Freedom Isn't Free

She has scars on her back. Four of them. I felt them the first night we were together.

Eventually, after we had been together for some months, I asked her if I could see them. She reluctantly agreed, pulled off her shirt, turned around.

Knotty, shiny, smooth, irregular; nearly -- but not quite -- perfect circles each one.

"What are these?" I asked as, one by one, I ran my fingers over them, tracing the circle of every individual wound. 

She would not answer.

Over time, I learned this was all she was ever going to say about it. The scars-- two of them centrally located on each of her shoulder blades, two more directly below the same bones -- became off-limits physically and every way otherwise.

And the less we acknowledged them, the more I wanted to understand, the more I wanted to know.

//\\

After a too-frantic, too-panicked search late one evening, I found her standing alone on the rooftop ledge of our apartment tower. I stole up behind her, made sure she felt my breath on her neck before I spoke. 

"I was worried about you," I said, leaning in and touching her on the shoulder.

"I want my freedom." 

"What?!" I jerked my hand away at the electric shock of her words.

She turned slowly and patted me on the cheek, smiled weakly. 

"Not from you, silly." 

My heart thwump-thwump-thwumped its way back to a slower, much-closer-to-normal pace as we sat down on the ledge, legs dangling, looking out at the array of twinkling lights all over the city.

"It was the last thing I said to my mother. I told her I wanted my freedom, and this -- these scars- - this is what she did to me."

"But...you told me your parents died in a car accident."

She chuckled ironically, but her black-painted lips remained a thin straight line.

"Yes...yes, I did, didn't I? And I'm sorry about that. Oh, they're out there, all right. Always will be. But they don't drive...they don't need to drive. Never have."

She looked away, cast her eyes upward, made a waving motion across the sky with her right arm before placing both hands in her lap. Then she looked back at me.

"It's the classic 'not under my roof' story, you know? Only we never really had a roof. Flying from place to place, living among the clouds and stars...I don't really want to bore you with the details."

"But I want the details. I want to understand. I really do."

She looked at me, placed her hand on my thigh and sighed. 

"Before she cut me, before she grounded me forever, my mother said: "Here's your freedom, dearest daughter. Now you're absolutely free to do absolutely whatever you want....You just won't be doing it up here.""

She pulled her hand away, lifted her feet and knees together, spun 'round quickly and stood up.

She then reached out and offered her palms-down hands to me.

"Let's dance, shall we? I really don't want to talk about this anymore."

I reached up and grabbed her fingers, let her help me to stand, my eyes never leaving hers as I rose.

We swayed quietly, long into the night, my hands gently rubbing her shoulder blades as we moved together to music only the two of us could hear.

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