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RITES OF PASSAGE Emma Heckel
I. It is eight thirty in the morning and my father’s rough, calloused hands are learning the art of braiding. I stand obediently on a chair in front of a streak-stained mirror that is too tall for my five-year-old body to see into. My father’s clumsy hands repeat the same pattern with three uneven strands of hair. Left. Middle. Right. Middle. Left. Middle. Right. Two pink-and-yellow hair bows are tied in at the base of my neck. Two tiny sunrises wrapped like silk around thick braids. Here, I learn how gentleness can manifest itself in heavy ways. Under tough, stop-bathed skin. In two matching sets of grayblue eyes. In hair bows. I wobble on the chair and a hand steadies it. II. There is a tree in the backyard of the house I grew up in. It grows apricots from tangled limbs that reach out like arms. I watch the silhouette of the tree move back and forth at night from my bedroom window and I think that the tree is going to grab me when I fall asleep. My mother fastens a blanket across my window with clothespins. I watch the tree from between the blanket and the splintered window frame and wonder if it can see me too. In the summer my father pays me to pick the apricots up off the ground. A penny each. The rotting fruit gets stuck underneath my shoes and dribbles sticky orange honey onto my hands when I pick it off.
