The Authentic Eclectic
Now That You Know
This wet, salty thing that she held in her hands could have been strung on a wire for a necklace. Or stretched between telephone poles to make a globular, shimmering bird. She wiped it on her jeans.
“You did not know this?” The voice was gentle.
“I knew.” Because the cat had been there since she was born, and last year it was gone. Besides, it was in movies and books and adults talked about it sometimes. But that was alright for other people, or distant relatives; and it was sort of alright for animals, too. Not for sisters.
The androgynous person in the wide-brimmed hat was a stranger. They had inserted themselves in the interval between the hospital staff and her parents. “Give her some time alone,” somebody had said.
But she wasn’t alone. She was with this strange old person.
“So now that you know,” they replied, as though her answer had been its opposite, “what will you do?”
She stared at them, lip trembling, fighting back another bawling fit. But there was something about this stranger that comforted her. It was almost a kind of aura, a cocoon. “Do?”
They wiped a tear from her cheek and brought it to their lips, then blew on it gently. It inflated like a rainbow bubble until it was larger than her head. They gave it a hard puff to send it bobbing into the air.
She gasped. “How did you do that?” Her eyes followed the mysterious motions of her tear, and its reflection in the mirror.
“What will you do?” they said.
“I’m not going to do anything,” she sighed exasperatedly, kicking a leg. “I’m gonna go home and play with Nell’s toys and hog the TV and it won’t matter and everything sucks.”
“Oh, no,” they said with a secretive smile. “No, no. You can’t do that, now that you know.”
She stared at them. Their eyes were somewhere between brown and blue. It wouldn’t manifest.
“People go to great trouble to learn what you know now. So young.”
“What’s the good in knowing that? So I’ll be like Nell someday. So what? Am I supposed to not go to school anymore or something?”
