The Mira Side. Karla Popovic
had it all set out on the bench; the nachos, bean dip, sour cream and of course the guacamole.
“Dinner’s ready!” She hollered out.
Lai jumped on the food straight out of nowhere.
“Just wait pig,” Mira hissed on Lai’s selectively deaf ears as she went searching for Mum and Dad. They were huddled to one side of the couch together, holding hands. It stabbed Mira right through the heart.
But she called cheerily, and probably a little too loudly, “Dinner’s ready!”
“Thanks honey, but I think I’ll go to bed after my cuppa,” Dad smiled at her. Everything in him radiated the fight back at her. The fight to smile from his cracked lips, all the way up to his eyes that bulged too far out of his sunken face. He was defiant, even in the face of death, and by God she wasn’t going to let him down. Mira would show him how strong she was, show him his legacy in her. She wouldn’t let him break, or any of them. Even if she only had bare threads of the universe, she’d stitch a mother fucking parachute for them all.
“Your father’s had a bad day honey,” and Mum hummed a few times to herself, like she did every time she was tense; which was all the time lately.
“Ok, no worries,” bright as a button, with fuck you cancer steel in her eyes, Mira bounced over and gave her parents each a savoured kiss on the cheek. Little, everyday things were all of a sudden the very big things.
Strolling back into the kitchen, Mira surveyed the demolition sight that was once her Mexican dinner fiesta.
Lai jumped off the counter, phone in hand, and didn’t even look up to say thanks as she typed furiously down the hall.
Mira sighed. She’d wanted so desperately to recreate something special, a moment they’d never have again. She’d just wanted to sit in it one more time.
Instead she sat in her work clothes, itching at her skirt, pecking at leftovers.
Eventually, with a food coma promising to set in, Mira stretched and slid off the kitchen bench. She dragged her feet through the motions of cleaning up the kitchen, yawned deeply, and pulled herself off to bed.
Morning was always deceitful. It was in the morning that Dad got up by himself and gave her a kiss. It was in the morning he smiled, even though the movement looked like it could crack his fragile face to smithereens. It was in the morning she saw a little twinkle in his eyes and she pulled him to the Earth with hope, keeping him close for another day.
Not at night though.
Dad was an unfathomable force of strength. Everyone thinks that about their dad, but this man really had it - a fight that surged and stuck its finger up at surrender.
When Dad dropped a wine bottle on his foot and it swelled black and blue three times its size he didn’t flinch, didn’t even grunt; he just put his boots on and went to work.
When his appendix burst it took another 24 hours to convince Dad to go to the hospital because that’s the man he was. Nothing broke him, nothing stopped him; he wouldn’t let it because that would mean stop fighting and Dad fought till the end.
But at night her father’s screams of agony saturated the house. It was frighteningly wrong. She didn’t hold him to the Earth at night, didn’t try to pin him down with her hope. At night she prayed to God to let it stop, to let him be free.
It’s indescribable, the kind of self-destructive loathing that comes from praying someone you love was dead. It corrodes your soul deep down past the layers of sense and boundary, past the things you can fix.
“Mir.”
Mira sat up in bed, seeing Lai’s silhouette in the doorway.
“Come on,” and Mira moved over in her childhood single bed, making room for Lai to squish up beside her.
Against the screams, Mira put her hands over Lai’s ears. She felt her little sister’s tears streaming over her arm as she whispered over and over again “It’s ok baby, I got you baby.”
And Mira held back the needles pricking her own eyes. Not tonight misery, she had a job to do.
So she kept singing along to Airplanes in her head.
Eventually Dad’s screaming stopped, and sometime after that Mira finally drifted into a restless sleep. She had flash dreams of running a trail, trying to keep up with someone, but it was impossible to see them clearly as a haze of dust was always in her eyes.
It had been a hell of a night, the worst yet.
Mira woke thinking it was incredible she’d beaten her alarm.
But she hadn’t, Mira had slept through it.
“Shit Lai, get up! I’m going to be late.”
“Stop it,” Lai grumbled as Mira shoved at her to move. Mira dashed into the shower while Lai was still complaining in her half-sleep.
Mira flew out to the kitchen, trying to push down her hair that was frizzing up a halo around her face.
“Ma, have you got a hair tie? I gotta get going to work,” She blustered past Mum making toast.
“You need to drop Lai off at school this morning,” Mum instructed.
“Jeez Mum I’m going to be late!” But Mira wasn’t exactly talking about work.
“I’ve got to take your father into the doctor this morning, he had a really bad time of it last night.”
Mira wanted to wail Fat lotta good that will do, but she bit her frustration back and just said “K, no worries Ma.”
Mira rapped all her urgency out on the bathroom door.
“Come on Lai, seriously, we’re both going to be late.”
After another five excruciatingly long minutes, Lai breezed out of the bathroom with her hair perfectly straightened and eyeliner nailed.
“Really? I’m going to work and I don’t even have makeup on for fuck’s sake,” Mira fumed.
“Not my fault you’ve got no self-respect. No wonder you’re old and alone,” Lai pushed her hand in Mira’s face before she could launch into a rhetoric about genuine self-respect.
But in the car Mira had Lai cornered.
“Let me tell you something…”
Lai groaned and looked out the passenger window.
“One day, if you’re lucky enough you’re going to be old.”
Lai stuck her tongue out in repulsion.
“Oh I know, you think you won’t but you will. In fact, if you’re really lucky, you’re going to spend more of your life old than young.
And if you’ve spent your whole youth measuring your worth by how pretty you are, how many boys are looking at you, and how many girls wanna be around you; you’ll never find you - ‘cause you’re too busy measuring your weight on someone else’s scales.
Put some of your firecracker energy to working out who you are now. ‘Cause if you don’t find that bright light inside you that no one can touch, you’re going to get snuffed out over and over again. The only person you’ve got to chase is you. The only person you’ve got to be your best for is you.
Time’s gonna take your reflection baby, make sure you’ve got something with more endurance that shines.”
Turning her head back to Mira, Lai squinted and said “We’re at school weirdo.”
“Oh yeah! Love you and hey…” Mira grabbed Lai’s arm as she was scooting out the passenger door “No scrapping. Keep your head in your studies.”
Lai slipped Mira’s grip and was out the door hollering back at her “I know! My education is my responsibility, and it’s a gift,