The Unmaking of Audrey

Vignette One

In summer, I’m someone else. Somehow, for three months a year, every bad thing finds a way to lift itself off of my shoulders before crashing back down as soon as August rolls back around.

Summer is liminal. In summer I’m not here or there. I may be in my room, but in my head, I’m in a million different places doing a million different things.

When it’s summer, my mind conjures up something dangerous: Hope.

I don’t boast it loudly, squandering my plans for the future by sharing them with everyone I know. I hold it close to my heart like a life all its own, the way you might savor a sweet, buttery candy under your tongue, trying to make it last longer. Knowing that once it’s gone, it’ll never be the same. You can unwrap another candy, but you’ll never taste it like you did the first time.

My wishful thinking returns, year after year. It’s never for the same reason. I hope to be skinny, to be pretty, to be happy, to be free, to understand why I’m the punchline of every joke—I throw it into every wishing well, whisper it to every eyelash, pray it to every shooting star. I find the hope that one day someone will want me, will long for me, just as I long for the day when they’ll arrive.

When summer comes I harbor the dangerous belief that somehow, someday, I will no longer be so alone, a strange girl in a world of even stranger people. People who all seem to hold some unknowable secret that I haven’t been let in on.

Even so, every night, I allow myself to ascend quietly into the night sky as the crickets sing. I am always alone in my room, but when it’s late, I open the window and let the bugs fly in. Let the mosquitos tangle themselves in my hair, the crickets crawl up my arms, the fireflies light on my bed sheets and hum me softly to sleep. They are my choir of creatures. They are just like me. In summer I am a god and they are my disciples, my eccentric troupe of freaks. In summer I wonder if this is the secret of living. I wonder if I am the only one who knows—I decide I am, otherwise I wouldn’t be so alone.

Vignette Two

My favorite classroom is the history classroom.

It’s on the third and highest floor of the humanities building. The windows are wide and stretch across the whole back wall. It overlooks part of the city and part of the leafy green suburbs—but mostly, all I can see when I look out of the window is the hills. I wonder, all the time, what’s behind them. They’re big and blue and rolling, like waves on the ocean, creating a barrier between me and the rest of the world.

I wonder if out there, beyond the hills, there’s something else. I don’t know what. I never have. I wonder if out there, there’s a life I want to be living, the girl I’m trying to be. I try to picture her. A writer, an actress, an artist, a student, a teacher, a mother. Am I happy in any of them? Will I ever be able to live with myself, choosing one over the other? I know I’ll never be able to guess until I get there.

I know I will learn who I’m meant to be somewhere along the way.

I wonder if, out there, is the girl I’ll be. But I’m not her, not quite.

Vignette Three

The prettiest dandelions are always on the side of the road, winding their way up through the crack of green between the sidewalk and the asphalt. They are big and blooming, unabashed, unaffected by coughing exhaust pipes and the pelting stones sent their way by rubbery black wheels.

They aren’t weeds when they’re by the side of the road. They aren’t bashful and wilting, sucked dry for nutrients, folding in on themselves, petals painted a dull shade of sort-of yellow. Their stems aren’t dark and wiry, choked by the grass and purple clover like they are in the yard.

When they are by the side of the road they are only competing with themselves, with the wind—nobody’s going to come along and spray weed killer on the sidewalk on the side of a busy highway. They’re full and bright and free. Maybe that’s the tradeoff. Maybe no dandelion can ever have it all.

Vignette Four

The black paint is peeling, curling. It chips off in my hands like tree bark, getting under my nails. Underneath is a layer of robin’s egg blue, and I wonder why they painted over it in the first place. The swing doesn’t go very high, as we’ve learned.

My big sister stands behind it, getting a running start before pushing as hard as she can with her skinny six-year-old arms.

The swing could seat three or four people. It’s like a metal bench, hanging precariously on rusted chains that rattle and creak as I kick my legs back and forth, trying to give it some momentum. We’re trying to get it as high as we can. We want to touch the leaves on the low-hanging branches in front of us. I wait and wait and wait to get higher, my hands reaching out every time I swing forwards, stretching as far as I can until my shoulder aches, trying to grab the branch to no avail. It’s no use, says my sister. The swing won’t go any higher and my arms hurt.

The swing keeps rocking back and forth even after she stops pushing. She walks out in front of it and jumps on next to me, making it swivel back and forth. Above us, a bird alights on the branch I tried so badly to reach.

A mourning dove, I say, it’s the only kind of bird I can recognize. I recognize it from the books by the leather chair at our grandparent’s house we’ve spent hours pouring over, looking at all of the pictures and rubbing our fingers over the shiny, plastic-like pages that glide under our hands like silk sheets. Who-woo, who, who, who, it calls to us. Who-woo, who, who, who, we call back, kicking our legs back and forth to keep the swing going. I reach my hand out again, a last attempt to grab the branch.

Not even close, I realize, as the swing rocks back in the other direction again. The bird puffs up its chest and gives us one final who-woo, who, who, who before flying away. I watch it leave—going, going, gone. I wonder if branches are only for birds, if we should just stick to the ground.

Vignette Five

It feels awful, not knowing. Not knowing if I’m pretty, if I’m thin, if I’m good enough. Not knowing how people perceive me, if they like me, if I’m good enough. Sometimes I hate being a teenage girl, but then I remember that I have something nobody else does. There’s no name for it. It’s an emotion, a feeling, a lifestyle. Living in the unknowing, spending every day wishing and praying. Feeling like my wrists are bound with shackles, like there is a crouched beast inside of me, waiting to pounce. Like there is a ticking time bomb in my soul, about to explode. I will explode in a flash of light and I will be great but I know all that’s left will be ashes.

I wonder if every teenager has this. This inscrutable quality about them, the whispering in their heart to break free, to run away, to stand on top of a rooftop and scream and scream and scream and scream until they can’t scream anymore. I wonder if I will forget this feeling when I grow older, this unknowing, this ancient well deep inside of me. I wonder if I will ever understand. I wonder if I will ever be lucky enough to forget. I wonder if I will be lucky enough to remember.

Vignette Six

I’m always crying. Through my tears, I see my life unfolded in front of me like words on a page. Like scrolling through my camera roll, little clips of my existence play in my head. I wonder if this is what it means to be alive.

Why, in spite of my tears and my anger and my fear, do I still persevere? Why do I still find beauty, even as I lay on the ground, curled in a ball, my head in my hands? It hurts, but that’s just life. You’re born, it hurts, it’s beautiful, there’s love and you’re love and it hurts some more. And then you die. Is that it? I thought life was more than that. I don’t know why. I always thought there was something else. But maybe there’s not. And maybe that’s beautiful. Maybe that can be enough. Maybe the pain is enough. Maybe the insatiable rage can fulfill me just enough so that I am able to write poetry about it. Maybe my words will be enough to warm me, late at night, when I remember I am perpetually alone.

Life is a thunderstorm on a dark Sunday night. It’s deep and it’s inherently earthen but I know, I know, I know it’s from somewhere in heaven. I know it’s someone out there saying, here; escape. Watch the rain. Imagine yourself running. Imagine yourself flying. Imagine yourself as a glowing sphere without a body, without a face, without greasy hair and cuts all over your arms. Imagine yourself as the rain.

It is, after all, in the wanting that you find who you truly are. Who you are truly meant to be. I was meant to be the rain, or a bird, or a tree. I was meant to be free, I was meant to be free, I was born to be free. I’ll pound on God’s front door until he lets me in. I will tell him I belong up there with them. I will tell them I am me, I am me. Let me be free.

Vignette Six

I sit patiently on the bed, criss-cross, tapping my fingers on the soft duvet as I wait.

I ask her if she’s ready, craning my neck in an attempt to see out of the door.

No, she says. No, It’s hard to get on. Give me a second! She’s yelling so I can hear her from the locked bathroom door. I hear her giggling. I sigh, fall back on her pillows, and wait.

The bathroom door opens with a quiet click. I sit up in anticipation. First impressions are everything, she says. I make sure to keep my eyes trained on the door.

With a triumphant smile she struts into the room, wearing a frivolous dress that looks like a rainbow has thrown up on it. She saunters to the foot of the bed and spins around and around and around, the full-length skirt lifting up and billowing around her like a prismatic cloud. Her hair whips around her face as she laughs maniacally. When she stops, my jaw is open. I am awestruck. She holds onto the bedpost. She tells me she’s dizzy. I tell her I want to be her. She beams, standing up straight.

She gushes her thanks, doing another little spin. She looks like she’s glowing—but that’s just her essence. She sparkles. You’d never know she had me for a best friend if you looked at her, and I’m almost jealous, I say, but she’s so beautiful I feel like she must be sharing some of it with me so I’m not.

Don’t be, she says. You’re just as pretty as me. (It’s a lie, I know. She is a liar.) My mouth twists into a bitter, forced smile.

I’m not jealous, but I don’t say it out loud. She wants me to be jealous, and I would rip my organs out of my body if she wanted me to. So I stay quiet.

She’s a guiding light, an eye-catching and all-knowing force of nature. How could I be jealous of her? She’s too beautiful to envy. I know she’s not really mine, I know, I know. But in these moments I feel like she could be. I hate her more than she will ever know, but if she let me I would kiss her and never let go.

Vignette Seven

I was robbed of my childhood. Not in the usual sense, the loss of innocence, the death of a relative—I witnessed the death of a world. Of a people. I was ten years old when the world screeched to a grinding halt. When, all too soon, I was forced to stay inside, look longingly at the world from my window until I forgot what it was to play in the yard, chase my sister, sit in an ice cream shop. I was ten years old when I began my desk job, working hours on end, my back slumped over with the weight of the world. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve—the dog days of childhood, the peak of adolescence, stolen from me.

The internet is no place for a child. I know that now, but I didn’t then. So many lost hours, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. So many hours I would have had if they had not given me a computer and a chair, told me to stay put, in my room, in my house, twenty-four hours a day. It rested heavy on my shoulders. I slouched for years.

I mourn the girl I might’ve been if I could’ve had those years back, those years spent wearing masks, avoiding people—I could’ve made friends so much quicker. Would’ve been able to remember my life before I was eleven, any of my friends, anything about my life or my family. All gone, all lost to the pandemic. To the masks and the screens and the windows. The death of the world was the death of a girl, a girl who might’ve been alive today. A girl who was owed more than I have now. A girl who was stripped of her adolescence, who didn’t even notice as it happened—but now she’s screaming, on her knees, nails clawing at her chest, wanting it back.

Vignette Eight

I scream, in my head. I scream everything I don’t say out loud. Tonight I am screaming to convince myself of a simple fact: I am enough. I repeat it over and over again. I type it in my google search bar. I am enough. Let it be known, I am enough.

I will tell them all. I will show them all. I will show them I am made of love and kindness, despite my hardened soul. I am joy and light, despite my aching bones. I am beautiful despite the never-ending onslaught of life. I love, not in spite of, but because. Because there is love all around me. Because I am loved more than I know, more than I know. I wonder if that’s true. Sometimes I think it is. Sometimes I think it isn’t.

Tonight, I am the center of the universe. Tonight I am a supernova, tonight I am stardust, tonight I am a celestial being presiding over my court. Tonight I am a god, tonight I can be free. This night and every night, I am enough, even when I cannot see. And so, I scream. I am enough, I am enough, I am enough. I don’t know if that will ever be enough. Someday, it might be.

Vignette Nine

Fifteen is strange. I am still twelve years old, at the lunch table, laughing. I am still six years old, sitting on my father’s lap. Fifteen is in between here and there. Lost and directionless. Maybe this is all I will ever be. Maybe this is the secret the universe is whispering to me. Fifteen feels like a drunken stupor. I’ve never had alcohol but I think this is what it would be like, whiskey on my breath, vomit on my shirt, sweat on my brow. There is something rotting inside of me, this is not my place. God watches and does nothing, nothing at all. I pray on my knees every night to go somewhere, anywhere, away from here. I'm not meant to be here, fifteen, sitting on the bed I’ve had since I was five. What do you mean I haven’t been a child for six years, what do you mean? What do you mean I am not a little girl on my father’s lap? My mother doesn’t wash my hair in the sink anymore, my head on a towel, eyes watching the birds from the kitchen window. I know I’ll never feel the cold water dripping down my back again, but I can pretend, I can pretend. Fifteen is strange. I feel no different than I did, but everything has changed.

Vignette Ten

It has been five months. Five months and fourteen days. Five months and two weeks. You can say it how you like, I don’t mind. Any way you look at it, time has passed. It is April. Five months and two weeks ago, it was October. Birthdays have come and gone, children have grown a little bit older, teenagers a little bit wiser, both eagerly waiting for the kiss of May, the sweet release of summer, the final breath of graduation into the hot, sticky dog days of June and July. It has been five months and fourteen days since you left. So much about me is different. I thought I should tell you.

My hair is long now. Not from an outsider’s perspective, but it’s down past my chin and it just barely brushes my shoulders. I remember when it was so short, so spiky and so red. I still refuse to wear it down, just like I always have. Even when I was a little girl, Mom had to bribe me to wear it down to school. Do you remember that?

I finally started taking school seriously. It’s not as bad as I expected, I guess. Just a little more studying, applying myself. Honestly, it feels good to get good grades. Not that I don’t still get bad ones, which I’ve made a sort of habit of in Geometry. (I never did inherit your gift for math) But, of course, I’m doing great in Art and English and French—and History, obviously—so that kind of cancels out the mathematics side of my report card. Dad’s really intense about college. Sometimes I think about what you said. You said I was special. You said it would be hard, but I would find my own way. You wrote me a letter, only me. Not my sister. You told me I would be everything, get everything I wanted. Sometimes I almost believe you.

On another note: I remembered something about myself I’d almost forgotten. Not forgotten like it had slipped my mind, but like I’d been cramming in down for so long that I’d almost stamped it out entirely. Then it just sort of exploded inside of me. I’d known it was a ticking time bomb, but I didn’t imagine it would’ve burst so soon. I thought I had a few more years, but there’s just no denying it after what happened.

I started talking to someone. Someone that would make you cry, probably, someone that would make mom give me the cold shoulder for the rest of my life, that would make my church recoil. Someone that would make my father the worst thing of all: disappointed, with his sad blue eyes, wondering where he went wrong.

To tell the truth, the worst-case scenario has happened: I’ve got a crush on a girl.

It’s been five months and fourteen days since you left us, and I don’t think I’m someone you’d be proud of. I know you would love me, but I know I’m not what you expected. I know I don’t live up to anybody’s expectations of me, but maybe, in these past five months, I’ve gotten a little closer.

Vignette Eleven

It is half-sensual, all fear, hands shaking as I pull you close. Footsteps above, shouting outside, the thick and stagnant classroom air that is getting harder and harder to breathe in.

I’m breathing on your neck. I wonder if you notice. I bury my face in your hair. I try to remember exactly what you smelled like before the raw scent of terror overtook the strawberry perfume. The unknowing, the waiting.

I listen.

I wait for the first shot, I wait to die.

I try to make amends. My phone is in my backpack, across the room. My arms are around you, holding you tighter than I’ve ever held anyone or anything. You are the anchor tethering me to myself. I run through the plan in my head for the hundredth time. When the time comes, cover myself in your blood, don’t throw up, lay down, eyes open, don’t cry, don’t breathe, don’t move. Survive by any means necessary.

I would hate myself for this thought, but I don’t, because I know you’re thinking it too. I silently forgive you for what you must do when the time comes. From someplace deep in my mind, where it has been instilled in my memory since kindergarten, I remember the poster plastered in every classroom, every hallway:

Run: Try to escape the threat

Hide: Find a secure spot, lock the doors, turn out the lights, and pull down the shades

Fight: Defend yourself by any means necessary.

They are forever covered with emojis and written in loopy fonts with bright colors to hide the awful truth.

I thought I would fight for you, I thought I would never let anything happen to any of you, but the shivering in my bones is telling me otherwise. I am shaking, I am hiding, I cannot stop trembling. We are all pressed so close, like sardines in a can, and I know they can all feel me quake. I am a fawn in tall grass, watching helplessly as my mother stares frozen at fast-approaching headlights. The primal fear knotting itself into my stomach is telling me I am no saviour. It is telling me I am a coward. It is telling me to run and save only myself.

I wonder if this is the end, if fifteen is all I’ll ever amount to. I clasp my hands together, tightly, as tight as I can. Is this what prayer is? A wet, tearful face rests on my arm, all of us piled in the corner, sweaty and shaking. You are on my lap, she is on my leg, another wrapped around my shoulder and my side, heads all shoved down—some red and blotchy with tears, others blank and clammy—I know looking up to be a death sentence, a shot to the head and it’s over—I know we will probably die anyway.

My fingers interlace and I cram my face into the crook of your neck, praying, praying, praying. I know there is no God in this place. I know he is in Heaven, just watching. That’s all he ever does. Even so I rebuke him. I tell him, with every cell in my body, with every racing heartbeat and ounce of adrenaline I can produce I command him to protect us. I make no half-hearted promises to him. I don’t lie and say that I will never be an unbeliever again if he saves us. Instead I swear on everything I hold dear that when I am shot to death in my high school French classroom I will bang on those pearly gates, I will demand that they let me in. I will charge into his throne room and rebuke him for everything he’s done. I swear I will never forgive him if he allows them to die—my girls, my sisters, my peers.

I will scream at him that there are children here; some no older than nine or ten. I tell him to let us take the burden of death, we are older, we have lived more, but not them. They are fresh out of elementary school. They run to class, they haven’t yet learnt to be mean. I want to tell him about their braided hair and their flower crowns and their innocence. I will tell him to please spare them, spare us. I remember I am a child, too. I have almost forgotten.

I try to forgive and forget, in what time I have left. I can’t tell her, not really, but I whisper it anyway. In my head I am screaming it. If I am loud enough, she may hear. Mom, I love you. If anything happens I love you I love you I’m sorry. Dad, I love you. I hear footsteps I love you I love you I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I’ve said and done, please know I meant none of it except that which made you feel loved. I remember when they were Mommy and Daddy. I remember when I still had time, when my life wasn’t confined to the ticking clock of Is our school next? Am I? I have already resigned myself to death, I already know how this will end. I pray Mom and Dad find the strength to move on.

I think of my sister. I think of my friends, who are really just family, and I tell them I love them. I tell them they are my life, they are part of my soul. I tell them I will not go on without them, I tell them to not give up without a fight. Fight. Fight. Please, fight. There is silence in response.

Finally, when all else fails, I whisper the only prayer I know. Our father, who art in heaven, save them all. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, save your kingdom. I can’t remember the rest. I can’t think of anything besides this: I’m not done, I’m not done.

I’m not done here.

Back to reality as the floor rumbles with heavy footfalls above us. I want to cry but I can’t. I screw my face up, pressed into your hoodie, and try to will the tears to come. They don’t. I know this is the end. My face is dry. I don’t feel anything. I should, but I don’t, not anymore. I have used up all of my emotions. I am tired.

Your nails are piercing my skin, my bones are digging into the floor. I don’t move. I try not to breathe, then I remember it may be my last chance to breathe at all. Deep, refreshing gulps do nothing to stop what’s coming.

I listen.

I wait.

I wait for the first shot.

I wait to die.

Vignette Twelve

I sleep feverishly, if at all. Monday through Friday—I collapse into bed at eleven, twelve, one. I wake up at six. I blunder through each day, wishing I was someone else.

On weekends I stay up later and sleep until late afternoon. I wake up in a dreamy haze, half awake, half alive. The other half is somewhere else, on a train, in another country. I am always falling, I am always flying. I wake up and stare at my back in the mirror. I rub my shoulder blades. I close my eyes tightly and say that when I open them again wings will be there, wings that can take me somewhere far away. It’s stupid and it’s childish. I always want to be anywhere but where I am. I always have this insatiable urge to be free, to break out of whatever’s chaining me to these people or this place. I want to end all of my friendships, block all of my contacts, hitchhike to the other side of the country.

Instead I dream, when I can. Most days, I only get four or five short hours of sleep. Dad tells me I need to go to bed earlier. Mom tells me I need to catch up on sleep for school. They don’t know what I do, not really. I write. I write about being somewhere else. I write about being free, something I’ll probably never be. I write about waking up from my nightly fever dreams. I write about my lack of wings.

Vignette Thirteen

At first, I wasn’t sure. You felt foreign, like a god, like something larger than life. Someone that couldn’t be touched. But I tried anyway.

I tried, I’m still trying. I knew it was this or nothing. We’ve been talking for hours now, and I wonder if this could be real. I don’t dare guess what it could turn into—I know that only leads to disappointment. I’ve been taking risks, I’ve been saying things that would’ve made the old me want to curl into a ball and die. But, somehow, I’m doing just fine.

You feel so much closer now, not like someone on the other side of the world, typing on a phone screen, but someone just a few miles away from me. Someone I can see with my own two eyes, someone who’s almost mine.

I haven’t come by this easily. I know if I continue on the road I’m going down I’ll lose a lot. More than I thought I would. It’s almost worth it. I wonder, all the time, how it’s going to turn out. How I would tell my parents. How I would hide it from them, hide it from everyone. It’s the strangest feeling. Is this growing up? Is this maturing? Have I finally made it to the world of dating? It’s so close, I can almost taste it. I can only guess as to whether it’s real or not.

Vignette Fourteen

I hate being young. I hate the late nights filled with books and thesis statements and geometry, I hate looking longingly at my paints gathering dust on the shelf. I hate the secrets, the whispering, hot sticky breath in my ear, saying something about she-did-this and she-said-that and she-told-me.

I hate long calls and sore thumbs from sending paragraph after paragraph, knowing anything you say can and will be used against you in the form of screenshots and cropping and twisted words.

I hate knowing once I tell a secret to one person it begins to jump, catching like a virus, until everyone I know is in on it. I hate myself, mostly, but I’m trying my hardest not to. I hate my mom when she asks me to tell her about my day. How do you say ‘It was fine, nothing happened, but it was awful because I hate my life? Because I am constantly dreaming of being somewhere else?’

I wonder if re-reading Shakespearean sonnets over and over again instead of paying attention in English class is a kind of prayer. Wishing I was a fairy queen, a star-cross’d lover, a wisp in the trees. Not here, not me.

I hate the headaches after school. I hate being stressed over my life and the rules I’ve created for myself. Rubbing my temple, the bridge of my nose—which, of course, always reminds me of my horrible skin, the skin that I hate, the skin that changes textures like a mood ring.

I hate being young. I hate having nothing figured out. I hate living in my parent’s house. I would take wrinkles and stretch marks and saggy skin over misery any day. I hate being young.

But what I hate most of all, more than my skin and my greasy hair and my tendency to ruin my own life is the unknowing. I have spent my entire life on the edge of a cliff. I have spent my entire life walking the line, my entire life teetering over the edge of a ravine. I have spent my entire life wondering what will happen if I jump.

Will I have wings to fly, or will I plummet to my death? I can almost see the bottom, and if I look up, I can almost see beyond the sky. I hate being young. I never know if everything I’m feeling is cyclical, if it can be predicted, or if I’m just walking further and further into darkness. I hate being young. I hate the surface-level fears and I hate the inherent terror deep within me, my primal hatred of the human condition that waves like a flag in the wind, marking me as vulnerable for all to see.

Vignette Fifteen

It’s never enough. I’m like Icarus in the most haunting way possible. I’m always pressing my cheek to the cold glass window panes, I’m always praying. I repeat it over and over in the hopes that someone will listen, someone will understand. Please Please Please Please. Nothing here, nothing human, will never be enough for me. Nothing is ever enough to fill me, to make me satisfied, to make me feel like I’m done. Like I’ve accomplished enough. Like I can sit back and relax. I am always on edge, I am always waiting for what’s next, and nothing in the world can fill my empty desire. Nothing is ever enough for me.

I stare at the sky and pray. Pleasepleaseplease

pleasepleaseplease. I know it would be scary to fly, and I would be terrified, but I’m not so afraid of heights anymore. I’d never be afraid if I had wings to catch me when I fell.

Instead I watch the sunset, standing on my tippy toes at the edge of my balcony, feet scrambling for purchase on the railing as I throw my arms wide. Sometimes, I’m almost free. Sometimes, I’m almost me. But those moments are few and far in between. It’s never enough. I know my life will never be enough for me. It is too small, too quiet, too insignificant to fulfil any of my dreams. If only I had wings.

Vignette Sixteen

I’ve found that the more I stare at my reflection the less I feel like myself. The more I pose and pick and peel and flash winning smiles at myself, everything else falls away. I shrivel up until and I’m nothing more than a husk filled with self hatred.

I’m usually laying on the floor, trying to remember who I was twenty minutes ago, who I was before all I could see in the mirror was my bloodshot blue eyes, my chapped lips whispering, Why not me?

I tug and I pull at my clothes. I set my phone up on my bookcase and film myself. I practice walking. I balance. I lean my weight to the outside of my feet, then the inside. I practice keeping my head down, my back straight, my feet aligned.

I choose to keep my balance, knees straight, eyes downwards, feet apart. Every step has to be perfect. My legs cannot swing out, my neck cannot jerk, my mouth cannot upturn in that awful way it so often does, my chin must stay down, creating the illusion that I’m more graceful, more poised, than I am.

Then I go back and watch clip after clip, studying every twitch of my hand and toss of my head.

I zoom in on my skin, on my face. I go back to the mirror. I compare my reflection and the photo. I don’t know what I look like—no matter what I do, no portrayal is the same. I walk back and forth, up and down. There are calluses all over my feet. I practice and I practice and I practice. Moving normally, keeping my hands at my sides, fingers never crushed together and never splayed too far apart, not using excessive gestures when I speak or jump, never losing my balance, never falling over when my ankles roll or give out underneath me. I practice and I practice. Making sure my feet don’t turn in, my knees don’t bend towards each other when I crouch, making sure they don’t bend out—everything is carefully calculated. I watch and I learn and I hate and I pick and I pull and I judge and I wonder what it would be like if I could figure out how to move like everybody else.

Is it heel first, or the ball of my foot? I can’t remember. I can’t remember, and it feels like everybody is watching me. My ankles cramp and pop as I walk down the school hallway. I trip over my shoelaces, I want to die. My arms swing too much. I hold them at my sides. I put them in my pockets. I hold the straps of my backpack. I slump into my seat and pray I never have to stand up again.

I’ve found that the more I practice behaving normally, the less normal I feel.

Vignette Seventeen

When I was younger, in the summertime, I took walks. Sometimes I went barefoot. Sometimes I ran. I’d go ten whole acres to the very back of the pasture, to the little thicket where the violets grew, a thick purple carpet knotted into grass and clover. It’s shaded by a grove of walnut trees and bamboo shoots. The land dips down and the grove is hidden by a grassy knoll. There, past the muddy bank, is a creek. It’s not even a foot deep. I laid my change of clothes, which I often forgot to bring, in the grass. I walked into the shallow rushing water and sank down into the pebbled creek bed.

I always held onto a fallen tree branch so I didn’t accidentally drift onto the neighbor’s property. When I was younger, I was always outside. My parents didn’t worry if I didn’t come home for hours on end, if I came home sopping wet, if I came home with bugs in my hair and scrapes on my knees. It was freeing, knowing there was nothing I could do to turn their heads.

In the thick heat of the summertime, laying in the creek wasn’t an escape—it was, simply put, a type of worship. Not to a particular god. I’d thrown in flowers I picked, I’d throw in shells, still warm from the sun beating on the pea gravel driveway. Sometimes I threw leaves, gems, coins, eyelashes. Rotten walnuts, the bright green shell mottled away to reveal a sickly sweet smell and a dark red stain that didn’t leave my hands for days.

After my grandfather died, I decided that was his creek. In a way, a shrine to him. I threw petals and jewelry, letters, things I wished I’d said. Once I even stuck my head under the water without regard to the mosquitoes dancing on the surface or the waterbugs dwelling underneath and let out a scream, bubbles rising to the surface and popping like a halo around my head. Whoever I’m thinking of, I hope my messages float down the current and end up wherever they are. I haven’t been to the creek in a few years.

I wonder if violets that got caught under the iron gate before they could float away are still there, waiting.

Vignette Eighteen

When I was young, my mother would tell me she hoped I had a daughter just like myself. Just so I could see how awful I was, how I truly was the worst daughter she could’ve asked for.

I used to think I didn’t want children, but now I’m not so sure. Now I want a little girl of my own, or two, or three.

I don’t want them to spite her. Well, maybe I do. But I want to hold her, to brush her teeth and braid her hair and play in the yard with her. I want a girl just like me. I want to prove to her she is not hard to love, that there is no generational curse.

I remember long, hot afternoons waiting for someone to come and play with me. I remember making my own mud soup and picking my own leaves from the trees. I played ‘shop’ and ‘family’ by myself, I learned to live inside my head. It’s the curse of the youngest daughter, I guess—everybody’s moved on, but I was still there, waiting for someone to care.

I will play songs for her. We will dance in the kitchen and spin around the island. I will never leave her out, never send her crying to her room, never drag her up the stairs and smack her across the face. Even now, I still remember the red-hot sting of flesh on flesh, the bruises and scrapes from digging my nails into the white banister, screaming, begging. I will never forget, I will never allow her to feel the way I did. And maybe, when I tuck her in at night, I’ll be tucking in the little girl I once was too—the one with the muddy hands and scraped knees, who only ever wanted someone to stay. I will stay.

I will look at my mother and say; here, look. She is not hard to love, and neither was I.

Even if the generational curse isn’t real, I still pray I have a daughter just like me. I pray that even though I am complex and mean and rude and hard to understand, she will be even more so. I will comb out the gnarls from her hair and kiss her goodnight and I will understand her perfectly. Even now, she is not hard to love. I love her fiercely, I will protect her with every fiber of my being. It comes easily.

And maybe one day, when she is grown, she will braid her daughter’s hair the way I once did for her. Maybe the curse was just a lie we were told, to keep us from imagining gentler futures.