Shattered Reflection

A girl with a wide-set sallow face and tattered blonde-almost-white hair drags her feet as she walks slowly down the dingy street. Her dirty black sneakers send pebbles skidding across the street like water bugs on the surface of some grimy pond that rarely sees sunlight. Her hands are crossed behind her back and she twists them together as she walks. Her shoulders pitch slightly to the left and her head to the right which gives her a strange lopsided appearance. The girl’s eyes are too far apart, her gait too uneven, her crooked posture too noticeable. People avert their eyes as she walks by them. They know why the bridge of her nose is too wide. They know why her eyes don’t focus. That’s what you get for having a bastard kid, they say. That’s what you get for bringing men drinks to share.

                But the girl is oblivious to their whisperings or she pretends to be. She stares at the ground when she walks, which is why she notices the piece of paper, folded, that is about to fall through the blackened grate that leads to the sewers. She stops and a man walks into her, curses her, cuffs her around the ears, and keeps walking. Now she grabs the piece of paper, stuffs it in her pocket, and takes off running.

                The girl runs down the street until she reaches an intersection where she takes off to the left for a few blocks before ducking into an alley, under a grate, and over a low fence. She slows to a walk as she approaches a sooty brick building with a faded, chipped green door.  She knocks and then knocks harder. Finally footsteps are heard from behind the door and an old and blubbery woman with unfortunate eyebrows that are connected over the middle of her brow by a bridge of wiry hairs opens the door.  

                “Lila,” she greets the girl brusquely.

                “Marian.”

                “Sam is in his room.”

                Lila is off past the mother, running up the stairs to Sam’s room where she knocks once before letting herself in. Sam is sitting on his bed reading a book.

                “Hi, Lila,” he says, not looking up.

                “Hi, Sam,” she replies, a little breathless from running the whole way. She pulls the piece of paper out of her pocket, unfolds it, and lays it on the bed in front of him. “Read this.”

                While he reads, she looks at his face. He has heavy eyebrows, like his mother, and now they are scrunched together above his pale gray eyes. His hair is in a ponytail that hangs down his back. She thinks that he would look cuter if it were short and hung around his face, but he is insistent on keeping it long. Lila likes the way that Sam’s face turns intense and focused when he reads. She wishes that he would offer to teach her to understand the patterns that the letters make on the page, but is too shy to ask.

                “Well, what does it say?” she asks.

                “I…I don’t know. I can’t read it.” She hears the false tone in his voice.

                “Liar.” She waits for him to give in.

                “I really don’t.”

                “Sam,” she complains.

                “What?” he is defensive.

                “Tell me!”

                “No.”

                “Why not?”

                “You don’t want to know.” This stops her. What could be written on that paper that she wouldn’t want to know? Sam knows that she loves gossip.

                “Tell me!” she commands again, but he shakes his head no. She can feel herself getting angry. “Tell me, Sam.” But he refuses. “Why won’t you tell me?” She is pleading now. She can feel the anger coming in a fierce surge that seems to originate in the pit of her stomach, as it always does.  She knows that soon it will sweep up in between her ribs and set her heart pounding, seep into her throat and make it constrict, seep into her eyes and make them tighten, seep into her brain and take away her control. This is the price that she must pay for being the bastard daughter of an alcoholic prostitute. This is the price of being born different.

                Lila knows that the anger is coming on strong, but she is no longer in control of it. Her hands ball into fists and she tries to stuff them under her legs, pressing them hard into the bottoms of her thighs to keep Sam from seeing. It doesn’t work, and her heart starts thudding. Her brain seems unfocused. She is grabbing the letter from Sam, she is ripping it in half, balling it up, throwing it on the floor. She is turning to the falling-apart dresser and grabbing a mirror and throwing it at the wall, crash, and bending down and picking up one of the jagged pieces. She is throwing it at Sam, who does not raise a hand to defend himself. There is a noise coming from somewhere, a whining, catching, breaking noise and she realizes that it is coming from her throat at the same time that she feels the pain of the air choking its way through the constricted tunnel. The blood is glistening on Sam’s cheek and the world turns red as a high-pitched scream fills her throat and ears.  

*

                “Sam! Sam!” Lila hears Marian shaking him, trying to rouse him. Lila’s hands are covered in matted blood and hair; she is lying on the floor with shards of the mirror around her reflecting random sparkling patterns on the blood-splattered walls. She sits up and looks at Marian, who is now sobbing over…

                “Sam!” she cries. His pale face is smeared with red. She lurches up and sees that his face and neck are covered with cuts. His hair is all over her hands instead of on his head, and she thinks chaotically that now his hair is short, just like she wanted it.

                Lila’s cry alerts Marian to her presence in the room. The older woman turns around slowly and stares blankly at the crimson-stained girl on the ground.

 “Why?” is all that she can manage. Lila searches the floor until her eyes land on the ripped, crumpled piece of paper. She picks it up and thrusts it at Marian. “Read it out loud,” she says. So Marian unfolds it and reads aloud:

                “Dear Lila,

“I can’t tell you what I need to tell you in person, so I’m going to write this down. I know you can’t read it, but maybe  you’ll find someone who can. I love you, Lila. I have always loved you and I always will love you. I want to kill the people who hurt you. Maybe someday we will run away together and I will make a better life for you in a place where we are safe. I’ve written you so many of these letters, Lila, but I can never give them to you. I throw them in the gutter so that you will never see them. That way, even though you don’t know that I love you, I can still be with you. Maybe someday I will give one to you.

                                                                                                                Sam”

                 Marian turns away from Lila to look at her son, throwing the letter back to the floor.

                “Why?” she asks again, and this time she does not seem to be searching for a response. “Why?”

                Lila stares at her friend lying dead on the bed. She feels like the tears must come, but they do not. They are stuck somewhere inside. She grabs a shard of mirror from the floor and squeezes it in her hand until more blood trickles down from her palm but she does not feel the pain. She sits on the floor, among shattered pieces of mirror, and grieves for lost love as the blood dries on her clothes and the sky slowly turns to inky black.