Disclaimer: I own nothing from Wicked except the soundtrack and the ability to look up everything I can about it on the Internet.
MemoriesI hear someone say, "I want to be young again."
And I wonder…was I ever young?
I remember…everything.
I see the past as if it happened no more than an instant ago…am I truly in a room in the Emerald City or in Munchkinland years ago?
My father shouts in disgust and I learn that 'Green' is bad.
My mother smiles and says I love you but not in those words.
Mother whispers my name and doesn't hate me, that's her way of saying it.
I look at her and know she is 'mother' and she is special. I smile at her and speak in my own private language…it's enough, she knows.
When I was two I found a baby bird in the garden, I thought it was sleeping, she explained to me that the Creator of the bird loved it so much that its spirit was taken from this world to the next. This is death, said she; it is not evil or good. It is peace. Grief is for the living things that mourn the absence of their loved ones.
I fell into a lake when I was three, my mother took me there, and my mother pulled me out. I was scared to go back but she said she would always be there to pull me to safety.
Of course I believed her…she was the only person in my limited world who told me the truth.
My father ignored me, my nurse pitied me, the doctor treated me like a specimen but she was different.
She told that the world would hurt me, she told me to fight, but she also taught me what love was…without her I would have broken beneath the weight of the world's scorn, because of her I was able to survive.
Life wasn't much but she gave it meaning, life –for me- was four walls and a small garden with high walls. My mother was my life, I lived to see her smiling at me…then it changed.
Mother held me in hers arms, on the old wooden rocking chair, and told me I was to have a new room in the family wing of the house. It has a garden with a big shady tree, she told me, and a grown up girl's bed.
I was really too old, at four and a bit, to sleep in a toddler's cot but no one pressed the issue until this day.
I asked her why and she smiled, such a soft sad smile like she couldn't decide if the reason was good or bad.
I went to the doctor today, she said and I cringed instinctively – Doctor and I did not get on well at all. Something to do with my tendency to scream and bite whenever he came near me, no doubt.
Your father is very happy with the news, and I hope you will be too.
Father was happy…I knew it wasn't anything to do with me, unless my new room was even further from him than the nursery.
In seven months, if all goes well, you will have a brother or sister.
I stare at her incredulously and shyly ask what that means. Mother laughs, but kindly, and explains that she and father are to have another child.
I tilt my head and feel betrayed…she knows how I feel, I don't know how but she always knew when I was upset…or about to scream my lungs out just to be aggravating.
She tells me that I can never be replaced in her heart, she does not mention my father and I do not ask – I know that to be replaced in his affections I would first need to have them.
I felt the same, she says, when my younger sister was born and she took so much of my mother's time that had been mine for so long. I frown, this does not reassure me…then she finishes by telling me that once she saw her sister she loved her.
If the new baby is a girl she will be named Nessarose after your poor aunt who died when she was but a girl of twelve years, when we still lived in Quadling country.
What is that? I ask and she tells me of the people who live in the South, of their red skin – not as unusual as mine but stranger than that of the rest of Oz – and the damp, swampy, beautiful land they live in. A land she once loved as much as she loves my father – oh yes she did love him – and myself and my brother or sister who had not yet joined us in this world.
As she finishes talking to me the clock chimes and she takes a small bag on out of her pocket and pops something into her mouth. I ask for some, thinking it a sweet of some kind, and she tells me no it is medicine and not for young girls but mothers who are to be so again.
My mind wanders from the topic and I start pestering her with questions about where my sister is, which she refuses to answer and distracts me with stories until I fall asleep.
Time passes and things do not change except the size of my mother's belly, which seems to get bigger each time I see her.
By now she has explained to me that the baby, whom I am certain is a girl because I simply must have a sister as my mother did, is inside her and Mother is protecting her until she is big enough to live in the world on her own.
She is in the warm dark place. I proclaim in my childish tones, mother stares at me in shock then nods and says yes that is where she is and where you were before her.
Mother hasn't looked well since the day she told me she'd been to see Doctor, I worry in my childish way but she just tells me that making a baby is hard work and she'll be fine…then she falls asleep on the rocking chair while I sit at her feet looking at my picture books.
She comes to see me on the morning of my fifth birthday, her stomach is so big that she can not bend down to me, she sits on the chair and tells me that very soon my sister will be with us but she wanted to see me first.
As I look back I think she must have known what the day would bring.
She said to me: Elphaba, you're going to have to fight for what you want in life because no one is going to fight for you.
I said: I love you, Mother.
She smiled and kissed my cheek then told me that no matter what she would always love me best.
She gave me a present, her favourite comb the one she always used for my hair.
She rubbed her back and said I love you – she meant Goodbye.
I said Goodbye – I meant I love you too.
We smiled because we understood each other.
She left and I was alone.
Time passed, I felt uneasy, I wanted to see her. I broke the rule and left my room. I searched the house until I saw Doctor come out of a room carrying something. I heard him speaking to my father and I slipped into the room.
My mother was in the bed asleep, I thought, until I got closer. I looked at her calm face, her closed eyes, and knew that the Creator of people, whatever It was, loved her so much that It had taken her away from me.
She looked peaceful. I looked at her but could not cry.
Grief is for the living and without her I did not feel alive.
Doctor came back into the room; he was startled to see me but for once did not flinch. He knelt down in front of me and showed me what was in his bundle.
I saw my sister for the first time and I loved her.