Trapped in Forever

57 ~ The Ugly Duckling

It was early-September, with bright blossoms of flower petals vibrant and eye-catching from where they were sprouted from slender, rock aligned gardens with dark dirt flecked with fertilizer surrounding the green stems that varied from smooth and thick to slender, almost flimsy, with fuzz like bristles adorning the stem, and the hot sizzle of heat occasionally ringing in our ears, the pavement wavering and quivering yards ahead as Mom drove, the windows rolled down and letting the warm breeze flutter our hair and partially cool my sunburned shoulders. Sunglasses were perched on the top of my head, nestled into my hair like a headband, and my tribal print bag was resting against my bare thigh, the strap sprawled out over my lap and fluttering slightly from the rushing wind barreling through the half-opened window. I was texting Kara, telling her how my mom just wanted to show me and my dad the new renovations for the lake house, how I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping in a place with the aroma of fresh paint and warm wood to lull me to sleep. I smiled down at the screen of my phone when she sent me a picture of her, propped up on her bed, with her hair twisted messily into a short braid, and her eyes bare, without eyeliner and her Maybelline mascara to enhance her eyelashes. She had captioned herself with a dramatic pout tugging on her lips, and then she texted me i miss u a moment later. I caught the glance of my mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror, as if she sensed my smile and wanted get to its roots, if it was appropriate or not, if it was just as outrageous as my idea to model.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, her tone struggling to keep a lighthearted edge instead of letting her natural irksome tenor pierce her words. She flexed her hands on the steering wheel, her fingers fitting smoothly into the finger groves, and she glanced up at the rearview mirror again, her eyebrows raised faintly. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to be discrete or if that was as much as she could stifle her curiously perked eyebrows.

I just shrugged in response, my eyes directed for the screen of my phone instead of the rectangular rearview mirror that danged from the rooftop of the car, captioning her coffee hued irises and the wrinkles in her forehead that stemmed from the corners of her eyes and her temples, wisps of dark hair pathetically trying to conceal these stressed induced imperfections. As I typed my response to Kara’s out of focus photograph, the pads of my thumb touching on the gray touch screen keys stamped with alphabet letters, ignoring a spelling error when cute was changed to cut, I heard the heavy whoosh of Mom sighing in the driver’s seat in front of her, her shoulders slouching against the black seat, and her head leaning further into the headrest, strands of her hair tied into a ponytail wrapping around the headrest like it was trying to embrace it. Like my spelling error, I ignored this lengthy sigh as well and let it flutter out of the rolled windows and into the traffic of the highway, multicolored cars with gleaming hoods and rolled windows and muddy tires and drivers, with dry and crusty elbows propped up against on the opened space where the window had rolled away and out of sight, winced at the sound of my mother’s disappointment seeping through the car.

For the past few weeks, I’ve caught the suspicious looks of my mother glancing my way like piercing glares of dissatisfaction and doubt mingled into her eyes as she watched me text Kara or Reese or Veronica or when I told her I wasn’t hungry when she mentioned that she made my favorite meal (pork chops and green beans) or when I stepped out of the bathroom after five minutes and tucked my toothbrush back under a box of Tampax tampons in one of the drawers beneath the bathroom sink because the bristles are untouched, pristine, but the end of the toothbrush is gnawed with teeth marks and gleaming with saliva after I pull it away from my mouth.

I’ve heard her scold me for letting my pants hang low, exposing the hem of my underwear, because they’re jeans for a medium sized girl when I’m slowly turned into a small one, with noticeable collarbones and fragile wrists, but I can still see that layer of fat clinging to my collarbones and fragile wrists even though my mother gazes at me with looks that always shift, sometimes to suspicion, like she’s been listening outside the bathroom door or scrolling through my text messages when I’m away, or sadness, like my collarbones and fragile wrists aren’t fragile enough for her, and even though Orion touches my collarbones like they’re butterfly wings, thin and wispy, never to touch like a neighbor’s flower garden or a historic piece at a museum. He once told me my arms were beginning to look like a baby bird’s and I just smiled at him and told him that I liked baby birds, that they reminded me of spring and beauty, and he just nodded, but it felt more like an end to a conversation than an agreement.