t e n

i.                    

When she was eight years old, she couldn't see. She would reach out, thin arm trembling, eyes squinting, trying to peer at a distant image that refused to materialize under her gaze. Face crumbling, she would close her eyes, giving up.

 Two days later, when she discovered she could no longer read the chalkboard no matter how much she squinted, she told her parents in a fit of tears. Her mother pursed her lips, looking disappointed. Her father gave a hearty chuckle.

 “You need glasses, that’s all,” he said, fingering his own thick wire rims.

 A week later, she was given a pair of her own—much smaller than her father’s, and dark pink. Sliding them on her face, she looked into the mirror. Her face looked distorted—but clear, vivid. She could see with detail each flyaway strand of hair, the patch of dusty looking skin where she had forgotten to put on lotion.

 She realized she would never be able to see her actual face, her non-glasses face, again. For when she would, it would be nothing but a tanned blur.

 

ii.

  
Tiny, she was. From birth, she had been tiny. Not just short, but small- she possessed little arms and limbs, baby doll feet and arms. But her eyes were huge—dark brown, almost black—murky. Ever since she was old enough to notice the vivid shades of her friend’s eyes—startling blue, or green like the plants her mother kept in the kitchen—she thought her eyes were boring.

 However, they were the first thing her relatives ever noticed about her, whenever she would visit India with her family.

 “Such big eyes, like her father,” her paternal family would say proudly.

 “Such big eyes, like her mother,” her maternal family would exclaim fondly.

 Her father’s eyes were smaller, and dark chestnut, with long, long lashes. Her mother’s eyes were small as well, and a light, chocolate-y shade. Her eyes were neither. Her eyes were boring.

 When came back to India a year later, wearing her glasses, people stopped mentioning her eyes. Instead, they talked about her new baby brother’s eyes.

 “Such big, beautiful eyes,” her paternal family would say. “just like his father.”

 “Such lovely, large eyes,” her maternal family would praise. “just like his mother.”

 

iii.                 

When she was twelve, she came to the sudden and jarring realization that she was her mother’s height. Then she realized she would never think of her mother as tall again. She realized she would be stuck at five foot one for the rest of her life, probably until she was in her sixties—she knew that once she hit her seventies, she would begin to stoop and shrink. She had watched it play out on both of her grandmothers.

 She wished she was six feet tall, tall enough to rule and conquer the universe, tall enough so that other people would look upon her with reverence, with fear, with respect. She was small, she was petite, and no one would ever take her seriously. Ever, ever, ever.

 Perpetual child. Little doll. Plaything, the voices in her head would cry. That is what you are. That is what you remain. 

 

iv.                

Her family decides to move to India that same year. 

A year later, they are getting settled into their new apartment, into their new lives. She is thirteen now. She is self-conscious and lonely—the type of lonely that aches, that stabs. When she goes out, she stares at the people around her, she gazes out onto the crowded streets and wonders if any of these people felt as alone as she does. 

Earlier that year, her family visited their relatives in their hometown. She had been minding her own business one day when her aunt had touched her arm, tutting disapprovingly. She had looked up, alarmed.

“You've tanned,” she said in their native tongue. “You've gotten even darker. How did this happen? You must stop playing out in the sun."

The same day, she goes to the shop to buy milk for their grandmother to churn into butter. While they were there, she browsed idly, rubbing her arms against the chilly monsoon weather. It was then that she spotted it—a vial of lotion labeled Fair and Lovely.

She had seen the ads on TV, but never believed them, nor had any desire to use them. But she remembered sharply what her aunt had said to her that day, and looks down. She remembers looking through the newspaper and finding the Matrimonial section, in which brides and grooms list what they want in potential partners.

 

***Groom seeking fair, pretty bride from cultured background***

 

***Groom seeking 22 yr old girl, fair, must be 5’2” or taller***

 

***Groom seeking fair, slim educated girl, 25 y/o***

 

Despite her unwillingness to fall back into societal customs, she looks down at her dark arms and a shudder runs through her—screwing up her eyes, she grabs the vial, and pays for it herself.

She hates herself has she rubs the sickly smelling lotion into her skin that night. 

v.                  

It doesn’t work. 

 
vi.                 

A few years later, she decides to cut her hair.

 It’s something done on a whim—after much arguing with her mother that no, she’s not a lesbian, and no, she doesn’t want to look like a man—but it wouldn’t matter even if she did!—she does it. Cuts her hair short, despite friends warning her that she’d look ugly, that her nose and facial features are too big for it to look good—she does it.

 Fuck them, she thinks. Fuck everyone.

 It takes a minute of staring into the mirror when it’s all done, when the hairdresser finally allows her to put her glasses back on, to decide that she likes it.

She turns around in front of the mirror, spins. Smiles. 

She looks fucking great.

 

vii.

It’s sometime after that when she finally realizes she’s been searching for the wrong thing all along— the realization comes when she’s reading Sylvia Plath, when the famed line appears in The Bell Jar:

 "I took a deep breath listened to the old brag of my heart.

 I am, I am, I am."

 She thinks about what she is—a pair of too big glasses. Her boring, big brown eyes. Her father’s inherited nose, too big on her own face. The fact that she is only five foot one, and will probably remain that way up until her seventies. Her dark brown skin, so unlike her mother’s fair tones. Her short hair, that labels her as so many things but frees her of the self-consciousness and resentment that, until then, festered inside her like an infected wound.

The girl takes up her laptop to write all of this down, but something is missing.

She doesn't know what she forgot. 

 

viii.             

(she realizes it now.) 


ix. 

She is all of the things she's listed. 

But wait—

x. 

She is so much more.