The interrogation
had been going on for hours. The
room was damp and smelled like mold.
A cheap table and fold out metal chairs were the only items in the
room. The fluorescent light made
everyone look sickly. Aggi had her
legs pulled up to her chest. Her
thin, pale blond hair, clumped together, made her appear almost bald. Band-Aids were wrapped on her fingers
to help her from chewing her skin bloody.
Her watery blue eyes stared vacantly at the ground.
“Explain this so I
can understand.”
“I am so
cold. I hate to be cold. Can’t we go somewhere else?”
“I need you to explain
why this was in your pocket.”
“I really have to
go to the bathroom.”
“After we get some
information from you. Look, you
seem like a nice kid, but you need to help us to understand.”
“It’s for good
luck.”
“Good luck? How would this give you good luck?”
Aggi’s eyes met
the detective’s. She stared hard
into his eyes with a puzzled look, then stared back at the floor.
“I don’t know.”
“Look, I don’t
know what happened to you in your life, but this isn’t normal. This isn’t right, if you are…”
Her head came up
quickly at an uncanny angle and her dull blue eyes suddenly sparkled.
“When I went to
see her in her coffin, I waited until everyone left. I took out my rose clipper and snipped off her finger. It was only a little one. Who would care? She was my friend and I needed to keep
a part of her with me. You know,
so I would not forget her. That’s
all.”
Aggi then walked
over to the door and stared at it, waiting to be let out. The room was silent.
Agatha
It blended in with the
ground it laid on, but Aggi saw it.
It was a small dried up dead baby bird. The ants had eaten the eyes out. She knelt down over it, and picked it up. She removed all the ants and shook off
the lose debris. She felt intense sadness. Her eyes welled up with tears.
“It’s okay little one. You are not alone any more.”
Aggi reached into her
pocket, carefully unfolded a small piece of foil, and wrapped the little corpse
in it. Then she wrapped it with a
cloth handkerchief that Emma had made her.
“We are going to go for a
little walk before I bring you home, okay little one?” Aggi tilted her head waiting for an
answer. She seemed to get
one. Satisfied, she continued her
walk.
Later she would put it in
her closet against the back wall, lined up with all the others she had
collected, so they would not be alone or scared or forgotten.
Emma was
always making new hankies for Aggi. She didn’t know why they were always
disappearing. But, as Emma put it,
“All young ladies should carry a handkerchief.” They were beautiful, white linen squares with colored
embroidery along the edges and an “A” in one corner for “Aggi”.
A
Her name was Agatha. She
was named this because her mother told her that all she did was cause agony in
her life.
Life, as Aggi saw
it, was different plains, different layers of existence. Aggi did not know what layer she
belonged on or where she fit in.
She wished she knew. She
wished she fit in. She wished she
belonged.
Aggi was an
observer. She sat for hours
watching people moving around her.
She concentrated on each one.
She studied their mannerisms, behavior and their eyes. She tried to figure out what their life
was like. How they lived. How they fit into this world.
Aggi got home
late, so she became invisible as she walked in. She did not know her parents could see her. As early as she could remember, they
told her she could turn invisible whenever she wanted to. They thought it was funny. Aggi knew nothing else.
They had kept her
isolated. She was their experiment
to see what they could get away with.
It was purely for their entertainment.
Aggi lived in a
quiet, negative world. Either her
parents didn’t talk to her, or they were telling her how she did something
wrong, or was just bad. Her little
brother never spoke.
Her mother and
father kept pretty pictures ripped out of fashion magazines taped up and down
the hallway to Aggi’s room. They
told her she was ugly because she was a bad person. When she started being good she would turn pretty. Whenever Aggi got the courage up, she
would look into the mirror to see if she had changed.
Most people would
say she’s a beautiful girl. Her
baby fine, soft blond hair wisps about her shoulders. She is average height and very slim like a runway model. She
has a perfect complexion, flawless in fact. Her eyes stand out the most, crystal blue eyes that can
change in an instant from penetrating to vacant. Girls are jealous and boys want her. When she sees herself in a mirror, she
sees a warped monster as a reflection.
Aggi does all the
chores in the house. Her parents
are pigs. They drop their garbage
wherever they are at the moment.
Her parents love American cheese wrapped slices. The clear cellophane is everywhere,
along with her father’s contact lens.
He takes them out and just drops them where he stands. Sometimes he thinks it is funny to
flick used ones on her.
Her parents never
clean. They say their time is
worth too much for that. The house
is either disgusting or Aggi has just cleaned it. She cannot stand mess.
It makes her mind foggy, and she can’t think. Her parents have her bury most of the trash in the yard. They say it is “weed block”. Aggi puts anything else in black
garbage bags and slides it under various neighbors’ hedges at night.
She cleans up
every night before she goes to bed.
She is always so tired. She
sets her alarm for 11:50 P.M. She
then places it under her pillow so she does not bother her parents. She does this ritual every night.
When Aggi was little,
her mother told her to stop crying, or at midnight her face would freeze like
that forever. To prove it to her,
they showed her deformed pictures of people and pointed out deformed people on
the street. They said they froze
like that. Her parents taped these
pictures up and down the walls of the hallway leading up to her room.
When the alarm
went off, she would position herself, without expression, and hope she did not
sneeze. After midnight, she would
set her alarm for school.
Aggi’s world was
so ugly at times.
She felt divided
in half. One moment she felt
herself walking in a world filled with Emma, kindness, and possibilities. The next moment she felt herself
stifled and trapped in her parent’s world, where horror was constantly shoved
into her face.
“We are donating
your body to science, you know. We
own you until you are eighteen,” her mom said, with her head tilted down and
eyes peering up from the top of her head.
“If we piece you
out, we should make a pretty penny.”
After a few moments of silence, her parents exploded with laughter and
started poking at each other like kids in grade school.
Aggi said nothing.
The morning after they told
her about donating her body, there were pictures taped up of cadavers in
various stages of dissection. They
were very disturbing. Some of the
pictures took a minute to understand.
The head sitting in a tin cooking pan with the face skin removed and
folded over on itself was one of the pictures. Another was the skin of an old man’s face resting on a
stainless steel counter. It looked
like a rubbery Halloween mask. Her
parents wrote messages on paper and taped them beside the photos. One scribbled message said, “I’m coming
to get you!” in red ink.
She wished her
life were different.
Aggi watched the
families on television and wished for a life like that. Her favorite show was the Brady Bunch
reruns. They were a perfect family. Especially the scrumptious dinners they
had. They all sat together and
passed around heaping platters of food.
She loved the way their forks tinked on the plates. She wanted a family like that.
Aggi would sneak
out at night so she could walk the streets; peeking from a distance into the
lit windows; imagining the happy life the people had in there. Especially when it was a cool crisp
night, and the smell of logs burning in the fireplace swept through the night
air. She imagined people huddled
around the fireplace laughing, and playing games. Sometimes not speaking at all. Families who are just content, safe and loved.
Aggi’s heart was
heavy. She wanted someone to love,
and to be loved back. She created
her own family. Aggi looked
through old Sears and JCPenny store catalogs. She found pictures of kids who she wished were her older
brothers and sisters. They became
real to her. So no one would find
her paper family, she folded them into origami designs. She kept them on her
nightstand. They were her secret
family. Her mom would sometimes
come into Aggi’s room just to knock one over and watch Aggi squirm as she
crushed it under her foot. Her mom
knew they were important to her, she just didn’t know why. As it would fall to the floor, Aggi
would hold her breath.
Please be okay… Please be okay…
As her mom would
grind it into the floor, Aggi would cover her ears to muffle the screams she
heard from her origami person. She
would close her eyes hard and say nothing.
“You are so weird.
What did I ever do to deserve you?” her mother would blurt out. “Why didn’t I
just abort you? I tried to, you know. I stuck soap up me to wash you out, but
you wouldn’t die.”
No matter how many
times she heard this, it would hurt every time.
Often, as her
mother would leave the room, Aggi would hear her whine, “What am I being
punished for?”
Every time it
happened, Aggi would give herself a few moments to feel sad over the death, and
then she would push away the sadness. She had work to do. She would get one of the little coffins
she made from old cereal boxes, and would bury her family member outside, back
along the fence.
The last time, it
started to rain. Aggi tilted her head back to let the rain roll down her
face. It mixed with her tears. She
memorized the moment. She wanted
to remember to never hurt people like her parents hurt her.
When she didn’t
want to remember the hurtful actions or words of others, she would write them
down on a piece of paper to quiet them from her mind. Then she would destroy the paper, so no one else would know
her thoughts and feelings.
Sometimes she would eat the paper, so her stomach acids would slowly
destroy it. Make it disappear.
Only one person
had ever known that Aggi wrote.
That was Emma.
Emma told Aggi,
that she was a writer.
Day
1: September 26 – 365 days to
freedom.
Today is my birthday. It is not special. It never is.
Emma gave me this little book to write in
so it is harder for me to eat the pieces of paper I write on. It is my birthday present. It is the only one I ever remember
getting. She meant well. I will write in it. I will do it for her.
Some days I cannot smile.
My face is so heavy.
My heart is heavy.
I feel the corners of my lips turn
down.
I cannot stop it.
What does this mean? Am I crazy? My soul is pulling to the ground. It is so strong.
I feel like letting go sometimes.
I feel like letting my body fall to the ground. Is that death? Would I die? I am afraid to do it.
I am so alone.
Aggi
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