Self-Story Two: Volumes

My small feet walked slowly on the vinyl floors of the Swift Current mall. My mother had long since dropped my hand, the sweat covering mine making her too uncomfortable. I felt awkward in a dress I would’ve chosen not to wear as it fell to my knees, making me feel as if I was standing out in the crowd of casually dressed people.

We walked into the dollar store and my eyes lit up as if I had seen magic. The walls were lined with a bright yellow beaming down at me, blinding my eyes. The bins full of stuffed animals my older sister rushed to were plastered in the same neon shade. The aisles lined with a sticky paper of their signature color. It was then that I saw her. I always knew that I was a little bit bigger around the stomach, even at the young age of seven, and it made me feel separate from my peers. But, here was someone who was different from me in a different way.

The little girl stood amongst the yellow walls and approached the same bin as my sister. She had dark skin and dark eyes that darted back and forth looking between the huggable small animals. She looked so different from my sister, but yet they had arrived at the bin with the same goal. The ponytail her dark hair had been pulled back into bounced back and forth as she clutched the small animal she had finally chosen and ran back to her parents. Parents that looked exactly like her. I began to rack my memory for something familiar and wound up empty. None of my classmates looked like them, no one at church, no one I had ever seen.

I turned to my mother who stood behind us, not next to us like that little girl’s parents, and asked “why does that person look like that?” The words echoed across the store, louder than I had intended. I had never known the proper volume to speak, all I ever wanted was to be heard and I had learned that the louder I spoke the more people listened. My mother looked down at me, her face turning red and her short brown curls framing her face, trying to keep her face hidden from the other family and her eyes down. She told me to be quiet and looked up, smiling sheepishly at the little girl's parents.

At that point my sister grabbed my hand and ran off towards the doll aisle, dragging me along with her, my church shoes dragging across the floor as I rushed to keep up with her athleticism. Once we arrived she picked up a doll and pointed it towards my face.

“She looks like that little girl!” My sister said excitedly, as if she had figured out the key to a long lost mystery. I clutched that doll, favoring it over the options of stuffed animals, and looked towards the exit in wonder, but the little girl and her family were gone.