Pearl Necklace

1. It is four in the morning and I am lying on the floor of the bathroom, adjacent to my bed, while the cool tiles dig into me. I push my eyelids together and force myself to sleep. It is six in the morning and I am very tired. My hair is ridiculous. It is growing out of my skull like wasps flying out of a nest, wild, and angry as I am to be up so early. As I run my fingers through it, they hit a snag, there is a brittle breaking sound, and a sharp pain. I am left holding a gnarled clump of it, seasoned with dandruff.&nbsp; It is twelve in the afternoon, and I am vaguely irritated; I don’t know how I will stand another year and eight months of middle school. Someone says, “Ella, I wish I had hair like yours— do you want to know why?” I say, “no.” She continues, “then I could carry everything on my head.” She sticks a pencil into my hair. The pencil stays in place and she starts laughing. I remain vaguely irritated but give her a smile.&nbsp;

Notes on Pearls and Pearl Related Incidents

They looked like little pearls resting in the bowl of my red palm, white and clean as my naivety, or the sheets I was laid out on. I shoved them down my throat. I did not know why I did such a silly thing when I woke up.

I am a young writer, who attempts to convey, explore, and boarden her worldview through her writings. My favorite pieces to write are generally creative nonfiction ones such as poems, or personal essays, but I love to write in all genres and forms. Reading has been one of my primary interests from a young age. I have always used it as a tool to help me better empathize with others and understand the world, while also considering imaginative ways to change it. I am a 2020 graduate of The Ethel Walker School, where I recently received the Brown book award, and the Mary Scouller Nelson prize for English. In highschool, I was the lead editor of my school’s literary magazine Daemon, head of my school’s student-led writing tutoring service, Writing Fellows, and the President of the Ethel Walker chapter of the National Art Honor Society. I also loved to engage by participating in different&nbsp;social justice, and community partnership focused activities and organizations. I am a rising freshman English major at Kenyon College, where I plan to continue all of this work.&nbsp;

This is how I stay calm nowadays, sitting on my bed alone, looking up at the white expanse of my ceiling so that I don’t see all of it. I watch the light filtered by wavering tree leaves scurry above me. When I am ready to wallow again, I let my eyes fall back down to the floor. I can’t actually see the floor, at this point. I’ve let it get that bad. Instead of wood or carpet, I see a coating of debris: clothes filthy from being worn for days, bald plates, dusty bottles of pills, unfinished journals, a rainbow of trash, empty boxes, tiny things that I don't have the energy to examine, a poster from that horrible movie I saw with you. I kneel down on a pile of shirts and towels, and I know why you aren’t here; there simply isn’t enough space. Even in the open gaps between piles and shelves, the air is heavy. It would weigh you down. And yet, there is one spot left for you: your stretch of the bed. If you would only try to squeeze past all this shit. We could lay side by side tracing the crack in the ceiling —the white sky, again— and again with our brown eyes.&nbsp;

A pearl is conceived when the flesh of a mollusk is disturbed by a foreign entity. The site of the trauma is coated in protective layers of nacre that eventually form the body of the pearl.

Southsea pearls are the most valuable pearls of all because of their size and difficult nature.

Paper texture

Pearl is the birthstone for the month of June.

My mother had a pearl for a face, but I, a drop of amber rolling around in her lap, more resembled my father. He is a bird-legged boy in his picture, with gray-stained knees, and a bulbous head. She says I was the difficult baby. I can vaguely remember the times, when I was a kid, that a hand out of reach, or head lacking its kiss, something terrible would swell, and overwhelm the inside of me, start to spew out of me. In this way I resemble her.

After "Shirim" by Melody’s Echo Chamber

Today I forgot how to dance, it seems like. I can’t remember the rhythm of bone beating bone, and, to look back on those June afternoons feels like searching through silt-choked water. Now summer's gone. That fresh-eyed girl I knew seems like she is leaving this town. Now, almost gone. And I am not quite so free, feels like&nbsp; I forgot how to choose heart over thoughts. Over thoughts.&nbsp; I smother myself with my thoughts. I am just trying to get close. Get close to the bright-eyed girl you know.&nbsp;

2. For my first day of freshman year I had to be new. I was attempting to leave behind my old, tired emo persona in order to adopt one that was more sociable, and kind. I knew it would be quite the challenge to pull off, but I had two decent plans. The first was to smile at people, and give them as many compliments as I could think of. The second was to cut off all my hair in a symbolic act that would cleanse my mean spirit, and allow me to start over on every level.&nbsp; Plan One worked quickly, and effectively. After about a month of trying, I had collected a good number of friends, and many acquaintances. I had also thrown a Halloween party. It was beautiful, with all the people surrounding me strung about my house like ornaments. My second plan was more difficult, however. After about a month, my mom still had not taken me to the hairdresser, and when she did, it was not at all what I had expected. The buzzing of the clippers, and the soft falling of my now-freed hair to the ground, had no effect on me. I waited for the sharp pain of a sudden change or the ache of gradual transformation, but neither came.&nbsp; About a month later, I bought clippers for myself so that I could maintain the new length. It didn’t matter how I felt, I knew that I was a different person than I was before, outside and in.

She tied the plastic pearl, affixed to its string, just a little too tightly around my throat. I coughed feeling the cool, solid shape of it pressing into my windpipe. That feeling followed me the entire night; through the stiff, semi-synchronized shifting of my limbs, small reliefs as I left the dance floor for yet another cup of water, and interludes of loneliness when she would go talk to him. I really hated when she would leave like that, I would get so lost in the crowd like a moon without a sun to make it shine amongst the stars.&nbsp;

Natural pearls are valuable due to their rarity and beauty.

lying there, my egg-head nestled in the basket of your chest, your breath falls down to my face,&nbsp; rank like something spoiled by the sun. for a moment, i think to hold my nose, but i remember it is you, someone i can breathe in as easily as i do&nbsp; the crisp winter’s wind on a star strewn night,&nbsp; when you tell me that i am special. last winter, we were constantly running.&nbsp; goosebumps brushing against our schoolgirl skirts, we hopped from one heated sanctuary of a building, to the next. i used to run behind you with a pain in my chest from struggling to keep up. you used to run from your suffering, and still do. besides, what is your stale breath to me, the girl who would betray her horde of stinking secrets to you, and the one who promises to stomach yours gladly? i hold you, and you are the small part i know in an unfamiliar world. i hold you closer because this will be my solace, and i will need to keep it near me.

A Vicious Ritual and the Resulting Dream&nbsp;

When night falls, I take my place beside the mirror.&nbsp; By the light of a single yellow bulb, my clumsy fingers pinch and prod,&nbsp; deliberately scarring my body.&nbsp; What are they looking for?&nbsp; No treasure lies beneath that skin, only pestilence, blood.&nbsp; No healing lies within this process, only the breach, mutilation, &nbsp;a head bang on the wall behind me. I lie down in bed, close my eyes,&nbsp; and see a little weed growing itself into the shadows,&nbsp; ducking its fluffy yellow head&nbsp; under the thick, broad leaf of the flower beside it.&nbsp; I watch as the yellow falls from its face,&nbsp; and is replaced by a color like dust.&nbsp; I think, “What a silly weed, a drunken weed maybe.&nbsp; Someone should tell that weed to look up.”

All year long, I continue to flood my hair with&nbsp;pigment, and then strip it away (sometimes twice in one day). It is working, there are people surrounding me, looking, reaching out to touch. They are talking about it, about me, and to me, and I do the same to them; we are doing it together.&nbsp;One week at a party, a boy asks "is that your natural hair?" My friends and I probably laughed about that for a month straight. The day after the party, I am soaking my strands with “Natural Black” when I realize something; looking at them up close, they are too thin and too delicate, and when I pass the dye applicator through them gently, they snap. I try to wash away the dye and the water takes my hair, dark and spidery, swirling down the drain. Suddenly, the people circling me are falling away, and I am both bald, and alone. 4. My hair has been growing for almost two years now; it has gotten long. It curls, swerves, jumps, and does a little jig. &nbsp;In the mornings, I usually just take off my bonnet and fluff it up a bit. I know I should do better, and sometimes I do. I am trying my best! At night I usually moisturize it and wrap it up. It looks so alive, and shining in the light of this afternoon. I may almost be on the cusp of loving it.

3. Avery is so cool that, when she asks if I want to dye my hair purple, I don’t even consider saying no. I want to be just like her. I need to be cool like her, and her hair, practically glowing in the sunlight, is “LUSTY LAVENDER.” She massages bleach into my scalp with her bare hands. “Fuck the applicator,” she says. My hair is probably a couple centimeters short, but it is taking her a long time. As we wash it out in the communal sink, we see it is undesirably patchy. It is okay though, because Avery says the patches are “sick”, and she would know.&nbsp; After a few hours we wash the dye out and find that my hair has become a vibrant patchwork carpet of pinks, oranges, purples, and reds. This is also okay, because Avery likes it and I like Avery, and we are here doing this thing together.&nbsp; I say goodbye to her, and then I say goodbye to summer. I start school. I have&nbsp;decided that I will be cool all year, but at this point, my hair has faded to a&nbsp;relatively even, neutral shade, so I take copious amounts of&nbsp;bleach and dye to it. I turn my hair bubblegum pink, and suddenly, in the mirror, I am what hoped to&nbsp;be— a fast-flashing caricature of a girl.

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