Sehnsucht
by Stevie Billow
In her arms, laying in the grass beneath the night sky, I realize that I am the only person she will ever hold. I am her only child; her one breathing, bleeding creation. She is my only creator and only I will be held to her chest and know the rhythm of her beating heart.
I am four years old and have a rudimentary understanding of wish-making. We watch shooting stars manifest, only to dash themselves against the blackness.
My head lays on her breast.
“What’d you wish for?” I ask. I realize that wishes must be kept secret for them to come true, but our secrets are always kept together.
“Hmm, to lose ten pounds by Christmas,” she runs a hand down my hair, “what about you? What’s your wish?”
“To be a boy.”
Her response is quick and sad, “oh, honey. No you don’t.”
I am six and awake in bed. The room is gray in the wintry dawn. I look out my window at the frozen stalactites trickling down from our roof. I imagine myself as a miniature arctic explorer, scaling the ice with their trusty toothpick and twine looped over their shoulder. The explorer notices me, smiles and waves. I wave back at my other self. My first true secret.
I am ten and do not want to play softball.
“The ball’s too big and I can’t do underhand,” I am leaving my last baseball practice at the community center. We get to the car and I toss my duffle bag in the trunk, “why can’t I play baseball?”
“I’m sorry, sweet-pea, but you’ll be too old for the team next year,” she crouches low and offers her hand. I take it and she squeezes three times. I squeeze three times back. She smiles and that makes me smile.
“Just try softball, ok?”
“I want to be on the baseball team.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Can’t I be like Mulan?”
“What?”
“You know. Cut my hair and pretend to be a boy and then I can join the baseball team.”
We get in the car. We buckle our seatbelts.
“That’s just a movie, sweetheart.”
“But I suck at softball!”
“Don’t use that word.”
“I stink at softball.”
Her eyes are in the mirror, crinkled at the sides, “I’m sure you don’t stink at softball,” she looks back at me, but not at my face, “besides, you have such pretty hair. You don’t want to cut it.”
I am thirteen and want to cut my hair.
We are at the only hair salon in town. The linoleum floors are peeling in places, curling into yellowed tidal waves. The backs of my knees, bare against the chenille chair cushion, are sweating. I leaf through the old photo books, looking for the shortest women’s hairstyle I can find.
“Maybe keep it long enough so you could still put it up and keep it out of the way?” she suggests from the seat next to me.
“It won’t get in the way if it’s short enough.”
She runs a hand down my hair and settles it on my shoulder, “what about a bob? Right off the chin.”
I flip the page. The women’s section has ended. The next chapter begins with a collage of square-jawed men with buzz cuts and fades. I think of my secret. My explorer. I imagine their hair.
I linger too long on the men’s section.
She turns the page back for me and points to a middle-aged woman with thin bangs plastered to her forehead, “what you want is a pixie cut! That’d look so cute on you, honey.”
My hair is cut and I do not look cute.
I am sixteen and, at last, I understand. I learn the names of my secret feelings. I understand what the explorer is. Who they are. Who I am. I am happy. I am afraid.
We are in the living room, in our pajamas. I tell her.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. But there are articles and books on this stuff.”
She starts to cry, “I just don’t want you to make life harder for yourself.”
“It’s ok,” I want to hug her. I want her to hug me.
“So, what are you then?” she forces a little laugh through the sobs, “you’re not a boy or a girl, so what are you? An alien?”
She smiles at me and I am flung across the room, out of our house, and into the sky. I wheel through the air, past the clouds, and into the dark isolation of the exosphere. I want to freeze over. I want to plummet to the earth and be extinguished by the fires of my descent. Instead, I hang there. Weightless. Unmoving.
Alone.
Later, she will tell me she meant it as a joke. She had only wanted to lighten the mood. She takes my hand and squeezes it. Once, twice, and a final third time. I squeeze back, relishing the strength of our tether and knowing it has never been pulled so taut.
I am twenty-two years old. I am in my childhood bedroom. Packing. Not packing for summer camp or college. Packing for a life known to her only by phone calls and holiday visits.
She joins me, a picture frame in her arms. We sit on the bed and she holds the photo face-up in her lap.
“Remember this?”
I see myself, seven years old, kneeling in the grass, wearing a white dress and a lacy Easter bonnet. I have a gap-toothed grin and squint into the sunlight.
“I remember that dress being itchy as Hell.”
She shoves my arm, “come on. You were so cute!”
She looks at the photograph and, again, I feel her longing. I feel her mourning a person who did not die, mourning a daughter who never existed.
I hug her and hold her head tight to my chest.
“I’m here, mom.”
“I know, baby girl.”
Stevie Billow is a creator and educator currently based in Cambridge, MA. Their creative work has previously appeared in Meat for Tea: the Valley Review, Beyond Words, and is forthcoming in The Blood Pudding. They sporadically post on Instagram @wollibs.