[from my archives]
A tenet: And mother created daughter in her own image; in the image of mother she created her.
I got my first period four days before your eleventh birthday pool party. By the time the day of the party came I didn’t need a tampon and I was relieved, not that I’d need one in the first place because my flow was so light it wasn’t even red. I had this deep shame when I saw the first stain on the inside of my underwear after a miserable morning of cramps, felt my heart throb in my throat when I told my mom, and couldn’t even tell my younger sister till a month later. When I did tell her I told her cautiously, written out on notebook paper, prefaced like breaking the news a relative has died.
Your mom greets me at the door briefly, the script I wrote for our play clutched in her hand, wadded up like a roll of newspaper, ignoring my mother who is dropping me off. I stood in the arched entryway of your $1.2 million dollar house, my bare toes freezing on marble chilled by AC, my skinny-limbed bony body in a full one-piece swimsuit. You greeted me politely, half-breathless and eyes averted, a perfect young lady made in the image of your mother. You had an unconventional build for ballet; all thick bones and early curves and broad hips but a face like a fairy and hair so gold it blinded me in the sunshine. Old ladies at our gentrified church would smile when they saw you and kiss your face and stroke your hair and pass me by but I never cared because I understood what they felt when they saw you. Who wouldn’t love you? I wondered if you’d had your period yet.
At the playground we walked around the perimeter of the park, watching the boys play soccer with disdain. I think I want to play, I told you, and you whispered in your soft angel voice, I’m not allowed, and I felt bad so I stood beside you and tried not to glance over at the game too often. We walked in silence, like we usually did. You didn’t say much but I didn’t care because you wanted my company. I was shy but I could carry the conversation if I had to. Sometimes I gave up, and we walked around the playground without speaking, each of us thinking of things we wanted to say but couldn’t say, and you slipped your hand into mine and I shook it away.
I wondered about the world and you wondered about your world and you would listen to me as I told you about the snippets of news of war that I knew from hearing the adults talk. There’s war in the Middle East, I said, and children are dying. Isn’t that sad? That there are kids who are dying? Kids like us, I thought, and maybe you thought that too but I would never know because you never responded. You sat there in silence, wide-eyed and quiet, and I wondered if you were wearing a wire that your mom held on to. I wish she had bugged you.
I’m changing in your guest bedroom when you come in so softly I hardly notice. I’m toweling my hair and shaking water out of my ears, droplets coursing down my bare ribs when you sit at the edge of the bed, staring out the glass patio door, overlooking the river. You say nothing but I know you’re thinking about how it will be like saying goodbye to me at the end of the summer. I know that your mother only invites me over and not my sister because I am the top student in our class. I know you never asked for that, and I never did either, but I wonder if this tenuous friendship between us is real or a ruse. I think of all my hobbies: sewing, reading Louisa May Alcott, playing classical music, competing in memory challenges, and I realize these are your hobbies.
I wrote you once a week although I saw you in person once a week, and it felt like holding my breath before doing a cannonball in the pool when I told you at the end of every letter that I loved you, in every language I knew. I love you. Te amo. Te quiero. 我愛你. I signed the phrase under the table in class, and you would feel my hands and I’d watch your face light up when you figured out what I was saying. And when I ran out of languages I made my own. I mailed you a key to the characters I made up corresponding to each letter of my fake alphabet. I love you. I wrote you whole letters in my alphabet, silly letters about what I did yesterday and funny stories about random things, anything on my mind. I made that alphabet for you.
Your mom told my mom to tell me to stop writing in the secret code and I didn’t know why. You said nothing and I couldn’t tell what you thought about it, but I felt slightly angry and I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand why she made me stop writing to you in our language but I understood that I had to respect my elders and it wasn’t my place to question, so I accepted it quietly.
Before we got in the pool you took me to your bedroom and showed me the new decorations your mom had bought you: glow-in-the-dark stars plastered on the ceiling. A set of five vintage spellers piled on your nightstand in a neat stack, and an illustrated book of manners with a colorful table setting illustrated on the front sat on your bed. You didn’t mention them. You went to your ensuite and came back out with a tub of sunscreen, and wordlessly scooped some out and began applying to the back of my neck.
I leave for the other community at the end of the summer unceremoniously; your mother grew angry at my mother over the phone. I saw you again three years later at a ballet, and you seemed to look the same to me. I whispered your name (the same forward and backward, a changeless palindrome in my mouth) and you caught my eye but you were in shadow behind your mother. I didn’t want to find you again.
Even in 80 degree heat I’m not one to get wet. I sit at the edge of your pool, red in the face and limbs slack from the heat of the sun while you cut through the water choppily, like a blunt blade. Under the surface you’re a silver ripple until you pop your head out right by my knees and gasp for air, pulling stringy gold strands of hair out of your eyes. You pull yourself out of the pool, ballet-toned shoulder muscles straining.
Your younger siblings play tag by the poolside, their chubby white feet hitting the sparkling pavement and crushing sixlets beneath their feet. You got pearl-colored sixlets for your party. Your mom said you could have whatever you wanted and you wanted the pearl-colored sixlets. I follow you, at a distance, trying not to seem like I’m following you, then grab a handful of sixlets from amid the elaborate charcuterie board your mother assembled for you and that no one is paying attention to, except the horseflies.
I pop the sixlets in my mouth, one at a time, crunching through the fruity shell to the cheap smooth chocolate beneath. The shell tastes like your chapstick: artificial strawberry, slightly waxy.
I watch Greta Gerwig’s Little Women five years later in theater, sitting in the dark and shoving popcorn into my mouth trying not to cry when Josephine March tells her mother: “Women. They have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition. And they’ve got talent as well as just beauty. And I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it. But I’m so lonely.” and I think of you and I wonder if you’ve seen this movie yet, or are going to see it, or if you want to see it but your mother won’t let you, and I imagine a world where we’re seeing this movie together, just you and me, and I keep eating this popcorn that’s making me sick because I hope the people behind me won’t hear me choke on my tears.
I watch this movie again on my 18th birthday with girls that can’t ever replace you, and my house is empty and this movie isn’t as good as I remember. I miss you.
In the Silence Between 