I’ve Got You

She examined the poem, recalling fragments of the emotions she felt. She right clicked, deleted it, then emptied the recycle bin.

A few hours later, Aleshia had finished the article, showered, and prepared herself for visiting her sister, one bus ride away. She checked herself in the mirror, combing back damp black hair into a ponytail that reached the top of her shoulders, placed pale lip gloss on her lips, and reluctantly trimmed her eyebrows. She’d been letting herself fall apart, recently. She scrunched up the pizza box from earlier and roughly forced it into the trash, and prepped up the bag to be thrown in the dumpster when she left her apartment. Two plates with matching cutlery and stained coffee mugs congealed in the sink.

She puffed out her chest like a frigate bird’s, examining her bra, and admitting she probably needed to get one with a wider girth, as it pinched too tightly. She needed a lot of things, in all honestly. New friends, a different way of living her life, and to stop threatening her body to obesity by stuffing it with junk food every day.

On the bus, Aleshia stared out the window, noting small flecks of dirt in the corners, but otherwise the overall cleanness of it. Buses in the countryside were much more mud-choked. What surprised her most about Miami was that despite the immense size of the city, with a population of 5.5 million, the air felt clean. Not as clean as where she came from, but there was the faint whiff of salt on the wind from the sea.

The atmosphere of Miami felt bright, even though Aleshia had held the misconception that the entire East coast was prone to bitterly cold winds from the Atlantic ocean. She imagined sunny summers and shivering winters.

Vaneese choose to inform her that it never snowed in Miami. Ever. Sometimes they had snow flurries, but nothing settled. The climate didn’t allow it. Dressing up for the cold apparently meant wearing a hoodie over your flip flops. At first, Aleshia couldn’t comprehend that a place in America could not have snow.

She did a tiny bit of research and discovered Miami itself resembled more of a tropical zone, ranging from a wet season to a dry season. The proximity to the sea kept the place as one of the more desirable locations for many Americans. For anyone who loved the countryside, or ever wanted to live by the sea, Miami was a good place to start. Aleshia should have figured by the pictures she had seen, of breezy palm trees, clear blue waters and bright blue skies. Her view of the East Coast had been marred by her one time trip to Boston, during a particularly cold slash of wind that chilled her to the bone, and of the people shivering in the streets.

The bus stopped at red lights. Heat pervaded through the window, causing beads of sweat to curl down Aleshia’s forehead, despite all the top windows being open, and the bus air conditioner cranked at full blast. Some cars chose to ignore the red lights, zipping across the junction. Car horns beeped. People on the streets yelled, some in Spanish. She saw trash collectors taking anything that threatened to mess up the pavements, and two small children depositing their empty cola bottles into a public trash can. She saw a hint of clouds in the distance, floating in from the Everglades, and their bus trundled along a palm lined road, wide and spacious. They also passed less glamorous areas which looked like boarded up crack houses and rugged streets exclusively reserved for drug dealers, and the homeless.

Aleshia at first had come here to escape, to seek comfort in her sister. She had moved nearby to Miami Beach. Traveling to visit Vaneese meant taking the bridge over from the bustling metropolis –as it constituted as a separate area.

Miami, however, offered something more than just a place to run to. She regretted not asking her sister enough questions about where she lived. The sheer diversity of the place, from the rich, shining buildings and beaches the metropolis held to the poor, run down, poverty stricken sections of the city fascinated her. It was all fuel for her writing.

Thirty minutes later, at her sister’s house, Aleshia walked into a massive hug by the taller, bustier woman, who also trumped her in age by eight years. “Little sista! You’re earlier than I expected. Come, come. Amy’s been asking for you.”

Inside Vaneese’s beautiful, large apartment, Aleshia kicked off her flip flops. Her sister lived in the Miami Beach region, and the conditions seemed far more ideal than her place. She also suspected she had less chance of being run over by a crazy driver.

“You’ve started learning Spanish yet?” Vaneese asked, as Amy spotted her aunt, squealed in delight, and dashed to embrace her in a hug.

“Not yet,” Aleshia said.

“You might have some difficulties staying in this place if you want to make it permanent. We have a high Latin American population.”

“I work online,” Aleshia countered. “I don’t have to worry about getting a job in the city. I work good.”

“You earn that much online?” Vaneese frowned at her sister, even as Amy began dragging her aunt over to look at the colorful pictures of beaches she had drawn.

“Yeah. I’m a copy writer and I do marketing. Work can fluctuate, but I’ve saved a lot in my account.”

“Can you afford a place from $1500 or more a month, plus expenses?”

“Easy.”

Vaneese squinted at her. “Move to Miami Beach, then. Rent a condo. You’ll be much better off.”

“Just so you can keep an eye on me better?” Aleshia smiled at her sister.

“Among other things. You’re at this moment a single mother, and,” she held one finger up at Aleshia’s darkening expression, “You need to accept that reality instead of moping about it. We also need to spend more time working out the kinks. But for now – I want you over here as often as possible. And, if you’re interested, we can work on getting you into Miami Beach.”