“These
floral shirts look like curtains,” Justin said while dragging the shirts out of
Stephanie’s closet. “And what the heck are these things? They look like they
are straight out of the ‘90s!” He held
up a pair of platform sandals.
“Ok,
whatever to the shirts. We can ditch them, but the heels make me tall!”
He
rolled his eyes and gave a sigh of disgust.
These need to go away now, he thought. He threw them in a pile with other
shoes and moved on to the next piece of clothing.
Stephanie’s
tiny, 2-by-4 closet was full of clothing from middle school and high school,
and there was enough to supply a small army of children. This girl is 21 years
old and needs to start looking like it. All she does is complain about how
everyone thinks she is 16, and Justin was sick of hearing her talk about it.
Turning
back to the closet he found the next ugliest thing and said: “How old are you,
80?” The sweater was white, fluffy and long, with no buttons except for a broche
of a golden Christmas wreath.
“Well,
it was a gift from one of my aunts,” Stephanie retaliated.
“That
explains it. Can I burn it now or later?” Justin dived back into Stephanie’s
closet, flinging the old lady sweater to the donation pile while she sat on her
bed, dangling her feet. She appeared defensive and unwilling to cooperate. But
that’s OK, because one way or another he was going to get rid of all that stuff
even if she screamed.
This
went on for a while. Shirt after shirt, skirt after skirt. This is never going
to end. We have a lot of work to do.
He gazed at the inside of the closet door and felt the compulsion to just throw
everything away. We have a lot of work to
do.
Why does she
have a towel in her closet? Oh my god it’s a skirt. “Stephanie, why
do you have this?” He pulled out a powder pink skirt with ruffles and tasseled
fringes all over it.
“I
took it with me to Russia, I love that skirt!”
“I
don’t care! It looks like a towel!”
“I
wear this skirt to church. What am I going to wear to services without it?”
“You
can go buy a new skirt, but you need to get rid of this ugly thing. You can
attach pictures to the tassels.” She got off the bed and tried wrestling it out
of his hands. “You need to let go. Let go. I mean it, or else I will, and I
swear, I will tear it.”
Thank god this
is almost over.
He looked over at the pile of bags filled with clothing. I need to get out of here. “Oh fabulous, you can finally open and
close the door now!” Justin said.
2
a.m. rolled around and the house was quiet except for the two of them, they
began to take the garbage bags filled with clothing to the basement. Justin
hugged his best friend good night, and she couldn’t decide whether to thank him
or cry.
All
that work thoroughly tired Justin out, and he was ready to go to bed. He slowly
made his way into his 2005 Toyota Corolla, and was glad that that her closet
was finally clean of all the memories and terrors of a life in high school.
Written: 22 February 2012
