Cherub

Have you ever just lain in bed without sleeping? I mean really just laid there. Not sleeping or even just resting with your eyes closed but just laid there, awake and restless, just waiting for the next day. On the last day of my seventeenth year, I just laid, captivated by the pewter of the chirping crickets, the deep browns of the sounds of a croaking frog near my window and the soft greens of the cool breezes moving in and out of my open windows. Well, it was more so lazily flopping around than it was just laying. My old four poster bed creaked with every lazy flop. Though they very slowly were, it was hard to believe that the few remaining moments of my childhood where slipping through the cracks of the present to fall in the abyss that was the past. Who was I? Who was Cherub Wilkes? I thought, am I just a girl who loves old records, poetry and painting? Am I just my freckles and my curly hair? I couldn’t help reflecting on my childhood years. For seventeen, almost eighteen years I had lived a quiet life in mostly rural Louisiana in the small house I was born in with no company but my mother and our fat cat named Erwin (after my grandpa whom he shared an uncanny resemblance) I was home schooled, never had any friends except Erwin of course and hardly even left my mother’s land other than to go to the small town about half a mile away that was barely a town and sure while I had changed, my small featureless body while still small has shifted and taken on a different shape marked by soft subtle curves, my dark hair had gotten longer but I hardly felt any other changes at all. I was still lonely, still uninteresting, still Cherub.

I had never experienced any terrible sadness or great happiness, no adventure, no surprise, no hate and no love. That was the day when I felt it. The feeling had grown like a melon inside my stomach, nurtured by years of isolation, curiosity and just plain feeling like a loser. It was time for a change, a great adventure and I wasn’t going to let the time go to waste. My alarm clock began to ring, bright lemon yellow, causing Erwin who had been softly snoring on the very top, to leap off of the large stack of suitcases that have doubled as my wardrobe (since an accident ten years previous involving a dozen chicken eggs) and sprint into my closet. He had ran so quickly that the gleaming new beams of morning sun barely lit his stripy brown fur. It was 7:33 a.m., May 29th, the time of my birth 18 years previous, and its 18th anniversary. I sat up in my bed. Nope, it still didn’t feel different.

“Oh, happy birthday, bumblebee!” my mother walked into my room, carefully avoiding the various items of clothing, books, and records strewn all across the floor. She held a cake with sparking candles and there was a mirror tucked under her arm. “I can’t believe that it’s been eighteen years!”she placed the caked on my lap, It was mint green with bubbly red piping, it’s silvery, metallic cracks and pops had filled the room with sound, and it’s sparks illuminated my light yellow striped quilt and the floral wallpaper, on the top, it read HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHERUB with big boxy letters. “18 years ago you were born! Oh, you were such a tiny thing! My tiny little angel, my little cherub.” My mother smiled, a smile mirroring the one that had widened on my own face, down to the tiny, barely noticeable gap that we both had between our two front teeth.

She was still in her signature green plaid night gown, and her dark hair was in pink sponge rollers. Even though time had shown on her tanned face, she was still beautiful to me. Her mouth and eyes were framed by all the laughs and good times we had together and each freckle marked one of the many hours we had spent in the sun, drinking tea and daydreaming. Oh how I love her. Looking back, I don’t feel awful. I just feel awful for not feeling awful. Still, if anyone were to understand my actions following that morning of my 18th birthday, it would be my mother. “Mom, help me blow out the candles!” we blew in unison as hard as we could and extinguished the persistently burning candles. I wished that my mom would forgive me for what I was going to do. I hoped that she had made a wish too, maybe for a hot tub or that new record player we had seen on TV that played your records and stored them for you. She slowly took the mirror she had been holding under her arm and held it up to my face. I looked at my own brown skin, big curls, and freckles. My own dark eyes stared back. “Now when you look in the mirror… you’ll see a woman” she said. I didn’t think I looked any more like a woman than I did the day before. There was no knowing look hidden in my eyes, no expression of maturity, just same old Cherub. Still, I kept smiling for her sake. My reflection kept smiling back, perhaps for mine.