My Copper-Eyed Girl

         I knew a girl once with beauty greater than the night sky full of stars. She had amazing hair -- brown and long, flowing, with slight waves --, stood a little shorter than five and a half feet, and rarely weighed any more than 105 pounds, no matter what time of year. Her complexion was fair, and she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. Above her right eyebrow was a tattoo; small, so small that from far away it looked only like a place where ink had exploded onto her forehead. However, upon inspection, if you dared to walk closer, you could see it was a black rose. She loved her roses, that girl did. All over her body, rose tattoos made their home -- all different colours, from buds to fully bloomed to dead. She couldn't possibly have picked a favourite, she once told me. Nevertheless, I always had a strange feeling it was the first one, the one above her eyebrow that, if you looked close enough, seemed capable of jumping off of her pale skin and right into your hands.

         I never cared much for tattoos myself, but then, I never cared for any tattoos. Of all the tattoos in the world, I will admit that hers were some of the most magnificent I'd ever seen. Still, there was more about her to love than the tattoos, and I felt they only took away from that. She was drop-dead gorgeous, the girl was. Noone, no matter how bitterly they hated her -- though I can't think of a reason to do so -- could ever call her ugly. The all of her was beautiful, but what really sealed it in for me, and I think for everyone else, were her dancing eyes. I have never seen, and doubt I will ever see, a girl with eyes that colour again. They were beautiful -- absolutely beautiful. They were big, nearly perfect spheres. My father used to call them "doe eyes" -- and I guess, in a way, they were. They always had a helpless, naive look to them. I knew, upon noticing them -- really noticing them -- for the first time, that no man in her life would ever dare to break her heart. Her eyes, in the end, would always drive him back to her. They say a woman loves nothing more than a guy she thinks she can change. I've found, in my experience, that a man loves nothing more than a woman he can protect. Her eyes begged for protection, for a shield from this terrible and violent world.

         As marvelous as the shape and the helpless look of her eyes were, that wasn't why they were so strikingly different and wonderful. That was due to the astounding colour. Copper -- a bright, shining copper. Not brown, as some might choose to call them. From a distance they looked brown; to the untrained eye they looked brown at any distance; but to the artist's eye they were copper. The colour of a penny fresh from the mint; a beautiful, shiny, metallic, striking copper. They were amazing. I wished for years they were mine; that I could have her beautiful, round, copper, deer-in-the-headlights eyes. But they weren't, they couldn't be. They were hers, and like everything about her, they were better than what I had. She had everything better, that girl did. My girl did. My helpless looking and tattooed girl.

         She was always better than me. She didn't even have to try.... She was just always better. I told myself for years to be more like her; to be good and beautiful like her. But I couldn't be, in the end. I didn't have the natural feeling about me, the elegence that had oozed forth from her being ever since she was born. I didn't have the willpower she had, either. She could get through anything, I think. And that was just one more thing, I guess, that made her better than I was; than I ever can be. She had all that I lacked and then some; that copper-eyed, long-haired girl.

         I knew a girl who sang me to sleep when I was little. Her voice was beautiful -- sweet and soft. I loved her voice; wanted to have it just as I wanted to have her eyes. She had magic in her voice; whispering the words to her favourite songs to me late at night. She wrote some of her own lyrics and music, even, and would sing them to me before anyone else. I had a favourite one, one that I made her preform nearly every night. We called it "Glimpse of a Soul", but years later, when she joined a rock band, she renamed it simply "Inside". I remember one verse, specifically, that I would sometimes sing along to:

I misplaced my trust, I misplaced my life.
There's too much pain here and not enough light.
Painful remembrances, haunting my eyes.
You say the day's cloudless, yet I can't see the sky.
I'm beaten, I'm battered, I'm bruised and I'm torn.
You say the rose is beautiful, but I prefer the thorn.
My life is surreal, I'm not in control.
I'm different from you, I've a broken soul.

         I've tried for years to sing it myself, but I always fail. I've always failed at the things she was good at. And she was good at everything; therefore I am a failure at everything. She had the most beautiful music for that song: a long, low, slow melody that invaded your thoughts and would become stuck in my head for days. Unlike with other songs though, I never minded when that one was stuck in my head. It was too beautiful to mind. Beautiful like her eyes. Beautiful like a night sky full of stars. Beautiful like my nearly perfect, doe-eyed girl.

         I knew a girl who cried herself to sleep at night. I would come into her room sometimes, when there were storms and I grew scared. She would shush me, hug me to her chest, and I would fall asleep there, held tightly in her arms. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night to find her crying silently, her whole body tremoring. I never knew what to say at those times, but I would scoot back into her a little, reminding her that I was there for her; was there to protect her from whatever was making her cry. She would cry for hours sometimes; and when it seemed right, I might even cry with her. Her mother would find us in the morning, fit together like puzzle pieces on the girl's. Her mother would merely smile and tell us it was time for breakfast. I don't know if she ever understood what was wrong with her daughter. I'm not sure if she ever even cared. Either way, it didn't seem to matter to my girl. As soon as her mother was gone, she would get out of bed, rub her eyes, tug on a robe, and pad downstairs in her slippers. I would stay there for a few moments longer, sitting in the spot where our bodies had lain only moments before, and feel the heat and the sadness that remained settled in that crevice. And sometimes, just sometimes, I would cry again then. Cry for her, my sweetly singing, almost perfect girl.

         When I grew older she stopped coming in to sing me to sleep. We grew apart and back together periodically -- one minute we were best friends, inseparable; the next she had dumped my love for that of another and would stay away from me for days on end. It hurt me when she did that. But then, I guess it hurt her too. A lot of things hurt her, that copper-eyed girl. I never did find out why we grew apart so quickly at times; but I knew it happened at I was hurt by that. Those years she stopped being my girl at all, but just a girl. A sweetly singing, crying girl.

         I knew a girl who hurt herself. She would never have told me, if I hadn't caught her once. Then she stopped caring if I saw her or not, as long as I didn't tell her mother. I found razor blades in her drawer once, smeared with blood, and threw them away. She yelled at me then, with such surprising force that I felt like I'd been slapped. The scars and new cuts graced her feet; her stomach; her wrists. They were not beautiful, yet she remained so. Even cuts and scars could not obscure the beauty of my almost pefect, occasionally snide girl.

         I knew a girl whose father hurt her. She would never have told anyone if it had been her choice, but I found out on my own. Something changed about her when the abuse started, something about her seemed to crawl inside and refuse to come out. She spent Saturday nights with him; as part of a custody agreement. He never laid a finger on any of her brothers or sisters. She was the only one. As always, my girl was the exception. For once though, being the exception didn't work in her favour. He hit her, her father did. He threw things at her and slapped her over and over. Sometimes I would see the bruises, watching her change into her pajamas at night from the door of her room. That's how I discovered her secret. She made me promise not to tell. She told me it was her fault; that she made him do it. I never believed her, but I never told anyone either. I would never betray her; my scarred, teary-eyed girl.

         I knew a girl who was scared of everything. It was one of the few things she didn't need to tell anyone to have it known. Everything seemed to terrify her. Water, spiders, and lizards were the worst for her. I sheltered her from them as much as I could, but I needed a rest at times. There was another fear too, one even greater than all the others combined. "I don't want to be alone," she would whimper sometimes. "I don't know what I might do to myself." I wanted to hug her so badly at those moments, to bring her back to the times when she had cried herself to sleep with me in her arms. But she didn't like to be touched anymore. Untouchable, she was; my abused, self-injuring girl.

         I knew a girl who joined a rock band. "Satan's Martini" they called it. She made new friends; friends with piercings and skull tattoos; dyed hair and drugs. I didn't like her new friends, but they made her feel better. Anything that made her feel better couldn't be terrible. Or at least that's what I told myself. She steered clear of the drugs, but she became like them in every other way. Her long, flowing dark hair became a purple mohawk; and she gained a new tattoo, a snake that wrapped its body around her ankle. The sweetly sung lyrics I'd heard years before became music for them to play; somehow different when they played it. Their electric guitars and heavy drums ruined it all; and she no longer sweetly sang the lyrics but shouted them instead, shouted them with such vigor and pain that I wanted to scream with her. The songs would still become stuck in my head for days, but this time I minded. They weren't beautiful anymore. They were warped and messed with, just like her -- my battered, terrified girl.

         I knew a girl who hated me. It lasted for months, this hate -- not as long as it could have, but long enough to hurt me. Satan's Martini changed her, I think, into thinking that she could no longer trust me. She started to hurt me sometimes, just kicks and smacks. She made me swear not to tell her mother about the drugs she was doing or anything else her mother wouldn't approve of. I would whimper and cry softly, as softly as she had all those years before, lying with me in her bed. She would look at me in disgust, kick me once more, and then leave me. She stopped singing her songs at all, instead simply yelling them out; shrieking. They changed from rock to something new; something closer to metal. I hated her songs when they were sung like that. When they became stuck in my head, I would do anything to get them out. They were ugly; uglier than any songs I ever had heard before. Ugly as my scared little rock star girl.

         I knew a girl who eloped with a drummer. He played the drum set for Satan's Martini, and he had always been one of my least favourite. They both left their homes one night and planned on never coming back. Her mother and his father were frantic to find them. It was weeks before they did though -- weeks I spent sitting in her room, strumming on her old acoustic guitar she'd picked up long before the electric one, and singing "River of Pain" until I fell asleep, stumbling up in the middle of the night to fall asleep again in the spot where our puzzle piece bodies had once lain, her arms wrapped around me. The finally found them in California, living in one of his friends' apartments. That night I stopped sleeping on her bed -- but I still picked up and fooled with her guitar, plucking the strings with my fingers and singing, just as she had done all those years ago. Back when she was still my brown haired beauty; not this new, spiteful, screaming girl.

         I knew a girl who came back home. Her hair was dyed again, but it was back to its beautiful, silky brown. I watched it grow, day by day, back into the beautiful cascade of waves it had been years before. I watched her quit the rock band. I watched her take up her old guitar again and play her songs with sweetness, not with hate. I watched her be able to stay by herself; stop cutting; and report her father's abuse. I watched her cry through the commotion that followed; bawl when she found out his sentence. I saw her buy me a guitar of my own, watched her hug me, no longer untouchable. I watched her learn to love me again. I watched her come back from hell to the real world, to a world full of people who loved her for what she was; who had always loved her -- even when she had been a drugged up runaway girl.

         I knew a girl who died. She was hit coming around Satan's Bend by a red pickup truck. We all ran to the hospital, driving ten miles above the speed limit the whole way; running all the red lights. She was still alive when we got there, and she wanted to see us. It was decided that I should be the first to go, since I was the youngest. She smiled slightly when I came in, and I could tell that it took an amazing amount of energy for her to do so. "C'mere," she said weakly, her voice barely audible. And then, in a shaky voice, she started to sing.

"I misplaced my trust, I misplaced my life.
There's too much pain here and not enough light.
Painful remembrances, haunting my eyes.
You say the day's cloudless, yet I can't see the sky...."

         Her voice trailed off, and her eyes closed slowly. I heard a moaning from somewhere far off, a deep voiced sorrow. Then a tear made its way down my cheek. In a voice just as shaky as hers had been, a far off voice -- my own -- began to sing:

"I'm beaten, I'm battered, I'm bruised and I'm torn.
You say the rose is beautiful, but I prefer the thorn.
My life is surreal, I'm not in control.
I'm different from you, I've a broken soul."

         The tears came faster now, splattering on my shirt. I hugged my knees to my chest, my feet resting on the edge of the cold, hard plastic chair. I rocked myself back and forth, back and forth, my mind playing over and over the sound of her voice, singing the song that I loved one final time. Hearing the voice of my loving, copper-eyed girl.

         I knew a girl who was burned to ashes. Her mother put the ashes into an urn and then she cried, but I didn't. I would be strong, for once. I would show them that I could be strong like she had been her whole life. But when they put the urn into the ground, I had to cry. I cried for everything that she'd been through and dragged me along with her for. But mostly I cried for her -- her, my rose-loving, doe-eyed, near-pefect, beautifully singing, sometimes hostile, teary-eyed, self-injuring, abused, easily scared, spiteful, runaway, rock star of a brown-haired girl.

         I knew a girl once with beauty greater than the night sky full of stars. I cried for her that day. I cried for my sister, my copper-eyed girl.