My recent thoughts of wanting to do her harm make me feel anything but proper.
She turns away from me and walks toward the door as I continue staring at my reflection, wanting to rip the band out of the braid and claw at my hair until it’s a tangled mess around my face.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” my mother adds as she stops in the doorway. Trudy is stopping by to check on you today.”
I turn and stare at her blankly and she bites her lower lip worriedly.
“You remember Trudy, right?”
Trudy Marshall: eighteen years old, blonde hair, and my friend since elementary school.
Giving my mother a cheerful smile, I nod. “Of course I remember Trudy.”
I hate Trudy. She’s a snobby bitch who thinks she’s better than me and wants to take what’s mine.
The mean thought in my head makes my smile falter, but I put it right back in place so my mother will stop looking at me like I’m crazy. Trudy is my friend. She’s one of my only friends and she’s never thought it was weird that I lived in a prison, like so many others. I have no idea where that errant thought came from and I don’t like it.
“She’s been so worried about you,” my mother continues. “She wanted to come sooner but your father wouldn’t let anyone visit for a few days so you could rest. Why don’t you put on a nice dress and I’ll make the two of you some fresh lemonade and sandwiches for lunch?”
I nod distractedly as she gently closes the door behind her and leaves me alone.
I should be excited that someone is coming to visit after feeling so alone the last few days, but something about Trudy leaves me feeling strangely angry about seeing her. My mind is at war with the facts about her that are engrained into my head and a fleeting thought that there’s a reason I don’t like her. Just like every other thought in my head, it doesn’t stick around long enough for me to grab onto and examine it.
Scrubbing my palms up and down my face in frustration, I sigh loudly and walk over to my closet to find something to wear. The metallic screech of the hangers, sliding across the clothing rod as I flip through one ugly dress after another, fills the room. Half of the dresses are different shades of pink, the other half are varying pastels; they are all boring and more fit for a fifty-year-old woman than a teenager. Yanking the least offending one off of the hanger before I try to find a pair of scissors and cut everything in this closet to shreds, I hold the pale yellow dress up in front of me and glare at it. With a defeated shake of my head, I drop my towel and begin getting dressed.
When I woke up in this room three days ago, I felt like I didn’t belong in it, even though the room was familiar and I knew it was mine. I stared at my mother and father standing by my bedside with worried looks on their faces and even though I knew who they were, deep down inside they felt like strangers. When the doctor asked me what year it was, I knew it was 1965. I knew I was eighteen and I knew before I looked in the mirror that I had long black hair, green eyes, and a slim build. I knew the answer to every question he asked me about the prison and my parents, but I faltered when asked about the gash on my head and the scratches and bruises on my arms. When I started to panic and demand answers about what happened to me, I was told not to worry and that the important thing was that I was safe and my injuries would heal. No one seemed to understand that I didn’t care about the superficial cuts on my arms, the scrapes on my legs, and the bump on my head. I knew those would heal in time. What I cared about, what no one seemed to be in a hurry to help me with, was the injury inside my own mind.
I keep telling myself it’s only been three days. Three short days after something happened to me that no one wanted to talk about. A part of me wonders if everyone around me is lying and they know what happened. That it’s so horrific I’m better off not knowing. I know it’s supposed to take time and three days isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but as each day passes, I get more and more confused and feel like everything I know is a lie. Nothing is falling into place and everything feels wrong.
It’s hard to believe that three days ago, in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm, I was out in the woods at the edge of the property alone. My parents say they don’t know why I was out there. They don’t know what happened that caused me to get hurt and forget bits and pieces of my memories. I’m a good girl, they tell me. I’m a proper girl who wears proper dresses, and a proper hairstyle, but a good girl doesn’t go wandering alone in the woods at night unless she’s asking for trouble.
A good girl doesn’t think of harming her mother.
A good girl doesn’t want to rip the perfectly constructed braid from her head and scream at the reflection in the mirror.