The Woman in Green [Story #25]

I am an ancient being. Big as the stars and the gaps between them. Bigger than the data flowing through supercomputers—machines that measure life in petaflops and pebibytes. Deeper than the Mariana Trench.

My enormity manifested into the form of a too-tall woman whose height and girth don’t match my Guatemalan ancestry. But my body is far too small. I feel—have always felt—claustrophobic inside of it. Stuffed into a fleshy sack, elbowing for space among bones and guts. I walk this earth with leaden feet, tethered to the three-dimensional plane. I long to peel away the organic cage and emerge, as a crab sheds its shell or a snake sloughs it skin. And then I would fly, rise up, let myself expand into the sky.

At age forty-five, I’ve grown used to the constant feeling of claustrophobia, but I still find myself panicking every now and then, feeling the weight of walls pressing in on me. I think the shadow children understand.

They are ancient beings as well, caught in a constant turmoil I don’t envy. Their shadows vie for attention, control. They struggle to beat back the liquid dark as it seeps into their eyes, their hearts, their clenched fists.

No, I don’t envy them. But I do understand them. We all have shadowy corners of our souls and I confronted mine long ago.

You may not believe this, by I come from the stars. Of course, I have an earthly mother and father, I have a human body, but my origin is from the cold crystals that orbit a planet in a far-off solar system. I am the stuff of chilly darkness, a pinprick of light in the void. How could a thing born in the vastness of space easily tether herself to earth?

It’s why, I suppose, I enjoy wearing flowy dresses. The lightness of them, the wind dancing through and around them, gives me an illusion of freedom. I notice my emerald green dress now, as I walk toward the school. It’s cold—entirely inappropriate for a dress made of silk chiffon—but I revel in the feel of the fine fabric against my thick legs. I often think of my legs as ceiba trunks—sturdy and tall, bridging the space between earth and the other planes—but my legs are not nearly so white.  

I walk toward the school office and every person I pass in the narrow hallway looks up at me, awestruck. I excuse their stares. Few people have seen a giantess in her finery striding down the hall of a public middle school in the northern part of gods-know-where middle United States. When I spy the shadow child, I pause, cock my head, give her a small smile.

She looks at me in wonder, golden eyes blazing.

I continue walking toward the office, but I can feel her eyes on my back. She knows I’ve come for her. I can feel the vibration of her trembling skin from here. She knows I have answers.

I walk inside a beige office with sagging maroon chairs lining one wall and a cheap wooden receptionist’s desk plopped into the middle of the space. The woman behind the desk has glasses that make her watery blue eyes pop unnaturally; the gum that she’s chewing tumbles out of her hanging lower lip as I walk into the room.

We make eye contact. It takes her several seconds to remember her courtesies and ask, “Can I help you?” Her voice comes out as a squeak.

“Yes,” I say. My deep alto rolls past her mousy mezzo. “I’m here to see Ellie Silvestre.”