March 1966
*
Penny didn’t like that she was called Penny. It was much too childish a name for her. Yes, Penny, precocious as she was tempestuous, was greatly misconstrued because of her name and was far smarter than people liked to assume. She was patronised incessantly, infantilised even more so, and though she is only ten years of age, she knows what all those words mean. As she walked home from school, she contemplated the severity of this injustice to the backdrop of a great downpour. Perhaps the sky too felt its name was a great deception, a bastardisation of its character, and was expressing its indignance. Though, Penny couldn’t be sure; she wasn’t one for surmising, speculating or, worst of all, dogmatically believing in a preconceived notion.
Her feet fell in and out of sync with the rain, speeding up when she was lost in her thoughts as her feet, entirely independently, were trying to reach the ground before the next droplet of rain, somehow outwitting a natural process, and slowing down when her patent leather shoes, with their floral adornments, gaudy and sparkly, began to rub against her heels and toes. Her school backpack was a hand-me-down, originally the property of her brother, Jude, who hadn’t been seen for months now, although her mother never explained why. He had moved out almost 5 months ago now but had visited regularly. Until one day, he simply stopped. Defying her staunch opposition to surmising – Penny justified this by thinking of it as an educated guess, something far more informed than speculating – she believed that her mother simply couldn’t find the words to explain what had happened, and when Penny offered linguistic assistance, her mother’s eyes only grew wetter and her voice quieter as the emotion inside of her manifested itself so brazenly that she had to excuse herself to the bathroom. But Penny missed Jude, profoundly and greatly, and so when her mother would say, “I’ll explain it to you one day, petal, when you’re old enough to understand,” it only made Penny’s heartbeat faster, convulsing in a kind of uncertain, foreboding anguish.
Penny didn’t mind the androgynous look the bag gave her. She always had the sense that certain teachers at her school assumed boys were smarter than girls, even though the boys in her class couldn’t explain what sexism was and Penny could.
The contents of her bag were as follows: an encyclopaedia (volume III) from the school library; a copy of ‘Franny and Zooey’ that her brother gifted her with an inscription which read: ‘I was saving this for your 13th birthday, but you’re ready for it now. Happy 10th birthday!’; a pencil case from the local charity shop filled with ballpoint, gel and glitter pens; and a few rogue stickers from her teachers, making their way to the bottom of her bag, condemned to the graveyard of childish things that grew exponentially, along with the rest of the stickers plastered with platitudinous compliments like “you’re a star!”, she’d received since the last time she cleared out her bag. Penny was too old for stickers, or at least she felt she was, and that was as good as being too old for them to Penny.
Penny approached the clapboard farmhouse that she called home. It was situated close enough to the surrounding suburbia of Malheur, a unique, gentrified town (that was bigger than people expected), to be practical but far enough away to reap the benefits of reclusiveness but avoid anti-sociability.
Penny entered the front door of the house, which remained perennially unlocked because the distinct lack of any surrounding human life removed the fear of burglary and thus the need for home security. Since her mother was yet to return from work, Penny was excused from the customary hugs and trite conversations about their respective days. She quickly climbed the cream-carpeted stairs to her room, ascending two at a time. The sun streaming in her window was abruptly cut off by the mirror, positioned adjacent to her bed, which Penny sat herself in front of. Her bag, having come open, sat in her peripheral vision with the books poking out the top. Penny regarded her blonde pigtails (which, as she aged, grew increasingly darker, as if with every new word she memorised the definition of or every new fact she learnt, a strand of her hair matured and turned brown), made bedraggled and frizzy by the rain, and the dimples on her cheeks, which, even when she wasn’t talking or smiling, remained as a shadow of youth on her face, perpetuating people’s misapprehensions about her, along with her name, age, gender, blonde hair and, frankly, everything else about her.
She was annoyed she didn’t look older.
She was annoyed she didn’t look more mature.
She was annoyed she didn’t look wiser.
She was annoyed that she was forced to be vain because it was her appearances that deceived people so greatly.
She wondered: if she was as intelligent as her mother and the people in white coats imbued with the scent of acetone and the shampoo aisle of the pharmacy said she was, why couldn’t it be reflected externally? Looks are strange, and how people interpret them is stranger. As her rumination morphed into lamentation, Penny lay back and looked up at the white ceiling, thinking about all the things people didn’t know about her and all the things she didn’t know about the world.
The Saint-Germain 