It Watches

Content warning: allusion to childhood abuse and SA. 

“That’s what’s wrong with her–you and your mother!” My father shouted angrily, his fat pointer finger inches from my mother’s face.  The sentence came frothing out of his mouth, hot spit landing like acid on her cheeks.  His words were daggers–said to her but embedding themselves into my back, as I cowered in the corner, head between my knees, crying and waiting for the threat to pass.  He’d inevitably leave again.  Storming out to God knows where, slamming the door behind him.  Each time, I’d pray he wouldn’t come back and cried again when he did (for which, of course, I was always scolded). 

“Daddy said there’s something wrong with me,” I sobbed to my mother once he’d gone, almost pleading with her for an explanation.  I don’t recall the comfort that was offered to me then (beyond figuring that, while it must’ve soothed my tears at 5, it did nothing to soothe my soul ultimately).  What I do recall were its eyes staring at me, vacant and still.  Owl-like, animatronic eyes lined with teal plastic and settled above a garish yellow beak, all of which contrasted horribly with its hot pink fur.  An ugly, useless thing.  

It would blink and chatter with me at play in my childhood home, sometimes the only sound outside of the cacophony of voices in my imagination.  The sole student in my bedroom-classroom where I was the teacher.  The single lively attendee of my pretend tea parties, when the only other little girl who lived in our cul-de-sac moved away.  Though nonhuman and unsettling, it became my friend when I had no others.  And I loved it immensely in this way. 

In my own world, its empty eyes and battery-powered blink felt like magic.  A friend that was mine, chirping to each other in a language only we spoke.  Its grotesqueness became a part of what made it so lovable.  Others might ridicule its absurdity, but it had a place with me.  The unease with which I’d first greeted its features gave way.  More than a friend, it was an ally to me.  Or so I thought. 

Magic in make-believe, our friendship didn’t translate into the real world.  Idle on a shelf my ally sat, absorbing every moment of my real life coldly.  Every abandonment, every argument–glasses thrown against the wall, high-chairs chucked across the room, forceful hands demanding submission or affection not otherwise given willingly.  My child-mind longed for it to intervene or comfort me somehow.  Forget senseless chirping, I need real words!  Tell me it will be alright–tell someone about all of the things no one else sees!  

Eventually, even my imagination was no longer somewhere we could meet.  The secret language we shared became one I lost the ability to speak, as time tethered me more and more to reality.  I grew up, arguably too fast, while it sat on the shelf in my bedroom watching me.  As my body changed and grew to hate it, my attempts to make friends who ultimately betrayed me for someone or something better, boys and men seeking to lay claim to me.  It watched indifferent, its empty eyes assaulting.

Sometimes, I thought I’d see its ears flutter or hear the whirring of its parts, like it might speak up for me in the face of these abuses or call me back to the world we shared where it was safe.  Maybe you haven’t abandoned me after all. 

But it continued to disappoint me, sitting silently on the shelf. Until one day, at 15–having crossed the threshold between girlhood and womanhood voluntarily for the first time, and having my heart broken–I could stand its gaze no longer.  How can you sit there and say nothing–do nothing–when I’m in so much pain?!  How can you let me live this way?  I wept, while those eyes held all of my guilt, all of my secrets, all of my shame.  

I picked the inanimate creature up off the shelf and shook the damn thing so hard with my bare hands, if it was ever sentient like I'd hoped as a child, surely it would have said something.  Receiving nothing in return but chaotic blinks and the chittering of its beak instigated by the force of my grip, I hurled it at my bedroom mirror–like one of those glasses thrown against the wall, or high-chairs chucked across the room, or forceful hands that attacked and violated my own space.  On the floor among shattered pieces of my reflection, it finally chirped–almost like it too was in pain. 

The world spun outside of my bedroom window as I cowered in the corner, head between my knees, crying and waiting for the now omnipresent threat to pass once again.  This time, I know no one was there to comfort me (and I wouldn’t have let them close enough to, if they had tried).  

Time on its own pacified my heaving chest and shards of broken glass were buried in the trash–where I intended to put my former friend and ally, after extending it an apology.  With its plastic eyes shut, the lifeless thing looked even more so.  Hugging it tight, its fur against my skin both comforted and taunted me.  Instead of the garbage, into a cardboard box it went to be forgotten–the haunting memories it held also laid to rest.  But out of sight is not out of mind.

From my childhood home to a college apartment, around the world and back again, that box traveled with me–my old friend still inside, shrouded among other junk and treasures.  Carried but concealed, until I was 25 and attempting to make my own home, when that seemingly innocuous cardboard crypt would be opened once again.  

“No shit!”  Em exclaimed, sifting through the sepulcher before I could realize what she had her hands on.  “I haven’t seen one of these in forever!” She continued. 

“90's nostalgia at its finest,” Cora echoed, examining the gremlin-like robot.  “Wonder if she has any juice.”

My stomach dropped and anxiety percolated in my chest.  It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.  I could feel my eyes widen and body tense, the blank expression on my frozen face masking my nervous system’s distress.  It was like they’d opened Pandora’s box.  Memories of trauma and a life I’d convinced myself wasn’t my own came flooding back, as the tiny robot’s ancient on switch somehow gave it life a decade later.  

Hearing its eyes shutter open and closed, I was sure that–in mere moments–my old ally would divulge my worst secrets to the real friends I’d finally made, as revenge for my abandoning it.  However, anything it might’ve uttered if it’d been able was drowned out by the girls cooing over the toy in their hands and reminiscing about the lives they’d had when they’d played with their own. 

“I remember carrying mine in my backpack to school–a purple JanSport, so the purple fur would match,” Em recounted.  “Grape jelly on my PB&J, cuz everything I ate had to be purple too!”

“Man, life was so much simpler back then,” Cora bemoaned lightheartedly.  “No worries or responsibilities–the biggest drama was who had a crush on who, and what color jelly your mom put on your sandwich!”  They both laughed.  

Em sighed, “if only we could go back to THAT.”  

The girls shared another chuckle and looked to me to join in their laughter and conversation.  Cora passed the toy my way.

Looking into its artificial eyes, devoid of the life I’d seen in them so clearly as a child who longed for comfort, I was struck observing in them my adult self, along with every hurt version of me the object had witnessed.  Holding it in my hands, I realized fully for the first time it was never a friend–never an ally–rather, just a toy I’d made an extension of myself to hold what I alone couldn’t bear. 

Grief overloaded my senses–grief for the protective illusion I’d relied on that was no more, and grief for the girl I was, who lost her life in childhood never having been protected.  While my friends reminisced about the joy, love, and simplicity that characterized their youth–a time they wished they could return to–I was burdened with the realization that joy, love, and simplicity were things I’d never felt.  I didn’t have a childhood to return to, even if I wanted to. 

The seconds that passed in that moment felt like hours.  I cracked a faint smile, rejoining reality to play the role that was required of me. 

“I know, right?” I laughed in agreement, the sound I’d imitated stuck in my throat like a glob of peanut butter sandwich that couldn’t be washed down.  

Caressing the toy’s fur a moment longer, I contemplated the depth of the lie I’d told my friends with those three little words.  Another secret, just you and I know.  I thought to myself.  And I could’ve sworn I saw it wink at me.