Mask of A Legend

by Stephen Andrew Salamon

  To Legend, those dizzy raindrops only crashed because of Legend’s image, breaking them of their innocence. Legend turned away from her reflection and walked out of her room, trying to forget what she saw in the window pane, like she did a year ago, when she accidentally saw her reflection in the same window, with the same morning presenting its melodies of thunder and rain before the nails began pounding into the shade by her doings.

  Craving to forget her features, she walked down her tight hallway and came to the clothes-congested stairway, some half-drenched from being washed but not dried, and others were still dirty, but hot, evidence that her mother dried clothes, but forgot to wash them. Disgusting, especially the mixed aroma of clean and dirty clothes dancing in the air. Mildew.

  Legend walked down the stairs, yawned, and then saw her mother in the distance. Still groggy and filled with melancholy, smelling her mother’s perfume and the scent of hot, dirty clothes, she entered the kitchen and watched her mother drink a clear substance. That’s when she smelled the aroma of liquor. It drained Legend from having to put up with her own face; acne and ugliness are all she thought of.

  “Come on, your breakfast is gonna get cold.”

  And there she was, an overaged gold-digger with a face of pretentiousness. Strange-looking. Years and years of make-up abuse affected her mother’s beauty as if the past colors were embedded in her face. Rosy cheeks. Dark eyeliner. The works.

  Legend sat down in a rickety chair and ate her eggs off of a chipped plate. Looking at the floor and keeping silent, fearing that her mother would allow the liquor to be mean to her, she saw nothing but junk piled over junk, lying there so long that dust took over each of their shapes, making everything on the floor look the same grayish color. So she sat, like a baby lamb in a vacant field, afraid to look up. The hunter might see its prey. She didn’t want to see her mother like that, watching how she wears her pain by drinking. But even her silence wasn’t enough.

  The same morning ritual began, but with a different beginning, always. “I got a call from your principal about an hour ago. She said that you’ve been missing school all this week. Is that true, Legend?” She sat down opposite Legend and took out her curlers from her perfect blonde hair. Her mother then poured herself another drink of the clear liquid. Legend watched the half-empty bottle and how its label was torn off. Her mother slurred, “Is that true?”

  “Yes it’s true,” Legend replied. Still gawking at the ground, she heard her mother finishing her drink with one gulp, followed by the echoes of her pouring herself another. Legend continued to stare at the floor of junk, a better sight than her mother.

  “Listen to me, Legend, school just started two weeks ago, you can’t keep on missing.” She got up from her chair and walked over to a rusty sink, put her plate in it, and held onto a chair to control her drunkenness. A mess.

  “I know, Mom….”

  “That’s what you said last semester when we moved here. I don’t want you to miss any more days, I’m sick of you faking sick all the time, and don’t tell me that you’re not faking.” Her mother turned to Legend and looked at her acne, reminding her of a hurtful subject she could bring up. “Plus, I don’t want you looking at any more star constellation books, I want you to start looking at your school books instead. You’re an intelligent, young woman, but if you keep this up, you’re not going to get anywhere in life!”

  Legend turned her eyes away from the junk-filled floor and gaped at the table. Filled with loathing toward her mother’s choice in subjects, anger toward her drunkenness, she still stared at the table. “You dropped out of school when you were sixteen, Mom, and look where you ended up,” Legend stated. Her mother laughed in a crazy, drunken howl.

  “No, I don’t know where I ended up, please enlighten me.” Sarcasm mixed with rage was the chosen voice of her mother. She finished her second drink in one gulp and grabbed the bottle.

  “You got married to a very rich man, better known as my father,” Legend said.

  “Well, he is now my ex-husband, and an x-father to you. The only reason why I got the chance to marry that rich bastard is because of my looks!” Her mother then noticed Legend’s eyes forming tears. Still staring at the table, Legend looked at her mother in hatred. Her teardrops fell to the dust that blanketed the junk below.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Just because I’m not pretty like you, doesn’t mean I won’t have it all in life. I’m so sick and tired of people telling me how smart I am, I wish they would tell me how beautiful I was instead,” yelled Legend.

  “Even when you were a child, Legend, you believed that money wasn’t everything, and now you use that as an example to me, to show that it meant I succeeded!”

  “And even as you stand before me, drunk, you’re acting like ‘marrying for money’ isn’t everything, even though you tried to teach me it was. I think that magic liquid you drink every day, Mother, has turned you into a hypocrite!”

  Rage boiled inside of her veins, firing through cell to cell, creeping up to her flesh, and turning it red. The liquor ignited her fury even more, holding an uncontrollable urge to strike at Legend’s face. The mother’s hands shook, and her skin cried as she ran up to Legend, slapped her across the face once and waited to see what reaction she would display toward the pain. Perceiving Legend’s strength, seeing how the slap forced her to gawk at the mother, she slapped Legend again, feeling the liquor craving to see blood, a reaction, anything to come out of Legend that proved she felt pain, as much as the mother’s mind felt toward those words.

  After the seventh hit, blood poured from Legend’s nose, and delicately, she pulled her hand away from Legend. A bloody handprint was left on her face. The closer the mother pulled her hand away from Legend to her drunken chest, the faster the liquor drained from her eyes, diluting reality from evil, salt-like drops that washed away the liquor even more to help her see the child she loved. “I’m so sorry, Legend, I didn’t mean it.”

  Anger attached to her eyes, Legend rose from her seat and ran out of the kitchen, wiping her blood away with a napkin.

  Her mother chased her all the way up to her bedroom and pleaded, “I’m sorry, Legend, I know your father used to – I shouldn’t have done that!” Her mother’s half-intoxicated body scampered up to Legend and hugged her tight.

  Legend ran away from her mother’s grasp and went to her window, not knowing what to say, or do, bewildered about whether she should cry more and show her mother her frailty, or stay fervent and show no reaction at all. She surveyed the rain plummeting even as her tears fell at the same speed. Then Legend peeked at her reflection in the window again and that’s when she wept more. Her tears fell down her acne-filled face, and curved around each pimple, like water going through a tangled labyrinth with tormenting corridors.

  Legend felt enclosed, crying because her mother was standing to the back of her, and crying because her reflection stood in front. So, the mother just looked at Legend’s back and then saw Legend’s reflection; all she could see was her tears. Legend’s mind was lost because of her looks, because of the way her eyes don’t accept the face they’re a part of. She looked at her mother’s reflection in the window and saw her eyes wanting to help her, but her mouth stood silent.

  Legend whispered, “Mom, I’m so sick of being …ugly…. Why do I have to look revolting? Why can’t I be beautiful like you were at my age?” She stood silent again and stared at her mother’s reflection, seeing a small tear developing, as if her mother felt the pain Legend was enduring with great echoes that reminded her of her crying. “The reason why I don’t like to go to school is because the girls there are mean to me…. They call me names and I don’t even know why….” Legend moved her glossy, red eyes to her own reflection. “I’m just so sick of having to put up with hearing those names called to me. They hate me. They actually hate me because I…look like this.” Her mother walked up to her, but hesitated from hugging Legend, as if her drunkenness delayed her motherly reaction and forced her
not to hug her at that instance.

  But then she grabbed onto Legend and gave her a tight hug. It was like she knew what Legend was feeling, going through, like she could see through Legend’s teary gaze, invoking her own gaze to seal in tears that crept through her shaky eyelids, passing through her black mascara and staining Legend’s right shoulder. The sentiment of confusion, unknowing and agony that filled Legend every moment she gawked at her own reflection, her mother understood. “I just wish I could be beautiful, so the whole world could see my beauty,” said Legend, crying on her mother’s left shoulder. “Mom, I just want that so bad.” The lightning struck harder, echoing through the tall buildings that surrounded their house, beckoning Legend to notice their sounds of greatness; but instead she cried more, tears that begged to fall on her mother’s shoulder.

  Her mother pulled away from her and peeped at Legend’s tear-filled blue eyes in sincerity, seeing the tears fall faster instead of lessening their flow. “It’s okay, baby, your acne will go away, it did for me when I was younger.”

  “Yeah, but you were only ten years old when your acne vanished. I’m seventeen, and this acne’s getting worse! My hair, cheeks, everything about me is ugly!” Her mother hugged her tighter, embracing her in a rapture of love, trying to lessen the tears she felt fall over her shoulder again. “They make fun of me at school, Mom, they call me crater face, ugly, and astronomy geek. Just because I like looking at the stars, they call me constellation face. Even the guys make fun of my looks when the school holds those stupid dances. A lot of times they swear at me, Mom. They swear at me. I just wish it would all go away!” Her mother pulled away from her hug and looked Legend straight in the face.

  “I promise you, baby, your wish will come true…one day. You’re only seventeen years old; you still have plenty of time to develop beauty. You already developed it within…. You have a very old soul, Legend, that’s filled with great wisdom; soon it will show on the outside. Those girls at school are just jealous of you. They all developed already, and are afraid that when your time comes around, you’ll outdo them all; and you will. Besides, if only you can see that you already did, without growing into that great woman you were destined to become. You’ll see, what comes around goes around.” Still, Legend smelled the liquor aroma on her breath, but trusted that the words her mother spoke were real; she prayed they were.

  “I know, Mom, I just wish it would come around already!”

  “It will, and that’s a promise!”

  She felt Legend’s tear-drenched face and just stared at her with a lonely smile, praying that the words she spoke went straight to Legend’s soul and helped it glisten, showering it in truth that would aid its beacon to shine greater. Legend tilted her face away from her mother and stared at her reflection in the window again. She grinned toward her reflection, but the grin vanished when her mind became overwhelmed by her image. It blew out the beacon of her soul that strived so much to excel. Legend turned around to face her mother and hugged her tight. “Thank you, Mom….” She yearned for her mother to believe that the words she slurred to Legend helped her a bit. After all, this was the first time she ever acted like a nurturing mother with liquor still on her breath, and secretively Legend wanted to let her know that she did well, even though it didn’t fix her soul in the least.

  “One day every guy on this side of town will be pounding at your door, just to get a glimpse of your beauty,” said her mother. Legend gave out a small laugh.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far, Mom. Besides, I don’t think a guy would like to date an astrology, zit face kind of girl, like myself,” Legend laughed.

  “I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that, you never know…. Now, get your butt moving, I don’t want you to be late for school.” Her mother returned a sobered smile and wiped her mascara-stained tears away with her hands.

  “Alright.”

  Legend put on her blue school skirt, and a white shirt, striving to avoid looking at herself in the mirror of her bedroom. She always did this, the ritual of staying away from anything with a reflection, especially a mirror − her worst enemy − struggling to brush her hair and feel its shape, making sure that, through her imagination, it was just the way she wanted it to be. Not perceiving her face for a long time, Legend got used to the routine of balancing her clothes and hair −feeling them out− without gazing at their entirety that a reflection blesses the eyes to grasp. But Legend knew the evil behind that blessing, the sinister that eyes can bring, wrapped up with the idea that, even though a reflection is precious to the eyes, it can and most likely will be the greatest curse of all; the reality of what the eyes don’t want you to see; beauty that hides under torturous memories of hatred toward its unconscious features; the wicked melodies that one hears when their eyes meet in a mirror. To Legend, her eyes forever saw ugliness when looking at her image before she discontinued the normal ritual; she didn’t want her eyes to continue the abuse to her soul, so nevertheless, she adapted to a life without her reflection. Of course she still was and is reminded of her looks now and then when her face pops out at her on purpose through the reflection on a window, or a puddle of water, as if it premeditates these meetings for her to know it’s still there, belonging to her like a curse she can’t shake off, like a dying love craving for one more glance of a heart that denies its life.

  She grabbed her backpack, three astronomy books and ran out of her small house with the aroma of liquor still apparent in the tobacco-smoky air, stifling at her breath, choking her without mercy. It was an aroma that gets engraved in a mind, chiseled, where, if she smelled it again in another place, it would cause her to flashback to her house and remember her drunken, depressed mother and a glass house with broken windows.

  Legend ran three blocks down through the rain where her Catholic school stood, pausing for a moment, pointing her eyes at the school, watching it from a distance. Fear. Nerves. She watched in great dread, smelled the fragrance of mental torture blowing in the wind, perceiving how her long day of being picked on will inevitably be. The fright of entering the school, hearing those evil names again, ran through her guiltless mind so much that Legend heard the echoes in her thoughts of those transgression-like names.

  Zit head, ugly….

  She thought of them over and over, similar to a shadow of a monster whispering them to her soul’s eyes, panicked and nervous; she closed her eyes and allowed the voices to go away as she always did. Standing alone in the windy, bitter-like school ground, Legend often wished for an escape, a way out for her to avoid the future’s doubtful message. So, she would close her eyes, and imagine her legs lifting off from the cold ground, growing wings from her back and soaring through the clouds. She would race toward the sun, toward the dawn, toward the stars, beyond the satellites, the planets, and circle about a world where beauty has no name, and there she would frolic about and breathe in the refreshing air of prosperity. Freedom.

  Nevertheless, she would then open her eyes always and see that her feet never left the ground they were cursed to feel, and forget about that world she so needed to see again. After her mind lost the light and blackness took over, Legend proceeded to her school as she said in a low prayer, “Please, God, don’t let them make fun of me today.” Wounds and scars stabbed into her essence, opened stitches and unbandaged wounds bathed over her spirit from past memories of bullies making fun of a face that she was forced to dislike herself. It wasn’t always like that. No. Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved her life, enjoyed breathing in and out and looking at the mirror. But then others started their name-callings, and that little girl grew to learn that her face was judged as being ‘ugly’.

  Nonetheless, Legend was terrified once again. But, holding strength to her flesh – trying to − she stepped her feet on the front lawn of the school and went beyond the grass that seemed as sharp as thorns, leading to a place that her mind reminded her about, haunted stories that it whispered to her through her glossy sight and sweaty pores. She took another ste
p closer to purgatory, hoping for a fire to start in the school, breathing in the scent of the fire drill going off in the air to prevent her from going to that place of evil echoes yet again. She then took a third step, her flesh dripping sweat down to the blades of grass, perspiring her nerves like melting ice on a fire, when suddenly a familiar figure ran up to her and gave her a nudge.

  “Where have you been all week?” Jenny asked. She held Legend’s sweaty hand and they walked over the grass more. They reached the school’s staircase and continued up it, waiting at the top, patiently awaiting the sound of the bell and praying that it would go off before the sounds of name-callings were heard, like stones flying through the air toward them. Legend looked at Jenny’s obese body and chunky face, stopping abruptly; she started to erect uncertainty in her scorched eyes.

  “Why are we stopping? Didn’t school start yet?” Legend inquired. Legend was terrified by the sudden silence and halt. Legend knew this formula was perfect for harassment, foreseeing the mean girls and their disturbing shadows behind them, knowing they would walk up to her and call her those menacing yet childish names. She felt secure to be in the school, or to be in motion, that way the girls can’t make fun of her while the teachers are present, or with her back turned to them while walking quickly away.

  “No, the bell hasn’t rung yet,” replied Jenny. They stood under the awning of the school and watched the students accumulate on the front lawn, like insects over a large, green giant, resting on top of its green belly, waiting for that perfect moment when they see their prey; Legend was it and she alleged their bites would be enjoyed.

  “You know what, why don’t we just wait inside?” Legend asked, tripping over each word that exited her dried mouth.