Her name was Scarlet and there were certain things she knew and didn’t know. She was six years old. She did not have red hair. She did not know what her favorite color was and she did not think anyone liked her. Her middle name was Red because her father thought it was funny, and she supposed that was why her mother was gone. Her mother, Lucy, probably didn’t appreciate her father’s kind of humor, even though Scarlet thought it was quite charming and she loved it. Her father quoted her mother a lot, and that’s how she knew he still loved her. Well, that and also the fact that one bright morning, when she had been playing in the attic with her dolls, she found his pictures of her mother.
Scarlet wasn’t even supposed to be in the attic, because the one rule her father specified was the “attic-is-off-limits” rule. But her father had been out at the hardware store looking for roofing nails, and Scarlet had stumbled upon the attic door hidden in the back of the hallway closet. There hadn’t been much up there, just a couple of suitcases and a silvery box with cursive font spelling out L-U-C-Y. In there she’d found her mother’s pictures, and Scarlet spent hours staring at her mother’s face. That’s how Scarlet came to know that her mother had red, red hair and green eyes and skin so pale you might mistaken her as a piece of fine porcelain. Scarlet herself often thought her mother’s picture perfect skin really was the skin of a china doll. Scarlet had been so entranced by her mother’s seeming presence that one afternoon, when her father was out grocery shopping, she investigated his closet for her mother’s clothing and found three different dresses: one green, one pink, and one white. She’d asked him when he returned what the dresses was for and he said he’d bought them thinking they would look good on Scarlet when she turned seventeen. But she knew he was lying, because his mouth was shaped like a pear and when his mouth went into pear mode, he was always lying.
Scarlet knew her mother had a beautiful voice that sounded like ice cream and pudding sliding through the mind. There was a tape inside the silvery box too labelled simply as “Lucy singing” with the date in slipping handwriting she couldn’t read. The next time her father went to the grocery store, Scarlet tip-toed into his office to place the tape on the gaping tongue of the tape player, and watch as the spirals unwound, her mother’s voice slowly winding into the room. It made her unexpectedly empty to hear the lovely voice singing alone in the silence, so plain and bare that she reached for someone’s hand to hold. Her tiny fingers closed around the emptiness of the room and she started to cry, because it seemed to her that her father was always gone. She had too many toys made for sharing and not a single person to share it with. Her name was Scarlet and she was lonely.
Once she asked the kindergarten teacher what color scarlet was. The teacher looked to the clock and Scarlet heard the seconds tick by as she watched the smile piece itself together on her teacher’s face. When the smile was finally aimed down at her, it was so tired and machine like that she almost took a step backwards. Still sporting her strained smile, the teacher told her to ask her parents about it since they must have an interesting story for such a dear little girl. Then, the teacher ushered Scarlet back to her seat, reminding her not to interrupt class or ask unrelated questions or bother the teacher with Scarlet’s personal life. Her fingernails dug into Scarlet’s spine. By the end of the day, three buck toothed boys had worked hard to find the ugliest colors possible to label “scarlet”. They thrust the papers at her as she walked through the door after class, giggling madly, while the girls around her glared at her, whispering and pointing at her lopsided ponytails and mismatched clothes. Scarlet tried to wear something acceptable and comb her hair each morning, but her wispy hair only slid out of her short fingers and her father never noticed when her clothes became too small. Thus she had come to the conclusion that nobody liked her, for the boys were forever making fun of her and the girls looked down on her shabby appearance. She wanted to be as beautiful as her mother. She stared up at the sky and wished on the star-shaped cloud drifting across the universe. Dear Mr. Cloud, I would like to have china doll skin and long red hair and big green eyes. Also some pretty dresses. She crossed her fingers and thought harder. P.S., I hope Daddy plays with me and I also hope to get a mother for Christmas. It’s okay if I can’t be beautiful but I would really, really, really like a mother. Please tell Santa. Love, Scarlet.
