You
are a little girl, sitting on the floor of a large gray laundry room. There are
washers behind you, hidden in a corner and dryers stacked up in front of you.
You have assorted action figures and dolls on the floor by your feet—George
Clooney dressed as Batman, a 1996 “made in China” Mattel Barbie doll in a pink
dress, and a soldier moveable joints.
Your
aunt is a few feet away from you. She has one end of her jump rope to a large pipe
that extends from the floor to the ceiling. She is playing jump rope by
herself, counting how many times she can jump without stopping. You make George
Clooney kiss pink Barbie and then make the solider attack them both.
After
sometime, you begin to get bored—you look out the window from the floor which
is at the top left corner of the room—and notice the rays of sun beaming
against the gray walls. There is a large table near you, against the left wall.
You look at it and think about swinging from it—call yourself Tarzan—just for a
little fun.
On
five year old legs, you get up and walk to the table. There is a bar near the
edge of it which you begin to swing from, your legs rocking back and forth on
the floor as you do so. But, little do you know the table is giving way to your
swaying and rocking back and forth with you. It is heavy but you do not notice
this because you feel as if you are in the jungle somewhere far away from the
gray laundry room, and you close your eyes.
In
the blink of an eye you become your aunt. Now from the eyes of a thirteen year
old girl, you stop your jumping and you stare. Your skin begins to burn as you
look at your niece—her head is being crushed by a table—as she is laying on the
floor. Adrenaline is building in your system, but this isn’t what comes to
mind, you need to save your niece. You run to her and try to lift up the table
but it is so heavy. You become panicked and somehow manage to lift the table
with one arm and drag her out with the other.
You
stare at her crush face, her nose is pushed in and her eyes are squinted. She
is bleeding from her nostrils and her eye sockets. She is still conscious and
asking you what happened. You tell her—
“Everything
is going to be okay.”
You
take her inside of the house and call for your mother—her grandmother—who
begins to cry. She is cringing and calling for her son—the girl’s father—the
call 911. The girl hugs her grandmother and asks her why she is crying and her
grandmother responds—
“Because
you are hurt.”
“But
I’m not hurt grandma, I feel fine. Please stop crying.”
And
her father wakes up from his slumber to see what has happened. His face is
distraught when he sees his daughter’s crippled skull.
In
the blink of an eye you return to yourself. You are the girl again. You remember
being fed fruit loops and hating them. You remember being in a wheelchair and
going to a vending machine. You are standing in front of a mirror, the sun is
shining in through a hospital window and you see yourself for the first time in
weeks. Your eyes are swollen and there are black bags under them. You look like
a raccoon and say out loud—
“That
isn’t me.”
You
don’t know who you are or where you have been.
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