A Brief Portrait of the Narrator as a Young Girl

I didn’t really start thinking, intentionally, anyway, until I was around fifteen. It’s not that I didn’t think at all, or didn’t have some kind of insight. I just hadn’t really applied it to anything yet.

I was eating French fries when my grandma died. I'd been in the hospital for hours, just waiting, but of course she slipped away in the few minutes it took me to get Steak n' Shake to-go. I came into her room and she was so skinny that for a second I thought the slight bumps of her legs were wrinkles in the sheets. It hadn't struck me just how frail she was until after she passed. I was around fifteen.

I had just grown out of my cargo-pants-only phase and that day I was wearing jeans for the first time. Scratchy, trendy, hip-hugging denim. They were so tight and stiff, big thick seams pulling and pushing on me. I tried not to pull at them too much as I sat on the floor in the hospital corridor, listening to my mother, aunt, and grandpa discuss my grandmother's remains. I didn't know how I felt about their varying opinions regarding whether to donate her body to science. What is truly irreverent to the deceased, and how does that change (or does it at all?) if potential discoveries in medicine hang in the balance? I knew that her heart had been the subject of three experimental operations, and in years past I'd heard the doctors say how her brain was a unique Alzheimer's case study. But the thought of her being all hollowed out—her insides not being hers anymore—made me feel as if I shouldn't stand for it.

I was confused and I wanted very badly to draw my own ethical, logical conclusion (even though I of course had no say in the matter), but all I could really think about were those damn jeans.

Before that age, my mind had wandered aimlessly through tangled thickets of concept and experience, picking such an exquisite bouquet from some sweet things that grew there while the more thorny things scratched at my legs at times, or caught in my hair.
I had only a vague sense of guilt for a little childhood mischief or ignorance. I was barely self-aware and it was blissful.

So I think that’s why it’s only recently that I’ve realized: we were perfect, you and I. We just didn’t know it yet. We thought—-because we were told-—that we were bad little girls; irreverent, scandalous. Though, the way I remember it, we didn’t really mind except for when we were being scolded. It never stopped us from clinging to opposite fire escapes, giggling together through Boy Scout walkie talkies, pilfered from older brother’s dresser drawer, or sneaking around the sanctuary to brush our little hands across the quilted wall-hanging. There was glitter on it, and sequins, and it sparkled as our nimble fingers traced the burning bush and the Hebrew inscription just above the hem. How could they expect us not to touch it? It sparkled and we were little girls.
The sequins would cast light on the ceiling sometimes, and the reflection of the wavy pattern in which they were sewn made me feel as if I was underwater. I loved that feeling.

Grandpa had a swimming pool in the back yard, and as a child I spent most summer afternoons there. It was so blue and clear and clean--it even smelled clean and I liked the way the scent of chlorine would linger in my hair all day, if Mom didn't make me shower right after a swim. I loved the feeling of myself in the water; it was suspension, the only time I felt graceful. Like I was covered in cool glass, the old-fashioned kind—the hand-blown glass with ripples and dimples that they show you on field trips in second grade—but better because it was so pure and bright. Nothing makes a little girl feel beautiful like being covered in things that glint in the sunlight, and nothing made me feel beautiful like watching my limbs glide under that liquid crystal. They were distorted though, and strange, so it was easy to pretend I was no longer human. I was something else; anything else. I'd be Something Else for a while, then run inside to be a little girl again, dripping water on the carpet and getting chocolate everywhere after Grandpa gave me Butterfingers.

I would paint rainbows on my face as a little girl, too, or paint my entire body all different colors. Mom tried to scold me but laughed instead. As I aged my childhood inclination toward coloring my very person grew into a fascination with bright hair dyes. Blues and greens and pinks; they made me feel like magic, an ever-present rainbow to toss in the sunlight and release a thousand shining strands of color into the wind.

I think it takes a certain lack of self-awareness to feel like magic. Even writing the phrase seems ridiculous to me now, from a more cynical perspective. I don't see my mind as a thicket so much anymore. Now it feels more like clipped hedges, a manicured lawn being constantly and meticulously treated for weeds or moles or anything else spontaneous or unplanned.

I remember the thicket fondly, though; it was a place I wanted to be. A happily disheveled little girl in a creek-splashed dress; twigs, dandelion fluff, bits of leaves and some of those crawling blue flowers you see in springtime making nests in the tangles of my hair. Wildflowers everywhere, entwined in the bramble. It was warm, too, and quiet; a peaceful sort of chaos.

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