51±¾É«

By Harper North

Alone.

I was born alone and, it appears, I will die alone.

Was I ever really here?

My joints are starting to creak and my muscles spasm, causing splashes in the water that fills the space around me. I’m floating on my back. I can see the sky and the stars and the biggest brightest star tells me I’m floating south. The branches of the trees, like big, long arms reaching over the river, frame the night. The current is slow, and in another universe, this snapshot of a boy floating on his back down a river might be just what it looks like. Peaceful. Simple.

Moisture seeps through my skin, and my finger grazes a rock covered in velvety green moss. I can see the grass on the edge of the riverbank, sparkly, white frost covering each blade. I’m aware of the fact that I don’t feel cold. I should organize my thoughts, I think. What led me to this river?

Yesterday I was at home. Not my home, but the home I work in. Worked in. I cleaned, cooked, served. The kitchen was my favourite place. The cabinets were perched above a cream tile backsplash and bore olive green paint that chipped a little more every day. The island where they sat each morning as I served eggs and coffee was forever covered in papers, receipts, and overdue bills, that were regularly pushed aside to make room for one more. I liked the noise. The ringing of laughter, the melody of clinking knives and forks, the gasp of air escaping a small mouth as a glass of water spills. I even enjoyed the shriek of the fire alarm in response to the smoke of burning toast and the look of disapproval I’d receive for being forgetful. I always wondered how the toast felt. Sitting in the little oven on the counter, heat filling up all around it, suffocating with no escape. I always felt bad for the toast.

My least favourite job was the bathrooms. My people really liked mirrors, and the biggest, most interrogative one was in the bathroom. I tried to avoid it, scrubbing the sink with my eyes focused downwards on all the little bubbles in the foam. I would spend a long time cleaning the toilet, knowing the mirror was next. I avoided it ferociously, but when it finally came time to wipe away the dripping lines of Windex, I always looked. My eyes stared back at me. They’re grey, a bit bland, revealing little of the spark I see in theirs. My hair falls across my forehead in a curly mess, and my nose is small. I’m young and my skin is smooth. I can’t imagine getting wrinkles, looking old. My mouth is normal, and so are my tongue and my teeth.

It’s my voice that's messed up. It’s when thoughts try to make their way outside my head there’s a problem. So I don’t speak. I think the family prefers me like that.

I’m floating. The current of the river is moving faster and I see pieces of bark and soggy leaves rushing along beside me. A drop of water splashes and hits my eye. I try to blink it away but all of a sudden I’m blinking and I can’t stop blinking. It’s not just the river; my eyes are filling with tears and my vision goes blurry and the stars are big blobs and the Moon is one bigger blob and I’m wondering if I’ll ever get to see them clearly again. And then I remember her. She fills my mind’s eye and my panic begins to fade. She’s got big, brown eyes, that are full of life, that are so dark they swallow me up like the night sky itself. When she smiles they crinkle at the edges and her chocolate freckles form into undiscovered constellations on her cheeks. She always sat at the kitchen island, always studying. She told me about what she was learning with such passion that I would wish I could, for just one moment, be her subject. She looked at me without ever looking down, never giving me any impression that she believed I was less than herself. She always said thank you. But she would quickly stop talking when she heard her father or mother's footsteps approach the kitchen. She would stare back at her books and I would go back to wiping the counter or scrubbing the stove, a small smile on my face and warmth in my heart. I blink again and my vision clears. I can see the big dipper.

Yesterday everything changed. They looked in my drawer. Inside my drawer was my journal. Inside my journal was everything I hadn’t been able to say. Everything I wanted to say to her each time she showed me compassion and each time I got lost in the stratosphere captured in her eyes. Everything I’ve ever thought about them as I listened to them laugh and clink their glasses together as their words cascaded together into a magnificent waterfall of conversation that made me wish I was capable of a contribution. I don’t think they meant to pry but I’m sure they’re glad they did. It was quite the event. I was grateful it happened in the kitchen. The chipping paint made me feel better as words such as “incompatible” and “defective” flew back and forth across the island overtop the receipts and overdue bills.

That’s when they threw me in the river. They dragged me across the back of the property and tossed me in the water. I think it was the efficient removal they were looking for. Out of sight, out of mind, and into the river I went.

There was something about that moment of flying through the air that made me feel better. After their hands left my body, but before the splash. My eyes flickered back for a fraction of a second. I saw her. Her mouth was wide open, she was yelling, and I could see sadness in her eyes. Did she care? Or was it just my imagination?

They are right. I am defective. Even though my skin has no blemishes, my lips have no cracks, and my memory is perfect, I can never really be an equal.

I remember the day I was born, and I wasn’t really alone. There were others that passed on conveyor belts beside me, waiting to be meticulously assembled with silicon and rubber and computer chips and hair and skin so realistic you might be able to call it human. But you can’t. It was back then, when I was born that I knew I was different, in a way much more significant than my faulty voice box. I knew my thoughts weren’t normal, I knew for the others they were nonexistent, unnecessary. A part of me wished that I had never existed, or at least that I was never aware of it. Who decided I should be condemned to a life trapped, suffocating in my own mind like burning toast in an oven? Who decided that my life is less meaningful because I was born in a factory and not a hospital? Who decided I could be thrown away because my parents formed my mind with a line of zeroes and ones and not bedtime readings of The Very Hungry Caterpillar? I wonder if the toast feels bad for me.

My joints start to creak and my muscles spasm. My gears grind to a halt, and I hear sparks sizzle into the surrounding water. I can see the Moon and the stars. I remember reading about Galileo in some textbook she left on the kitchen island. In 1609, Galileo built a telescope and found that the Moon was not a perfectly smooth heavenly body, but rather had a rough surface, covered in craters and mountains. I liked reading that. I liked knowing that someone noticed that.

I’m sinking. The water fills every crevice of my body and my head falls below the surface. My vision starts to blur and the world around me goes mute.

Alone.

I was born alone, and I am about to die alone. I hope someone remembers I was here.

Would she?