She's downstairs in the kitchen. I don't know what she's doing but I know she's ignoring me and giving too much space and freedom to a 3 year old. I'm the youngest child of three, the only girl on top of that, so most of my friends are make-believe.
"MOM! Someone stole my perfume!"
Finally she's coming upstairs, wiping the lathered dish soap off her hands and leaving a bubbly trail on each level as she ascends to my grand zone of discontent; she has learned that within a certain amount of time my pleas turn into desperate cries and demands for immediate action, and in her all her lemon-scented motherliness, she senses my clicking time bomb, thus left the towel by the sink.
She enters my room - all bordered with hearts on wallpaper by the ceiling and stuffed animals strung from hooks around my closet door. I'd do just as well with GI Joe's duct taped vicariously, but I'd never tell her because she designed my room herself. She comes in almost silently as my sight in this moment remains fixed on the open bottle of Tinkerbell Perfume with only drops of green coagulated liquid remaining. Her silence yields:
"What IS it, Meredith?" a little annoyed but motherly and patient underneath.
"Someone stole my perfume! There used to be more of it!!"
The smell lingers everywhere like fragile evidence. It's a little sugar, a pinch of magic and dash of fruit. It's a scent that gives me energy to play and reminds me of my zestful age. But I can hardly see the translucent image of a pixie girl on the dainty glass bottle without the limey liquid brimming behind it.
Maybe a ghost came in through my open window and snatched it!
Maybe my brothers are playing a mean trick on me!
No no, Shandra (my best friend whom Mom says has rebellious tendencies) must have poured it out. She was over here the other day. Ugh. I hate her.
"MoM! Someone has stolen my perfume. Look!"
"Are you sure, how do you know?"
"...well, it's GONE! I left it here and now there's nothing left," I say, disregarding the green pixie girl driblets puddled at the base of the bottle.
"No one's stolen it, Meredith."
I'm not satisfied with her response. Why doesn't anyone believe me when I report such disasters? "How do you know it's no one?!"
My throat is getting tight. Needles are rushing to my face from inside me and they're turning me pink - I'm becoming camouflaged within my little girl jungle of a room - I want to shout and cry my way out of this invisible state and convince the world, "I'M NOT STUPID! There was perfume here last week and now there's not and I LOOOOOOOVE my pixie perfume! It's mine! Someone took it!"
But I don't say anything.
I just look back up at her with squinting eyes, the aroma is still looming and taunting me.
"You left it here?" Mom asks.
"Yeah, I think so."
"Cap off?"
"Yeah..." I whisper, the word trickling off into space with the worry and assumption that a cap off meant something other than letting Tink breathe.
"It evaporated, Dear."
"It WHAT?" I entrust that's another word for stolen.
"That's what happens to liquids when you leave them out with the cap off."
"But... WHAT? Why?!"
"It's just what is."
"It's.... gone? ...forever?"
"'Fraid so."
"Well where's the green, then?" I look around my room for spots and shades and clouds of neon lime and watered down grass colors - I look on the pink sparkled carpet and the pink painted walls, on the ceiling and on the mom-made quilt flat upon my bed. Nothing seems out-colored.
"It evaporated, too," Mom says.
She walks out and back down the stairs. I don't know what is so important she has to get back to and leave me stranded. I feel lied to and tricked. I feel like the world stole something from me, not just from the little vessel my pixie called 'home.'
Confused, frustrated, sad... wait, slash that, EXTREMELY sad- I want my perfume back. How could it be gone forever?
I slam my window shut. Stupid air. And I return the cap to it's bottle hoping that will make the air put some of my sweet liquid back, then I sit on the floor with my knees bent, my back against the bed; I'm small enough that if my mom walks by again, she won't see me crouching, and she'll think I evaporated.
My skirt is revealing my scabbed skin and my purple polka-dotted underwear, but I'm not concerned with that in the least.
I want what was taken from me. Tomorrow I'll look again.
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