She wears her mother’s pearls. They
bear into her neck. They hurt her. She wears her mother’s gold instead. This
gold, passed down to her from her mother’s mother, hangs loosely around her
neck. What should she wear? She wonders.
She looks at her reflection in the
mirror. Her eyebrows furrow. There are lines under her eyes and around her
lips. She is not smiling. She frantically looks for something that fits. She is
frustrated.
Then she gets up and she take one
of the many black scarves her mother hangs in her closet. She wraps it around
her head expertly, with swift hands that perfected this movement over the
years. She looks at the girl in the mirror. The girl is still angry. She
grimaces. The lines in between her eyebrows grow deeper. The hands go up and
fix the scarf, here and there.
This is what she does every night.
She places her mother’s pearls, her gold, and scarf back where they belong.
Then she leaves her mother’s room.
Sometimes, she weeps. Quietly. So quiet
that her secret remains only between her and the quiet night. The night is kind
to her. The night holds all the secrets of all the troubled minds deep in its
heart; Secrets that the girl could never tell.
And when she finally sleeps, she begins
to dream. She dreams of wind that tangles through her hair, and she wears a red
dress, and her gold necklace rests lightly on her neck, and then she sees waves
crash against the shore beside her, and she is running just because she has the
freedom to, and she laughs, and she laughs again, and this time, this time she
laughs louder.
The girl smiles in her sleep.
