Helen Oyeyemi - Boy, Snow, Bird

nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. Id hide myself away inside them, setting two mirrors up to face each other so that when I stood between them I was infinitely reflected in either direction. Many, many mes. When I stood on tiptoe, we all stood on tiptoe, trying to see the first of us, and the last. The effect was dizzying, a vast pulse, not quite alive, more like the working of an automaton. I felt the reflection at my shoulder like a touch. I was on the most familiar terms with her, same as any other junior dope too lonely to be selective about the company she keeps.

Mirrors showed me that I was a girl with a white-blond pigtail hanging down over one shoulder; eyebrows and lashes the same color; still, near-black eyes; and one of those faces some people call harsh and others call fine-boned. It was not unusual for me to fix a scarf around my head and spend an afternoon pretending that I was a nun from another century; my forehead was high enough. And my complexion is unpredictable, goes from near bloodless to scalded and back again, all without my permission. There are still days when I can only work out whether or not Im upset by looking at my face.

I did fine at school. Im talking about the way boys reacted to me, actually, since some form of perversity caused me to spend most lessons pretending to absorb much less information than I actually did. Every now and then a teacher got suspicious about a paper Id turned in and would keep me after school for questioning. Has someone been helping you? I just shook my head and shuffled my chair sideways, avoiding the glare of the desk lamp the teacher invariably tried to shine into my eyes. Something about a girl like me writing an A-grade paper turns teachers into cops. Ill take the appraisal of my male peers over that any day. Four out of five of them either ignored me or were disgustingly kind, the way nice boys are to the plainest Jane they know. But that was only four out of five. Number five tended to lose his balance for some reason and follow me around making the most extraordinary pleas and offers. As if some kind of bug had gotten into him. Female classmates got anonymous notes that said things like: So I fall for you. Probably because I can see and hear. I see you (those eyes, that smile) and when you laugh yeah, I fall. Im not normally this sincere, so you might not be able to guess who I am. But heres a clue Im on the football team. If you feel like taking a chance, wear a blue ribbon in your hair tomorrow and Ill walk you home.

The notes I received were more tormented. More of the Youve got me going out of my mind variety. Not that I lost any sleep over that stuff. How could I, when I had a little business going on the side? Boys paid me to write notes to other girls on their behalf. They trusted me. They had this notion that I knew what to say. I just wrote whatever I thought that particular girl wanted to hear and collected dollar bills on delivery. The notes my friends showed me were no work of mine, but I kept my business quiet, so it stands to reason that if anyone else had a similar business, theyd have been discreet about it too.

When my hair started to darken, I combed peroxide through it.

As for character, mine developed without haste or fuss. I didnt interfere it was all there in the mirrors. Suppose youre born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-something. Suppose your fathers a rat catcher. (Your absent mother is never discussed, to the extent that you nurse a theory that youre a case of spontaneous generation.) The interior of the house you grow up in is pale orange and rust brown; at dawn and sunset shadows move like hands behind the curtains silhouettes of men with Brylcreemed waves in their hair gathered on the street corner to sing about their sweethearts in seven-part harmony, the streetcar whispering along its track, Mrs. Phillips next door beating blankets. Your father is an old-fashioned man; he kills rats the way his grandfather taught him. This means that there are little cages in the basement usually a minimum of seven at any given time. Each cage contains a rat, lying down and making a sound somewhere between twittering and chattering: lak lak lak lak, krrrr krrrrr krrr. The basement smells of sweat; the rats are panicking, starving. They make those sounds and then you see holes in their paws and in their sides theres nothing else in that cage with them, and all your father does to them at first is give them water, so it stands to reason that its the rats making the holes, eating themselves. When your fathers about to go out on a job, he goes to the basement, selects a cage, and pulls its inhabitants eyes out. The rats that are blind and starving are the best at bringing death to all the other rats, thats your fathers claim. Your father puts three or four cages in the trunk of his car and drives away. He comes back late in the evening, when the jobs done. I guess he makes a lot of money; he does business with factories and warehouses, they like him because hes very conscientious about the cleanup afterward.

So thats Papa. Cleanest hands youll ever see in your life. Hell punch you in the kidneys, from behind, or hell thump the back of your head and walk away sniggering while you crawl around on the floor, stunned. He does the same to his lady friend, who lives with you, until he starts going for her face. Shell put up with a lot, but not that. One day she leaves a note under your pillow. It says: Look, Im sorry. For what its worth, Id say you deserve better. Take care of yourself.

You dont get too upset about her departure, but you do wonder whos going to let you bum Lucky Strikes now. Youre all of fifteen and youre a jumpy kid. You dont return peoples smiles its perfectly clear to you that people can smile and smile and still be villains. One of the first things you remember is resting your head against the sink you were just washing your hair in it, and you had to take a break because when your hairs wet its so heavy you cant lift your head without your neck wobbling. So youre resting, and that clean hand descends out of nowhere and holds you facedown in the water until you faint. You come around lying on the bathroom floor. Theres a burning feeling in your lungs that flares up higher the harder you cough, and the rat catchers long gone. Hes at work.

Where does character come into it? Just this: Ive always been pretty sure I could kill someone if I had to. Myself, or my father whichever option proved most practical. I wouldnt kill for hatreds sake; Id only do it to solve a problem. And only after other solutions have failed. That kind of bottom line is either in your character or it isnt, and like I said, it develops early. My reflection would give me a slow nod from time to time, but would never say what she was thinking. There was no need.

A couple of teachers asked me if I was applying to college, but I said: Cant afford it. Actually, I was pretty sure that the rat catcher could, but I didnt want to have that, or any, conversation with him. He hit me when one of his caged rats bit him. He hit me when I pronounced a word in a certain way that made him think I was acting stuck-up. (He told me that the difference between him and other people was that other people would only think about kicking me in the shins whenever I used a long word, but he went ahead and took action.) Hed hit me when I didnt flinch at the raising of his arm, and hed hit me when I cowered. He hit me when Charlie Vacic came over to respectfully ask if he could take me to prom. I seem to recall he began that particular beating in a roundabout way, by walking up to me with a casserole dish and dropping it on my foot. There was almost a slapstick element to it all. I got a sudden notion that if I laughed or asked Are you through? hed back off. But I didnt try to laugh, for fear of coming in too early, or too late.