I walked out of the bathroom and look around. It’s always like this here. They rush me everyday. “Can’t you just get done, Lavender?! Why do you always take so long?” they call through the door. I sighed and walked out, pass the line of others who needed the lavatory. “Finally!” they say as I walk down the hall to the play room. I picked up puzzle and started putting it together. The picture on the box was a sunny field with an apple tree near a prairie house on a hill. Those kinds of things make me wish I could be there to know what it fells like.

I haven’t introduced myself. My name’s Lavender Black. I’m thirteen years old. And I’m an orphan. I live at the orphanage with the other two hundred kids here. I can’t talk to anyone without them getting this look on their face that tells exactly what they think of me. Their eyes grow wide and they looked like they just got hit with a shot of “omigosh” and are trying to recover from the shell shock. I guess they have a good reason to.

How many people do you know that have purple eyes?

Yeah, that’s right. Purple. That’s my iris color. And everyone hates it. No one talks to me, they think I see things like ghost and spirits and, in secret, they call me Medusa, thinking I’ll turn them to stone if they look at my eyes. The only people with enough guts and smarts to talk to me is Miss Marllo, the guidance councilor for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Orphanage of the young and deserted. That’s actually the whole name for this little place. But I just call it “the orphanage”. Much easier if you ask me. But we talk about every Tuesday, and she always takes out a puzzle for me to do when we talk.

The thing is, when we talk, we always get into my past no matter what we talk about. It’s like a cycle you can’t avoid with me somehow. Politics. My Past. The new movie coming out. My Past. We could even talk about butterscotch-peanut butter cups and still end up talking about what happened in my life so long ago. Every Tuesday. But I deal with it, cause she’s the only one who chooses to talk to me.

Thirteen years ago, when I was born, my mom and dad were the happiest people on earth at that moment, let me tell you. They even video taped everything. When they saw me, they thought I was the most beautiful thing that’s happened to them. They wrapped me up in my great-grand mamma’s hand-made quilt. They took me home. And they gave me the most florally decorated room a baby could have. All that time, though, my eyes were closed. They were so excited to see my eyes, they would rock me in my crib at night, hoping that I’d open my eyes.

Finally, I was able to open my eyes. It was like opening up a part of me that was so new to the world, even I was excited. But the first thing I heard, the first unpleasant thing, was something I thought I’d never hear right then. I heard my mother scream. The first thing I ever saw was her horror-stricken face, my dad at her side, trying to keep his face calm. He couldn’t take his eyes away from mine. My mother was spastically screaming in little cries, terrified of the sight of me. “Abby, get a hold of yourself!” my father said in a soothing voice, trying to stay calm.

“No!” she screamed. “I didn’t give birth to that…that…” she trailed off as she tried to breathe. My father closed his eyes. “Abby…” “That thing!” she cried, pointing a trembling finger to my crib. She started to sob loudly, sitting in the rocking chair she had by the door. “What did I do?! What went wrong?! The doctor said she was a normal baby, nothing was wrong! I…I…”. “Abby, I don’t know,” my father murmured as he held my mother, trying to calm her. Then I heard him let out a sob.

All that time, from my crib, I watched them, not understanding what was wrong. What was wrong with me. After that, nothing was the same. They tried their hardest to put on a happy face, to try to be my proud parents. But they knew that I’d never be like the other kids. My “impediment”, they called it, was the thing that made my life what it is right now.

My mom, little by little, couldn’t take how much pressure she felt. She thought she screwed me up. She thought she made a “dud”. Every so often, when I was three or so, I would see her staring into space sitting at the kitchen table. I’d go over and ask, “What’s wrong, mommy?” Then it seemed she’d come back to earth, and when she would look at me, she’d start crying. Not once in those three years had she or my father said “I love you” to me. I never thought that was wrong. I didn’t even know what that phrase even meant.

One night, I heard my mother and father talking in the living room. I needed to go to the bathroom, but I stopped when I heard my mother crying. I stayed close to the wall, making sure they couldn’t see me. “I can’t take this anymore!” my mother said between sobs. My father sat close to her, his face concerned, but also frightened that he knew the truth. He couldn’t take it either.

“Abby, she’s just a--” “A what, Mark?! She’s not normal, I doubt she’s even human!” she cried furiously. “We have to try, Abby, if we don’t, what would she have been for?” “I can’t try anymore! I’m done! Do you know what it’s like, the other women and their precious little babies, laughing and talking about them. I can’t even say anything about her! They don’t even know she’s my daughter!!” she screamed.

My father stared at her in horror. “You didn’t tell anyone about her?” he breathed. She looked up at him, her eyes ashamed. “Not even your parents?” His voice was getting louder. At that, she looked down, the feeling of her eyes being displayed. “Abigail, she’s our daughter! She’s our child! You can’t keep her from the world! She needs to live, to be a child, to learn, to have friends! And you’re sheltering her from that! You can’t do this, you just can’t…” He started sobbing, looking up to notice I was there.

“Lavender,” he said in his calmest voice at that moment, “please, come here.” I walked across the room, trying not to look at my mother. When I did, she shuttered. I stood in front of him, staring into his eyes with mine. “Lavender, I--” “I love you, daddy!” I said. I had wanted to say it and know what it meant, it sounded so unusual. When I did, his eyes grew wide, his face blank without worry. “Oh, Lavender,” he whispered. He pulled me into a hug and held me for a long time. “I love you too, Lavender,” he said as tears streamed down his face. It was late, and I started to get sleepy.

Even when I slept, he stayed with me, humming my little lullaby, stroking my hair every so often. And I just felt so warm and content. He was my father, and it felt like the first time he held that fact to his heart.

The next morning, my father was called into work early to help out with a few things. I woke up in the morning, hearing my mother in the living room on the phone. “Hold on Jan, someone’s on the other line.” I heard a beep, and she started again. “Hello? Yes, this is her. What?!” I heard a slam of something hard. Nothing made a sound for a while, then mom finally spoke. “Oh my God…No, this couldn’t have…I’ll be there as fast as I can.” She made the phone beep again. “Jan, I gotta go. No, I can’t--I’ll tell you later. Bye.” She hung up the phone and rushed to my room. “Lavender, we have to go, come on, get dressed, we need to hurry.”

She helped me get dressed, then walked me to the car. She buckled me in and sped down the road. She made hard turns, U-turns, and we finally arrived. At the Hospital. My mother practically ran inside, me in her arms, just to save time. She went to the front desk and asked, “Where’s Mark Black’s room?” The nurse pointed left and mom ran in that direction. Down the hall, we reached his room. “Mark, oh my God, what happened?!” she gasped as she walked into the room. But my father didn’t respond. He looked like he was sleeping.

“M-Mark?” she asked, getting closer to the bed. Then she noticed a loud, flat beeping noise. Her eyes grew wide. “No! No, Mark, you can’t! No!” She knelt beside the bed and took his hand firmly. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me! I can’t do this!” she cried to the ceiling. Nurses and doctors came in, checking my father, disappointment on their faces. My father was gone.

My mother cried, night after night, miserable. I tried making it better, but she just cried more. She picked up the phone and dialed a number, then waited. “Mom?” she asked. “Mark’s dead.” She didn’t say anything for a long time, then she asked, “Hey, Mom, would you like…to see your granddaughter?” Another long moment of silence. “Alright, I’ll see you in a while. Ok, bye.” She hung up the phone and looked at me. I looked away, afraid she would cry again. But this time, she closed her eyes and said, “Lavender, you’re going to be with Grandma for a while.” I didn’t know what to say. It was odd, all of a sudden with these events visiting my grandma. And for the first time. My mom packed up everything I owned, even my little pieces of furniture, and put them in my father’s truck. We drove for a long time, silence between us.

After what felt like two hours, we arrived in front of a little house with a garden. Mom gave me a pair of sunglasses to wear, telling me to put them on. They hid my eyes from others. So, we walked up the porch, and rang the doorbell. After a short moment, my grandma was at the door, looking down at me with the warmest smile I had ever seen. “Come in child, come in,” she said as she moved aside to let us through. We walked through into a room more florally decorated than mine. Pictures scaled the walls and tables, and the room smelled of dried flowers.

“Sweetheart, take those off, you’re inside now,” she said as we sat in the cozy room. I didn’t bother to look at my mother. I could feel her eyes on me, praying that I wouldn’t remove them. But I did, and I looked down at my feet. Grandma gave me a kind smile and said, “Let me see your eyes, child.” My mother’s eyes grew wide, her mouth opening to protest, but I already looked up to my grandma. With my eyes meeting hers, her smile faded, her face blank with horror. She backed away from me, bumping into one of the many tables mounted with memorabilia.

“This child’s cursed,” she whispered under her breath. “This child’s the work of the devil!” My mother began crying, and my grandma hurried out of the room. I looked around, not knowing what was happening at the time. My mother got up and followed her. “Please, Mom, let her stay here, she can’t stay with me!” “Abigail, I’m not gonna have a cursed child, a devils spawn, in this holy house and home!” “But please--” “Enough, Abigail! Take her out of this house at once!” She banged her cane to the floor as she said that. “But Mom--” “Now!” my grandmother bellowed.

My mother came back to the room and took hold of my wrist firmly. We walked out, slamming the door behind us. Once in the truck, she hit the steering wheel with the ball of her hand. She turned the ignition, roaring the truck to life. As we sped down the road, going past the speed limit, she started to mumble things like, “What did I do?” and “I’m cursed!” But I just looked out the window at the passing houses and stores that lined the streets. After another while, we were in the city in front of this huge building.

We got out, opened the doors and walked to a large counter. A woman sat there, reading one of those over-rated tabloid magazines. She looked up as my mother approached. “Welcome to the Franklin D. Roosevelt, how may I help you today?” she chimed. “Where do I drop her off?” my mother asked in a cold, dead voice. The desk woman’s face saddened as she heard her. With a nod of her head, she said, “To the left, and then make a right.” My mother stormed off in that direction, dragging me along by my wrist.

Mom stopped at an office door, opening it and barging in. The man at a small desk looked up in surprise as he saw my distressed mother. “May I help you, ma’am?” he barely spoke. My mother slammed the door behind us and we sat in the chairs by his desk. “Please, take her,” she said. The man looked concerned, then brought a clipboard from his desk with a pen. “Just fill out this information sheet, then the medical sheet, and if she needs any medication, fill that in as well.” He turned to me with the fakest smile I could ever see. But I didn’t look at him. I looked at my feet again. “And what’s your name, little miss?” he asked. “Lavender,” I mumbled. He smiled wider at my shyness. “It’s alright. Why don’t you look at me when I talk?” I tried to find the words to say, but all I could think of was, “’Cause mommy says not to.”

The man looked at me hard. “Look at me, please,” he asked. I raised my head at his proposal and looked at his eyes. With that, he jolted out of his chair, knocking it over. “O-oh, a s-special case, huh?” he asked my mother. She kept her head down over the paper and pen. She then slammed it on the desk in front of him. “Where does she go now?” she whispered. The man picked up his chair and sat again. “Well, she goes to the children’s room. She’ll be taken care of well, I assure you. We even give the children individual rooms!” he said, trying to sound excited.

It didn’t help my mother. “Where’s that?” she whispered again. The man’s expression fell again. “Down the hall to your left, you can’t miss it,” he mumbled. My mother got up and took my wrist again. The man looked at me and forced a smile. He looked like he was having trouble when he spoke the words behind his smile. “Welcome to the Franklin family, Lavender.” He choked on my name at the end.

So we walked out to the hall, turned left, and found the children’s room. The large room was filled with other children, playing, laughing, talking. It was the brightest, happiest place I had ever seen. My mother knelt down and turned me towards her face. She shuddered a bit when she looked at me, but she took a deep breath, refraining from the tears that wanted to come out. “Lavender, I--” “I love you, mommy!” I said, trying to make her happy. My mother hugged me tight, the tears flooding down her face. “I…I just…I can’t…” she cried. She dried her tears and looked down at my face.

“I’ve always wondered what you saw with those violet eyes. But I’ll never know.” With that said, she walked away, but turned back to me. “Goodbye, Lavender. Be…good,” she said, her voice hoarse with tears. She rushed down the hall way and passed the door. And that was last time I ever saw my mother.