Fulfillment Center - Part III
In Part II of “Fulfillment Center,” Amber and Charlie begin to bond during their night shifts at the warehouse. When they discuss the future and Amber’s sick father, they get in a fight and Amber storms off.
When I got home, there was a dark green Jeep parked on the driveway, which could only mean one thing. Dani was back.
The yelling confirmed it. I snuck the front door open and found a perfect tableau. Mom was standing on the stairs with her hands up, and Dani was shouting cross-armed from the living room. And there was Dad, lolled on the living room couch like some kind of diseased turtle.
Just like that, I was sixteen again.
Dani looked the same as ever, except her hair was dyed magenta and she’d gained weight, and maybe she had a new tattoo. Her face was flushed red. “So I can’t come to check in on my own dad, huh? Or visit my sister?”
“This is my house, Daniella!”
I closed the door behind me. Mom looked up, her face softening. “Get her out of here,” she said. Then she threw her hands up and stalked to the master bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
It was too late, or too early, for this. My head throbbed dully, and the Denny’s food sat heavy in my stomach. “Hey Dani,” I said stupidly. “Who’s watching Annabelle?”
“She’s with her daddy,” she sighed, walking over to fold me into her arms. I smelled powdered milk, cigarettes. “I was just dropping by. When’s the last time I saw you, huh? Auntie Ange’s party?”
“What happened?” I asked. “Is it Josh?”
She shrugged, slowly. I checked her face for bruises. She looked fine, just tired. I knew better than to keep pushing.
“Must be so nice living with Mom and Dad,” she sighed. “You have it good.”
Irritation rose in me. “Actually, I just got back from work,” I said. “You know the new Amazon warehouse on Magnolia? I work there all night.”
“Oh,” Dani said. Her voice was odd, uninflected. I didn’t recognize the look on her face. “Come outside with me, okay? You know Mom doesn’t want me around.”
“Let me check on Dad first.”
Dani nodded and slipped out the front door. I took my time making Dad comfortable on the couch, working his pills into his mouth one by one, managing a few strawfuls of water through his chapped lips. His eyelids fluttered as I touched him, but he didn’t speak. He’d gotten so weak lately. I pressed a kiss to his forehead, slipped a fleece blanket over his body, and walked back outside.
Dani was leaning against the house, face blank. When our eyes met, her lips started trembling. Then her whole face gave, and she fell into sobs. I was too tired to do anything but watch.
“Amber, I need money,” she begged between tears. “I can’t have another fucking baby, and Josh can’t know I was here.”
“It’s okay,” I said on autopilot. “I won’t tell him. How much do you need?”
Dani just kept shaking her head, making these childish whimpers. Her mascara was beginning to run. One part of me pitied her, distantly, the same way someone might pity a newborn. The other part wanted to shake her. To tell her to grow up, but it wasn’t like that had worked before.
“How much?” I pressed with as much authority as I could muster.
“Two hundred. Just two hundred. I’ll cover the rest,” she gasped, swiping at her eyes. It took off a swath of makeup, leaving her looking lopsided. If only briefly, I saw traces of the sister I’d admired so much as a kid. Now Dani just looked tired. Weren’t we all, in this family.
I took my wallet out, gave her my last hundred. “I’ll Venmo the other half.”
“Thank God for you, Amber,” she said, folding me into her arms with a sniffle. “You’re so good, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, tapping at my phone and sending her the rest. “You owe me.”
“There’s one more thing,” Dani said. “But only if you really want to. I feel so bad asking you, but—”
“What?”
“I just—God.” Dani looked straight into my eyes, her own shining with tears. “Could you come with me? Please? I just don’t wanna go to this thing alone. I’ll have you back by afternoon, I swear.”
My heart sank. Mom was home all day today, so at least someone’d be watching Dad. But I’d set aside the whole day to catch up on sleep and do nursing modules. Maybe I could finish one on my phone in the waiting room, though my entire body protested at the thought.
“How long will this take?” I said hollowly, walking to Dani’s Jeep. She brightened, striding after me and entering the driver’s side.
“Hopefully not long,” she said, turning the ignition on. “And you can sleep in the car. Jesus Christ, Amber, what do they have you doing? You look exhausted.”
*****
We spent an hour and a half waiting for a walk-in appointment. I killed time reading Vanity Fair and checking my phone. I’d never been to a Planned Parenthood before, and the whole place felt weirdly calm, like someone wasn’t about to hollow out Dani’s uterus. I felt guilty, mostly because I knew what our parents would’ve said about this situation. I’d taken special care to hide all my boyfriends from them.
“You know, you could work here,” Dani said. Now that I was a captive audience, she was full of bright ideas. “You want to be a nurse, right? This is kind of similar.”
I didn’t look up. Nursing talk just made me feel bad about the modules I couldn’t bring myself to do. “It’s not like I even want to do nursing,” I said. “It’s just what Mom suggested.”
“Well, if you don’t like it, you should find something else,” Dani said. “Who cares about what other people want? You have one life; go out and do you.”
That turned out great for you, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Instead, I watched as a nurse walked into the room, clipboard in tow. “Daniella?” she called. I was left in the waiting room, scrolling through Facebook.
The first photo to come up was a photo of Alexis. Her sorority had just finished some charity drive. Alexis was squatting in a white dress with all her Tri-Delt sisters, who were also wearing white dresses. The caption read Ending World Hunger one Delta at a time!
Alexis and I had been friends since fifth grade. Somehow my family drama didn’t scare her off. The night before she left for freshman year, we sat on her driveway and made promises. Send postcards. Send care packages. Let’s Skype every week. And we did send letters, or at least Alexis did, talking about Rush Week and hot professors and media internships. When she came home for Christmas, we watched rom-coms at the Edwards Cinema, and I took her to all the restaurants that had opened while she was away.
You inspire me, one of her letters read. You’re optimistic, even when things are shitty. No matter what happens, you keep going. You remind me that hard work is worth it.
Now we rarely talked. Alexis had other friends, and I didn’t blame her for it. I knew she wasn’t meant to stay in Eastwood forever, and so I’d made my peace. But there were other things I wanted to talk to her about: Dad, Dani, Amazon. When it came down to it, our lives were just too different. How could I call her up in the middle of the night and say I wish I could do nothing all my life? I wish I had Dani’s freedom? I wish my dad would die already?
Logistically, calling Alexis at night would also be impossible. I’d get points if I used my phone mid-shift. The very thought of work made my body feel heavier. It was so much easier to sit here, AC blowing in my face, drifting off while my sister got an abortion.
*****
They had Dani recover in a side room for an hour after the procedure. She was still tired after that, so I steered her to the parking lot, buckled her into her Jeep, and took the driver’s seat.
“The person who helped me was pretty cute,” she mumbled, leaning her head against the seat. I sighed, trying to swipe the exhaustion from my eyes before starting the engine.
“So that’s it. You don’t have to go back, right?”
Dani flashed me a thumbs-up and shut her eyes. I couldn’t spend too much time looking at her. Instead, I pulled out of the parking lot and roared onto the freeway. Dani’s Jeep was flashy and unwieldy, and by the time I’d figured out exactly how much pressure to apply to the brakes, I was more or less awake.
We hit traffic on the 91, as usual. Every lane slowed to a crawl. Taillights started blurring in my vision. I nudged Dani, told her to talk to me so I didn’t fall asleep.
She mumbled something and shook her head. “What?” she said. “We’re not home yet.”
I set my mouth in a tight line. “I’m not home yet,” I said. “We haven’t moved for five minutes. Can you try to keep me awake?”
Dani muttered something and turned the radio on. KBRT 740 AM, the display read. A deep voice blared: “What does the Bible tell us about Original Sin? We have to remember: sin is not a choice, but a condition...”
“Christ, Dani,” I muttered. “Why do you listen to this?”
“Josh likes it,” she said. “Fuck if I know why.”
We listened together, occasionally snorting when the announcer made references to loose women. “Lord only knows,” Dani scoffed. We got to the commercial break before Dani changed the station to KIIS FM. It was loud enough to keep me alert, at least.
Finally we reached our exit—my exit. We were only ten more minutes away from home. “Dani,” I said. “Come home. For real. I’m worried about you.”
“You know I can’t do that,” she said. “Mom would kill me.”
“She misses you,” I said. It was more of an assumption than a fact. “And Dad’s not going to be around much longer. I know you want to spend more time with him.”
Dani snorted. She was staring out the window at the new shopping plaza. The new Applebee’s, the Ulta Beauty. All these things that had cropped up after she left home.
Finally, she turned to look at me. “I meant what I said, Amber,” she said. “You’re the good kid. As long as you’re here, we’ll all be okay.”
My chest tightened. “Sure.”
“I mean it,” she said, placing a hand over mine. She seemed clear-eyed now, awake. “I wanna teach Annabelle to be like you. ‘Do your homework, just like Auntie Amber.’ Maybe she’ll end up doing better than me, you know?”
I pulled into the driveway, half-expecting Mom to be watching us from the window. I was itching to get away from this conversation, but obligation locked me to the seat. Dani was looking at me with these sincere, childish eyes. That was my problem: I kept seeing other people as children.
I settled for reaching over and giving her a hug. For a split-second, I thought she would start crying again. Instead, she pulled away and hopped out of the seat. “Your stop,” she said. “I’ll see you whenever, I guess.”
“You sure you can drive home?”
“I’m good.” Dani shut the passenger door and rounded the car, not meeting my gaze. “Just go. Dad must be waiting.”
I knew she didn’t want to linger, so I walked to the front door and watched as Dani backed out of the driveway. Then she drove away, tires skidding to Riverside, or San Bernardino, wherever she was living now. When we were younger, we’d dream about traveling the world. Now I couldn’t picture us anywhere but where we already were.
*****
I woke up sweating, sore. In the dark of my bedroom, I could barely make out the fuzzy outline of my clock: 1:34 AM.
I was late for work.
“Shit,” I said, bolting upright. “Shit, shit.”
I crept down the stairs and saw that the lights were on. Mom was hunched over the dining table looking at bills. The sight made me pause. This was the first time in a while I’d seen Mom stationary—not spooning baby food into Dad’s mouth, not bustling around making dinner for us, not on the way to work or going upstairs to sleep.
Dumb relief pooled in me. I had no idea how much I’d missed having her to myself.
“Mom,” I managed. “It’s your day off. You should get some rest.”
She scoffed and shook her head. “No, no. I’m used to being up.”
Before I could say anything, she went on. “Go ahead and call in sick. There’s pizza in the fridge. Could you get me a grape juice? These bills are killing me.”
I was wobbly with love. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that under Marvin, there was no such thing as a “sick day.” Any missed shift was two points off, even for emergencies. People are more replaceable than you think, Samantha had warned me during the interview.
But a few minutes later, I was watching my pizza slices rotate in the microwave. Mom lifted her head from the bills and sighed. “Bad news today. Ms. Cindy quit. She found another family for better pay.”
The pizza went on rotating. I kept my eyes fixed on it, clinging to the predictable motion. “I guess she needs to eat too,” I said. The possible consequences flashed through my mind—quitting Amazon, quitting everything, becoming my dad’s nurse.
It occurred to me that I’d been preparing for this moment. It all made sense now. The listlessness of my life, the inertia that crawled into me whenever I thought of the future. I would stay in Eastwood to care for my family, and that was okay. Like Charlie said: it wasn’t like I wanted to be president, or a real nurse, or even anything. I could go back to sleeping at night, and wasn’t that enough?
Mom shuffled her papers together, then spoke again. “We’re sending Dad to hospice care. We both agreed on it. The fees are cheaper if we pay upfront. You can quit the warehouse and work somewhere else.”
The microwave beeped, and my muscles twitched reflexively. “So Dad isn’t going to stay at home,” I repeated, barely remembering to take the pizza out. “You won’t need me during the day. At all.”
“No,” she said. “You can even start nursing classes at RCC. Whatever you want.”
RCC was our closest community college. I took the pizza to the table and mustered a smile. “I’m sure they have something I can do there,” I said, even though I’d looked into those classes before. They were far above my skill level, calling for at least four of the modules I’d skipped.
Mom had slipped back into paperwork, pushing up her glasses. The roof of my mouth stung. I realized I’d been eating the scalding pizza on autopilot, my body desperate for something to do. “Wait, are you sure Dad doesn’t need me?” I pressed. “What if the hospice gets his meds wrong? I learned Ms. Cindy’s routine, and I know what he eats and doesn’t eat—”
“So do I,” Mom sighed, reaching to squeeze my shoulder. “But what can I do? Your Dad’s not going to be around much longer. At a certain point, we need to let him go.”
I felt it then. Shame. Excitement. I admitted it to myself: I didn’t want Dad at home. I didn’t want to hear his wheezing breaths, his groaning prayers. I didn’t want to wipe slobber off his mouth and take him to the bathroom. I didn’t even love him anymore, and I knew that Mom didn’t quite love him either, or if it was love we felt for him, it was a different kind. Like the kind of love you felt for a newborn, all wrinkled and vulnerable—not even a person, not yet, not anymore.
It had been four years of this. Hospital trips. Medication refills. Dad losing his job. Us accepting his death. And yet, and yet. Behind the terrible relief was fear. I glanced out beyond the dining table into the darkened living room, where Dad slept, his breaths rattling. I wish I felt love or guilt or even pity, but instead I was left with dread: what am I going to do now?
The future was wide open, yawning like a mouth. Stretching into endless dark. I felt my vision blur the couches, the TV, Dad’s drooping body. I had no idea what was ahead of us.
“What are you staring at?” Mom said, elbowing me, as if our lives hadn’t just changed again. “Are you a baby? Don’t worry me like that, Amber. Your food’s getting cold.”
*****
After I swallowed my pizza, I kissed Mom on the cheek, adjusted the blankets around Dad, and took the Toyota out. I could’ve slept until dawn, but I didn’t want to be in the house any longer.
Everything closed early in Eastwood. The Edwards Cinema, Best Buy, and Sports Chalet kept flashing their garish signs, but the interiors were lifeless. The Yogurtland was dead. Even the Jack-in-the-Box stood empty, only or two strange cars parked in the lot.
At least the streets were clear. I drove aimless circles around the neighborhood, letting muscle memory guide me to the places I knew. Rosa Parks Elementary, Riverwalk Middle School, and Susan B. Anthony High flashed past in one long line. On the light posts, faded flags announced the names and pictures of kids who’d gone to college:
Talia Lopez, Cal Poly Pomona!
Helena Chou, Amherst College!
Alexis Reyes, San Francisco State!
A right on Scholar Way, then a left on Hillcrest. This brought me to Mayflower Park, where clumps of high schoolers would smoke and gossip. I remembered sitting by the skate park with Alexis, Mandy, and Stephanie, trying to make crushes out of pimple-faced bikers. Then we’d lie on our backs as the Little League games started and the floodlights cast bright, distant rectangles.
I parked in the empty lot and sat at a picnic table. Under the streetlights, the graffitied playground looked sad, tired. It was here that Dad tried to teach me soccer, that Dani and I dared each other to copy Olympic gymnasts on the monkey bars. After prom, Angelo had whisked me onto the swings and kissed me, breath warm with beer.
Who was I to say that I hated Eastwood? I didn’t, was the problem. It was my city, and I’d grown up with it. I was eight when the first cows got sent to Wisconsin. And I was eighteen when Eastwood did its first-ever fireworks show.
Mom, Dad, and I had sprawled on the baseball field on an old towel, watching the flat skies explode into color. The streets had been packed; we’d all known this was the only time things would be exciting. I remember thinking that if I looked around, I could see everyone I knew one last time, before we all went our separate ways forever. Nobody had bothered to tell me that I’d be seeing some faces over and over again.
But tonight, it was just me. Mayflower Park seemed to stretch on for an endless, dark eternity. If I left Eastwood now and just kept driving, maybe I would end up somewhere better. But the longer I sat at the picnic table, the harder it was for me to get up, and the harder it became to feel like there was a larger world.
I remembered one of the conversations that Dad and I had before he got sick. We were trying to decide: was it better to stay in one place forever, or keep moving without ever knowing home? I kept saying that these weren’t the only two options, and that the whole question was pointless. Now, when I thought about the person I’d grown up to be, I could only see myself making one choice or the other.
To be continued…
Ariel Chu is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she was awarded the Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction. Ariel has been published by The Rumpus, Black Warrior Review, and The Common, among others. Her works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net Award, and Best Short Fictions Anthology, and she has received support from the Steinbeck Fellowship, the Luce Scholars Program, and the P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
Check out more of her work here.