brittle-stemmed, sickly, you were never the son your parents had desired you to be. from some feudal notion, they had thought that, as an heir to the name, you could carry into further generations whatever you would establish in your own. what's a girl going to do? your father fled the scene, deserted the hospital after it was said that it was a 'she'. your mother knew of the sorrow: she had wanted a steeled lad, too, with your father's strong brow and her crude sense of aesthetics. you were born a girl, a child of summer. your parents abandoned you to the thin, long shores of howth with only your conscience watching you. your feet stuttered in the sand, and the mud bled onto your round ankles. you were left for hours on this beach: you were surprised later you did not drown. you thought that, as a boy, you would not drown, either. what kept your mind at bay, then, what kept you afloat? why did you breathe? You did not know.
and so, you have set the path to your girlhood. you have exhausted yourself over perpetual comparisons -- - claiming that alternate life your parents had prayed for. you cut your hair once. the strands pricked into the back of your neck, and your mother mourned the gold of your head for many long hours.
●
your mother was once a pretty woman. in the very few photographs you have seen of her, she righted herself as a calm face, pleasant to the eye. you compared it to the one you saw in the morning, the one you saw at eleven o'clock, with her long lashes (glued on, of course) sloshed to the side and lipstick on her glass. you once compared her hair to a beehive; she smacked your wrist for that. you had the privilege of witnessing her ritual: you sat in the empty tub, hugging your knees, and watched as she drew lines. you thought of it as art: she perceived ahead of herself a grand beauty. the chemicals in her hair swelled, and her red mouth smiled. "darling, dearest, you must be pretty," she crooned. "never settle for a plain face, because the others will always look for the prettiest first." you wondered if this charade was her perception of beauty. when you questioned her about it, she said that it was a boy's understanding of it. in a museum, your eyes always seek out the finest. "and that's what boys do," said she. you, however, didn't want to be on display. you were curbed to be, like a cattle readied for trading. you saw the pity in the house-elf's round eyes as she adjusted the ribbons in your hair. she called courting a hunt. you called it a game you've already lost.
in that bathroom, you grew increasingly aware of something. she spoke to you, but stared at herself. and that's the way it had always been.
she was the caricature of wilted youth. the generation that tilted backward, and sped to bounce up on its feet. you thought her face was kinder when stripped from today's principles. you still do. your father granted the future his blessing. you watched as the years chipped lines into his brow, as the black hairs on his chin turned a sour grey. your mother was a soldier: you observed the needles pump stuff in and out of her. her cheeks thinned like a used bar of soap, slick and soft to the touch. she had the gift of keeping it natural - debatably. your father hissed the word 'cheap' at the table once. your mother turned deaf that evening. as you headed to your room, you heard glasses chatter in your father's study. she drank herself into a sorrow that morphed into anguish you had never seen before. as you grew, you watched the pain in her swell. her hands are heavy on your shoulders: the baubles she carries on her skin weigh more than the love she has for you. she distracted herself with regular travels to greece, seychelles (her honey-brown skin smelled like sea water and wine for weeks), and all of the other things life had to offer, at a cost. her existence smelled of money. she had bloated with you inside, and she hated you for it. you drained the youth out of her. it was the twenty-first century that ruined her. the twenty-first century, and you.
you tired of your pet names at nine-years-old. being compared to a lump of cake was no affection: it was consolation, fiction your mother had sparkled your sorry self with. to you, it was a revelation, a terrible instability. when she called you chérie, sweet, baby, dear, all you heard was: "i acknowledge my ignorance of you, thus i speak these words to you through a closed door." you valued your father's honesty: his disinterest in you had never pushed him into making you believe a lie. when you've reached the age of solidity (walking, reading, talking, and all of those other little necessities), you were left to your own devices. the two house-elves fed you with loving verses and distanced touches. you had established ivanka as your favourite of the pair: long-limbed, with a bobbed nose and a stare so bright you could see your sad face in it. they knew well enough never to replace the affection you required. you felt that gap in your interactions: they had always been fearful, funny creatures to you, dog-eared and stuffed with more life than they could take into their little chests. whenever you thanked one of them for dinner under your mother's scrutiny, they cheeped and cried and hid in the kitchen cupboards for hours (you thought they were playing hide-and-seek, you were right; just not with you.) your doorframe is a portrait of your childhood. the little markings indicating your growth were forked out by house-elves topped on shoeboxes. you trace the squiggly lines with a wistful smile. you tell yourself later that you would like to take the doorframe home: you laugh at yourself and say you will bring in an axe next time.
●
when sparks fly out of your hands, your eyes glow.
you were born young, eager, but frail. your magic: fickle, stubborn, brutish. you rarely played with the children of howth, but whenever you did, the absences in what you thought had been your troop of friends grew more noticeable each encounter. you were locked in an ivory tower from the start: your sheets stunk of freshly-washed linen, and you stood fifty-seven inches tall with a golden spoon you never asked for, its back curved against the soft palate of your mouth. the boys teased you. "that's because they like you, my baby, my sweet," your mother said to you. you thought in reply: did they still love me then, when they knocked me 'round till my knees bled?
your magic had always manifested itself in odd ways. once, you were the explorer: eager and keen, strong on your feet and lover of the nature you never met. the others played the savages. raggedy they were, spindly and with dirt smeared on their cheek. you've discovered a world for yourself, a canopy that hovered over your head, tall grass that tickled your knees. you ran like a bullet through the jungle. the natives chased you with their spears. your small chest shook with laughter, and you smiled so wonderfully you thought you would fill up like a balloon and float away into the pearly sky above. you bounced over rocks, and you charged in wide leaps. you dropped to the battleground when one of them caught you by the arm. you learned that day of the cruelty of children. and now you laugh at the metaphor, you laugh at just how dutifully it reflected the truth you denied.
the more you grew, the angrier your sparks got.
you broke a window once, having flung into the glass a stone you had mothered on the beach. you were summoned into the study by your parents. the curtains slung into folds ahead of you, and the fire crackled in its bed. "lyra, lovely, you've been so very careless," you were told. "when are you ever going to listen? your father and i, we try so hard to give you a proper education -- - pull up your sock, dear, you're no paperboy - and this is what we come to? my word, and look at your dress, and your nose, and --"
"it's past your bedtime," he said. your father slumped idly by the fire, and you do not remember the sight of flames reflected in his stare.
you dragged the heels of your feet, the disappointment your parents left you with following you like a ribbon digging into the redness of your wrist. the memory of your father's frown stuck to the bottom of your shoe, damp and cold.
●
you are not talkative at gatherings; your relatives mistake your silence for lack of manners. on your birthdays, you are polite, but much too distant for your mother's liking. once you stood out, you became a trophy of sorts, polished daily, polished so very carefully. you were that little girl once, in some little dress, with little hands and little ribbed cuffs on her white socks. long-limbed, with that ugly nose your mother thought disfigured the rest of your honey-brown body. your hair felt silky in her hand, and you greeted the guests by hiding in the kitchen, helping ivanka with some of the amuse-bouches your mother had requested. you were beckoned into their sight eventually. people cooed and crooned, and pinched your cheeks and pulled at the bones of your arm. you had always been a doll with pale hair, you sat on your mother's knees as she brushed through them, her nails dipping your head lower into her shoulder as you expressed your discontent in scowls and whines.
hours later, you are prodded on a chair with your chin in your hands, watching as cards stretched before you, your cousin rima ahead of you, only four years your junior (you are eleven now, and you leave tomorrow; you smile at the promises of tomorrow.) she was pretty, with dark hair and a bobbed nose. much prettier than you ever were. she was pretty, and she talked prettily of boys, gifts, and her mother's lipstick. you hum, nod sometimes, but keep your words to a strict minimum. she was hurt by your lack of involvement in the conversation. "stop being such a bitch," rima told you. you understood later that your cousin rima never knew the true meaning of that word.
●
you taste the salt on your lip, you notice the wind twisting through the little branches of the tree rooted by your window.
there are many things you were as a child: ugly, wronged, invisible, ill-mannered, a witch, plain, a bitch. these are the things you were not: a boy.
