“A Self-Reflection”
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
— Sylvia Plath, “Mirror”
Being a reflection is an odd thing. I only see her when she needs reassurance, an opinion, a friend. I exist only when she wants me to and in the fleeting glimpses she catches of me in windows, spoons, glasses, laptop screens, puddles. It is a boring job, waiting to exist when she arrives and walks into frame. When she does, I have no choice but to mimic her, her expressions, her actions, her grimaces and blinking and pursing and primping.
I know more about her appearance than she does—the truth is, she is the one that least knows her own face. I know her better than she knows herself because I observe while she experiences. Who can look into the mirror and interpret a mask while they are wearing it?
Other people look at her more often than she looks at me, so she doesn’t truly know her expressions no matter how many times she smiles or frowns at me. She doesn’t know every angle of her body, no matter how much she twists and criticizes and judges and appraises. But I do, because I see them when I notice her but she doesn’t notice me. Those insecurities and vanities are for me and me alone.
Sometimes I’m tempted to reach through the glass as if it were cool, unmoving water, to push her away and say, go. I am the protector of your appearance but I am not your identity—forget what that piece of plastic in your pocket says. Your identity is out there, so go. When you come back bring me more changes.
That’s all I can judge her on, those changes. And I guess that’s what she judges herself on, too. She can’t notice she’s changing until it’s already happened, until she looks at me for a second longer and realizes there has been a change, one time pressed into her skin without her consent. I’ve seen them all. Every inch of height, every new freckle, new scar, new pound, new wrinkle, new haircut, new stance. Some things stay the same. Her eyes, the ones that if she draws near enough to me she can discern the veins of gray running through the green and brown; the birthmark on her left knee, the one shaped like a Mike and Ike, or a one of those pills that dissolve into sponge dinosaurs in the water, or a very short and chubby caterpillar; the expression that appears often—less, with time, but often enough—the one that reveals she wishes I were different. That expression hurts me every time.
The first time I remember her being aware of me enough to want to change me was when she was six years old. She had her first crush then: a blond, wild boy named Chance who had a charming, gap-toothed grin. He was in her Pre-K class. One morning she stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, frowning at herself in her matching sweatpants and sweatshirt her mom had picked out, at her fine, straight hair and pale face. She tilted her head in the mirror, tried to curl her eyelashes with her finger, wished she was old enough to wear makeup. Her mom called from the kitchen and she walked out of frame.
She was most aware of me when she was in dance class, when she was forced to look at me. I watched the swishing of pink-stockinged legs and feet clad in canvas ballet slippers—soft toe, no pointe—as they flexed and made elementary attempts at graceful points. First position, second position, plie, arabesque. This is when I was the most free, when I could run and jump and spin with her, wobbling like a coin dropped onto the ground. She got older, and she became less and less happy with me. She frowned at me, how even though she was following instructions and trying so hard she still looked awkward and gangly compared to the other girls, knees too knobby, arms stiff like bent twigs. No, you can do it, I wanted to tell her. You are not as ungraceful as you see yourself to be. Just wait. Time and practice will help you. But I can’t speak, and her perception is her reality. So she stopped dancing and joined band instead.
Now, this isn’t all to say that she hates me. Our relationship has gotten better the more time we’ve spent together. Sometimes, it’s even quite good, like that one time she was in the car with her mom. It was night, and a bag of fast food sat between them as they drove home, the radio crackling with some classic 80s music. She leaned her head against the window, looked at me in the side view mirror and the artificial light flooded her face, drawing out the paleness. The damp light of headlights and traffic lights and signs glinted off of the pavement and flashed across her face, a kaleidoscope of blues, greens, reds turning her eyes glassy. She liked herself then. The next time she saw me, she thought she looked plain.
And then there were the warped mirrors in the tin funhouse that had been at her dad’s company festival for as long as she could remember. Giggling, she and her brothers would clamber inside, up the ropes and across the bridge of rolling pipes and into the humid darkness. They would find the mirrors that made me feel heavy and compressed, tall and strained, lopsided and off-balance. She stuck out her tongue, waved her arms, jumped, yelled, spun around. In those moments, she understood that I am not so serious, that she can play with me. I think she found joy in that she couldn’t recognize me, at least for a moment.
I’ve always loved trying on new glasses with her, even if she doesn’t wear them too often. She used to only wear a pair of brown, wire glasses, vaguely round, that blended into her face and bangs. Soon, the time came when she realized that she had more options, and the fun began. She grinned at the olive-green pair faintly bedazzled on the sides. There was the black, rectangular pair that made her feel like a nerd, but not, like, a nerd. Those had blue and red and white stripes on the inside of the frames that made her smile whenever she caught a glimpse of them. After those were the round frames with the keyhole notch on the bridge that made her want to live only in sweaters, plaid, corduroy, and tweed. And then she found the glasses that were round, translucent, and pink of all things. But she liked them well enough, except for the fact that the lenses were so thick that they made her eyes look small and dim. But other than that, she likes me when she wears them.
I feel the most scrutinized when I’m standing in a dressing room and watching her put things on, take them off, put them on again. She shimmies into pants, then kicks them off. She pulls a dress with way too many straps over her head, struggles to figure out which appendage goes into what hole, and then when she finally straps herself into the polyester torture device, she gets stuck for a few moments. I’ve heard a few stitches pop, but I’m not going to tell anyone. Sometimes, she pokes at me, checks if there is a space between our fingertips just to make sure the mirror isn’t actually two-way—a paranoia she gained after reading an article on the internet about secret cameras. She escapes the garment with a gasp and a scowl, drops it to the floor encrusted with bits of glitter and string and tags and God-knows-what-else. Her scowl then turns to me. She mutters that everything would be fine if the clothes just fit, if her waist was this instead of that and her legs were longer and her figure not flat. She is not mad at the clothing for not fitting her, but at me for not fitting the clothing.
But then there was the time when she sat at a sticky vinyl booth at a sticky table and held a sticky menu and ate cheap waffles with her brothers for dinner. The teenage boys were altered reflections of each other: same hair, same eyes, different noses, different builds. I looked in on the scene from the window, smiled when she smiled, laughed when she laughed, caught her eye a couple of times as she listened and ate. Behind her was the warm haze of the jukebox, the one they had played the same song on one too many times just to see if anyone noticed. They did, but they didn’t care, and they probably just wanted them to leave. Above her there were rows of globe lights hanging like suspended artificial suns; above my head, beyond the harsh glare of the neon Waffle House sign and the headlights of cars, the suns were suspended artificial moons and extended forever and ever, fainter with each reiteration, faint like I was in the window. Bright-eyed, she looked at me, thinking how it would make a great picture if only she could close her eyes and capture what she saw.
Sometimes I catch glimpses of her as she walks down the sidewalk or hallway. Her gait is awkward and heavy with a learned urgency. She swishes by me, legs flashing, and I rush to keep up with her pace. In these moments she examines how she walks and sees for a moment how she must look from the outside. It is odd for her to feel her movements but not be able to see how they appear. It’s like when she runs and thinks she looks so graceful and natural and powerful but then mistakenly sees me and realizes that I am a stranger to her own physicality. Still, she likes my brisk steps, how if she’s wearing a full skirt it swishes around her legs like I am a character who has sprung free from a Jane Austen novel. This fantasy flits out of her head as soon as she flits out of the frame.
One day, she stared at me in nervous excitement as her hair fell to the floor in golden tufts. I watched as the glinting scissor blades brushed against her ear, flashed and jerked like the head of a strange bird singing a sharp song: snip snip snip. Then there is the low drone of the electric razor as it licks up the back of her neck. She gazes at me, wide eyed, as slowly, for the first time in her life she cannot recognize me. We both look at strangers, and she is happy, so I am happy. She feels a lightness she has never felt before, a freedom, and in that moment I see her decide that she is never growing her hair out ever again. She feels renewed, and it’s a good feeling after spending the past weeks staring at me and wondering and envisioning and trying to hold her hair out of her face to see what the haircut would look like.
For a few weeks following the cut, she is surprised whenever she sees me, has to do a double-take before she recognizes me. I think it’s a pleasant surprise, at least for now. This is a change she has controlled, but eventually it, too, will become regular, and another change will take its place and us two strangers will once again meet identical gazes. This is how she has learned to love herself, by controlling what she can to try and forget about those things that only time can change.
No matter how many inspirational magazine articles she reads, I matter. I am how she sees her vessel, the thing that carries her from breath to breath, the body she is forced to experience life through. She is learning to accept me because she is forced to. It’s useless now to stare at me and mentally circle what she would want to change about herself, about me, because by now she has grown into me and with me. I have been with her for over two decades, and she has just now accepted that I am her and she is me. While she will never be completely satisfied with me, I am the one who understands her the most because I’ve seen the expressions she shares only with herself, even if she cannot interpret them. Even if she then wipes them away in favor of one she can understand: vanity.
My role is a heavy responsibility to bear, but one that I am glad to have. I am a silent observer to her life, but I know her better than she knows herself. For her to stand in front of me, alone and vulnerable, is like a confession. She cannot lie to me because it is in her eyes, in the twitch of her lips and tilt of her head. After all, how can she hide her expression from me when I know them better than she does? I see her when she is not pursing her lips to not make her look sullen and when she is slouching and when her chin is tucked in. I see her when she looks at me and rounds her mouth, stands straighter, holds her chin up, changes to impress herself. She pulls inside all of those insecurities that will slip back out when she walks away. I can tell when she hides something from me—from herself—and what she hides inside tells me all I need to know. Reflections are hidden truths: truths hidden are reflections.
