Banna.

She opened one eye, then the other.

Rain hit the windowpane in front of her. The sheets felt like heaven, everything else felt like it was smothering her. The air, the soft sound of traffic from the window, the colors the outside world made when it danced in the light through the window—she bit her lower lip, and closed her eyes again.

Her head rested gently against her hand, and she clutched a blue blanket with flowers on it—it was a security thing from way back in her childhood. If someone were looking in, they’d think she was as peaceful as anyone.

It was the middle of the day, around 3pm.

She’d just graduated from college, and was living with her mom—a fifty-something new-age sort who worked at the library until close.

She figured there was very little to do with her English degree. It felt imposed upon her. After all, she’d practically grown up in the library where her mother toiled day in and day out—organizing, reorganizing, replacing, scanning. Her first memory was of riding side-saddle on the book cart as her mother walked around the vast rows, alphabetizing.

“Pick a book, any book.” Her mother told her.

She was six, and reached towards the shelf. She pulled down a large green volume. The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson.

“Good girl!” Her mother beamed with pride.

That was the beginning of the fad that would last a lifetime. A lifetime of writing, rewriting, reading, rereading, and longing to be an important literary figure people would remember. Yet, here she was. There was nothing special about her volumes of wordy poetry, her alliteration, her mediocre dramas spat on the pages of her marble notebook.

She laid in her bed now because she was living in a different world from everyone else. She felt like an alien, a thing of weird circumstance. She wanted to read substance, she wanted to read things that made her quiver—better, she wanted to write things that made other people quiver.

But she was living in a different world.

She was living in a world where Fifty Shades of Grey was being called erotica.

Her mother had put Vanna on the birth certificate, but a typo had made her come out of the hospital legally named ‘Banna’. The way it ended up, her mother actually preferred Banna, and decided to keep it. A lot of people thought it was Banana. She had to correct a new person every other day since forever.  
            Banna. Banna. Banna. Nana. Nana. Nana. Bah-nana.
            Banna grew up getting postcards from her dad. She never met him in the flesh. He was living in India, and at one point before she was born he’d changed his name from Greg to Santi—it meant ‘peace’ in Hindi. In his postcards and letters, he referred to himself as her father…It was an unusual arrangement, and she knew the truth.

Her mother had met Santi in college, and they became best friends. Santi was searching for enlightenment, and they bonded over books and conversations on philosophy. They were practically inseparable for ten years following their college graduation—they had platonic sleepovers discussing books that lasted until the early morning hours, they had brunch together, hung over after nights of partying with their hippy friends, and walked around the mall wearing sarongs and sandals made of hemp.

Santi announced one day that he was moving to India to seek a purer way of life, and Banna’s mother was devastated for a couple of days. After all, she was thirty-three, and unmarried. She wasn’t close to many people. She resented the idea of losing Santi, because he was the closest thing that she’d had to intimacy with another person.

After brooding, she devised a plan, and pitched it to her best friend.

Santi was asexual, but when he watched Banna’s mother sitting there in a pool of her own tears, he quietly consented to her wish. She had asked him if he would have sex with her, purely for the purpose of conceiving. She wanted to have a baby, and had for a long time—she just didn’t have anyone in mind to help her out.

Santi was the perfect person to father her child. He was smart, kind, handsome, and someone she could trust. He was also going away, and having his baby would preserve a piece of him with her always. When she put it to him that way, Santi really couldn’t say no.

They came to a once-a-week agreement until her pee sticks came back with a positive result. It didn’t take too long. Santi was incredibly patient, supportive, and made the sessions as personal as he could without stepping over the line of their agreement. They weren’t in romantic love, but they loved each other—he was giving her a gift.

Banna’s mom was three months pregnant when Santi said he had to go. His papers were sorted out, and he had only a limited time to enter the country. The terms of their agreement were informal, but settled out—he was going to be father to the child, he was going to financially assist this child if need be, and he was going to keep in touch as often as possible.

And so, thousands of post cards, pictures, and letters later—Banna knew a lot about Santi, and called him Dad.

As a kid in grade school, her classmates made fun of her for having a ‘pretend’ dad, and she began to actually doubt his existence. That’s when her mother came out with it. She sat Banna down, and told her she knew she was mature enough for a ten year old, and deserved to know the truth. Santi wasn’t pretend, he was just a Hindu living in India, walking around barefoot, shaving his head annually to rid himself of sin, and giving alms.

The rest of Banna’s growing up had a lot to do with feelings of being an outsider. She sometimes thought that she’d have been better off having been born in a different time period, in a different country. She was exhausted from having to explain everything to new persons—this kind of small talk ritual didn’t impress her, or turn her on.

Why’re you named that? What’s your dad’s name again? What are you going to do with an English degree? Why is your father in India? What is he doing? What does your mother do?

But it didn’t get better, it got worse, and here she was.

            Banna worked in a coffee shop, and had been working there for about a year. Every day she had to interact with people who were under the impression that she was far more normal than she actually was. This was in part because she had found a nametag that read ‘Britney’ when sweeping under a counter one day, and had taken to wearing it on her apron.

            Britneys were less suspicious than Bannas.

            But today didn’t feel like a day to go to work. Today felt different. It had been raining for ages, and it didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon. Her bed was too comfortable to leave at 8am…still too comfortable at noon…

            The phone rang.

            She pulled her blue blanket over her head to hide from the sound. It was obnoxious, and resonated throughout the wooden structure of the house, absorbed by absolutely nothing. With no one to answer the call, the answering machine picked up after the sixth ring.

“Hey, Bannie, I’m just calling to see if you’re coming into work today—Val is super pissed you didn’t show up, but I told her you were too sick to call in…Bannie, please call me back. You’re freaking me out a little.”
            Click.

Banna recognized the voice. It was Natalie from work. Natalie was a super tall redhead, and the only person in Bannas life to ever call her Bannie.

Natalies are less conspicuous than Bannas.

It was nice of her to care, but today wasn’t a day for caring about work. It wasn’t a day for caring about much of anything. It was a day for staying in bed. It was one of those days.

In fact, it was the kind of day that discouraged her from sitting up and smoking a cigarette. It was the kind of day that made her want a dog around to snuggle with, a big dog—like a golden retriever. It was the kind of day that made her sleep with a bottle of Demerol under her pillow.

Banna sat up, and reached over for the half-full glass of water on the bedside table. She never went to sleep without a glass of water. She took the pill bottle from under her pillow. She counted five pills. Five was a sensible number. She stuffed them in her mouth one by one before chasing it with the rest of the water.

It wasn’t a whole lot to think about. It would be enough to kill her or sedate her for hours—only time would tell. Regardless, her mother was coming home around eight and would figure it out anyway. If she didn’t, oh well…that’s the chance you take when you play with dangerous things.

She laid her head back down, pulled the blue blanket up to her shoulders, and stared at the rain slowly dripping down the windowpane.

“…I fucking hate Fifty Shades of Grey…”