Mirror Me

2: The Girl Who is Afraid of Mirrors

"Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Martinez," said the doctor as he removed his gloves and opened the door. "I recommend a good night's sleep for you both."

My mother nodded and raised her chin.

"Come, Hope. It's time we go home."

My tennis shoes squeaked on the shiny floor as we exited the room. My mother took my hand and together we left the hospital. I could sense something was wrong. She never squeezed my hand so tight before.

Bugs buzzed in the bright street lamps. Ping. Ping. Their little insect bodies bounced off the glass. I glanced at my mother. She was clenching her jaw; her eyes welling up appeared distant and concerned.

When we got into the car, my mother sat there quietly, the keys rested in her lap. I hesitated, feeling I had done something wrong, but she was not angry.

"Forget everything, Hope," she said through a sob. Her fingers curled around the steering wheel. "Forget all you saw and heard. From now on you will never look into another mirror or even a reflection. You hear me? Now, promise me. Promise me you will never look again."

"But why?" I asked, shifting in my seat. "I told you I made it up."

"Don't lie to me. You can fool the doctor, but I know you saw something."

I glanced at my reflection in the car's side mirror. My mother grabbed my chin and turned my head to face her. Her fingernails dug into my skin. I wanted to cry.

"Promise me," she sternly repeated. Her voice cracked in fear. "Promise me now!"

"I promise," I said, dropping my head in shame. And that was it. Mother started the car and we were off. We said nothing to each other the entire way home.

The home we returned to was no longer the same one we left. An aura of fear and foreboding had fallen over the quaint apartment building and my once happy family. My sister Laura crouched on the sofa, a blue blanket wrapped around her body. Her tiny face and big brown eyes looked at me in bewilderment. She whimpered and tucked her head behind a pillow as I neared the sofa. Down the hall scratched the sound of a broom pushing shards of glass along a hardwood floor. My abuelita, Magdalena, Maggie for short, appeared at the doorway to my room. She was wearing her favorite cat slippers and pink sweater. Her long gray hair fell in two pigtails nearly reaching the back of her knees.

"Mi amor," she whispered, running up to me; embracing me and kissing me on my cheek. "Are you alright, mija?" She checked my face and then my hands. I again yanked them back.

"I'm fine," I said, giving her the best fake smile I could muster. "No really, I am."

Mother pushed passed us with a fierce look in her eyes. She stomped into my room and grabbed my bed sheet unfolding it on the floor. She began snatching anything reflective and tossing it on the sheet.

"Barbara," shouted my abuelita in alarm. "¿Qué estás haciendo? What are you doing?"

"Everything reflective must go. Anything that casts a reflection must leave this house at once!" Anger now filled my mother's voice. It seemed she had snapped, gone insane, possessed by some ravenous demon keen on ripping apart the house. My abuelita pleaded with her to seek reason, but my mother refused to listen. Instead my mother dashed into the hall and began ripping the glass out of the picture frames, piling in her arms my sister's shiny sporting trophies, flinging the polished silver trays from the kitchen cabinets, nabbing the fancy golden cat father had brought us from his last visit to Mexico, and dumping the silverware, forks, knives, spoons, anything metal onto my bed sheet.

The mirror in the bathroom was the final thing to go. Mother hoisted it without mercy into the air and smashed it atop the heap of our beautiful glittering possessions. My abuelita, Laura and I watched on in frozen horror as our mother dragged the immense load of precious memories out of the apartment and into the dumpster. 

The television was the next victim. From then on the rule was to cover the TV when it was off. The last thing to vanish from our lives was the windows. The curtains would remain closed at all times.

"Nothing reflective," my mother repeated as she rampaged through the apartment shutting the curtains. "Nothing reflective will ever enter this home again! You hear me!" She shouted at us. Tears flowed down her flushed face. "Nothing reflective! I won't have this happen again! This will end tonight!"

I slept on the couch that night with Laura. We tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep.

"Are you sleeping?" Whispered Laura. She peeked at me waiting for an answer. "Hope?"

"No," I said lifting my head in the darkness.

"What happened, Hope? Why was mommy so angry?"

"I don't know," I said, dropping my head back down. "Just forget it, okay, and get some sleep." In all honesty it was the only thing I could think about. I recalled the moment before the mirror shattered. The boy had reached out of the glass and his hand grabbed my arm. I pulled down my sleeve to see the only proof of that frightening moment. The bruise near my wrist had gotten darker. I had hidden it from everyone. "It's all in your head," I repeated to myself counting the finger marks. "It's all in your head." I counted five, but where the fingertips should have been, instead there were small cuts. The hand was not that of a boy, it had changed to a monster with claws.

Three years passed by with no explanation as to that night. I learned to stay quiet and try to accept my new life. No mirrors. No reflections. Mother had made it absolutely clear. It was all in my head. Even my abuelita, who once told me stories before bed about a world beyond the mirror, would come to whisper a single phrase before kissing me goodnight.

"Los dotados son grandes," she would say. A phrase that roughly translates to, "The gifted are great."

Little did I know something great was waiting for me beyond the mirror, and all it took to get there was for me to break one more thing, my promise to mom.