The Secret Child
I sat on a white, plastic lawn chair that had slats so thin and far apart I barely stayed on top of the seat. Every so often, I would slip down between two of them and I would have to twist and scoot about until I was propped ever so tenderly in a sitting position once more. It was very quiet, where I lived. Now and then the sound of a laughing child would echo, all around me, and fill up the blank space that was my canvas. That was what I had.
So blue was the sky; every day, brighter than the clearest ocean. The sky was mine. It blew breezes of drifting hands across my back, and made the Canadian flag behind me rustle and sway in the breeze. I was not sure why I had a Canadian flag. I did not live in Canada. I was not sure where I lived. But I knew it was quiet, and I liked that. I liked it a whole lot. Where I used to come from, it was always loud, and noisy. And somebody was always asking strange questions, like what two plus two was and how to read the words on the paper.
Paper…
What was that? I thought about it sometimes, when I remembered it, and then I realized that where I used to come from did not matter. What mattered was where I came from now. And so I stopped thinking about it when I began wondering where it was that I did come from now. I was never entirely sure if I was right or not, when I decided. Sometimes I thought it was Belgium, and other times, America. But I knew it was not Canada. It was too warm to be Canada. It never, ever snowed. The trees far down below me were in a constant state of shedding their leaves. Did that mean it was fall?
I never went down on the ground. I was always on the balcony. The one that I thought must be ten stories off the ground, and never seemed to change. There was not a timeline for me; I had not begun sitting here one day and done it ever since. I had always sat here. It was an endless occurrence. The cheap, off-white lawn chair was mine. But the flag was not. Nobody told me this; I just knew. Knowing things was important where I came from now. It was important where I used to come from, too, but not as important as here. If you got something wrong there, or did not know, there would always be somebody to help you or tell you what it was.
Here…
Here there was empty canvas. I thought I must be the only person, but at the same time knew that I could not possibly be alone here. From my tenth story balcony, I saw the whole world go by. The whole, empty world. Was it mine? I did not know. But there was nobody to ask, and so I would have to decide for myself.
The chair was warm all the time, like I had never left it. Did I ever leave it? I was not sure, once again. I hoped I left it sometimes. But I did not know. And when I started to wonder about those sorts of things, like where I came from before and why I was here now, I felt sort of dizzy and found myself looking in a different direction, where something would catch my eye and again I would begin thinking about where it was that I sat.
Sitting…
That was all I ever did. I never stood. And I never wondered why I only sat, either; I accepted it as fact and continued to obediently sit, every day. I could not turn around to view the building that my balcony protruded from—yes, I knew that the balcony, along with the chair and the sky, was mine.
I did not wear shoes. My feet were bare, and small, and my toes were dirty, with slightly overgrown toenails that had dirt caked under them like it was a part of me. There was, sometimes, a voice that was not mine that would creep into my head and interject random observations every now and then. And who are you? I would wonder. The grass is not down there they would reply. And so I would wonder, for a little bit, why there was no grass, and by the time I came back to questioning the voice it would be gone. I thought it must be a genius, that wanted to peek inside the minds of normal people like me and figure out what it must be like not to notice things like absent grass.
I came to think that there was no real purpose to my balcony, or this world, or the sky; but I always wondered about the flag. I could not actually see it, because it was behind my head and off to the left, but I knew it was there, and I knew that it was a Canadian flag. It might have been the way it sounded that tipped me off, but I was not sure how that worked. To know what something was by the sound of it.
It always came together when the voice told me there was no floor. And who are you? I would ask. There is no floor down there they would reply, and for a while, I would be distracted by the floorless state of my balcony. Oh, but I do not need a floor. I would say. How are you up here, then, without a floor? They would ask me. I do not need a floor. I would reply.
“Jenna!” This voice would always shatter my concentration, and so I would never reply. “Jenna!” and then I would turn around, and see the red brick of the building my balcony was protruding from. “Jenna, play time is over! Come inside, now!” and I would blink at my large, off-white, rickety lawn chair, and my wooden balcony, and I would see the woman coming outside to fetch me.
“Come on, now, Jenna, it is time to go back inside for writing class.” And I would accept this, and go with the woman I did not know inside of the school building I did not recognize, past the Canadian flag that was not mine, and away from the view I had of the buildings of where I used to be from. And tomorrow, I would do it again.
For the song 'Undiscovered Colors' by The Flashbulb.
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