A Voice for the Invisible Girl

Sometimes, the smallest voices ring the loudest truths.  

She sits with her head tucked down, an effort to veil the intelligence in her eyes.  She slumps in her chair and crosses her arms, folding herself into the shape of the little girl she is out-growing.  Braces line her teeth, a metal gate that traps her inside herself.  She only smiles behind the curtain of her hands and never laughs out loud, except in text messages. 

A dozen plastic bands line her wrists.  She is her own billboard advertising her opinions.  Her backpack is a purple armadillo, shielded by pins and buttons.  You might laugh, feel guilty, or learn something if you stop and read them.  So, most people don't.  After all, someone who wears so much eyeliner has to be two-dimensional.  

She didn't win a trophy for the debate team last year.  As a matter of fact, she didn't even try to join.  But her notebook is a loaded weapon; she could shoot a hole in their logic from the other side of the cafeteria with less than an ounce of ink. 

I barely hear her voice and I'm standing right next to her.  "Yo creo que..." she whispers.  She is learning to tell her opinion in a second language.  I'm dying to hear the rest of the sentence, because what she believes and thinks matters.  

Trust me, if nuclear warfare happens, you'll want her to have a voice.  When you need a brain surgeon, you won't care how many piercings she has.  Her tattoos won't matter when she lifts your child into the ambulance or when she talks your sister out of committing suicide. 

Sometimes, the smallest voices ring the loudest truths.  I say we give the girl a microphone.

Wall

My heart pounded my throat like a hammer as I saw her struggling over the wall.  She hit the ground with a dull expulsion of air and lay there, very still.  I waited a minute, clutching my shirt around me tighter, hardly daring to breathe.  There had been a long line of us running away from the flames and I guess I was expecting some of the others to make it.  I kept staring at the darkness above me, the horizon between safety and what lie beyond.  A string of barbed wire winked at me above the harsh stones.  Screams echoed and died along the cobbled streets, a symphony of suffering on a xylophone of indifference.  

I turned my attention to the girl again.  She still lay crumpled just as she had landed.  No pool of blood surrounded her head, so I figured she would be ok.  I got up from where I was crouched and approached her.  A long gash ran up her leg from her knee to her thigh where raw skin peeked behind a curtain of ripped denim.  Her nails were caked with dirt and blood.  Ashes streaked her arms, a tattoo of the nightmare that was her reality. 

I moved the hair that veiled her face and her eyes blinked to life.  Around her neck, an amulet glowed the color of the fire inside both of us.  She rattled a stream of words I didn't understand, a language all her own that I could never hope to understand.  I just nodded.  Pain is universal.  My own tongue felt heavy in my mouth as I spoke words that were foreign to me.  New vocabulary.  I had never suffered like this.  She smiled sadly as I fumbled over the words.  She patted my hand and looked away from me, back over the wall.  Her gaze was as distant as the moon that glowed red from the smoke. 

The next moment we were walking.  Nowhere in particular, just away. 

Day by day, we put a day behind us along with the fire that nearly destroyed us.  Fresh, pink skin grows in places all over my body where new life insists on replacing the old.  But the smell of smoke still lingers in my dreams.  No matter how many times I wash my hair, I think the tragedy has invaded my follicles.  The rancid smell comes from inside of me, a scent of experience that haunts me.  There is a spot on my face that won't come clean, no matter how hard I scrub.  Maybe I will learn to accept it someday.  Things could be worse, I suppose.  I'm lucky that the scar that distinguishes me is in the shape of a butterfly.  A promise that I can transform into something greater than I was before I left my cocoon.  

The Glass

She stood there staring at me from the other side of the glass.  Her image was broken into rectangle segments, framed by the latticework.  She held one hand pressed against the window next to her face, as if she were whispering a secret to her own reflection.  

Magenta lips worked “oh’s” and tears rolled down her cheeks as silent screams that never broke through the glass encased her.  She raised a fist and let it fall against the glass and the frustration on her breath clouded the pane as she leaned her forehead on the window and wailed.  

I stood at a loss, not quite sure what to do.  She was in the wrong place.  This was no museum, no asylum.  We were standing in the middle of a Starbucks where life went bustling by.  I don’t think anyone else saw the girl in the glass box, her terror on display for a world who didn’t even notice.

She kept on murmuring words that I couldn’t make out, but then she looked me directly in the eyes and poignantly commanded me.  “Help,” she mouthed.  I tried to look away, but her eyes pierced down into my soul.  There was something familiar about her, something that I recognized but couldn’t put my finger on. 

I looked around for a rock or a hammer or piece of metal that would be strong enough to break the glass.  Out of desperation I threw a paper coffee cup at the glass.  I didn’t believe my eyes when it flew directly through and landed at the floor by the girl’s feet. 

I hesitated, unsure whether I should run away or step closer to investigate.  Her gaze still held mine and it pulled me closer like an invisible force.  I stood very close and watched her suffer.  I saw her wrists were red and bruised, as if she had clawed at her arms to remove some invisible bonds.  A thin line of blood caked her lips, evidence of a chapped voice that resonated back at her off of the glass.  

As I watched, her eyes slowly melted away, drowned by her tears like an ice cube under a stream of water.  Her soul still stared at me from empty eye sockets and I could feel the chill from inside her seep through the cracks in the windowpane. 

I felt sick.  I felt empathy and compassion.  I wondered what it was that kept her trapped there.  There was a part of me that wanted to reach through the glass and touch her, but another part wanted to order my double Americano and walk blindly past her like the rest of the world. 

I turned my back on the girl and walked away.  One foot in front of the other, I approached the counter.  I saw a little girl in a hot pink t-shirt waving and grinning broadly at the glass pane I had just deserted.  I breathed a sigh of relief, glad I wasn’t the only one who could see the girl trapped there. 

I took my coffee and stepped behind the little girl and towards the exit.  I turned to the glass for a last glimpse at the tragedy.  I clenched my cup so hard in my hand that I spilled coffee all over my shirt.  The little girl stood waving at her own reflection in a renovated windowpane.