Lena spent Sunday studying and transplanting her overgrown snake plant, Monty. His pot was a rather heavy terra cotta model, with an artistic splash of calcium residue around the bottom. It had a long crack that should have split the pot in two a decade ago. Despite several attempts to clean it, it never looked clean, but Lena figured he probably like it that way. She dumped Monty's pot into the back garden and worked her fingers between his roots, shaking the dirt clumps off. It was chilly outside, and the clouds painted the sky a matte grey. Next to the garden was a small shed that was steadily composting into the muddy clay soil underneath. Yanking the door open, Lena swept an arm in front of her face to catch any invisible spider webs. Cautiously, she knocked a stack of plastic pots onto the floor, kicking them apart to scare out any hibernating insects. After inspecting the cleanest looking one, she returned to her disentangled plant. Monty was large enough to probably make three plants, but she settled for two. She placed the larger one back in the terra cotta pot and the smaller one in the plastic pot. She brought both back up to her room just before dinner.
Monty seemed content with his new soil and the extra space. As her closest confidant, the snake plant had been awarded the title of Honorary Study Buddy. Lena practiced reciting latin names and terms to the plant and imagined him quizzing her. Anatomically accurate (well, mostly accurate) sketches were stamped on every spare bit of paper on her desk. They got progressively messy looking as the evening wore on.
She pulled out her student teaching application and glanced over it. She decided to fill out the easy parts and leave the parts that required thinking for tomorrow. Half-way through the third page, her brother, Roy, poked his head into her room. His dust brown hair was missing it's usual little spike above his forehead. He must've mussed it up during a nap. He had just started high school this year, and he was already taller than Lena by several inches. He bounced a little on his toes, "Hey, do you think we should do brownies or cake for Dad's birthday?"
"Have you asked Dad?"
"He's still at school, finishing some grading. It's gonna be a surprise."
"How about brownies? I can help. I'm done with this," she said tucking the papers into the front of a notebook.
Downstairs, Lena's two youngest siblings, Eli and Claire, were lounging on the couch in front of a movie. At the mention of brownies, both sat up, all prior boredom forgotten. Eli sauntered into the kitchen, attempting to look nonchalant, following them to where Lena's mother stashed the chocolate chips. Claire failed at hiding her enthusiasm and did her best five-year-old version of barefoot river dance.
"Claire, you can't have any chocolate until after dinner. Mom said." Eli scoffed as he got a glass of milk from the fridge.
"Well, you can't have any treats!" Claire put her hands on her hips, taking at stab at impersonating her mother. She jutted her chin out for good measure.
Lena sighed, they hadn't even started cooking yet and already there was the makings of sibling warfare. Sometimes it was hard to feel like a complete adult while Lena still had to mitigate disputes between her siblings. Particularly Eli and Claire who were five years apart in age, and had trouble seeing eye to eye.
Helena Marie Anderson was the oldest of five siblings and the only one that had ever moved out of the house. She supposed that had to count for something, even if she had moved back in a year later. She hadn't really wanted to come back home, studying was easier while she was away. But half-way through her second semester of college, her classes couldn't keep her interest and she was dreading working at a desk, or with computers. She had decided to change majors, but it had been too late for her steadily degrading GPA. The journey out of engineering had taken a toll on her scholarships and she'd had to move back home. At least it was nice having people to talk to again.
Making brownies was simple enough that Roy did it pretty much on his own, while Lena sat on a stool and read off ingredients from her mother's battered recipe book. She only had to shoo Eli and Claire out of the kitchen twice. After the brownies made it into the oven Eli snuck in and licked out the bowl in the sink and then disappeared again. Lena shrugged at Roy; they had already licked off the beaters and spatulas.
Lena's father came in just as her mother pulled the chicken broccoli casserole out of the oven.
"Lena, can you see if Riley is awake yet? She's been up there all day. She won't be able to sleep tonight..." Her mother stretched a bit as she set the food down on the table, stiff from writing out her lesson plans. Sarah Anderson taught a little group of pre-school students out of the house three times a week. She had taught all of her children, and now that they were all in school, she didn't have to keep doing it, but she wanted to.
Riley was a senior in high school. She had stayed up all Friday night finishing an AP Spanish project, and had become nocturnal over night. Lena knocked on her door softly.
"Riley?" No response. "Riley we're going to eat dinner..." She slowly opened the door to her darkened room. A radio played softly in the corner, masked by the sound of a window fan aimed at ceiling. Lena clicked on a lamp, illuminating a pile of blankets spread diagonally across the bed. "Better hurry, everybody's starving." She crossed the room, trying to make progressively louder foot noises, and knocked on the door again on the way out.
Lena made out the sound of the garage door squealing open and then shut. She heard her father's steady footsteps, and then Claire's little slapping feet palpitating against the linoleum. "Happy Birthday, Daddy!" Lena bounced down the stairs, knocking on the wall outside Riley's room. An agitated, muffled sound followed her down the stairs, and Lena smiled a bit.
People say you are supposed to have dinner together so you can spend time with family; talking and sharing a happy experience. Lena had always found this an odd reason. Her family ate quickly and the socially positive parts of dinner generally happened beforehand, while everyone was subtly picking at food in the kitchen. Everything else was some sort of argument about the food. But it was certainly entertaining.
After finishing his food, Eli had attempted to pick a piece of chicken off of Claire's plate, and she had retaliated by trying to drink some of his juice. Roy pointed out that Claire wasn't going to finish her food anyways, and that Eli was doing her a favor. Then they started debating about what would count as having eaten enough dinner in order to be able to have some of Dad's birthday brownies. Riley seemed to be coming around and had tied her long brown hair back after her eyes adjusted to the light. Lena's parents were trying to decide how to best maneuver children and vehicles during the upcoming week.
They had a little celebration after dinner. Lena's mom had wrapped some new socks up in a cereal box with a little bell to try to confuse Mr. Anderson. The bell was muffled enough that he saw through the ruse and he guessed it right away. Eli had made his father a little ceramic soap dish in his art class. Lena had trouble not laughing. Her father had a not-so-secret alias as Mr. Lee Anderson, the art teacher at Eli's school.
Lena hadn't wrapped her gift, but she pulled it out from under the tablecloth. The little snake plant division was just the right size to fill in a gap in a nearly full windowsill in the art room. She suggested that maybe her dad could help Eli could make him a nice pot for it next year. Riley ran upstairs to get her gift. She came back down and handed over a bookmark she'd made out of bent copper wire. It was actually quite lovely and Lena wondered if she could borrow or perhaps subtly adopt it later. Maybe she could ask Riley to make one for her next birthday. Roy brought out the brownies he'd made and cut them up. After brownies the family piled onto the living room couch and chair to watch a post-apocalyptic movie that Mrs. Anderson had rented from the library. Claire fell asleep half an hour into it, and Eli followed suit shortly thereafter. By the end of the movie Lena's eyelids felt heavy and her thoughts were full of dust. She hurried to return to her room to review notes one last time before bed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The next few days passed largely uneventfully. Monday contained two biology lectures, educational psychology, and a 6 hour, closing shift at the fabric store. Tuesday was her anatomy exam (a solid B) and another 3 hour fruit fly counting lab. By the end of the lab she had microscope rings like red monocles around her brown eyes. As she walked to her little red car she tripped three times, thinking she was seeing twitching black limbs in the corners of her eyes. She started studying for the next anatomy quiz Tuesday evening and had strange dreams about accidentally stealing the anatomical models of the arm from the anatomy lab room. The disconnected muscles would start convulsing and crawling into her backpack as she tried to catch them and to put them back on their dummies. Wednesday was a laundry day, combined with math homework, avoiding preschoolers, and another closing shift at the fabric store.
But Thursday was a bit different.
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