Creative Writing

Tomorrow

Cleo ran her fingers over the keyboard, light enough to feel them rattle against her skin but not quite hard enough to create lines of characters in the open Word document. Her neck carried her head weight as she blankly stared up at the cement ceiling.

“Cleo, what are these FedEx envelopes doing here? I told you to mail these out last night.” A notorious deep voice interrupted her silence.

         She blinked and fixed her stare with a flickering led lightbulb. “You told me to wait for you to sign them in the morning yesterday. You forgot and then texted me at 11:50pm. Not even McDonalds was open, let alone FedEx,” she said.

         When she was little, her grandmother picked her up from school after she got suspended for punching a boy down the slide after he called her twin braids ugly. She blamed the attitude on her background, but her grandmother said that her background was the very reason she should’ve walked away. She should forgive those who hurt her and move on to the next day with gratitude for the experience in life. She also said that when Cleo told off her 9th grade Math teacher, 11th grade Spanish teacher, and her boss at the daycare. Now she found herself back on the slide with her boss of two years, and all she wanted to do was push him down.

He proclaimed his opening line, only today he had breakfast decorating his beard.

         “Bitching isn’t part of the assistant job, Cleo. You know, I hired your lazy ass when no one else would. You’re lucky to even have this job. I-”

         “I don’t want the job,” Cleo said, her tone flat. “I quit. Fuck you.”

         She grabbed her bag from underneath the marble desk and followed the sunlight that spilled in through the huge glass doors. No emotion was attached to her actions. The ‘fuck you’ after borderline slave labor felt like nothing. She’d been stuck re-living the same day over and over for eighteen days, and out of the past eighteen days she had given him the verbal finger twelve times.

         As the New York cobblestone led her home, she thought about how she never questioned the mechanics and logic of how beloved Hallmark characters were able to relive Christmas Eve until they ended up with Mr. Right. Yet here Cleo lived with, ironically, her own Mr. Wright in a twisted version of the famous cinematic time loop. After days of visits to universities, laboratories, libraries, and a couple churches, no explanations were given to her. Not even one page of ol’ mighty google could give her a plausible answer. It made no sense as to how April 8th had taken over her days. Or in her case, single day.

         Squeak. Crack. The ensemble of sounds welcomed Cleo home as she swung open her apartment door. A studio stocked with a bed, microwave, and mini fridge was home to herself and a pile of bills. The phone rang right on time. 12:46 exactly. She let it go to voicemail as she emptied her hands of bags and stripped herself of the uncomfortable corporate wear.

         She commanded her air pod as the caller finished with their note. “Play voicemail.”

         “Hola, linda, espero que estés bien. I’m calling because you haven’t called me and you know that your abuela gets lonely after her favorite girl went and moved to the big banana.”

         “Amor, it's apple,” Cleo heard her grandfather’s static voice in the background.

         “Aiye, mi nieta hermosa sabe. Look, mi cora, call your abuela before I die of old age and they come to bury me. I love you, mas que la isla.” Siri informed Cleo the voicemail has ended, and she answered back with an expressive exhale.

         As she folded herself into her lavender sheets, Cleo convinced herself that all she had to do was find the right combination to unlock April 9th. It had been eighteen days littered with the same beginning, different endings, and then the same beginning again. Her fingers scribbled an invisible equation in the air. Twelve days, including today, she had quit. She was fired three days, she didn’t show up for two, and a sucker punch to the nose and a kick up some thighs had left her in handcuffs for one magnificent day.

         The job was clearly the key to it all. Yet, at the end of each day she was left without it in some way or another. A frustrated grunt escaped her lips. “I love you, mas que las isla,” echoed in her ears. In the past eighteen days she realized that she had never called her grandmother back.

         She reached over to the phone that lay at the end of her feet. The press of a button and a ringing tone left her speechless in patience until song suddenly filled her ears.

         “Hola, hola nenita linda. Finally, you call your abuela!” Salsa blasted loudly in the background as if the music and her grandmother’s accent were in competition. “Aiye, you don’t know how much I miss you and those extra hands while making pasteles. You know Paola's daughter ordered two dozen just for Saturday? They’re having a baby shower. You remember Jose? He’s having another baby con esa chica de Wisconsin o algo asi. Maria said the baby could be Carlo’s son, though. I was like, ‘no me diga.’”

         “Wow, that’s crazy, Abuela,” Cleo replied. Normally, a little new gossip would’ve given her a rise in spirit. Today, she wasn’t feeling up to it.

         “I know that voice. What’s wrong, muñeca?” The phone rang again with a facetime request. She hit accept, and suddenly shared a screen with pinned up white hair and a fruit splattered apron. Without having seen the setting, Cleo recognized her grandmother sitting at the glass round table in her kitchen. A coffee cup balanced in her hand, and wise eyes looked down at her through her thin glasses.

         “Nothing, Abuela, I’m okay,” she settled. Her knees rose and she rested her chin on them. Guilt filled her chest.

         “I didn’t know you were so comfortable lying to your abuela.”

         To this, Cleo’s tears fell. They streamed down her face as the sobs racked against her yellow sweatshirt. She buried her running nose in her palm, and her body rose and fell with every attempt to catch breath.

         A voice cracked between her teeth. “Abuela, I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck, I’m really stuck. This job was only supposed to be for a little while and then it completely took over my life. My boss treats me like I’m worthless. He expects me to kiss the floor he walks on but doesn’t pay me. All my coworkers suck. I’m so angry that this is my life. I’m so far from my family. I have no friends because I don’t have time for friends. And everyone says I should be grateful, Abuela! I should be grateful that I’m barely living better than the rats on these streets? I came to New York to chase my dream, not be someone’s punching bag. I’m just, Abuela, I’m…I’m…stuck. I’m angry. I don’t know who I am. I’m so mad. It’s so unfair!” Cleo’s hand found the nearest object, a pillow, and threw it against the wall. “Why me? Why can’t I live a happy, simple life where things are easy, and people are nice? It’s just not fair and the fact that I’ve lived these two weeks over and over I’m-”

         “Ungrateful.”

         “What?”

         “Ungrateful. Nena, I’m not telling you that it’s wrong to feel all the things that you are feeling. Many of us have felt like that many times in life. I have a lot of times in my life. Life gives and life takes away. We must be grateful for both.”

         Cleo shook her head in great disagreement. “Abuela, how am I supposed to be grateful for an experience that has messed me up so wholly as a person? A job, a boss, a city that has done everything in their power to knock me down?”

         “Cleo, do you think you are so above life to think that it does not have the right?”

         She took a breath. On another day, a rush of anger would’ve replaced the tears that still blurred her vision, but she’d had seventeen days of anger. Seventeen days of self-pity and rage all wrapped in raw emotion. Today all she could do was listen.

         “Mira, When I say I love you more than the island does. What does it mean? No one loves more than our island. She provides food, shelter, and water for her people. She also gives music, community, and seasoning. If it was not for her, that arroz con gandules would not be so good, no? But what does she also do? She gives storms and floods and famine. What do we do then? That is when we are grateful for storms and famine because she teaches us the worth of food and land. We can work together as a people to grow again. We live with light hearts, grateful for the darkness because it reminds us of what it’s like to work towards the light, and then we do it. We work towards the light,” Cleo’s grandmother raises her fist with a shake. “Nenita, you are right. Life is not fair. You work hard and life should divide troubles equally. But like our island, it does not. You must take this time to be strong, to forgive life and those who have hurt you, and to continue to move forward towards your dreams.”

         “Abuela, I’m not just going to forgive these people I-”

         “Why do you think you’ve lived this day again and again then?”

         Cleo’s jaw dropped. “Abuela, what did you say?”

         “Que, nene? Ya vengo. Okay my love I have to go, your Abuelo needs me. Te amo, mas que la isla. Bye, my love.”

         She dropped her phone. Not only was she frozen by the fact that her grandmother had described her exact situation, but also by the words she said. Forgive and move forward? Cleo would do everything to move forward, literally, by even just one day.

         She turned towards the black framed window and took in her view. A dozen windows decorated with metal staircases stared back at her. Cleo thought back to when all she could dream of was what it would be like to call a blooming red brick wall her favorite view. Two years ago, she had walked out of a taxi with luggage and a dream. She was going to make this city home. She was going to grow and explore. She had hopes and dreams that were snatched away by a W2 and an overgrown nepo-baby.

         Her lips moved to the side. Cleo wondered if instead of taking them, she had given her hopes and dreams to them freely. Two years of terror and hopelessness, but she was the one who stayed. Her coworkers had overrun tongues, but she allowed their actions and words to affect her. She had her fault in how she felt. Yet, there were still actions and words she held hostage, ones where she was at no fault, and it fueled her anger.

         She thought about the key. The job. Every day she ended she laid to rest without it. She asked herself what would forgiving those actions and words really do? What would forgiving herself for being so angry do? We live with light hearts, grateful for the darkness because it reminds us of what it’s like to work towards the light, and then we do it.

         Work toward the light. Abuela never said the darkness would go away, just that her sight wasn’t set on it. Like how her people were after a flood, and she would rise again.

Hours went by as she flipped through the past two years with different vision. She didn’t excuse the bad, but she didn’t let it dig its fingernails into her heart. She remembered how April 8th left her without a job, but she didn’t worry. She felt her grandmother’s hands keeping her face towards tomorrow. She felt her heart getting lighter.

Tears tiptoed into her view as the saffron sun embraced the brick and glass, as if her emotions were on display right there with the setting sky. She closed her eyes.

She woke up to the same melody of a honking taxi and yelling neighbors. April 8th again, only this time she was ready.