My Favorite Shirt

By Randy Mong

I found my favorite shirt at the mall. I was fifteen. It was a simple shirt, nothing out of the ordinary, not even a graphic on the front like everything I wore at the time. A pink halter tank top. It was out of season for the dead of winter, which explained the clearance section. But it had a built-in bra.

“Can I get this?” I asked my mom.

“You sure can,” my mom said after a brief glance at the shirt on the hanger, her smile small.

I wore the shirt the next day. And then, I wore it practically every moment after that when I spotted that it was clean.

I was seventeen when I wore it on a date with a boy. He wasn’t handsome, wasn’t out of the ordinary, absolutely nothing special. Kind of like my shirt.

Later, my friends would insist that dating him had been an “act of public service” to make me smile. Maybe it was. But he made me feel like I was like a real girl my age.

He was three years older than me.

I didn’t tell my mom about the date. She thought I was at a sleepover. I guess it was one, just not the kind she thought. He didn’t compliment my shirt, just tugged it over my head by the hem while we kissed. I didn’t mind. He complimented me plenty in lots of other ways. I went to lots of sleepovers that year.

The shirt now made me feel a little guilty, phantom pinpricks of disgust crawling up my back. I didn’t wear it as much anymore.

I was eighteen when I watched my mom unfold my favorite shirt as we unpacked my things. I was moving into my dorm. When we shared our final hug, my throat thick and my eyes stinging, she told me that she was a phone call away. I wouldn’t see her again until Christmas break. I sobbed for an hour after she left.

Until he texted me. I’m outside.

When I told him I was going to Erie for college, it wasn’t long before he conveniently had living arrangements. Of course, I was elated. No long distance. Besides, it was easier to hide our relationship if we weren’t in town. Technically, it wasn’t illegal anymore, but still.

I was teary eyed when I climbed into the passenger seat of his car.

“Think of it this way,” he soothed. “You’re on your own. Free to do whatever you want.” It’s ironic, looking back on that moment now, because that was the start of my prison sentence.

My favorite shirt eventually became my party shirt. It wasn’t my choice; it was just the one he tossed at me when he was getting me ready. I didn’t mind. I never minded anything. He always made sure I was at least a couple of shots deep, tipsy enough to pull on the shirt and flimsily tie the strings and go.

I was wearing my favorite shirt the first time he had hit me in the quiet of my dorm room, my bloody mouth aching as vodka-tainted breaths left me in tiny, frightened gasps.

The splash of pink on the hanger in my closet started to make me sick.

No more memories of my mother and I at the mall. No more compliments. Only misery and terror. But I couldn’t make myself get rid of it.

I told him I lost it in the wash.

I was almost nineteen when the semester ended. I had packed my favorite shirt away, determined to never look at it again. We didn’t break up, not yet. He moved to Texas with his parents, unable to afford to live on his own anymore. He somehow managed to keep his talons dug into me for another year.

I stayed at home. The idea of stepping back on that campus filled me with terror that rattled my bones and dread cold enough to freeze my blood.

I broke up with him in June. Over text.

I was going to Pitt Bradford in August, and I knew I had to let him go. Or make him let me go. I guess there’s a difference.

I was twenty when I was scrambling to pack for my first semester back at college. I was surrounded by piles of clothes, falling victim to my overpacking gene yet again. Thanks Mom. She held something up in the corner of my eye, and I glanced over. My breath got clogged in my throat as I stared at the pink fabric of my ex-favorite shirt pinched between her fingers. She didn’t know, and still doesn’t.

I have never told her.

“Do you want this? I found it buried in your old stuff.”

To my surprise, I hesitated in my answer. A month ago, I would’ve told her to burn it. Who could blame me? But then the thought of that made me angry. That was my favorite shirt. How much would he continue to take from me?

Nothing. Never again.

“Pack it.”