How Two, Not-So-Single People Decided to Be Very Single Once Again

The man and woman met overseas and struck up a conversation while bumping down a nearly deserted road in Kenya. After discovering a mutual love for peanut butter and other topics of interest, the two exchanged emails.

Soon, the two single people decided to be not-so-single and dated. This led to a conversation about meeting His Parents, who lived in Boston. She was warned that His Parents were rather old fashioned and came with old money.

So to Boston she went, the young Texan girl who had lived in Africa. Twice in the airport her shoe squeaked in the security line, and she felt obligated to repeat the noise just so others would not think she had passed gas.
Boston. The air outside the airport was cold, biting her face and nose each time she breathed in deeply.

Face against taxi glass, she watched as they went deeper and deeper into suburbia America, till the small homes gave way to old, Victorian buildings and upper-upper class neighborhoods. 

Till they stopped in front of the largest, most grand-looking home of them all.

The family stood on the sweeping stairs, waiting to embrace their adventurous son and his new-found woman.

After the awkward hugs and vainly trying to remember his aunt’s sister’s name, she asked if she could use the bathroom. The Aunt With No Name took her down the hall to a small door and opened it.

She walked in and saw, to her horror, there was no toilet, only a bathtub and a sink. The Victorian styled home apparently had a bathroom and a restroom. One held the toilet she so longed for, and the other was meant for taking baths. She was in the latter, and felt her face get hot.

She couldn’t walk out and ask for the restroom, having already stepped on his mother’s toes and accidentally nailed his grandmother in the ribs with her elbow. Surely the family was already calling her an obscene amount of names and telling their misguided son that he needed a more graceful woman. This elbowing, toe stepping one simply would not do.

Looking around, she saw a small stool next to the bathtub. In a moment of infamous desperation, she pulled the small stepping stool over to the sink, unzipped her jeans and climbed onto the porcelain sink. This should be no different than peeing behind bushes.

As she began her business, there was a slight creak. And then there was a clinking noise, like cement pebbles hitting glass.

Patting hands and heavy voices woke her. As she opened her eyes, she became aware of how cold her posterior was and how very red everyone’s faces were. Then she noticed the dripping water and the smashed tiles.

The delicate porcelain sink lay on the ground, broken into several undignified pieces.

As the women helped her stand, she realized that her pants were still around her ankles, and that her head had a new and rather nasty bulge. Patting pieces of cement off her thighs and rear, she grabbed her jeans and pulled. As soon as she was decent, the ladies of the house fluttered and coaxed her down the hall and to the sitting room.

Relieved to see the large, high-back chair, the poor girl sat with great heaviness only to hear a faint crunch. The grandmother stared at her, wide-eyed and mouth open. The uncle (though she could not remember which one) jumped towards her, yanked her up by the crook of her elbow and pulled from underneath her a now-limp poodle.

She knew the dog's name—Jacque—because her dear boyfriend had mentioned nearly half a dozen times just how excited he was to see the family pet. Jacque, now limp and still in the uncle’s hands, was pronounced dead from a broken neck.

The grandmother’s eyes welled with reluctant tears.
Someone behind her coughed.
The girl saw her luggage near the door and stood. 

Thanking the family and apologizing profusely, she picked up her weather-beaten bag and left.