The Girl With One Eye

The Girl With One Eye

It was the morning of my first day of third grade. I sat at the kitchen table looking at the Funnies in the newspaper as my mother prepared her coffee for a long day of work. My mother always says that she absolutely needs her coffee or else she will fall over. I do admire her for her hard work. She tells me of the whispers that she hears behind her back at church and the grocery store. A woman isn’t supposed to work. However, my mother says she has to because her husband left a while ago. Sometimes I hear her crying at night. She must miss him. I’ve only seen pictures of this man. Mother tells me that she loved him with all her might, and that it wasn’t good enough. I listened to her sing a beautiful tune like a humming bird.

She asked me, “Are you excited for school?”.

“Yes,” I lied.

I just want to make her happy. She walked over to me and smiled.

“Oh darling!” She gasped. “What a beautiful dress! You have quite a nice taste.”

“Thank you.”

“Although, your hair could use some work. Come with me darling!”

She took my hand and together we walked down the hall to the bathroom. She told me to wait as she grabs a stepping stool for me to stand on. After she finished setting it up, I stepped on it and took a look in the mirror. The first thing I always notice about myself is my pink eyepatch. My mother says it’s a lovely color for my complexion. I honestly do not agree. I like the color blue; it reminds me of the sky. My mother began brushing my hair with a comb.

“You have such nice hair,” she said.

“Thank you.”

I stared at my good eye in the mirror. I wish that I could have two eyes like everyone else. My mother never tells me why I’m missing one eye. Whenever I ask, she changes the subject or says:

“Little girls don’t need to know such things.”

The boys and girls on my street always mock me as I walk past them. They make pirate noises or tell me to take it off. I’ve never looked underneath the patch. When it needs to be changed, mother won’t let me do it alone. She makes me close my good eye and she covers the bad eye. Apparently, what dwells underneath the plastic coated eyepatch is quite terrifying, and nothing a little girl should see.

“Darling, you seem glum today.” She pointed out.

“I’m just nervous” I told her.

“Oh honey, I know these things are nerve racking, but you will make many new friends; I just know it,” she insisted. “You are a fine girl, the smartest little girl I’ve ever met. And I’m not just saying that because you’re my daughter.”

“What do I do if they make fun of me?” I asked her. She frowned and put the comb back in the cabinet.

“Why sweetie, you move on.” she answered. “Why should you worry about what your classmates say about you?”

“I want to be liked” I admitted.

She helped me down from the step stool and looked me in my eye.

“Everyone does. But my darling, life is not fair.”

My mother walked me down the street to my elementary school. I watched the fathers walking their sons or daughters. Some children were even lucky enough to have both parents. My mother wore a skirt suit for her secretary job. I felt proud walking next to my mother. She was the person that girls my age secretly wanted to be. I stood close to my mother, nervous of what lied in front of me today. We didn’t talk much about that on our way to school. Instead she asked me what shapes I saw in the clouds. I saw a bird.

“I see a turtle!” She laughed “Where do you see the bird?”

I tried explaining to her where the wings and beak were but she couldn’t make out the picture. So she laid down on a field of grass to see it. After a while of staring at the passing cloud, her eyes lit up.

“I see it!” She gasped “Oh Grace, it’s beautiful.” She extended her hand towards me to help her up. We then continued on our walk.

“You know,” she began “I’ve met people with the perfect vision, and they can’t see as well as you.”

I nodded despite being confused by the meaning. She always tells me things that I can’t seem to understand because she believes I am smart for my age. Whenever my mother brings me to mass, the church folk are always impressed by the way that I talk. They say, “my, she’s a mature one”. I always felt more at home around older people. I could never seem to understand kids my age, and that’s probably because they do not understand me. Boys or girls will only show interest in me when nobody was around. A girl once told me that everybody thought I was weird. I asked her if she thought I was weird, and she said no. Yet, a week later she was laughing at me with other girls. This is why I have decided to live in between the walls of a book. It’s a place where you can be anything; the hero, the villain or even the underdog. Mother and I made it to the front of the school. She looked at me with an an encouraging smile and stooped down to look me in the eye.

“Now darling, I want you to have a good day. You understand?”

“Yes mother, I will try” I responded.

“Remember to just be yourself. If you do that, everything will fall together. If you try to act like someone else, the puzzle piece won’t fit. You understand?” She explained sincerely.

“Yes.”

She gave me a kiss on the cheek and we said our farewells. Besides the church folk and my mother, I have not spoken to anyone all summer long. I was very nervous as I walked down the hallways of the school. All my classmates were hugging and laughing. They were so happy to see eachother again. Sometimes I like to think I can’t make friends because of my disability. Yet this summer I learned something from my older friends at the church. I am cut from a different cloth. I am not like those kids, so they don’t like me. I want to be like them. I want to be normal and an average happy girl like the ones I see playing hopscotch and dancing in my neighborhood. I don’t know why I’m different. Mother says some people just are, and that’s the way it is.

I found my classroom. The room where I would spend a lot of time in this year. The teacher stood in front, greeting all my classmates as they walked in. I walked towards the classroom and she smiled at me.

“Hello.” She smiled softly, her eyes wandered towards my eyepatch.

“Hello.” I murmured rushing into the classroom, feeling her stair follow me. The classroom itself wasn’t comforting as well. I was immediately reintroduced to the familiar chatter of kids. They all talked over each other with no interest in what the other kid had to say. I sat down in one of the last rows of desks and cupped my hands on top, twiddling my thumbs. Just then a boy took notice me. He squinted at me in confusion. My eye met his eyes and he immediately looked down. I was used to the stares from curious people. I then watched him cautiously approach me. He stood a small distance away from me.

“May I sit next to you.” He mumbled. I nodded my head and he sat down slowly. At first we didn’t say one word to one another. I felt the occasional glance. I could tell he is curious about me. I turned my head towards him and noticed that he was drawing. It looked like he was drawing superheroes. When he turned his head towards me I looked away and pretended to stare at the clock. He shrugged and went back to his drawing.

A lady at my church, Mary, told me that I had a drawing talent as once. I remember when my mother and I were over at her house for tea.  My mother and Mary were discussing politics and such, and since I had nothing to say about that matter I was given a paper and a pencil. I couldn’t think of anything to draw or write so I walked around Mary’s house. It was very small and had been around for a while. The floors would squeak with every step I took. It almost reminded me of a museum. Everywhere you turned, there was a photo, painting or trinket that wanted your attention. I was looking at Mary’s trinkets in her china closet when I noticed the reflection of a cat behind me. I turned around and saw him staring at me. I stooped down and the cat walked towards me, and he let me pet him. I then decided to draw him. As I was drawing I could hear my mother’s hushed voice. My mother was telling Mary that her husband was gone forever, and that it was all her fault. I’ve always been told to not involve myself with adult conflicts so I went back to drawing. Before that day, I never drew much. Mother always told me to not waste my time with art, and to learn valuable things instead. Yet, drawing was a lot of fun. When I was finished, I was impressed with my detailed work. So, I decided to let Mary keep it. I went into the kitchen holding the drawing to find that Mary was crying into my mother’s shoulder. Her body was shaking and she was holding a picture as well. A portrait of a man. My mother looked at me.

“Darling please give us some privacy, there’s more paper on the table if you would like to write.” Mother asserted.

Mary rubbed her face with her embroidered handkerchief and looked up at me.

“She’s a good girl, Janice.” Mary praised, her voice weak from crying. I walked over to her and put my hand on her arm. I then handed her the drawing of the cat. She smiled and her eyes lit up as she gasped.

“Goodness!” She exclaimed “Janice, look!”

She handed the paper to my mother, and she smiled.

“I know, she is quite a delight.”

Through watching this boy’s actions, I came to the conclusion that he is probably very nervous. Perhaps, he is more nervous than I am. Maybe he likes to draw superheroes to feel like a superhero himself. I thought about Mary when she was crying, and how a picture was able to swallow some of her pain. So I opened one of my notebooks and began drawing him. I started with the face. I gave him an expression of bravery instead of nervousness. I then drew him to be muscular and I gave him a suit and cape. His cape covered the width of the paper. I placed him on top of the Empire State Building, with the skyline behind him. I then turned over the paper and wrote: “you can do it!”.

When I handed him the paper he stared at it intently for a few moments. He seemed uncertain on how to react, but a smile did break through.
“Thank you.” He said.

I sat down and watched him try not to smile. I was glad that I was able to do something positive. If this school year was dreadful, at least I had a good start.

Later on, at recess, I walked to my usual spot; the only tree on the field. I sat down and stared up into the branches. Like every year, a bird's nest has been made. If you looked carefully you can see a baby bird’s head peek out. I then heard footsteps. I looked down and there was the boy, walking towards me. He was holding a piece of paper. He sat down and handed it to me. It was a drawing of me! Me as a superhero! He did forget one detail however. He forgot the eyepatch.

“I love it!” I giggled “But you forgot the eye patch!”

“You drew me for who I am, not what you see. So I did the same.” He explained.

“What do you see?” I asked the boy. He giggled as he looked up at the baby birds in the tree.

“You remind me of my sister, who my grandma says has a free spirit. My grandma always says that her soul flies in the wind like autumn leaves or spring flower petals.” He beamed. “My name is Tyler.”

“Hello Tyler!” I giggled “My name is Grace.”

Tyler then began to pull on the grass and throw it to the side. He watched me with a sense of curiosity.

“What happened to your eye?” He asked me. I knew that question was coming.

“Not very sure.” I began, creating a pile with the ripped grass. “My mother says that looking at my eye would be scary. So I’m sure whatever happened was not pretty.”
Tyler then had a curious and mischievous look in her eye, and he looked at me as if he discovered a big invention.

“Why don’t you go take a look today? And if it’s cool, you should show the class!”

The first day of third grade was a long day. I am happy that I at least made one friend. That’s the most friends I’ve ever had. I walked down my block; Bermin Street, with a new confidence. I could not wait to tell my mother that I finally made a new friend. I saw my house and began to pick up my pace. My mother is probably dying to know how my first day of third grade went. I then remembered Tyler’s idea of looking at my eye. Why shouldn’t I know of the monster underneath my pink eyepatch? I walked over my front lawn and up the stairs to my door. I slowly placed my hand on the door, and turned the knob. From inside, I could hear my mother crying from her bedroom. She misses her husband, and I think that man was my father. However, like adults say, don’t get involved with adult matters. So I walked in and went straight for the bathroom. When I walked in, the stepping stool was still set up as it had been this morning. I stepped on it and then looked up into the mirror. I could see my body shaking in the reflection. I took a deep breath and prepared myself to capture the monster underneath the eye patch. I grabbed the eyepatch, and dragged it down. I felt a light coming into my bad eye. This was odd, I’ve never experienced this level of light in that eye before. The patch reached eyelid. So far, my eye seems normal. Yet, sometimes the truth lies below the surface. I then pulled down more. I felt my bad eye get attacked by the intensity of light. I fell off the step stool and onto the ground. I covered the eye to protect it from the light. My heart raced and my hands shook. Could it be? I can see? I slowly removed my hand from my “bad eye”, and I saw. I saw the intensity of the white bathroom walls and tiles. The light burned my eye. It hurt to open and close, but it hurt even more to see the truth. I got up and struggled to make my way on top the stepping stool. I stared in the mirror, my hand over the bad eye. I slowly removed it, and saw an eye. The white of the eye was tinted red, yet it was blue just like the other one. I looked at the eyepatch around my neck and I wondered if this was a mistake or a dream.. This had to be a mistake. All my life I’ve been blind in that eye. Why would it look well? How can I even see? Nothing made sense, nothing at all. I called out to my mother.

“Mother!” I yelled out.

Silence. I took another look into the mirror to see if it was all true, and it was. I am seeing that window to the world for the first time. All my life, it’s curtain has been closed. I saw my face. Besides the redness in my “bad eye”, I looked like a normal girl. Yet, I’m a normal girl in a weird world. I’ve always been told that it was the other way around. I heard foot steps approach the bathroom.

“Darling? Everything alright?”