A Moment for Silent Reflection

A Moment for Silent Reflection

She sits straight-spined, slim breasts slightly thrust forward. Pouting, she toys with a particularly stubborn piece of hair that refuses to form a perfect ringlet. As she does so, I cannot help but think how much she resembles her great-grandmother. This girl is brunette, where her ancestor was of fairer colouring, however the delicate upturn of her nose – if stabbed with modern metal – and smooth elfin features are truly Agnes.

It hardly seems a century ago that we first met. Agnes was a young nymph of seventeen, with a classical beauty worthy of the Florentine’s Venus. Her father had given mine large folded pieces of ornate paper and a few circular chunks of a meagre-looking metal in exchange for me. I was to be her birthday present; I was to aid her in finding a suitable mate. How I had wished it could have been me! We saw each other twice a day, religiously, ritualistically. I was her morning companion while she stroked creams, powders and colours across her translucent skin and I was her night-time lover, looking on tenderly as she allowed the furred brush to caress her long lustrous locks, unaware that her soft pink lips gently mouthed a century of numbers. And, although I know she never really saw me, it was in those moments I lived, for in those moments she was mine.

After some time we were no longer alone; I could see the presence of another in her once-sparkling emerald eyes. The bedchamber we shared was different now; we had moved. A man began to visit, intruding on our time together. I had once enjoyed my resting-place at the end of her bed, comforted by her soft breathing and the sight of her burrowing contentedly like a hibernating mouse under handmade patchwork blankets. In this new chamber of Hell, I reflected nightmarish scenes and when she looked over his tanned, toned shoulder, eyes pleading, all she saw in me was him.

The girl before me now sheds a tear from her similarly pleading orbs and I see her regret it immediately, hurriedly wiping the reckless droplet from her make-up masked skin, adjusting the slightly smudged black smears under her equally black eyes. Though not the brilliant verdant green of Agnes’ eyes, they are as expressive; they show her unhappiness. As she strokes her ivory dress to remind herself why she should be smiling, I realise that it is her wedding day. I had always tried not to look when she, her mother or her grandmother had dressed, as far as I am able. With Agnes, I was not so restrained…

She starts to speak; people have always found me easy to talk to, though, frustratingly, I cannot vocalise. If only I had been able to tell Agnes how I felt! I wouldn’t have wasted a word… She questions her decisions, how far they have been her decisions; she questions her lover, their compatibility, berating herself and speaking of his best qualities, believing none of it. I want to tell her that she is fulfilling her predestined role, becoming the fourth consecutive female to have this conversation with me. After so many years, I realise it doesn’t matter that this confused woman cannot hear me as she does not want advice; that is why they choose to speak to me. The four girls have confided in me and I, like an immortal parent, have seen them in different stages of life from suckling cherubic babe to pigtailed girl, porcelain bride to clucking mother and chuckling grandmother, until they no longer wake from their bed but are moved by wand-like men, sombrely, still.

There is one day I have seen with all four now: their wedding day. The styles of dresses have changed; the fashionable hairstyles each as ridiculous and beautiful as the last; the music they sing along to has become unrecognisable, and the serenading box is a compact chrome slice, no longer wooden with an ostentatious brass tulip. Their attitudes, too, have changed. This girl’s grandmother, Agnes’ daughter, spoke to me of her husband’s death, begging for answers, not long after she had beamed with pride as he left for foreign lands. She spent years in front of me explaining her lasting fidelity; she never remarried, denying love and growing bitter as a wrinkled lime. The daughter that never knew her father animatedly showed me that foundation garments, as my Agnes had called them, were unnecessary, restrictive cages, and should be destroyed in ritual fires. Ultimately she married too, justifying it to herself at me; it was an acceptable move, apparently, as she was to keep her name and an ambiguous title. And, though I didn’t really grasp most of her concepts, or understand much of the female mind, I grew to learn that this was a family of strong women, courage deepening like a sunset with each generation. For a long time I had been expecting this girl to do something special.

I am alone now. I have spent most of my time alone since my humble creation. My father, though poor, was gifted with such exquisite skill, of which even he wasn’t aware, nor was he able to control. He made me to reflect, and that has been my life: to reflect on the people that pass in front of me and those who stop to talk.

It is all a blur, where once so clear. Suddenly she has returned with a man. They are speaking and moving too fast, arguing. She speaks her mind, what she thinks is her mind, and he is enraged. They tell spiteful untruths, like little daggers, used to stab at each other. She sharply brings her palm to meet his face. Stung, he picks up a bottle of scented liquid shaped like a diamond that sits drunkenly in front of me, and throws it… everything fragments – she cries out – he yells – she tries to protect me – too late – I cannot see – I am falling – Agnes…