Mask of A Legend (2 page)

I

The Angel Hides,

Hearing a Soul

Weep From a Distance….

A
darkened room. It blocked out the city life, from trains coughing out their hard-working breath, to buildings swaying in the wind, creaking their silver, god-like bodies to let everyone know they are the giants of this city. Silence. Shadows silhouetting the yellow walls through the cracks in the brown, nicotine-drenched shade, breathing sunlight into this room that otherwise coveted the dark. The darkness was jealous of the sun, it seemed, a battle between both elements that began by a single window shade that was nailed down at all ends, planned out to make sure no light ever entered the room for reasons unknown.

But then the crack in the shade split on this day, and the sunlight that fought for a year to enter the room finally endured its moment of greatness, shooting in through the crack, kissing all ends of the room its soul could touch. And so the darkened room was dark no more. Silence. Yet, a noise was heard, pounding its way through the silk-like air that gave a peaceful emotion to Legend’s harmony-filled, sleeping ears. “I said hurry up, Legend, I don’t want you being late for school again,” her mother said.

She ran into her tiny room and shook Legend, bouncing her against the mattress so hard that springs began popping through the old fabric that made up the mattress’s skin. The crack of sunlight perceived her actions and eavesdropped on this moment it so desired to see, like a god tormented by sight, a blind man tortured by sound.

Dreaming of natural surroundings, Legend’s closed eyes saw fields of grass and wisdom-filled trees, sweet aroma of water, depicting to her senses that a stream was near. This was Legend’s escape, her only destination that gave comfort to her soul’s sorrow, grasping onto this moment every morning and night, waiting for it to arrive; and it did. Yet, this nirvana-like site ended, as it did every morning, when Legend’s innocent eyes opened, seeing her half-woken mother directly in her view. Legend already knew that every time she saw her mother’s face up to hers in the dead of morning, smelling her mother’s parched breath and stench covered up by loads of perfume, that meant she had overslept. “Come on, take a shower and get to school, it’s already 8:30 a.m.,” her mother argued.

She then bolted out of Legend’s room as fast as she came, whispering to herself about something in regard to Legend oversleeping again. All that was left was the scent of her mother’s perfume, fermented oil mixed with old roses that bloomed past their expiration date.

Leave me alone.

So Legend tried closing her eyes again, and fought to get back the image that she was dreaming about, but the aroma of water couldn’t be found, and the green grass that her subconscious gave to her didn’t seem that green anymore. So, she gave up the fight, as she did every morning, knowing that when night falls again, she will enter back into the place she desired to see every day. To Legend, that place she glimpses when her eyes are closed is the only reason why she opens her eyes, lives, breathes every day, is because she knows she has to work through the daylight in order to enter back into the paradise of her mind’s eye, like an angel soaring through the daylight, longing to fly with light of a full moon blanketing its wings.

Legend, trying to open her eyes, got up from her bed and walked over to her window, sensing her way through the darkened room while a poster of all the star constellations fell from her wall. Then it was seen. Light. She saw the long streak of sunlight peering through a crack in the shade and her eyes grew toward the moment of a beacon invading her den of longing darkness. She opened her eyes even wider and followed the streak. Confusion. Legend, for some reason, gazed at the crack in the shade and lifted the shade on her large window.

She tore the shade down from their nails and suddenly her whole room was lit with the natural beacon and she breathed it in, like it was air, a blessing from a god unseen to her gloomy sight. She looked out at the Sears Tower, reminding her of an overgrown tree that stole the light from other trees that strived to earn wisdom. But to her, the building was beautiful. “Good morning, Chicago!”

Then she opened the window a crack. Sound. The silence was broken and her room finally heard the noises from the outside, whether they be of breathless cars driving by with an ounce of life left to their steel, or the songs of sparrows fighting for their nests that were invaded by crows trying to steal their branches. She enjoyed it all.

She pivoted her body around and picked up the poster and looked at the stars engraved on the poster, like she was staring at a map of some kind, a path that would lead to a destination of significance. It brought a smile to her face, a morsel of unknown faith that grew every time her eyes moved to a different constellation, forcing her to strip the sticky gunk away from her eyes with her hands, and peel her eyes open even more. She rolled up the poster and threw it onto her bed and turned around to face the window again, hoping that the morning light would dilate her eyes as it did every morning when she went outside.

As she looked through the window, her same ritual as any other window for that matter, she saw her unwanted reflection. It was a reflection she hadn’t stared at for eons, but this morning she forgot her normal tradition of not looking at the window’s truth, reminding her of the reason why her eyes enjoy being closed, why her room needed to stay dark. Her smile vanished the deeper she stared at her face, gawking at it so close that she could perceive the small scratch marks on the window, due to past hail storms. It was a face of acne, from her forehead, face, all the way down to her neck. She saw her small lips and stringy, blonde hair while raindrops thumped against her window.

To Legend, those dizzy raindrops only crashed because of Legend’s image, breaking them of their innocence. Legend turned away from her reflection and walked out of her room, trying to forget what she saw in the window pane, like she did a year ago, when she accidentally saw her reflection in the same window, with the same morning presenting its melodies of thunder and rain before the nails began pounding into the shade by her doings.

Craving to forget her features, she walked down her tight hallway and came to the clothes-congested stairway, some half-drenched from being washed but not dried, and others were still dirty, but hot, evidence that her mother dried clothes, but forgot to wash them. Disgusting, especially the mixed aroma of clean and dirty clothes dancing in the air. Mildew.

Legend walked down the stairs, yawned, and then saw her mother in the distance. Still groggy and filled with melancholy, smelling her mother’s perfume and the scent of hot, dirty clothes, she entered the kitchen and watched her mother drink a clear substance. That’s when she smelled the aroma of liquor. It drained Legend from having to put up with her own face; acne and ugliness are all she thought of.

“Come on, your breakfast is gonna get cold.”

And there she was, an overaged gold-digger with a face of pretentiousness. Strange-looking. Years and years of make-up abuse affected her mother’s beauty as if the past colors were embedded in her face. Rosy cheeks. Dark eyeliner. The works.

Legend sat down in a rickety chair and ate her eggs off of a chipped plate. Looking at the floor and keeping silent, fearing that her mother would allow the liquor to be mean to her, she saw nothing but junk piled over junk, lying there so long that dust took over each of their shapes, making everything on the floor look the same grayish color. So she sat, like a baby lamb in a vacant field, afraid to look up. The hunter might see its prey. She didn’t want to see her mother like that, watching how she wears her pain by drinking. But even her silence wasn’t enough.

The same morning ritual began, but with a different beginning, always. “I got a call from your principal about an hour ago. She said that you’ve been missing school all this week. Is that true, Legend?” She sat down opposite Legend and took out her curlers from her perfect blonde hair. Her mother then poured herself another drink of the clear liquid. Legend watched the half-empty bottle and how its label was torn off. Her mother slurred, “Is that true?”

“Yes it’s true,” Legend replied. Still gawking at the ground, she heard her mother finishing her drink with one gulp, followed by the echoes of her pouring herself another. Legend continued to stare at the floor of junk, a better sight than her mother.

“Listen to me, Legend, school just started two weeks ago, you can’t keep on missing.” She got up from her chair and walked over to a rusty sink, put her plate in it, and held onto a chair to control her drunkenness. A mess.

“I know, Mom….”

“That’s what you said last semester when we moved here. I don’t want you to miss any more days, I’m sick of you faking sick all the time, and don’t tell me that you’re not faking.” Her mother turned to Legend and looked at her acne, reminding her of a hurtful subject she could bring up. “Plus, I don’t want you looking at any more star constellation books, I want you to start looking at your school books instead. You’re an intelligent, young woman, but if you keep this up, you’re not going to get anywhere in life!”

Legend turned her eyes away from the junk-filled floor and gaped at the table. Filled with loathing toward her mother’s choice in subjects, anger toward her drunkenness, she still stared at the table. “You dropped out of school when you were sixteen, Mom, and look where you ended up,” Legend stated. Her mother laughed in a crazy, drunken howl.

“No, I don’t know where I ended up, please enlighten me.” Sarcasm mixed with rage was the chosen voice of her mother. She finished her second drink in one gulp and grabbed the bottle.

“You got married to a very rich man, better known as my father,” Legend said.

“Well, he is now my ex-husband, and an x-father to you. The only reason why I got the chance to marry that rich bastard is because of my looks!” Her mother then noticed Legend’s eyes forming tears. Still staring at the table, Legend looked at her mother in hatred. Her teardrops fell to the dust that blanketed the junk below.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Just because I’m not pretty like you, doesn’t mean I won’t have it all in life. I’m so sick and tired of people telling me how smart I am, I wish they would tell me how beautiful I was instead,” yelled Legend.

“Even when you were a child, Legend, you believed that money wasn’t everything, and now you use that as an example to me, to show that it meant I succeeded!”

“And even as you stand before me, drunk, you’re acting like ‘marrying for money’ isn’t everything, even though you tried to teach me it was. I think that magic liquid you drink every day, Mother, has turned you into a hypocrite!”

Rage boiled inside of her veins, firing through cell to cell, creeping up to her flesh, and turning it red. The liquor ignited her fury even more, holding an uncontrollable urge to strike at Legend’s face. The mother’s hands shook, and her skin cried as she ran up to Legend, slapped her across the face once and waited to see what reaction she would display toward the pain. Perceiving Legend’s strength, seeing how the slap forced her to gawk at the mother, she slapped Legend again, feeling the liquor craving to see blood, a reaction, anything to come out of Legend that proved she felt pain, as much as the mother’s mind felt toward those words.

After the seventh hit, blood poured from Legend’s nose, and delicately, she pulled her hand away from Legend. A bloody handprint was left on her face. The closer the mother pulled her hand away from Legend to her drunken chest, the faster the liquor drained from her eyes, diluting reality from evil, salt-like drops that washed away the liquor even more to help her see the child she loved. “I’m so sorry, Legend, I didn’t mean it.”

Anger attached to her eyes, Legend rose from her seat and ran out of the kitchen, wiping her blood away with a napkin.

Her mother chased her all the way up to her bedroom and pleaded, “I’m sorry, Legend, I know your father used to – I shouldn’t have done that!” Her mother’s half-intoxicated body scampered up to Legend and hugged her tight.

Legend ran away from her mother’s grasp and went to her window, not knowing what to say, or do, bewildered about whether she should cry more and show her mother her frailty, or stay fervent and show no reaction at all. She surveyed the rain plummeting even as her tears fell at the same speed. Then Legend peeked at her reflection in the window again and that’s when she wept more. Her tears fell down her acne-filled face, and curved around each pimple, like water going through a tangled labyrinth with tormenting corridors.

Legend felt enclosed, crying because her mother was standing to the back of her, and crying because her reflection stood in front. So, the mother just looked at Legend’s back and then saw Legend’s reflection; all she could see was her tears. Legend’s mind was lost because of her looks, because of the way her eyes don’t accept the face they’re a part of. She looked at her mother’s reflection in the window and saw her eyes wanting to help her, but her mouth stood silent.

Legend whispered, “Mom, I’m so sick of being …ugly…. Why do I have to look revolting? Why can’t I be beautiful like you were at my age?” She stood silent again and stared at her mother’s reflection, seeing a small tear developing, as if her mother felt the pain Legend was enduring with great echoes that reminded her of her crying. “The reason why I don’t like to go to school is because the girls there are mean to me…. They call me names and I don’t even know why….” Legend moved her glossy, red eyes to her own reflection. “I’m just so sick of having to put up with hearing those names called to me. They hate me. They actually hate me because I…look like this.” Her mother walked up to her, but hesitated from hugging Legend, as if her drunkenness delayed her motherly reaction and forced her not to hug her at that instance.