Letters Written in White by Kathryn Perez Page A

seen Darcy not perfectly put together. She leans back against the bathroom door and slides to the floor.
    Hurling the pregnancy test across the room and looking up at the ceiling, she screams, “Why? Why can’t I have a baby of my own?”
    A baby of her own?
    I don’t understand. She has a beautiful daughter whom she obsesses over.
    Darcy slowly gets up and wipes the tears from her face and bends down, picking up the pregnancy test and pitching it in the trashcan. She then makes her way to her bedroom, where she kneels down beside her bed and reaches for something beneath it. I watch intently. She pulls a large glass bottle out. I squint trying to read the label. Vodka.
    “No way?” I say out loud, talking to myself.
    There’s an empty glass on her nightstand. She pours the clear liquid in it until it reaches the very top. Screwing the lid back on the bottle, she leans down and slides it back under her bed, and then stands up and sits on the side of her bed. She begins to drink the vodka, and the ease with which she consumes nearly half the glass in one drink is shocking to me. It’s as if she’s drinking water. Quickly she finishes off the glass, and then her phone rings. She looks at the screen and takes a deep breath.
    “Hi, honey,” she answers.
    It must be Roger, her husband.
    “Yes, I know. I got your list. I’ll pick up your dry cleaning and do everything else you asked before you get home, I promise.”
    Her voice is different from what I’m accustomed to. She sounds so submissive and demure.
    “Yes, I know. I’m sorry about yesterday.”
    She pauses and nods her head.
    “Yes, honey, I know you didn’t mean it,” she whispers, reaching up and touching the bruise beneath her eye.
    Oh my God. Roger hits her? I’m in disbelief.
    “Okay, yes. I love you, too.”
    She places the phone on the bed and her bottom lip begins to quiver. One tear falls from her eye, and she quickly wipes it away and stands up.
    “He loves you, Darcy. It was just one of his bad days. We just had a bad day. I drank too much and I forgot a few things he needed me to do, that’s all,” she mumbles to herself, pacing back and forth in her bedroom.
    She walks over, pulls open the drawer on her nightstand, and gets a small calendar out. She sighs and grabs a pen marking a large X over the day that reads, Test . Flipping back through the calendar, there’s a big X on the same day of each previous month. I guess she has been trying to get pregnant for some time now. She drops the calendar back into the drawer and then pulls out what looks like a journal. Putting pen to paper, Darcy begins to write. Strangely, I can very clearly see what she’s writing.
     
    It doesn’t look like I’ll ever have the baby I want. It doesn’t seem that I’ll ever have the marriage I want. I know he loves me, but his “bad days” are becoming more and more lately. And the more bad days he has, the more drinking I do. I love our little Riley, but nothing replaces the hole I feel inside me, or the yearning there is within me for a baby of my own. It continually makes me feel like a failure as a woman.
    I try so hard to be the best I can be at everything I do as a mother and wife. I do it all so obsessively to a point of exhaustion. Alcohol is my only reprieve from the pressure of it all. I know I need to quit. I just can’t. I need it. I can’t make it without it. Today I have so many things to do, and I of course have to do them all well. I have an appearance and image to uphold. Some days I look at women like my neighbor, Riah, and I’m jealous. She seems so confident in who she is. She can leave her house in sweat pants and no makeup without a care in the world, and the very thought of walking out my door like that gives me such immense anxiety that it physically sickens me. I see her husband outside playing with their two beautiful children, children who she had the gift of carrying for nine months, and I feel so much envy. Roger never