Goodbye Melody
Fiction by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia
Last night I saw Melody.
You remember Melody, don’t you? Or not; she belongs to a time that was years and years ago, when we were the sort of little children who used to pretend we didn’t still play with dolls.
After seeing her I went home and looked for the only picture I had with her in it, one of those little class photos they take every year during grade school. My mother had dutifully preserved all of mine in an album, so that by quickly flipping a few pages you could watch as sweet children of four aged crookedly into adolescence.
We were so pretty you and I. Perhaps it was only nostalgia, but in the picture everyone seemed pretty, even the ugly ones, even Melody. There was I (white cotton dress shrunk hopelessly in the wash) and there was you (with the shiny red shoes I silently coveted that whole entire year). And, separated from us by two rows of feral cherubs, who seemed to think that smiling was simply an aggressive exposure of the teeth, there was Melody. Poor sad-sack Melody.
You know, I miss you now that you are not here, for we used to have our own coded language, a language built up from a childhood of shouted whispers and imagined persecution and not-so-secret secrets. I miss you, especially every time I look a person up and down and declare them to be a Melody. No one ever knows what I’m talking about, and I am always forced to explain that Melody was the girl who cried during dodgeball if the ball so much as rolled in her direction. And though they understand the reference (who had a childhood without a Melody?) it is never quite the same as if you were here to sneer with me.
Now that I think about it, what I really remember is how she used to cry and cry and cry. Of course, once she made the mistake of exposing this curious tick we never casually passed the ball to her again. No, we whipped it at her face, arms, shoulders, thorax, tibia; places I couldn’t yet name, but could certainly target. The nape of her neck, I seem to remember, was of particular concern to her. She would keep her hands protectively crossed over it, her elbows raised so that she looked like a flightless bird, as the ball arced towards her in an easy slope. Do you know I had forgotten until just now that we used to make a game of it; ten points for the face, one hundred for the neck? I do not remember who the all-time champion was, except that it was neither you nor me. I think it was that tall boy with the glasses who later moved to Australia (you must not forget to tell me his name if you can recall it).
But heartless as we were, I think we might have forgiven her pigeonish stupidity during gym if it had not been for my pen. Even if you have forgotten Melody, I am sure you still remember the pen. That gleaming source of so much trouble which belonged to my father and carried a special weight because it was made of real gold. I used to watch with envy as he signed his name to cheques, its glimmer and lustre inspiring my lust much in the way that dumb beasts covet tinfoil. It was always a special occasion when he let me hold it in my little hands, letting me feel its solid mass on my palms before he took it away, tucking it safely back into its case. I knew, even back then, that I was too young, too stupid, too careless, to own such a beautiful thing. But I wanted it and I took it and, as you no doubt remember, I inevitably lost sight of the thing the way careless children inevitably do.
One of my clearest memories from childhood is from that time. You comforting me outside the gates of the school because the pen had been stolen is one of my dearest memories of us together.
I will always be grateful for the fact that you never questioned whether or not Melody really took it. My word was enough for you, and my word was certainly enough for me, for I felt, with something less like intuition and more like rabid faith, that Melody had taken it.
I think the searches began sometime after that. It seems to stretch out forever in my mind, a time unceasing where we (not just you and me, but a crowd of now faceless others) pinned Melody to the wall before class and rifled through her things.
As children we already had the strangest ideas of justice. I distinctly remember you encouraging me to take things as compensation for the gold pen: tin pencil coffers, candy, and a beautiful fifty-plus pack of Crayola crayons. And because I was generous I used to take things for you and the others too. I have a funny memory of you choosing a peridot crayon out of my (Melody’s?) crayon box which you kept in your pocket and used to absentmindedly lick from time to time, forgetting that the sunny lemon shade did not correspond to the sweetness of rock candy, but to the bitter taste of wax.
It was possibly around the time that I confiscated the crayons that we discovered the pen. It had, ridiculously enough, fallen into a hole in the lining of my book bag. Being judicious I called a secret council (do you remember?) which we held over a feast of juice and crackers, scribbling in our illiterate children’s scrawl the different points for and against continuing the searches. I do not remember all the things we wrote at that silly summit, but I do remember that we decided that the searches should not stop. After all, it was only dumb luck that I had discovered the pen mid-semester and not during summer, or some later far-off time when Melody was not right there in front of us. Melody, taunting us with her blank face and her endless store of crayons and markers which seemed to hold hostage within their plastic confines all the colours of the world.
That awful face. If I think about it, it is really a wonder that I managed to remember her last night after so much time had passed. Most of the time we spent with her as children we were rifling through her things and I never troubled myself to look up and see the dull dun of her face. I can remember the way she used to suck on her hair, or the awkward elbow wings she made, but her face.
The only time I ever remember really looking at her face was the time we pushed her down the stairs. Tumbling backwards, utterly graceless, the arc of her back as she went curving over each step; yes, that was the only time her mushroom face ever took on any expression. We all saw, we all knew, that though it seemed impossible that the moment would end, it was only a matter of time before she shattered to the floor. I believe I laughed before she landed because of the way her arms flailed about for the rail or a balustrade or even a helping hand. What a heartless young girl I was to find the humour as her legs flew up into the air, her eyes and mouth rounded in surprise as gravity pulled her mercilessly down.
You know, I do not understand why we were never punished, for we were such bad little girls. I understand why no one ever told; they hated her. And I never told because I would have done anything for you, as you would have for me. What I will never understand is why she never told. I suppose it would have made little difference anyway since by then her parents had decided to pull her out of our school. Secretly though, I always felt if such a thing had been done to me (though who would have dared!) I would have screamed the guilty party’s name over and over and not rested till their breast had been emblazoned with a blood-red P for pusher.
I do confess I felt a tiny twinge of something when I heard that she was leaving school. I had become so fond of those crayons and, not knowing when or where I would get a fresh supply, I regretted giving so many away (though not to you, never to you).
Do you know, out of all the stupid, silly things we did together I can never remember why we did that? We must have been very angry I think, but I can’t remember why.
I could not stop staring at her as she was walking down the street last night and at first I did not understand. Then her ankle twisted and her arms spread wide as she fought for balance. Her mouth made a tiny pink o of surprise and I knew who she was. She did not go down this time.
I raised my hand to wave at her and then thought better of it. You will be interested to know that she is very tall now, and even somewhat pretty looking, though of course, she still walks with a limp. »