Lizzard Girl

I over hear them talking about me. I don't know how they think I can't hear them, both my mom and Megan have loud piercing voices. I go and sit at the top of those ugly stained hardwood stairs, where it's a deep rich mahogany on the edges and a sandy brown in the middle from all the trips up and down over the years. The stair well smells like tennis shoe rubber, pledge, and moth balls. I breathe out of my mouth. I sit low enough so that even when they try and whisper I can still understand them but I'm behind the turn in the stairs so they can't see me. I crouch and lay my head on my knobby knees while they go on with their trash talking.

"So your dad was driving her to school, and I guess she started crying and crying and saying how she hated it and she couldn't go back." My mom explains to my sister what happened this morning as she heard it from my dad. God forbid she actually ask me about my side of the story.

"What?" My sister hated it when I got away with things she could have never pulled off. "Wait, so it's her second week of high school and she's already giving up? How can she know if she really hates it? So Dad just brought her back home?"

I swear their voices are identically harsh. The loud booming sounds of women who refuse to be dainty, women who take charge, women who pretend they are never weak.

"I guess. She better not pull that shit with me. I'd never let her come back home, so what—you cry to get what you want and its given to you? What is she 2?"

"Yeah, what kind of lesson is Dad teaching her? Don't face your problems?"

God I hated it when Megan was right. She was always right which made everyone worship the ground she walked on. Her perfection just made me look bad. She didn't know what it was like to feel empty or alone or scared or terrified of the way people look at you. She's never felt a sadness so strong that your whole body hurts and when you cry you literally weep and you have no idea why you feel so bad. Megan had never felt rejection so she wasn't afraid of it. No one's eyes had scanned her up and down, sizing her up, judging every inch of her skin, her thoughts, her soul.

They stop talking about me for a minute and even though I can't see them, I know they've turned their attention to Dr Phil and their bag of Lays potato chips and ranch dip. That container will be polished off between the two of them before Oprah has a chance to explain the day's topic. Commercial break. Now they go into memories like they always do. I hate it when they do this because anything about me is usually negative.

"Ma, remember when you used to put us on a leash when we were little kids?"

Must have been something on Dr Phil about kidnappings to trigger this question from my sister.

"You remember that? Your grandma used to get so mad at me for putting you kids on a leash, she said you shouldn't be treated like dogs. Did I ever tell you about the time she tried to kidnap you?"

"Yeah, plenty of times. I remember that leash was rainbow striped, I thought it was really fancy and cute, I didn't care I was on it. I didn't feel like a dog. Did any of us ever get lost in a store? I'd think it would be LaFonda if it was any of us, she's always trying to get away."

Har Har Har. They laugh and I roll my eyes so hard it gives me a headache.

"No she never got away. You're right, she was such a brat though. I've never understood Lafonda. I mean ever since she was a little kid, I just didn't get her. When I would put her in time out she would just glare at me, turn around and look me right in the eye like she genuinely thought if she stared into me long enough actual knives would shoot from her eyes into my brain, slicing my head off and killing me on the spot. I mean how do you deal with a 5 year old who you can't communicate with that is hatching evil plans to try and kill you? I remember this one time, I walked in her room and she was putting the finishing touches on this Lion masterpiece she had painted on her wall. And I lost it. We always bought her the best art supplies—trying to channel some of that conniving energy into works of peaceful creativity. So here she has stacks and piles of canvas and paper and she uses the fucking wall. So I put her in the time out and she does the 'I'd kill you if I wasn't so small and my hands could fit around your fat neck' stare and I try to ignore her like the experts say you should. I just never got her—she could have been really cute if she wasn't so dirty and evil. She was always outside too, rescuing some lame brain dead animal, a stray cat that thought it was a tiger creeping through our house trying not to be seen. Or the baby bird that fell and broke it's neck that probably suffered more by having its life prolonged than if she had just left it to die. Anyways I walk into the living room expecting the regular death gaze, but this time I'm getting a double dose of the middle finger from your five year old sister. I tried not to laugh and have a heart attack at the same time. I secretly admired her gumption, I know I wouldn't have thought of that."

I remember that time too. That painting was of the Lovely Nhala from the Lion King and she was eating M&Ms in the bushes. Probably one of the best paintings I ever did, and mom put me in time out for it. So I gave her the double middle finger. I've never been afraid of her. I'm getting bored of their talk, they always tell the same stories and they aren't bad mouthing me any more. Not that they ever say anything different about me either, its always "I don't get her" or "Shes just weird" and all that, and they are right. I'm not like them. I don't want to be like them.

Lafonda is looking at her face in the mirror. Porcelain white vampire skin and slate gravel eyes stare back at her. Her attention moves to a pulsing zit on her cheek, a blemish attached to every nerve fiber in her body. Hands wanting to touch it, they stay at her sides, her eyes try and pop it with their unblinking stare. She likes the imperfection it gives her.

There's the sound of the stairs croaking and groaning under her mom's weight.

No knock.

"Lafonda, dammit did you feed the rabbit? I don't know why I let you have all these goddamn animals if you just leave them to starve and die."

She sits perfectly still, holding her breath and looking her mother in the eye. She is calm, statuesque, petite, almost meek, yet rebellious. Lafonda floats outside her body, sees herself flying up up up to the ceiling—glancing down on the dandruff caking her mother's head. Floating higher she becomes invisible, passing through the roof, up up up into the clouds and there she rests, alone, and utterly content in the peaceful solitude.

Clap, snap. Slam.

Unable to reach Lafonda in her haze, her mom storms out of the room. Their matching gray blue eyes seeing the world in such different ways frustrates and baffles her.

Lafonda turns back to the mirror, purposefully slouching her shoulders and bowing her head, she smiles. She has perfected the innocent act. Or maybe it isn't an act at all. She likes to think seeming innocent is something she had to work on, but its always been part of her personality. The zit is still there, as fresh as ever. Her eyes move to the reflection of the other creatures in the room, her friends, her confidants, the only two beings she could ever completely trust.

Grant is as long as her arm. His body slowly slithers around her smooth neck, warming himself with her body heat. The color of phlegmy puke, the corn snake's girth is no wider than a pencil. She reaches in the other tank, avoiding the harsh heat of the lamp, and gives Lenin a pet. Raising him from the time she was 9, Lenin is a chubby lizard. A Bearded Dragon she bought when he fit comfortably into the palm of her small hand, he was now as long as her arm, and his stomach was as fat as a CD. Whenever she took him to the vet they always said "Now that animal is loved and taken care of." And they were right.

Lafonda feels her breathing slow down and she is taken outside her body again, she is 3 or 4 or 5 and she is standing in their small town lake, knee deep in water, her skinny little white legs covered in scabs, bruises, and scars. In the middle of the snap weeds, she is so short that anyone passing by wouldn't be able to see her. She feels hidden and safe. She is busy finding fancy rocks for her collection. She was always saving random treasures: buckeyes, plastic Dixie cups, rocks, dried flowers, there was even a time when she saved every single bow from every present anyone in the house had ever gotten. What she did with these treasures, no one know. Her mom told everyone she must be building a time machine with all that crap. Something bright neon green catches her eye. She picks up a frog for the first time and she is in love. Bumpy goose pimple skin covered in sludge, she wants to lick it. Thinking back on it, she wondered why there was such a tropical looking frog in their dumpy Midwestern dug out hole as an excuse for a lake. Maybe it was someone's pet that had gotten free, but then how had it survived in this environment? The mystery of the little frog made the memory extra special, almost magical. Her ears pick up the sound of her mother screaming for her in the distance, something about how she better not be drowning in the lake, something about stop hiding, something about what's wrong with her. The memory is layered with two very important firsts for Lafonda: the first time she loved an animal with all her heart, and the first time that she remembered a clear hatred for her mom. It wasn't that she liked being the outcast and quiet, it was that people never understood her, so why bother? Her contempt was always mistaken as shyness. Rejected by her mother as weird, different, alien, she found solace and companionship from this moment on in animals, not people.