A Portrait of a Forgettable Young Woman

By : Jericah Helios

 

      Standing at the edge of the gate’s boundaries, she stood there watching the rain fall softly to the concrete covered school grounds. Rebellious wisps of her half-brown, half black hair framed a pale, if forgettable face. Bottomless brown eyes reluctantly peeked out from behind a pair of comically large eye glasses, reflecting the threadlike strands of rain that fell softly in front of her. These eyeglasses settled upon a regrettably non-European nose, which in turn hovered over a down-turned mouth. Unevenly cut hair fell about her face in a haphazard manner. Two brilliantly blue stones shone from her earlobes, the only spot of color amongst the brown and black. Overall, she looked as she was supposed to be. A young woman of Malay origin lost in the midst of American and European layers.

     

Her uniform, not neat, not messy, hung about her artificially. She looked ill at ease wearing them and the uniform looked ill at ease at being worn by her. They merely stayed together out of necessity. Dangling from her neck was a pathetic excuse for an ID card. The tips of the bottom edges were jagged. A reproduction of her face was on the card as well, and her name was blazoned in blocky black letters, last name, first name, middle initial. Her student number was half-erased. The largest pair of letters was below all that, and it was simply “IV” four.

     

From her short sleeved blouse sprung a pair of pale arms, like those of one who had rarely gone out to the sun. Big bones surrounded by soft flesh, they ended in equally soft, childish hands that looked like they have never worked. One pale underside of her lower arm hid ghosts of long gashes, and nearer to the wrist, a cut no older than a few weeks. Almost hypocritically, around her wrists she wore a bracelet rosary, on the other, a watch that ticked ceaselessly. The short hand just at the two, the long hand almost at the one. Two oh five in the afternoon and the rain fell down harder.

     

From her skirts peeked out two socked human feet, wearing a pair of shoes not too unlike the shoes worn by the witches of old. The tips were frayed from being dragged instead of properly walking. The socks were regulation ones, barely so, but regulation nonetheless.

     

She stood there for a few more moments. So did the rain fall. And when it showed no signs of stopping, she went back to the bench and began to write in the notebook again.

 

The End