[LJ Idol Season 20] Week 1: Open Topic - Ghost of a girl

[strryeyedgrrl]

There's a memory I have that is mine, but it doesn't make any sense.

I am between the ages of 8-11. I can't be sure, exactly, but that time period seems about right. I'm small, but not too small. It's before puberty makes me chubby. It's when I still run outside and play in the mud, before all I want to do is hide inside with books and I'm worried about what other people will think of me.

I'm sitting at a table in a woman's living room, but it might also be her dining room table. She lives in an apartment. Apartments fascinate me because I've never lived in one and I won't live in one until I'm in my 20's. This apartment may be on a golf course overlooking a water feature. It might also overlook Surprise Lake. I remember water and green outside the sliding glass door that led to her balcony. I have the foggy recollection of this apartment being in Milton, which was just up the hill from where we lived when I was that age. Surprise Lake Village was at the top of Jovita Hill where there was a Pay 'N Save and a video store and a Ben Franklin crafts. All of those things seem adjacent to the memory, like they existed around the space where I was.

Sometimes when we'd go up Jovita Boulevard, leading from our home in the country valley to the services we needed at the top of the hill, my mom would remind us that one of the Green River Killer's victims was found there. It's the reason we weren't allowed to camp in the back yard. Sometimes I wonder if I should have known this. But I am a child of the 80s and of Western Washington, and we are in the golden age of serial killers and missing children. There's a McGruff House sign on our window designating us as a safe place for kids outrunning a would-be captor. My mom has a vast library of Ann Rule novels.

Anyway, I'm sitting at this table with this woman in a chair beside me. I know her, but not well. She's not family. She's maybe a school employee, possibly a counselor. I feel like my mom knows her, which might make sense since my mom works at my elementary school.  I'm not afraid of her, but I hold no significant memory of her or even what she looks like. I think my memory chooses to paint her in the stereotypical 90s schoolteacher "pixie" cut, wearing an embroidered vest and a turtleneck. She has questions for me, possibly some kind of a test.

I'm used to tests. This isn't uncommon. Gifted placement tests. I took the SAT in the fourth grade. I tested at a college reading level when I was equally as young. I placed high on the now defunct Test of Standard Written English. I was selected to test for Johns Hopkins programs. I was smart, but never quite smart enough. I didn't get chosen a lot. It took me until middle school to secure a space in the gifted program.

The point is, being tested isn't strange. I like tests. Tests are tangible. They give you results. Sometimes they reward you. Full marks on a test or a quiz gets praise. Sometimes test results mean you're chosen. I want to be chosen. I want praise. I want to be seen. Sometimes I feel like I can only be seen if I test well. If I perform well. Then I'm worth seeing and praising and choosing. I like the data of testing, I like the analytics that rank and sort and give insight. It's factual and material and real. It's not like emotions and opinions, which always seem a little out of grasp for me, incorporeal and abstract. Later in life, I'll like lab results and numbers, but I won't like math. I will like analyzing data to make sense out of nothingness.
 

What I don't know, though, is why I'm being tested or what for. It's possible I knew then, but I don't remember now. The memory feels like tissue paper between my fingers - flimsy and see-through. Am I remembering correctly? Is this a dream that I've somehow breathed life into over the years? I don't think so, but there's so little about it to make it feel wholly real. I barely remember my mother leaving me there or how long I was at the table. I don't remember what the woman asked me or how I was tested - was it written or oral? What topics were there? What was the end result going to be, what reward would I get at the end?

I don't speak to my mother any more. That's a post for another time, if ever. I could ask my dad, but I can almost hear the inflection, the modulation, the tone of his voice as he tells me that he doesn't remember, that my mother was in charge of those things, that he was always working. I don't speak to my sister either, but she would have been too young to know. It may remain a mystery, I don't know. I have a million possible theories, from mundane IQ testing to some kind of CPS interview. Maybe it was an autism assessment. Maybe it was therapy. Maybe I was weird in a time when girls weren't supposed to be weird and someone wanted to know why.

I like to look outside myself at this memory and think that somewhere, there is a ghost of a girl in an apartment living room. She's looking out over the water and the deep green of the Doug firs and the bigleaf maples. She's got knobby knees and off brand sneakers. Brown hair that her mom tucks behind her ears to "train" it. 

She's probably just trying to please. 

She just wants to be seen.

Comments

[humanbeansradio]

I lived in Sedro Woolley during the Green River Killer's heyday... i was 20 and it was a weird time... anyway...

I really love the honesty and authenticity of this piece. There is a clarification in its fuzziness. I certainly relate to the always being tested thing and it all blurring together... good work! Thanks for sharing!

[penpusher]

We probably all have some memory that we're not sure about, somehow. I don't believe in "The Mandela Effect" as a legitimate concept, but this doesn't even fit that, since it's a personal remembrance.

There's probably some way of clarifying the memory... self hypnosis, regression therapy, something like that. I think so, because you have a lot of details surrounding it. I like to shout "it's in there!" when I'm having trouble remembering a name or event, occasionally... because "as soon as I hear it, I'll say, 'YES!'" and that might be the case with this, for you.

Maybe it's just another test! Thanks for the excursion up your hill.

[strryeyedgrrl]

The "YES!" moment was real when I was writing this and I remembered the McGruff House sign. I had to Google for it and sure enough, there was the one I remember being taped to the inside of our front window.

[penpusher]

Take a bite out of mind!

[pixiebelle]

Memories are so weird like this. I’ve pieced some together eventually, but others are just random images in my head. I remember once going somewhere with my cousins, and our parents went inside a house while we had to stay outside for a long time. It’s seemingly mundane but I really want to know why we were all there. It feels important, yet not at the same time. So I get it.

[muchtooarrogant]

It's interesting, while you were describing this I was thinking, "H'm, I wonder if it was an IQ test?" And then you suggested that as a possibility yourself! (grin) So, that one, I pick that one! :)

The image you described at the end feels very poignant, but it also seems like you could do a lot with it as an author. Why does this ghost exist? Or, maybe she's not a ghost, but another version of you that got stuck there somehow. Two versions of you, each out there doing different things, living different lives. :)

Cool entry.

Dan

[strryeyedgrrl]

The IQ test theory is the one I land on the most often because it makes sense that I didn't end up knowing the outcome - or, at least, remembering it. They don't usually give kids their IQ number to avoid identity building and anxiety around intellectual performance. Joke's on them! I already had built an identity around it! :D

[thephantomq]

Oof. She just wants to be seen, indeed. I know what that's like -- and tests were a great way to be seen.

I love the tone of this. The way it doesn't feel 100% real and solid -- like a lot of flimsy memories. But it has that bite of realness, too.

[hafnia]

I could picture where this happened — doesn't hurt that I'm familiar with the area :)

Really lovely, and the last line is a gut punch.

[drippedonpaper]

Hugs. Vague memories are odd. I have some too, and did they happen? All of us remember so differently.

I am glad you are in Idol. We see you!!

[bsgsix]

I truly understand the notion of memory, and the feeling of "I KNOW this happened, but what, and when, and how" - especially when you don't have someone to confirm it. Just like you, I don't speak to my mother at all; I had to protect my sanity. But in doing so, I lost memory as well.

This is a very honest, authentic, and emotional piece. I was a G&T kid who took tests far too early; I'm haunted by the girl I once was, who still wants to be perfect because that was expected. And my gods, "She just wants to be seen" is SO very heart-wrenching. That is a line that strikes my heart; I feel it. I know it.

Thank you for sharing something so open and honest. I really enjoyed your writing style here, and how very realistic this is. <3

[simplyn2deep]

This felt so haunting in such a quiet way. I love how the memory itself becomes almost a character; there are all these incredibly specific details around it, like the water outside, the stores nearby, the imagined pixie haircut and embroidered vest, but the actual reason for being there remains completely out of reach. Describing the memory as “tissue paper” was such a perfect image for that feeling.

But what really got me was the realization that the mystery of the test almost becomes secondary to what this memory reveals about that little girl. She liked tests because they offered something concrete: do well, receive praise, maybe get chosen. And then the ending strips all of that away until there’s just this little girl with her knobby knees and off-brand sneakers who wants someone to see her. “She’s probably just trying to please. She just wants to be seen.” OOF. That landed.

[adoptedwriter]

The memory like tissue paper…. Perfect!

[gardeningatnight]

I have a lot of these sorts of memories -- oddly specific in some ways, but also incredibly vague. Too precise for what ultimately feels like an inconsequential moment.

Also, I was a Johns Hopkins program kid. As a teen, it was probably my only real experience of feeling a sense of belonging.

[inchoatewords]

I have some memories like this as well, so very relatable. I really liked your descriptions in this piece.

[shadaras]

I love how many details you include, because they make the questions between the remembered elements all the more haunting. <3

(also, huge mood on being so used to tests at a young age and the feeling of simply trying to do well and be seen since that's how the world has decided one can be seen...)

[tonithegreat]

It is interesting how much of an impression those kinds of tests leave! I feel like my own kids probably had different, higher-pressure impressions than yours, which sound similar to mine. I remember McGruff too! Dogs and detectives were two of my favorite things throughout elementary school. There was a test administered to my girls as pre-Ks, I remember, that was part of the application process for the lab school that they are now about to graduate from. Now those kinds of tests and surveys are probably more fun for them because at a lab school they have even more regular exposure to them.

[ofearthandstars]

One of the things I think about sometimes is a bit I read years ago about how every recall of a memory changes it in some way. Which makes me question, well, everything I think I know about myself.

I can relate to being the kid who wanted to please. I was terrible in the social arena, and so for me, getting good marks or testing well gave me the approval that I craved. Not to mention, my dad accidentally engrained some super-high pressure educational expectations for me at a young age that added to it, because Dad's approval was the most important approval back then.

In short, I see 8-11 year old you. I get it. ♥

[halfshellvenus]

This was an interesting way of establishing a lot of your childhood background!

I'm from an era where there were no "gifted" classes, though my grade school in Salem had some accommodations. There was a classroom assistant in 2nd grace who helped us with advanced math and reading (allowing us to go at a faster pace), and I was allowed access to the whole school library in 3rd grade, which really helped. Portland offered less than that. I was usually just grateful if the teacher would let me read books during class. :O

[krispykritter]

I really enjoyed your entry. Dealing with being tested because of differences, whether it be being gifted, on the spectrum or other things can give you answers. It also can be stressful. Thanks for this and maybe someday this memory will gain clarity.

[poppetawoppet]

I have such distinct memories of things I can’t possibly remember because I’ve heard the stories a million times and my brain has translated it into memory.

[imafarmgirl]

It's interesting how we can have memories we aren't sure about but we know they happened and that they probably attered for some reason.

[mstrobel]

Loved this. I have those fragments of memories that don’t make sense too, and that’s a fascinating thing to think about.