. She covers his cage with a blanket grabs her phone.

Sofia looks between the bag of shards and Morgan, who is putting on shoes. “You want them to fix your fingers?”

“If they can.”

“And if they can’t?”

Morgan closes her eyes and sighs.

Sofia nods. She wraps the onions in saran and leaves them in the fridge. The fish was set to marinate a while ago and was already in the fridge. She goes to clean the knife, but Morgan stops her.

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll clean that later.” She’s already holding a purse and her jacket.

Sofia looks at Morgan’s eyes. They’re clear, if a bit watery. She hugs her, tight. Morgan hugs back, her mitten on Sofia’s shoulder.

“Get green fingers.”

There is a video I watched years ago that burns in my memory every time I look something up regarding anything mentioned above: https://youtu.be/w7l2hUp0CkQ

This Youtube channel fueled some unknown angst and sadness in me in a consoling nature, knowing that thousands of people live through these inexplicable feelings and emotions.

(I also have a Pinterest board of a myriad of these kinds of words,

too: https://pin.it/6pCcCG1 )

This is a form of confirmation bias, or something more simple: “we search for what we want to hear.” In any sense, it is reassuring that millions of other people want to “quit their job” and require a further push to do what they want to feel satisfied. Still, at the same time, there is an equally solid and relevant argument against it, so what is right? What is wrong? With an infinite amount of opinions, beliefs, facts, and “truths” on the internet, it feels overbearingly impossible to be able to listen to what others deem suitable for you and your life. This feeling that you feel like you cannot satisfy yourself or gain the approval of millions of other people around you makes up low-self esteem.

Am I doing something wrong if there are multiple schools of thought to do something? Of course not, but does the internet make you feel that way because we want to help each other (thinking optimistically). That is why there are these articles out here. But, who is to say that you are not living your life correctly? I still find myself searching online for any sort of help or knowledge because it is easy to place your worries onto the abyss that the internet is rather than reaching out to your mother, friends, or partner. That anonymous nature we crave for comes through the lack of communication with who know us.

After all, we know our regrets, worries, hopes, and thoughts, so we sow our minds how we want our seeds to grow. Our own actions are immeasurably more complex and mature than anything we can explain in words, especially online. Questioning ourselves and being our own devil’s advocate is much better than someone that does not know you providing their input. You know you. I know me.

Yet, throughout it all, I believe that the internet is a grandiose and overstimulated resource that can guide us and provide other perspectives. Without it, maybe I would not have pushed myself to put in my two weeks.

We’re too worried and confused about everything, and there will always be a million ways to live.

So who is anyone telling you what to do?

Who am I to tell you what to do?

-Riri