8. Flushing The Drawing
My mum notices everything. Things I miss. Things I forget I even did. A glass left too close to the edge of the table. A pause before answering a question. A look on my face that lingers too long. She says awareness is a discipline, and I believe her. If she points something out, it means it mattered. She is always right. Her many years of experience in things have given her great wisdom.
I remember once, when I was five, I showed her a drawing I was proud of. Our house. Flowers in the yard. A bright blue sky that took up most of the page. She studied it for a moment, quiet, her head tilted the way it does when she’s deciding something. Then she asked why the flowers were wrong. She said it gently. Not unkindly.
But my chest tightened. I didn’t want her to see how embarrassed I felt. I knew she was helping me, teaching me to pay attention to detail. Most mothers wouldn’t care enough to correct their children’s drawings. So I thanked her. Later, when she wasn’t looking, I folded the paper again and again until the lines disappeared, and I flushed it down the toilet.
Angel stood before the hallway mirror, her breath tightly held in her throat. Her reflection was a pale sketch inside the cold black metallic mirror frame, she felt. Her eyes looked a little too small. Her mouth looked just like a crooked line. The list was endless in her mind. Her right hand lifted slowly, as if pulled by a string. Her thumb extended, hovering an inch from the glass where her mother’s perfect cheekbone would be reflected. Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs, its wings beating a warning she could not name.
The pad of her thumb touched the cold surface. She pressed, just enough to feel the resistance of her own invisible self on the other side. “I wish I were perfect,” the thought formed, soundless and complete. She held it there. The whorls of her fingerprint became a faint, swirling galaxy against the silver. A mark. A proof of contact. Her heart hammered, a sharp, insistent rhythm that seemed to shout one word: cleanitcleanitcleanit.
Her muscles twitched, ready to obey, to raise her sleeve and erase the evidence of her trespass. The endless loop of corrections she wished could be made on her held her attention hostage. The flowers were wrong. The moment stretched, thin and silent. The warning heartbeat faded under the white noise of her own insufficiency.
She pulled her hand away, leaving the thumbprint, a soft, grey confession, on the pristine glass. She turned and walked down the hall, her footsteps soundless on the carpet. She did not look back. The mirror held the quiet room. It held the smudge, high on the right, a tiny scar on the perfect surface. The image of a wish. Made solid. Left behind.
