The Polaroid Picture

The words had left her lips with ease, and they were carried across the room with the joy in her voice. Time itself seemed to slow as I watched those nine simple words reach my ears, and cause me to question everything I had ever known. This must be some kind of mistake, I thought; but the longer my eyes lingered on the photo in front of us, the less sure I became of anything. How the photo had made its way to me, I wasn't sure of, either; all I knew is that it appeared at the bottom of a brown, paper-covered box.

The photo was of the girl I had been gazing at my entire life. Her head was covered with a mop of curly blond hair –hair was so bright, in fact, that the sun had bounced off her curls, and kept part of her face hidden from the photo. She had a bundle of flowers in each of her hands, raised up in her arms as if to offer them to the sky. The photo itself was just as familiar and comforting as it had always been, but I began to watch the girl change in front of me as I questioned who she truly was.

She had pulled the Polaroid picture from my hand, and traced her thumb along the girl’s face, as I had so many times before. There was love in her eyes when she looked back to me and said, “This is me, when I was a little girl.”

Those nine words kept ringing in my mind, and it sent me spinning further back in time.

That little girl had always been a reflection of me, as I was told that she was my mother. As I grew older, I would stare at her face, and compare mine to hers; all the while wondering what she might look like, and where she might have been. I held these moments in secret though, for fear of my father finding the photo. I had discovered it when I was young, shortly after 'the accident', in a box in the basement, full of random things.

I had always said that I never met my mother, but I also knew that wasn’t quite true. I had met her, of course, and we spent ten wonderful years together –but those would always be years that I’d never get back. When my mother died, a part of me died along with her; and I’ve spent my life since then trying to determine which one of us had it easier. We were in a car accident together, and while my mother lost her life that day, I lost her in more ways than one.

When I awoke after 'the accident', I couldn’t remember a thing. My father heard me fall from bed, but when he came running to help me, I screamed at his face standing in the doorway. I couldn’t recognize my own father’s face, and when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize mine, either. To this day, I don’t remember seeing any doctors after the accident, but my father assured me that my memory would never return. I was ten years old, and I couldn’t remember my own name, or even the face of my mother.

All I had was him, and all he had was me.

I knew that my father loved me, but deep down, I also knew that he blamed me for the death of his wife. It must have been too hard to look at her face, because I grew up in a home with no photos on the walls. He was the only family that I had ever known, and it hurt him when I craved more than just his love. I learned early on to appreciate my life with him, but as I grew older, I began to test our boundaries.

By the time I was fourteen, I had taken on the responsibilities of the house. I cooked and cleaned, washed my father’s clothes, and made sure the dogs were fed. We lived on a farm, but after 'the accident' my father let it fall into disrepair –he sold all the animals and watched the buildings crumble under the weight of new growth. He worked as a local mechanic, and I worked at scrubbing the grease from his overalls. My father wasn’t the nicest man, but he was strong and he kept me safe. This safety came at a cost, however, and as I grew older, I lost pride in my father’s strength –I began to fear it, instead.

He had decided to home-school me, after 'the accident', but we quickly lost interest in my education. My textbooks for Maths and Sciences began collecting dust in the corner of my room as I spent my days maintaining our home. Dinner was served at the same time every evening, and he would tell me in the morning what he would expect when he returned. He read the first half of the newspaper as he sipped him morning coffee, and I would place the remaining pages on the table next to his dinner plate. Every evening when I heard his truck pull into the driveway, I’d dish up his plate and place it on the table before he could open the front door. An open can of beer would sit on the coaster in front of his plate, and would be replaced by many others throughout every night.

We lived together like a well-oiled machine… until we didn’t.

I found the photo when I was eleven years old, and I held it in secret for many years. My wounds had healed and my father was away, so I spent the day roaming the house I was told was my home. Nothing had seemed familiar, and I could feel the spaces where smiling faces had hung on the walls and rested on shelves in metal frames. There was something lacking within those walls, and I couldn’t stop myself from searching for it. And when I found a mysterious door leading down to a dingy basement, my search had halted and I found what I was looking for.

There was a lonely box in the corner of the basement, and although it was hidden, I seemed to flock right to it. It was newer than the rest, as if it had been added to the collection only a few weeks ago. When I opened the flaps and looked at the contents, my eyes didn’t recognize a single item, but my heart did. I brushed past everything else to hold an old pair of overalls in my little hands, and I somehow knew that they were mine.

I held them up to my body and could see they matched my shape. There was dried mud running up the legs, with a massive slash at the left calf; faded blood surrounded the gashes, and there were patches where older holes had been repaired. There was a pocket on the front, with a Marigold flower embroidered on the surface, and it pulled me in with a force I couldn’t understand. I reached my hand into the little denim pocket, and pulled out a Polaroid photo of a little girl in a field of flowers. It was just as faded as I would come to know it, with water damage along the white frame.

I held that photo in secret for many childhood years; until I was sixteen years old and began to test the boundaries my father had set out.

Dinner was on the table before he walked through the door, and I placed his beer in its designated spot as he sat down. We talked about our days, as the meal in front of us disappeared, and I felt that the energy between us was light. There was a form of playfulness in the air as I talked to my father, and I allowed it to pull me in and dull my senses. The photo was in my pocket, where it usually was, and I traced my fingers along its edges as the words fell from my lips. “Is this my mother?” I asked. I pulled the photo from my pocket and placed it on the kitchen table between us.

It didn’t take long before I regretted that question, and I came to forget much of what happened after.

His fist slammed down on the table and the can of beer flew across the room. He rose to his feet like a raging bull, with so much force that the table pushed into my chest and sent me crashing to the floor in my chair. I gasped for breathe as he yelled in my face and my fingers felt in my pocket for the photo. I had given it away, though; I had showed my hand and suddenly he knew my secret. With large, angry fingers, he picked the photo up off the surface of the table and threw it down to me. I watched the white plastic fall toward my face, flipping in the air to hide and reveal the girls face. It landed on my chest like a leaf falling on a windless day, and he spat before he walked away.

His words seem to deny the question I had asked, yet the look on his face confirmed it. In that moment I decided that the girl in the photo was indeed my mother, and for some reason, that angered him.

These memories poured out of me, and then I looked up to see their eyes weeping. Her hand was at her mouth, gasping at the stories of my childhood, while his hand rested on mine. I hadn’t remembered him reaching out to me, but I found my hand in his, gripping him for safety. He was about the same age as me, and it was only in this moment that I noticed. His hands were tough from work and his skin dark from the sun. There were wrinkles on his face that revealed his emotions and I almost reached out to caress them. I stopped myself though, and turned my gaze to her. I could feel the sadness in her eyes, and yet her face seemed as young as the girl in the photo.

With my hand still in his, she rose from her seat and gently ran her hand across my shoulders as she walked behind me. She was gone for only a moment, and when she returned, she had another photo in her hand. It rested in a thick metal frame, with its glass shining brightly and a smiling little girl looking back at me. She was wearing a pair of overalls that seemed all too familiar, with a yellow flower stitched on the chest. I ran my thumb along the girl’s curls before I looked up to her and heard her voice say, “I think this is you, when you were a little girl.”

To be continued...

• Part 1 – The Old Barn
• Part 2 – Peace & Cake
• Part 3 – The Kitchen Table
• Part 4 – Paper & Twine
• Part 5 – The Polaroid Picture
• Part 6 – Bulls & Bullies
• Part 7 – The Raging Beast
• Part 8 – Water & Ice