pity party {mallory and vanessa}

Mallory Wraith. 

My mother is an excessive celebrator. A thrower of parties. Needlessly devoted to marking occasions, forever desperate for a reason to bring out the good wine and light the good candles. We even have a dining room used only for special occasions; but special occasions come thick and fast, and it gets plenty of use. I tried to avoid this particular occasion for as long as I possibly could, and yet it crept up on me, and my attempts to erase it from the family calendar were futile. Mother keeps track. She would never dream of letting something as important as my sixteenth birthday slip past without being thoroughly flogged to death. 

It's not like I didn't protest. I did, of course I did. I begged, actually, for something small. I was gracious; generous enough to suggest a picnic, or a day in town, just to quell her restlessness. She rejected this stiffly, almost as though my own reluctance was a personal affront to her, the birth-giver in the situation. My idea of a perfect birthday would be one in which the four of them leave me alone for a whole day and night. It would be illegal for them to speak to me at all, and I'd eat sweet peaches all day and sing to myself with nobody telling me to hush, and carry on without worrying about being told off for dirtying my blouse with the juice. A girl can only dream. 

We don't, in fact, always get what we want. And so the day began with a fuss, and surely will end with even more of a fuss, because we are expected to attend the party, and we are expected to smile and look as though we want to be there. We will say please and thank you so much for coming, and eat the food prettily and absolutely not drink too much wine, because it's unseemly for a young girl to do. On the bright side, I believe there will be cake. 

My chores list for the day was so long I almost choked when I saw it. After all, it's my birthday. Fifty-six guests are invited to the vineyard for dinner and drinks. Mother sent out the invitations, I'm not sure that I even know everyone who is coming. Vanessa and me (and Igor, although I'm sure he'll do his best to wriggle out of it, and mother will overlook it, because she always did want a boy) will spend hours scrubbing and dusting, cutting fruit and prepping vegetables, turning napkins and laying crockery in anticipation of it all.

I make sure to splash Vanessa with the dirty scrubbing water. She hates this, I know, and her shrieks are a welcome gift. When it was her birthday, just the month before last, we engaged in a very similar parade. The people loved it, Mother was thrilled. We ate leftover crudites all week. My stomach turns at just the thought of them.

"Want to play a game?" I ask her.