Resting She-Devil Face

Thank heavens you’ve brushed away that nauseating carpet of dust from my face. I can finally breathe again! The only thing separating us now is the thin sheet of picture-frame glass between your gaze and my photograph. Of course, time also stands between us. An entire one-hundred-forty-eight years since my photo was taken—a stretch long enough for fashion, language, and customs to have evolved beyond my recognition. What little I understand of this modern world comes from the conversations I’ve overheard; the little bits and pieces I’ve gathered from the patrons of this antique shop. Ever since fate landed me here amid the shelves of half-filled perfume bottles and other dusty portraits of the now-deceased, I’ve learned that today’s world stands in stark contrast to that of the Victorians. 

However, there is one part that hasn’t changed. A part that has miraculously proven resistant to the elements of nature that cause even the most beautiful things in this world to rot and decompose (my once vibrant complexion included).  That thing, as you may have guessed, is human emotion. While I do not recognize your strange attire or horrid manner of speech, I do recognize the emotion behind your facial expression as none other than confusion. Confusion softened by the tiniest bit of childlike wonder. 

With slightly squinted eyes, glimmering as you study my photograph, you appear perplexed at why I seem so sullen. Why all us colorless, bonneted, grainy images in old photographs look as if we detested our very existence. Perhaps you blame it on the fact that television and Cheese Whiz did not yet exist. Or that our childhoods consisted of wooden horses and puppet shows instead of those garbling little demons you call Furbies or that dreadful talking sponge I’ve heard some of the patrons’ children worshipping. (Sponges, I’ll have you know, are to be soaked in cold water and vinegar as a means for bathing. They are not to speak, sing, or navigate any type of water-propelled vessel.)

The fact of the matter, dear, is that my drab, sullen exterior does not accurately represent the colorful inner world that lives within me. Despite what might seem like photographic evidence of a pitiable existence, the people of my time were not perpetually miserable as you may believe. Some of our lives were rich, exciting. A time of Yorkshire pudding and playing hopskotch in the rain; a time of vast social reform and an entreprenurial spirit.

So, please, spare me your pity—although I'm having trouble sparing you mine. (Your makeup, unlike mine, has clearly been done by a heavy-handed brute. Haven't you heard? Subtely is key. If you'd like any advice on how I achieved the look in this photograph, I recommend nibbling on some arsenic wafers before bedtime and dousing your eyes with lemon juice in the morning for that watery-eyed-unrequited-love aura. You can thank me later. I've very well just saved you from a future of spintsterhood!)

The truth is that, beneath my dreary facade, I am holding back an insurmountable amount of joy, as I have just secured one of Birmingham's most eligible suitors. I speak in the present tense because my soul lives within this image. I am eternally trapped inside it, like a flower preserved between book pages, living this moment a thousand times over. 

And, yes, I can see you looking back at me an entire one-hundred-forty-eight years later, drawing infuriatingly inaccurate conclusions of who I was and what a sad little life I presumably lived. As your facial expression changes, I recognize a growing sense of discomfort in your disposition. It’s that same unsettling feeling all humans get when the eyes of old dusty portraits seem to follow them around the room. But, dear, it’s not in your head. As I've said, I am looking at you! We are all looking at you—at least most of us are, the ones lucky enough to have had not just their image captured by camera but their consciousness as well. Perhaps that is why us Victorians favored post-mortem photography so much. It was a way for the soul to live on. 

And as I myself continue to live on within the parameters of this ceramic picture frame, I assure you that I am doing just fine. I do not have a case of the morbs, as you might believe. You simply come from a different time period than me. A century where you smile for photos regardless of your true inner emotion. A time where you recite the name of that scrumptious yellow dairy product until your lips curve into a counterfeit display of happiness only a nincompoop would fall for. I’ve even seen some of you press your lips together for photos, like one of the Mallard ducks that used to swim in the pond outside my bedroom window.

It's absolutely revolting.

To make matters worse, you live in an age that enables you to capture photographs in less than a second. I've seen you do it. Those strange little palm-sized cameras that flash so quickly. By the time my camera captured this image, I had almost aged a year. No sane human being from my era could ever comfortably sustain a smile like yours for the time it took for our cameras to go off. And no ordinary human being from my time has a set of chompers as lovely as yours to expose to the world. I presume it's due to those strange rubber bands and brackets the little ones of this period wear. The ones that magically coerce your teeth to look like pretty little piano keys you could play Moonlight Sonata on.

However, you still mistake my unimpressed stoicism for just that—unimpressed stoicism. Believe it or not, I am feeling beautiful in this moment. Merry and effervescent, trying to hold in every bit of it with air-tight lips as straight as the horizon. With my dark hair falling over my shoulders in a neat row of barley curls, adorned with summer flowers, and my cheeks stained with just the right amount of beet juice, I am, as you and your counterparts say these days, feeling cute (although I did not have the option of threatening to delete later; perhaps, rather, throwing my photograph into the fireplace in a fit of self-doubt at some later time).

I mean, look at me! The way my brooch glimmers in the light; the way my corset crushes my organs into a waistline slimmer than your pinky toe. No wonder I captured the heart of Sir Odell Wigran so easily. The image is enough for any onlooker to become plagued with uncleanly thoughts of my ankles. Although my ankles are out of frame, I assure you they are completely shrouded by my floor-length dress. I am a woman of high moral principle. But more importantly, I am a woman of genial disposition and balanced humors.

And yet, you still do not believe me. You snicker at my straight-laced expression and blank, wide eyes that appear as if I they have just seen a ghost. (Really, I have just seen you—a young lady flashing her ankles in broad daylight.) You forget that I am more than a photograph. That the soul embedded within this image is much more complex. You foolishly believe that I wore this same unaffected expression through every moment of my life—through childbirth, heartbreak, and lead poisoning scares—when the truth is, back when I had a face made of flesh and muscles like yours, I could contort my face into every shade of emotion—elation, fury, amusement, disgust.

As your friends gather around my image, you dare each other to hang my eerie, sullen portrait on your bedroom wall, to sleep a whole night with me there. How humiliated you would be if you knew that every suitor in Birmingham would have seized the opportunity to sleep a whole night with me. I take it you spinsters cannot even secure one between the five of you! Yet you still do not think me anything more than a blank-faced lady. You've even coined a term for my expression. Resting . . . Resting she-devil face! (I am too moral a woman to replicate the actual term you used.)

Wait, wait, wait! What is that you’re doing? Putting me back on the shelf like some unrequited lover? Like an unfaithful suitor whose eye hath been caught by some hedge-creeping dollymop? Take me back, dear. Please! Stop walking away. I had more to say. Much more to say.