Learning Normal
Hopper sometimes regrets that he initially encouraged Eleven to watch TV. She is obsessed with it, and rarely consents to turn it off. She even leaves it on in her sleep. She sometimes watches it with a concentration that unnerves him. Her eyebrows draw down into a frown and she looks like a law student studying for the Bar, not a 12 year old kid watching cartoons. He knows she hasn't had a lot of experience with normal things like TV, but it can't be healthy to watch it for 12 hours straight. It can't be healthy to take it so seriously. She barely even blinks. Sometimes she mouths the actor's lines or copies their movements. It's funny, in a way, but also a little sad.
He doesn't know what to do about it.
He doesn't know what to do about her.
When she first came here, she pleaded with him not to leave her alone. He tried to explain about his job. She either didn't understand or didn't want to. She didn't like being alone and she still doesn't. In what she thinks of as her before life, she had only been alone when she was being punished.
When she had been a bad girl.
She still associates being alone with being punished. On her first day with him, he gently told her he wasn't punishing her, he had to leave, every day, to work. That's when she learns about chief, and police. That is his job. A job is something you have to do, and everyone has one when they are old. His job means keeping people safe.
People like her.
And that's how she learns that this, being here, isn't home. Even if there is food and clothes and Eggos. This is just his job. That makes her a little sad, but she already has a home, doesn't she? It's with Mike. It's her fort. Her friends. The people on her list. She keeps Hopper on her list, even if she doesn't have a home with him. She still likes him 6th best.
Still, she hates being left alone.
He tries to comfort her. He will always come back, he tells her. Every night. She makes him promise, just in case, and he does, so she feels better.
He jokes that she could watch TV, and then she won't really be alone. She will have someone to watch and listen to, at least. He sees her gaze fall on the TV, considering it, and chuckles. He thinks it will keep her mind off her friends, at least for a few hours every day.
He doesn't understand that what he said next still haunts her.
"A little TV would be good for you, kid. Teach you how to be normal."
She vaguely understands that he doesn't mean to hurt her feelings, to contract her heart in the sad way. She doesn't think he even realizes the importance of that sentence. And she doesn't blame him because it's true.
She isn't normal.
She has always, always known that. Sometimes she counts the way in which she is not-normal, and she knows that even that is not-normal. She knows that it isn't, but she can't help it. In her before life, normal people had clipboards. They wore white coats. They were in charge.
That was the first difference.
They told her what to do, and if she did it, she sometimes got a pat on the shoulder or a soft touch on her head. She liked being touched, she liked being a good girl. She understood from the very beginning that she was the only one who was different in those endless bright rooms full of doctors and agents and her Papa. They were all on one side, and she was on the other.
She was alone.
She was alone because no one else was like her.
She had power.
That was the second difference.
If they all had her power, they wouldn't be studying her. They told her she was special, extraordinary, incredible and she knew those words meant different.
Not-normal.
But she can't help that.
She didn't choose her power and she didn't choose to live with Papa. And when she thinks about this after a nightmare in the bad place, she realizes the importance of choice. The Bad Men (and Bad Women) chose to be there. They went home sometimes, and come back. They were replaced by other Bad Men (and Women) when they no longer wanted to be there. She couldn't choose anything.
And that was the third difference.
She couldn't choose what to wear. She always wore a scratchy white gown, unless she was in the bath.
She couldn't choose what to eat. They brought her meals, and she ate them because she was hungry. Because she needed the strength they gave her. Sometimes they tasted good, and sometimes they didn't. But she ate them anyway, because she had to.
She couldn't choose when to eat. The first meal came every day, when Papa woke her up. The second meal was after the tests. The third meal-the biggest meal-was always after the bath.
She couldn't choose to leave a night-light on, even when she was afraid of the dark.
She couldn't choose to leave, because they would hurt her.
And she couldn't choose to have hair. She has never had hair, because she always wore the wires. They shaved her head regularly, and it bothered her a lot. She liked hair of all colors and wished that she could have some, too.
That is the fourth difference.
She realized that she had extraordinary power. But she was also powerless. She hated that feeling and one day, she snapped. She killed the guards with a jerk of her head and crawled through mud until she escaped. When she finally did make that choice, she thought her life would finally be different. Normal. She would have choices. She would be safe.
And then when the first man-the nice man-died she saw that she still didn't have a choice, because they will always come after her. They will always make her unsafe. And that's why she can't see Mike and the other people on her list.
That is the fifth difference.
It's actually worse in her after life, and that makes her confused. She knows what confused means, because she feels that way all the time. Confused means not knowing things. And there is so, so much that she doesn't know. She thought, in her before life, that maybe it was because she was a child surrounded by adults, that she didn't know things. She thought that just maybe, other children would be more like her, even if they didn't share her power. Then she met Mike and Lucas and Dustin and realized all over again that she isn't normal.
It turned out that even her name isn't normal.
She never realized, in her before life, that Eleven is not a name. She didn't know anything was wrong with her name until she sees Mike's look of shock when she points to herself. When she explains her tattoo. And that leads to another unpleasant realization, having tattoos is not normal either. Mike makes her feel better about it, and calls her El. She thought that maybe Eleven isn't such a bad name because Mike likes it, and then she hears Lucas and Dustin. They don't understand why she is Eleven.
She learned that Eleven is only a number.
Not a person.
She realized that she isn't really a person, either.
Not yet.
She is still just Eleven, the last test subject.
She sometimes wonders what happened to the other 10.
She feels shame that her name is not really a name, but Mike seems to think it's cool and that confuses her. She isn't cold at all, not anymore. She is nice and warm because he gave her clothes and blankets and a fort. When she asks him about it, he laughs in that Mike-way, which is a nice way, and says that cool also means that something is interesting. When she asks what that means, he struggles for a moment, trying to choose a word that she would understand.
"Cool means nice. I like your name, it's nice. And El is a nice nickname…" and-before she can even ask-"like Mike is just a nickname or another name for Michael."
And now she's okay with being Eleven. And El. It's nice. She knows what nice is. Mike is nice, so it's definitely a good thing.
But she doesn't know anything, and they figure that out quickly. She can barely read or write, and she can't tell time. She doesn't know the words they know, or the words that describe the words. Sometimes she doesn't even know the words that describe the words that describe the other words.
The words make her tired.
She doesn't know what privacy is, and that scares them all for some reason. She turns pink thinking of it now. Dustin calls her a weirdo and she doesn't know that that means, but she does know what it means. Lucas calls her a freak and she doesn't know what it means, but she also does know. It means not-normal. Not like them. She knows that Lucas feels bad about calling her that, but she doesn't blame him. She doesn't blame him because it's true.
She is a freak.
Why else would they dress her up in Nancy's clothes, and make her wear a wig?
So she could look normal.
She likes the wig. She likes having hair. She asks them if she looks pretty, and she knows what pretty means. She has known that word for a long time. It means nice. And normal. Mike says she looks pretty good, and she looks at herself in the mirror. It's true. She looks like El. Not the number, but a person.
It's clear that having hair is important to being normal, and she is fiercely glad that hers is growing. She checks it every day in the mirror. It's still short, shorter than Mike's, but it makes her less of a freak. She hopes that it grows fast, so that the next time she sees him, she will look normal, too. She knows, deep down, that Mike won't care about her hair. He told her she was still pretty, even after she lost her wig. That's partly why she likes Mike so much. He never makes her feel not-normal. He is always patient and doesn't mind explaining things. She feels like she can ask him anything. He always tries to make her feel better. He never calls her a freak, or a weirdo.
But…
She remembers-very well-the first time he was angry with her. He has been angry with her two times, and she hates those memories. She never visits those memories when she is trying to sleep. He had screamed at her, voice breaking, "What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?" Over and over while she cried, not knowing what she had done wrong. She only knew that something was wrong with her, and she has always known that. That tells her something important. Mike may be patient and nice, but he knows she is not-normal, too. So now, 112 days after the Upside Down, she works hard to erase her freakishness.
She is learning to read. She is learning about money and science and history from Hopper. She watches TV the rest of the time and learns even more. She listens intently as the actors talk to each other and memorizes their facial expressions. She mimics their gestures and the inflection of their voices. She learns how to talk to people and what their words mean and if she doesn't know them, she looks them up in a book Hopper gave her, a dictionary. She doesn't know what that word means either, and she looks it up in the dictionary. Hopper tells her that's okay. It's okay to learn, and she is learning a lot. Sometimes it makes her head hurt and her eyes water, but that's okay, too. She doesn't mind. She wants to learn to be more like her friends, more like a person and less like a test subject. She wants more, than anything, to learn how to be normal.
For her friends.
For Mike.
And for herself.
She isn't normal yet, but she hopes that someday she will be.
She is fine with being Eleven, but she also wants to be more than a number.
She wants to be El.
