Young Writers Society

I have one green eye and one brown eye. The green eye sees truth, but the brown eye

sees much, much more.

My mother told me once that I was never to speak of the things I saw with this

brown eye. “It will be your own little secret,” she whispered into my ear, the

left ear which was closest to my brown eye. While she talked she lifted a thin

finger to poke my nose and then slid it down to the corner of my mouth. She

tugged at this corner, forcing half of my face into a smile. “It’s nothing to

be ashamed of, dear. I don’t want you to think there’s anything wrong with you.”

“Then why can’t I tell?” I persisted, pulling my face away from my mother’s touch.

She pushed her lips together into a thin line and turned her own perfect blue

eyes towards the bed, away from me. “Something is wrong with me, isn’t it?”

“No, darling, of course not.” I didn’t believe her words any more than she did.

“I can tell you though, about what I see?” My voice rose in a high pitch squeak,

searching again for something to hold onto. I felt as though my world was

growing darker, and I needed the speck of light that only my mother could

provide.

“No, not even me. Listen, my sweet, it would be best if you could learn to ignore

everything you see. Try to live like the rest of us, without the added

fantasies. You mustn’t be ashamed, my dear, I only think you will have a better

time if you can hide away anything unusual that you see.” My mother still did

not look at me, and I wondered if she thought my mismatched eyes were ugly.

Her words stung even more than her distanced bearing, and I felt sobs rising

through my chest. “They aren’t fantasies!” I shouted. My mother instantly

silenced me with her thin hand, skin that I had once thought felt soft. Now her

hand smothered me, and the smell of soap that I used to love made my breakfast

rise up to my mouth. I shoved the hand away and ran outside, where I stopped

half-way in the house and half-way in the street and let all the food escape

from my stomach. The vile taste that lined my mouth made me even sicker, and I

retched again.

“Darling? What is it? What’s wrong?” I could hear my mother’s voice, but I

could not answer her. Every word that came from her mouth only increased my

disgust, until I could no longer stand the bitterness that filled every part of

my body. I did not give her a chance to reach me before jumping over the mess

of my sickness and running like a madman down the dirt street. I knew people

were watching me, probably standing in their doorways pointing as I ran.

“There she goes, that strange girl with the different colored eyes.”I imagined the adults shaking their heads and feigning pity. The children would head their parents’ voices and come to stare

as well. One of them would recognize me and laugh.

“Oh, her? At school the other day she asked Joseph why he had a rope around his

neck. Stupid girl, he didn’t have any rope anywhere. That’s not the first time,

either. She sees things all the time.” The child would laugh again and run off,

because I had already been mocked and harassed to the point where I no longer

provided the satisfactory entertainment. But perhaps, I thought as I ran,

perhaps the parent would realize that the day after I saw the rope Joseph’s

father was arrested for stealing and cheating. The trial had not happened yet,

but I knew the outcome. Joseph’s father would be condemned, and his punishment

would be hanging.

I escaped the suffocating limits of the village square, and sprinted past the

last few houses that sat like unwanted moles on the face of the earth. As I

emerged into the forest I thought I saw a horse running alongside me, but when

I turned to look with my right eye, the green one, I saw only the trees sliding

by in a whir of brown and green.

“Ignore everything you see,” my mother’s voice repeated into my head, and I reached up

to cover my ears while I ran. The action took my mind away from running, and my

foot caught on some invisible obstacle and my body lunged forward into the cool

dirt. My mouth opened and a sound escaped from between my chapped lips- a sound

that I could not believe to be my own. For a moment I turned and scanned the

trees in search of some wild beast, but not even my brown eye could see the

monster. The sound had come from my own throat, and it moved down into a quiet

moaning growl that came from the very depths of my being. I wondered, as I

listened to my own distant cry, whether the sound did not come from the eye

itself.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” my mother had said. And yet it was. There was

something wrong with me, and the knowledge filled me with dread. I could not go

back to the village; I could not go back to my mother. When the moan had run

its course and the fire in my legs had subsided, I pushed myself up and turned

around to look back the way I had come. I closed my green eye, though I had to

scrunch my whole face in the effort of doing so, and let the brown eye, the

different eye, take control. I saw my mother wearing various shades of red,

even though she had been dressed in blue when I left. I did not understand the

sight at first, just my mother, asleep in her bed.

My truthful eye opened and I saw the dirt road and the patches of yellow and green grass,

and I saw the blue sky above me, and I saw two purple flowers beside the road.

I blinked several times and then closed my right eye once more and let the

dirty eye take control. This time I saw my father in his work clothes, with a

hammer in his hand. He was walking away from the house, but as he walked I

could see the knife that he had forgotten on the shelf. He must have stabbed a

piece of meat and eaten it off the knife the way he always did when he was in a

hurry. Except, as he worked on the leak in the roof he had set the knife

precariously on the edge of the wooden beam across the ceiling. If anyone even

touched the walls of the house it would fall.

I opened my eye again, and the grass beside the road matched the color of my truthful

eye. Except, I did not think that the eye told truth at all. Maybe a little,

broken fragment of truth. The other eye, the one that was unusual and shameful,

the other eye told the real truth, the whole truth.

My mother was going to walk in the house and brush against the wall, and the knife

was going to tip over the edge of the beam and fall, just as my mother stepped

underneath. I saw this with my brown eye, and I knew that what I saw would

happen unless I ran back and told my mother not to go inside, not to touch the

walls, not to take that one extra fatal step.

“Listen, my sweet, it would be best if you could learn to ignore everything you see.” I

turned back to the purple flowers that danced ever so slightly in the breeze. I

closed my lips tightly, the way my mother had done, and my tongue tasted

bitterness. I spat the taste out of my mouth, disgusted that such a vulgar

flavor had come from within me.

“Hide away anything unusual that you see.” I reached down and tore the two purple

flowers from the earth, roots and all. Then, that same animal sound rising up

from behind my brown eye, I rubbed the roots, dirt, and stem into my brown eye.

The dirt stung, but I continued to push harder and harder until I imagined that

the eye must be bleeding, though it could have been only tears.

I turned away from the village and began walking. I could only see the broken truth that

my green eye showed me. I saw the blue sky and the green trees shading the

road, and if I turned around I saw the two purple flowers painted red and lying

in the mud.