Sea Glass

When is a childhood truly over? Is it when you remember only the good parts? Those nights when you went to bed at seven and then your mom gently nudged you awake at nine, saying that it had rained, so you would go outside and look for toads. The water soaking through your bonnet, your pj’s covered by the yellow ruffled coat. You would catch a toad the size of your palm and hold it tight. You would make sure that your friend didn’t jump out of your palm. Everyone was your friend in those days.

The warm tears brought me back to reality, The reality I seem to be drowning in.

“I wish I were what I used to be” I whisper to myself.

The salty droplets falling into my mouth.

It had only been ten years from that night in the rain when I was four. The world felt so far away. I was only living in a fragment of it. It was like sea glass. A shattered bottle, with one piece that had softened edges from being loved by the ocean.

Now I was running in the space in between the broken glass. Sharp corners cutting me. Blood always on the floor. Scars slithering up my body.

“You’re 14,” my mother always says with a somewhat sour face, “You’re still living in the in between”

The thing is, no one remembers what it’s like to be in this place of darkness, where you can see light on both sides. In the future and in the past, but never in the place that you stand. You’re isolated and alone. Your “friends” are on the verge of enemies. Family becomes a restriction. Hobbies become an addiction, and time becomes endless with no forgiveness.

All of this is rushing through my brain while I’m sitting outside under a tree; waiting for the school bells to ring so that I can continue this day that seems to rush in a slow-motion blur of unimportant events. So that I can get home and lay down and sleep for hours. So that I can get away from these people who talk to me when they need a backup friend.

Finally, after science, the clock reaches for 3:30 and I run to my locker, then go wait outside for my dad. The cold sprints toward me, painting my skin with goose bumps, starting the music of chattering teeth. At last, he arrives, the beats of Tupac rocks my ears, and the smell of pineapple jerky drifts to my nose.

“How was your day?” he asks in his deep echoing voice as I set my bag on a pile of junk and heave myself into the front seat.

“As good as school can get” I respond with a sigh that I didn’t mean to release.

My dad chuckles. “Can’t say nothing to that”

The car ride is filled with his voice rapping along to “Dear Mama” the song that might as well be his.

We are home 20 minutes later and I walk to the pantry to get graham crackers and milk. The snack I’ve had since I was six. An unescapable craving. I pour the whole milk, then split my crackers into four, then dip them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 seconds then I pull each out. I bite into the soft, crispy sweetness. The sign that my day is at last over.

I drag myself up the stairs where I pull of my uniform and slip on a hoodie and sweats. I lay down on my bed then sit up as I realize that my mom is standing there at the door.

“You need new bras Isla,” she says. “those ones are getting to old”

“Not now I beg,” cringing at the whine in my voice.

“We’ll leave in ten,” she retorts undisturbed.

I slip on my converse, and leave my hair in a bun. I’m to the point of not caring anymore. It is freeing but terrifying.

Once again, I am in the car, but the music has changed. It went from the low rap to the soft voices of Jesus music.

“Why don’t you talk to me?” my mother asks resignedly.

“I do,” I say knowing that that is not all true, but the silence is what I need to calm down, and conversations only turn to arguments.

We walk into the store where she picks out a variety of colors, styles, and sizes.

In the dressing room I try on the first one. It hangs loose. To big for my flat chest. My eyes race up and down my body. Examining the way my thighs touch and my butt is nothing but bone. Insecurities that I file away to look at later. My hair is dry and frizzy. The curls undefined. My dark skin doesn’t match what the label says is “tan” One after another, I try each. The padding sticks out awkwardly too big for my small boobs.

Again, and again I repeat, “It’s too big” until at last, we leave in defeat. Our heads are down and our mouths are unmoving.

“It’s okay,” my mom says. “not all bodies are the same” A phrase that I’ve heard too many times.

It is recorded in my mind. But she doesn’t know all of it. Her hair is straight and her skin is light. Her eyes are blue. My hair is curly. My skin is dark. My eyes are a hazel or brown.She doesn’t know what it’s like for people to play with her hair like it’s a toy. Pulling it down then watching it spring back up, or when teachers handed me a “skin color” crayon that was so much lighter than my skin it made me feel like an alien. But then I would go to see my dad’s side of the family. Their hair all 4c. An escape from brutality, or so I thought. To them I was light. My skin the color of milk and hair too straight to call curly. That was when I realized I would never have a place.

Is becoming an adult the realization that you have no home to name your own, and no space create. Belonging is based on color and race, and friendships are never forever. The pinky promises you made as a kid mean nothing to them now as they disappear into a world that you are not a part of. To some, forever is temporary and meaningless while to others it is everything.

You do not know the words that float in people’s heads. The hate that they can spill, and the love that they can take and manipulate.

But remember your plans for the future. Now the whole world is straight.

I’ve reconstructed the glass bottle and now walk on top of it. Future how often do I forget that it is a possibility even for me. Where I can build up a world where I revolve around something. Where I have something to live and die for.

This realization helps me get up the next morning in my cardboard body that I see as fat. It gets me to school and I say hi to the girl I used to know in third grade. In a hurry the clock turns to 3:30 and I walk, head up, outside. The cold hits me but this time I’m smiling as my teeth chatter.

“How was your day?” My dad asks.

“It went by pretty fast,” I say wonderous.

I know then. I reached the end of my childhood. The end of the in between, because I am in the future that I always saw in my dreams. That light that glared at me from my right.

A future, I laugh, and my dad looks back at me confused, but I just smile and say “You wouldn’t understand anyway, but don’t worry that’s okay.”