Tomorrow is Today

Lilly had been sitting at the dining room table, staring at her parents across from her, waiting for the building tension to amount to something, waiting for the rain to start pouring from the heavy clouds dressing the horizon. She had been only seven when it was announced they were moving again.

She frowned, looked up at them, hoping it was only a joke, some kind of saying or metaphor or turn of phrase she didn’t understand, like all the other things she didn’t understand, only to look back down as her mother tried to console her.

“Our new house is very nice. You won’t have to tiptoe anymore,” her mother said, smiling warmly.

“You said you didn’t like the apartment anyway, Lilly,” her father chimed in.

“Didn’t you say that?”

She had said that, many times. It was true. Lilly didn’t like the apartment at all, she hated the noise, the smells, the rats in the basement you’d sometimes see when you left. She hated it, knew that she hated it.

But now she was crying.

Crying because they were going to move out of the loud, stinky apartment with rats in the basement. Crying, and she didn’t know why.

“Why are you crying, Lilly? Aren’t you excited?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. The truth stuck in her throat like a cobweb.

“You’ll have your own room in the new house. Isn’t that nice?”

Lilly wiped her face with her sleeve, got up from the table, and darted into the bedroom she shared with her mother.

She sat under the covers for a long time, crying on and off, waiting for her mother to come in. To pad softly into the room, to take the blanket off her head, to run her fingers through her hair and tell her it was going to be okay. Waiting, until she slowly lost to sleep without her.

It was deep in the night when she snuck out from the bedroom, pausing at the door that separated her father’s room from the rest of the house. She listened to her parents talk, mumble, argue in hushed voices about the move, and the work, and the jobs.

She knew they would send her back to bed if they found her, and going back to bed felt impossible. She hated to hear them yell, to hear them bark and snap like dogs, but it was so cold without them — and she would rather be bitten than left without her pack.

When she woke the next morning, she was back in bed. Her mother was in the kitchen, the coffee machine grinding the sleep from her head with a loud, mechanical screech. She heard people moving upstairs, the day beginning, the sun rising behind the city smog and heavy clouds.

Her father knocked on the door.

“Wake up! Time for school!”

Her mother had made pancakes. They were lukewarm and crumbled when she picked them up, soaked through with syrup to bury the mediocre taste.

The car ride to school was bleak. Her parents talked about their new house to each other while she stared out the window at the falling rain, at people passing by, here for a second and then gone.

School was loud. The bell, the chatter, the teacher shouting to be quiet. He rambled about adapting, about old animals in new spaces, about life and death.

“Lilly?” It was her friend, Conny.

“Are you okay?” she whispered.

Lilly frowned.

“I heard your mommy told my mommy you’re gonna go away,” Conny said worriedly. “Are you gonna go away?”

“I don’t know.” She still hoped maybe they would change their minds.

It was still raining when her mother came to pick her up. She smiled warmly as Lilly hopped into the car.

“Hi, my girl. How was school?”

Lilly looked quietly out the window, watching the trees go by. The leaves were cloaked in autumn, red and brown and gold, still clinging to the branches. The rush of passing wind shook them loose like petals from a wilting flower.

“I’m sorry you’re upset about the move, darling, but the apartment really isn’t big enough for us all. Don’t you want more space?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

She would have traded all the space in the world if it meant they’d never have to move again.

“It’ll be good for you. For all of us.”

Birdie, Lilly’s friend, came over after school to play. Even though Lilly didn’t really feel like playing, she did, because she knew she would be leaving soon, and soon she wouldn’t be able to play with Birdie anymore.

It was like this for a while, gloomy and hollow. Boxes began to collect around the house, filled with all their treasures and memories, piled in corners like trash. Many were taller than Lilly; they towered over her like teachers, disappointed and stern.

Soon, the only things left were small tables, blankets, and a mattress on the floor. Soon they were going to move tomorrow. They were going to leave tomorrow, and Lilly would be going away tomorrow, and soon tomorrow meant goodbye.

Tomorrow like a weight on her chest. Like she was drowning. Like the sky was falling and the world was burning and she was faced with doom incarnate, faced with a window into forever, into nothing. Like crying, crying, crying, holding back tears until you forget how to let them go.

And now tomorrow is today.

The house is empty. It isn’t recognizable anymore. It isn’t home anymore.

Lilly misses the comfort of her warm bed, of her mother, who is packing things into the back of a van, preparing for the dawn of a new normal. Like it was natural. Like it happened all the time.

She walked through the house, now a ghost of itself, something vital dead and forgotten, something left behind. The change marked like a tomb, like a scar.

She pressed her hand to the walls and the floor. She sat down by the landmarks she had grown to love. She listened to the neighbors argue, smelled the old musty air, and saw underneath the kitchen counter a dead rat, its neck caught in a trap.

She cried in the husk of the room she had shared with her mother. Her mother paced in, the floor creaking beneath her feet, and sat beside her, running her fingers gently through Lilly’s hair.

“I’m sorry, sweet girl. I know it’s hard.”

“I’m sorry,” Lilly whispered, the words tangled and doubled in her throat. The poor little girl.

She stared up at her mother’s face, at those careful fingers tracing circles through her hair. There was so much she wanted to say, but she knew her mother would never understand.

And oh, how the truth stuck like a cobweb in her throat, how she still hoped they would change their minds, how she missed the old house, how it hurt, how deeply it hurt.

There was a thorn buried in her soul, and it grew and grew. She would not dare to pull it out, the wound it would leave, the empty space, the bleeding, the ugliness, it would kill her. It would swallow her whole.

And for only a moment, she broke through the cobwebs and unpulled thorns and whispered a secret that would never truly get out, never be fully understood, not by them.

“I wanna go home.”

And they looked at her like a child.

Like her words meant nothing.

Like there could be no meaning.

No meaning to.

“I wanna go home.”