by Marlena Elias
October 28, 2000

Gentle readers, please allow me to issue this warning before you look any further. If you find graphic descriptions of violent bodily functions disturbing to your delicate constitution, GET OUT NOW! My darling sister Rita has been whining and complaining that I have not written about her yet. This week is her special week. Her story starts in a one-bedroom apartment in Mishawaka, Indiana. The year is 1978.

I was visiting Rita for the weekend (Dad and I were living in Wheaton, IL). At the time she lived in the upstairs apartment of an old house in Mishawaka. It was Saturday night, which meant Rita was going out drinking to "Fat Wally's" (she was 21 at the time). So as I prepared for a LONELY evening by myself (I was 15), I decided I would make chocolate chip cookies.

Let me stop at this point and describe some of the apartment. The kitchen was "S" shaped with one small window that needed to be propped open, a two-burner stove that was 50 years old, a sink-like object, a wobbly kitchen table with one chair, and a refrigerator that was as old as the stove and ran constantly. The appliances fit into the "S" rather tightly with very little room to walk. Rita had no food in the house, just a bottle of scotch. (Do you see a pattern developing here?) So the kitchen was really the size of a tiny bathroom and the bathroom was big enough to park a bus and still have enough room to use it as a bathroom. Whoever designed the house got the rooms reversed.

So Rita goes out for a night "on the town" (that's not easy to do in Mishawaka or South Bend or Notre Dame!) and I start to make chocolate chip cookies. It's summertime and Rita's apartment has no central air conditioning, so my little project is heating up this place rather nicely. I don't care since my sister HAS LEFT ME ALL ALONE SO SHE COULD GO OUT DRINKING, so for every cookie I put on the baking sheet I eat some cookie dough. It's hot, the kitchen is really hot, I and continue to eat the raw cookie dough. I finished baking the cookies, clean up the kitchen and proceed to make my bed on the couch. It is now 10:00 at night and as I lay on the couch a very clear thought enters my head: I'm going to be very sick.

I lay on the couch from 10:00 pm to 4:00 am waiting to be sick. My body has always given me plenty of warning before I need to high-tail it to the bathroom. This particular time I had SIX HOURS of waiting for the moment of impact. A wave of nausea came over me like I had never experienced before.

Let me take a dramatic pause at this time to describe Rita's bathroom in greater detail. As you enter the bathroom you face north, and as you walk into the abnormally large bathroom there is a half-wall blocking off the end of the tub, which is to your immediate left, lined up against the entrance wall in an east/west direction. Then as you pass the tub, there is the sink on the west wall of the bathroom and next to it is the toilet. All these details are absolutely necessary so I can set the stage for what is about to happen next.

By now my stomach had been brewing and gurgling for SIX HOURS, so when the moment HIT and I ran to the bathroom, I was overcome with a tsunami of vomit. No sooner did I enter the bathroom than I was faced with the prospect of puking all over the floor (which was the size of a ballroom) or turning my head to the left and hitting the tub. I projectile vomited the entire length of the bathtub. I shot chocolate chips and dough and nuts the entire length of this WHITE bathtub through my nose and mouth. I'm coughing and choking and then there is MORE vomit. I'm desperately trying to get to the toilet but I'm only at the sink. I've managed to vomit with Gale force all over the sink and the faucet. A continuous volcanic eruption of puke kept coming out of my mouth and nose, so after I completely covered the sink and part of the linoleum floor, I finally made it to the toilet. I managed to cover the little rug in front of the toilet and the entire toilet seat with more puke. Not one drop of vomit ever made it into the toilet, I did a Picasso to Rita's bathroom. If there had been an Olympic event for projectile vomiting, I would have won the gold metal for distance, style, and form.

Just as the vomit was dripping from my chin and nose and covered the entire front of my pajamas, my sister Rita came home after a long night of drinking and REALLY needed to use the toilet. In her drunken haze she was very curious WHY I was awake at 5:00 am, so as she came up the stairs she was hollering this to me. I hollered back that I'm sick as a dog and I've just puked all over her bathroom! She lets out a bellow that I can only describe as not human, and begins to explain in a very loud voice, screeching actually, that she left the bar so she could use her own facilities! I explained that her entire bathroom was covered in puke and I'm not sure what she thinks I'm going to do about this? Rita in her best, Meany drunk sister voice said, "You're going to clean up the puke on the toilet seat so I can pee!" I said, "Rita! I've just puked my body weight, I'm tired, I'm in pain and I have chocolate chips burning in my sinuses!" Her response: "Clean the toilet NOW!"

So I manage to clean the toilet seat because I have nowhere else to stay, and I can't drive and quite frankly I'm exhausted from all that output, so storming out of the apartment was not an option. The entire time I'm cleaning, Rita is loudly muttering: "Why didn't I puke in the toilet! How was she going to clean up this bathroom? She wasn't going to clean up the bathroom, I was!" She asked me many times "how did I manage to cover the entire bathtub with vomit?" Her muttering was equal to or more than the amount of vomit I produced. I could not explain how or why I missed the toilet. All I can figure is when a volcano is raging, you really don't question WHY, you just try to move to a safe place. At least I MADE it to the bathroom!

I think the real story here is Rita's abuse of alcohol and how it blinded her priorities from helping her sister who was OBVIOUSLY SICK! AS we get older, and Rita's memory fails her because of the brain cells she killed off from these drunken episodes, I feel it's my job to remind her of HOW in my hour of need, she YELLED at me and made me clean up 10 gallons of vomit. I'm still in therapy trying to deal with the horrible pain and emotional scarring that took place.

By the time Rita sobered up and I got the bathroom cleaned up, we were both laughing pretty hard. To this day, I would have to say this is the most bountiful, interesting, far-reaching sickness I ever had. But really, this story isn't about me, it's about RITA LYNN ELIAS and her drinking problem! Aren't you glad I shared this story Petey??

(Officially, my sister Rita does not have a drinking problem; I just took poetic license and embellished my story!) <EM>