And now I'm stuck in a place I hate, with an aunt who's too weak to stand up to her abusive husband, and an uncle that I'm lucky is only an alcoholic and not a pedophile or rapist. He beats my aunt, but at least he doesn't invade my bed at night. Considering all I have is a curtain for a doorway, it wouldn't be all that hard.
“How did they die?” the nameless boyfriend asks me, but I'm done sitting here and talking. The last thing I want to do is explain my life history to some guy who's wearing a shirt that says Two Hawt Fer Werdz. Gross.
“When you're done, shut the cellar door. Fuck each other down here if you want, but don't leave the door open.” Yori flips me off, but I just tweak a small smile, stand up, and head outside. My jean shorts are too short, riding up my ass, and I've got no bra under my white tank, but I don't particularly care. My aunt is so prudish, it makes me want to rebel; I can't help myself.
“Ozora,” she says, giving me a severe once-over that would be scary if it weren't for her black eye. All I feel is sorry for her now as she glares at me. I almost feel bad about calling her the witch, but she's so damn skinny, and her nose is hooked, and she just looks downright mean. Henry beats her pretty regularly, so I suppose she doesn't have a lot to smile about, but when I look at her, I just feel angry. I've been angry since I moved in here last year.
Enraged.
“It's Oz,” I say, and Aunt Em scoffs, shaking her head and drying her hands on her apron. Yeah, she still wears aprons. Who does that in this day and age? She turns with a click of her tongue and heads inside the one-room house we call home. Fortunately, my room is upstairs in the attic or else I'd have no sanity left. I might not have a door, but when I pull that curtain closed and slip my headphones on, the rest falls away.
“Oz is a boy's name,” she says as I roll my eyes and follow after her inside the warmly lit room. The table is set, the smell of fresh bread teasing the air with a hint of yeast. At least the food is good here. That's about the only nice thing I can say about this place. “Your name is Ozora.”
Gritting my teeth, I sit down at the table while Toto curls up on the floor near my bare feet. My toes are tainted with gray dust, but there's so little stimulation out here, I need to feel something beneath my feet to remember that I'm still alive, that this is not my whole world, and that I can escape this place as soon as I graduate. Not sure where I'll go or what I'll do, but there's no place like home, right? I think I'll head back to Washington and the city I grew up in.
“Ozora is a proud, strong Hebrew name,” Aunt Em continues, lifting the lid off a pot and stirring the contents inside. “It means the strength of the Lord. Be proud of it.”
“Oz is a Hebrew name, too,” I say snarkily, leaning back in the chair and balancing on the two rear legs. “It means strong, courageous, and powerful. What's wrong with that?”
“It's a boy's name,” Em repeats, but I'm not about to give a woman who lives in a one-room shack with an alcoholic husband a lecture on gender politics. “Besides, your mother chose the name Ozora for you. Give the dead some respect.” I narrow my eyes and purse my lips. There's no point in arguing with Aunt Em. She’s my dad’s much older sister, almost a mother since they were twenty years apart. She's from a completely different generation than me, a completely different mindset.
“Why am I in here?” I ask as she shuffles around the small corner kitchen. It's not much, barely more functional than the camper kitchen on my parents' RV, but damn, she knows how to use it.
“You have chores to finish up,” she tells me as I curl my fingers into a fist. Back home, my chores were simple shit like cleaning my room or putting dishes away. Here, it's crap like chopping firewood or waxing the wood floors. And then Uncle Henry storms in and shakes his dirty boots off all over it … “I want you to bleach the bathtub and pull the shower curtain down to handwash it. Get it out to dry before this storm rolls in.”
Auntie Em puts put her hand on her lower back and grumbles something about her sciatica pain flaring up. Every time a storm rolls in, she starts bitching about it. Anyway, we read about changes in air pressure affecting old injuries in my anatomy class, so I guess she might be telling the truth.
