Brush Strokes
The day dawned dim behind the closed draperies, engulfing us like the whale had engulfed Jonas all those years ago.
I sat at my vanity table, brushing my weird hair, stroking it over and over again. Hopefully, it would fall out, so then my parents wouldn't be happy to call me their beautiful daughter anymore. I stared at my pale yellow skin, as it glowed in the dark. I was a ghost. That's how I felt.
I had everything, the house, the status, the looks, the popularity, and most importantly the reputation, and yet I still felt like an outsider. Why? I didn't know.
Many a time, when I was younger, my father would take me on trips with him, to lower class neighborhoods, and even though the houses were tiny and were closely knit together on blocks the size of basketball courts, still I felt that I belonged here for some odd reason. I would stare out of the windows of our silver Rolls- Royce, and gaze around these poor neighborhoods in awe. It didn't matter to me that 100 of these tiny houses, could fit in my one, no. I didn't matter that the women on the corner wore skimpy outfits, no. it didn't matter that these houses were falling apart, no. it didn't matter to me at all, I was four years old, and the world was like one giant rainbow.
As, I sat at my vanity table, I felt the light from the hallway spill into my room. Why was she here? Did she just want to see me cry, why? What was so wrong with me? Was I that bad? Was I so bad that my parents had to have this lady, a stranger, come see me everyday at 7:00? Was, it not enough for them, that I was suffering, suffering from myself.
"Hello, Doll. How are you today?" She asks before, entering the room, as if she doesn't already know, that I feel like everybody is against me, "Can I come in?" she asks, I almost want to laugh at how childish she's being. Of course she can come in, but I don't say anything, I just turn my head so that she can see the side of my face. How can she bare to look at me, and tell me that I'm beautiful, when she knows that I'm suffering. Inside, I feel dead, dead to this horrible world.
She comes in then, and sits on the edge of my bed.
"How many times have you thought about the baby, today, Doll?" she asks me, but instead of answering I just turn back around to look at myself in the in my mirror, as I continue to brush my hair. I can see, her out of the corner of my eye, sitting on the edge of my queen sized bed, staring at me. I can see the pity. It's written all over her face almost as if she wrote it on her face with a black sharpie marker.
"Sally, " I say, "did, you know that if you brush your hair a 100 times it will start falling out?"
She looks at me, and smiles, as she reaches down into her briefcase to take out a yellow legal pad, and her infamous green pen. Oh how I hate that green pen. It always seemed to stare at me, like it was laughing at me, but this time, for the first time in a long time, I smile at that pen, and it seems to cower back, which makes me laugh.
"What's funny?" she asks, and I turn all the way around to look at her, with accusing eyes.
"Nothing,' I say, but yet I continue to stare at her. Almost as if I'm transfixed by her.
"Doll, how many times have you thought about the baby, today?" she asks again, and all I can do is stare at her, then I turn around, pick up my brush and continue to stroke my hair.