The Girl God Forgot
- Apr 26, 2019
- 5 min read
by Madalyn Campbell
She is eating blueberries she picked from the bushes surrounding us. I can see her on the horizon, blue staining her white dress, blue staining her white teeth, blue staining her hands and her knees stained with dirt and blood.
I can taste the sweetness in my mouth as she runs towards me. As she grows closer she grows older. From a child who ruined her good church dress to a teenager not acting quite her age to an adult standing before me. She kisses me and the sweetness grows and grows, her dirty hands clutching my dirty hands, the sun setting and casting an odd light on all the field, on all the blueberries.
When she kisses me I know this is a dream, or a memory, or something otherworldly. I know who she is as her fingers intertwine with mine. She has been forsaken. And as she pulls away I know I will wake up somewhere new.
This time I am in a bed with a man in it. The sheets feel soft, the light trickles in from a window adorned with curtains that perfectly match the color of the wall. The wall across from the edge of the bed is covered in pictures of children that are not mine. The bedside table has a wedding ring with a beautiful diamond that is not mine. The man has the covers pulled over his face and I know I have never met him before. This man is my husband and this house is my house.
Every morning I wake up in a life that is not mine. There is always a man. A man in my bed, a man texting me good morning, a man barging into my room and screaming in my face. I roll over and close my eyes, thinking of the girl in her white dress and her lips on mine. I cannot taste the sweetness. In fact, my mouth tastes bitter, so very bitter. I wrinkle my nose and lift the comforter.
When I place my feet on the ground they step into slippers. A robe is hanging on the hook of my door, waiting for me. I do not give my husband a glance as I leave the room. My house is two stories, my countertops are granite, and my two children are sleeping soundly. I make coffee and then I make breakfast, pancakes with syrup. I do not know how I know that my son likes strawberry syrup but my daughter does not. I do not know how I know that I have to wake them both up and drive them to school.
I have to lay out my husband’s clothes, set aside his things for when he gets up, leave him a stack of pancakes. I have to remind my daughter of the school dress code, have to hand my son his sports bag for his afternoon practice. We talk about the big game on Friday over pancakes. I don’t eat any pancakes, just sip on my coffee, and I will not see his big game. Tomorrow I will be someone new.
It’s not every night I have the dream where she kisses me. When I don’t, I dream of nothing. I go to bed and wake up and follow the path my body has set before me. I try not to think about her, the girl that I love, especially when men kiss me. It tastes like something rotten, something crawled into my mouth and died there. The only thing that can make the taste go away are blueberries.
Sundays are the hardest. Every woman I am on Sunday goes to church. I listen to the preacher talk of the stories in the Bible while my husband holds my hand, while my boyfriend leans his head on my shoulder, while my children sit between me and my husband, while I sit alone.
There is a woman who looked back and turned into salt, there is a man who lost everything, there is a child slated to die on a hill, and there is a man with magic in his hair. Wives devoted to their husbands, a woman who saw Jesus rise from the dead, a man who rose from the dead himself.
After I drive my children to school there is nothing for me to do. My husband is already gone when I return home. I clean an already clean home and I prepare dinner at nine a.m. I make lunches for the next day. I set back up all the various dominoes knocked over by the morning routine. A gift for the woman who will wake up here tomorrow. Her life will be as she left it.
When there is nothing left to do I find where I keep the Bibles. With shaky hands I pick the one with leather like blood and sit down on the bench stool in the kitchen. I leaf through the pages, worried I will tear them simply by looking at them. Worried my hands will burn, that I will turn into a pillar of salt.
We are not in the Bible; my name and her name are not in the Bible. I don’t know this for sure, this aching feeling in my chest, the dream with the girl at the edge of the world. Haven’t you wondered who the first girl was? The first girl to kiss another girl? Who, born from Eve, first dared to kiss another girl, who took a bite of the apple, who was cast from the garden of Eden?
I think it was me. I think I am Adam and she is Eve. This is my punishment. I am the girl God forgot, cast into lives and lives, over and over.
This is my theory, the only one I have. I don’t know for sure. There is nothing before this. I can’t remember farther than this; the edge of my memory frays and splinters. I don’t know who I was before this. I don’t know if there was anything before this.
My Eve, is she cursed like this? Does she wake up in another life? Does she dream of me in that blueberry field? Where was that? It’s been corrupted, the moment she taught me I was naked all along. I cannot remember the taste of the apple, just blueberries.
I close the Bible. Our names are not there. I idle in this life. I kiss my husband’s cheek and recoil at the taste. As I fall asleep in my bed I hope I will see her in her white dress. I hope when I wake up I will taste blueberries. Maybe this time she will be next to me.
Maybe I will be remembered.
Madalyn Campbell is a recent graduate of The University of Texas at Austin where she received her bachelor’s in English with a certificate in creative writing. She is currently living in San Angelo, Texas.
