The thoughts of a small child are nothing more than fragments, growing as they age. By a year old, you should remember how people make you feel. By four, you should remember insignificant details of the day before, and hold on to your thoughts, as jumbled as they would be. By eight, all thoughts should be sorted.
Emmy, eight years old, still has jumbled thoughts as she walks down the hall of her apartment building, dragging a trash bag behind her, socked feet hitting the floor as she makes her way to the trash chute and tosses the bag down it. The thoughts of the musician who lives down the hall flood her mind as she returns to the apartment. Their thoughts are so clear, so concise. Emmy hates how she can’t hold onto her own thoughts, like the musician can. Everyone’s constant garbled thoughts fighting for space in her head stunted her growth. She couldn’t hear her own opinions over the screaming in her brain. She can’t hear her own thoughts in her head, and even if she could, they would get mixed together with everyone else’s. She wonders why no one told her how to think.
By ten, her thoughts are harder to hold onto. She forgets as soon as she remembers, only hearing others’ thoughts and giving up on hearing her own.
Across the street, someone is complaining that they forgot to get milk.
Emmy’s mother grabs her hand, pulling her down the street. Her mother never tells Emmy directions, she just drags her along, because Emmy can never form the thoughts to turn into words. Her mother doesn’t know her, for it is impossible to know someone who hasn’t had the time to develop a personality.
The concept of her mother’s thoughts say that she wished she had left Emmy with her father, because she can never keep up. Her mother wouldn’t dare string the thoughts together even in her mind, but Emmy can hear the meaning.
Emmy can’t hear what her mother says. She can’t hear what anyone says. Not the musician who lives down the hall, nor the neighbor asking for a cup of sugar. She can hear sounds, though. She can hear the musician’s piano, the street sounds, and others’ thoughts. But when they open their mouths to voice them, Emmy hears nothing. She relies on their true opinion. She couldn’t hear their lies if she tried.
Emmy closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as her mother drags her into a store. Emmy hears her mother’s mind construct a greeting to the shop owner. But as always, when Emmy’s mother opens her mouth and says it, Emmy hears nothing.
She’s never heard her mother’s voice. She hopes her thoughts sound like her voice. She always hopes this. She always forgets it right after, only to think it again the next minute.
Her ears get confused, I guess. They listen to the wrong thing.
Artwork by Xan