New Eyes

          Every so often something happens in life that changes your view of the world. It can be as small as realizing some people have “outie” belly buttons or as major as learning where babies really come from. This story falls somewhere in the middle. It made me look at friends I’d known since diaper days differently, wondering if they were hiding something like Lauren Brown.
          I befriended Lauren in the third grade, about three years after I had moved to Maryland. We were fast friends, mostly because we shared a passionate adoration of the Spice Girls. I liked Posh Spice and she liked Baby Spice. We’d play with our Spice Girl dolls, tease her little brother, and watch a lot of syndicated “Growing Pains” episodes. It was a pretty average third grade friendship.
          Though the friendship was average, she was different than my other friends. Physically, she was like any little girl. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and was very petite. But she wasn’t like my other little blonde haired, blue eyed, petite friends. She was one of my few friends not in Girl Scouts and she didn’t wear Limited Too. She was also the only Jewish person I really knew. Her mother was Jewish, her father, Christian. Lauren and her brother were basically raised Jewish though, with the small exception of Santa and the Easter Bunny. She invited me to most of her family’s Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur celebrations over the years. I still associate Jewish holidays with salty parsley because Lauren introduced me to that tradition. I’d always found the celebrations fascinating and still hold on to the memories now.
          Lauren had attitude, something my relatively meek friends lacked. I had friends with fun personalities, but none with her rebellious spirit. In her fourth grade yearbook picture, she had her blonde hair pulled up in a bun with two large sections hanging by the sides of her petite face, not a flattering look. She topped it off with a clownish exaggerated frown. It still makes me laugh to this day. The picture made it into the yearbook because her mom accepted it, knowing Lauren would refuse a retake. I mentioned that picture to her years later and she just shrugged it off, not ashamed at all.
          It was this sense of rebellious strength she had that always interested me. I hadn’t seen her cry in two years of our friendship. I’d always thought of her as a very strong person, no one could bring her down. Then her parents got a divorce. It was amicable, more amicable than one may think a divorce can be. Lauren seemed to handle it well. She told me how excited she was that her dad’s new house would have a pool with a slide, and she casually discussed her dog, Lilly, would move with the kids. I’d never been through a divorce, and I assumed all was well. I remember being in the fourth grade, sitting in her large near-blinding turquoise room, while three American Girl dolls sat by the window collecting dust. I sat on her bed, which always had an off-kilter mattress, because Lauren liked it that way. I happened to see into her trash can. Lauren was downstairs grabbing us some snacks as I peered down at a very tattered book. The book was Catherine, Called Birdy. Pages had been ripped out and someone had scribbled out random pages and put big Xs on the cover. Lauren came up shortly.
          “Um, Lauren, did you not want this book?” I asked, not realizing it could be something deeper.
          She froze. I remember her blue eyes pacing back and forth from me to the book. Her silence was soon replaced by frustrated annoyance.
          “No, it’s just….nothing!” Lauren snapped.
          “It doesn’t look like nothing,” I pried.
          “It was just the divorce and everything,” she snatched the ravaged book out of my hand and threw it away.
          I never mentioned it again. However, I saw Lauren another way. Whenever I heard anyone mention the Browns’ divorce, I pitied her. I pictured her in that turquoise room tearing a book to shreds in her seclusion, hiding her pain. It had never occurred to me how hard this divorce really was on her. She disguised it so well.
          I moved not even a year later, but I still think about her from time to time. Catherine, Called Birdy has been recommended to me many times since then, but I can’t bring myself to read it. Whenever I see the cover I think of my friend who is too strong to admit her vulnerability and how she had fooled even me into thinking her untouchable. Finding that book in the trash was such a small instance, but it has made me aware that everyone hurts, just some choose to hide it.