Chrysalis
Every three years, I crack my head open and almost die.
When I was three, I tripped and hit my head on a rock, the only rock for miles. I unconsciously fingered the thick, uneven scar above my right ear, under my hair. That was the worst one. The other two scars were hard to feel, but if you parted my hair just right, you could see them, thin white lines criss-crossing my skull. At six, I fell down the stairs. At nine, I was thrown from a horse.
Each time, I was saved in the nick of time or from the brink of death. Clumsy, they called me. Accident-prone.
To me, it felt like destiny.
They were right, though. I am clumsy, have always been awkward, unsteady on my legs that always seemed to belong to someone else. I've never been able to make my body move the way I wanted it to, graceful and light, deliberate. I felt more like the hippos in Fantasia, which was pretty much what I looked like in ballet class. The other girls wafted and lilted around me, while I clomped around in my tutu.
By twelve, it had only gotten worse. Now, I'm not just awkward and clumsy; I'm awkward and clumsy with acne and braces and boobs too small for a real bra, but too big to just wear a shirt without ridicule. Bad enough having parts of my head shaved so much of my life, I thought as I pedaled my ten-speed home from school. Billy Morton had asked if I had a brain tumor.
I wondered if it would happen again this year, and if this time, they couldn't save me. That thought almost thrilled me. Death petrified me though, which was ironic, considering how close I had come so many times. Maybe that was why. I never found out what was next, not even a hint.
I pedaled harder down Kay Street, coasting downhill, sticking close to the sidewalk, listening for passing cars. The red brick Viking Hotel loomed in front of me.
I looked both ways before gliding across Bellevue Avenue, checking for cars flying around the corner. I pedaled hard up the small incline before coming to a stop at the light at Memorial Boulevard.
You'd think my parents would have kept me in some protective bubble after all my brushes with death, but they didn't, at least not obsessively. I wasn't the type to tempt fate needlessly—I didn't need to go skydiving or bungee-jumping; I could get hurt just walking. My body didn't need help to betray me.
I turned onto tree-lined Berkeley Avenue, relaxing at the empty road. Cars lined both sides due to limited parking, but I was scanning for moving ones. At the last second, I saw the car door open right in front of my bike. I braced for impact and closed my eyes as my body soared in slow motion over my handlebars, my head hitting the pavement.
All went black.
When I came to, I thought, not again. But the perspective was all wrong. I could see my body, lying in the road, blood soaking the concrete in an irregular pool, but I was standing in my head. Recognizing I wasn't in my body animated me, and I found myself floating upwards. A golden light pulsed all around me, and I realized that it was me.
There was no one around to save me this time, despite being one street from home.
I'm dead, I thought, and waited for the panic to start.
But the opposite happened.
A giddiness overwhelmed me and as I giggled, I discovered I was flying, that I had wings. And not just wings, but iridescent, gossamer wings of many colors that shimmered in the light. Effortlessly, I did an aerial somersault and had never felt so . . . me.
I gazed down at my body, still and growing colder, and realized that it was never mine, that I didn't belong in it. Gone was the awkwardness, the clumsiness. This was my true form, I knew, even as a call began, deep in the core of everything I was. A call to find my real family, where I truly belonged.
A call home.
~
Kaitlyn Downing—part fairy, part mermaid, and part cat—spends most of her time in her pool or her garden in Florida with her four cats when she's not teaching English. Her work has most recently appeared in Hemlock, 34 Orchard and Inkstains, among others.
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