Daughter 

2025 9th-12th Grade Prose Honorable Mention

   “Can you see me?” she laughs, the sound filling the otherwise quiet room. 
   Her grandmother returns her laugh as she replies, “Yes, darling.” 
   Isabella wonders if her grandmother’s laugh had once sounded different from the way she knows it to be or if it is like an artifact from when her grandmother was a child like herself. She doesn’t know if laughs age–she hasn’t known anyone long enough to be able to distinguish their younger self from their older self.
   Isabella and her grandmother are both on the bed, Isabella sitting on the edge of the mattress as her grandmother perches behind her, dragging a brush through Isabella’s hair. They are facing the mirror that is propped up on the dresser so that Isabella can see her grandmother at work. Or, at least, that was the intended purpose; now, it is so that Isabella can amuse herself by making funny faces in the mirror while her grandmother laughs and shakes her head in response.  

   The bed springs make squeaky noises as Isabella bounces up and down from her spot just to hear the sound again. 
   Her grandmother gently grabs her shoulders, saying, “Isabella, please, darling.”
   Isabella giggles but stops. She looks at herself in the mirror once more and begins to make silly faces again. 
   Her grandmother had really finished the braid a while ago, but she keeps on undoing and redoing the hairdo, just for an excuse to keep her granddaughter there with her. When Isabella looks at herself in the mirror to entertain herself, her grandmother smiles at Isabella’s reflection, absentmindedly running her fingers through her granddaughter’s hair. 

__ 

   I remember when my daughter used to let me do this with her. We would sit on this very bed, and I’d brush her hair, braid it, and I’d run my fingers through the pattern just to do it all over again. Just to get more time with her. My Isabella looks just like her, a preservation of my daughter’s image from when she was indisputably mine, and I cannot tell if this is a good or bad thing. Isabella has her mother’s smile, her hair, her eyes, and my favorite of all – her laugh. It feels good to have my daughter back. But there are moments in which I can see my daughter’s temper in her, her rage, her stubbornness. And I’m reminded as to why I lost my daughter to begin with. 
   It’s so strange how the word “lost” can be used.
   I lost my daughter. Ah, there you are, sweetheart! I told you not to wander off!
   I lost my daughter. I will never be able to see her again, to hold her in my arms, to hear her voice, because death doesn’t give me a choice. 
   I lost my daughter. I will never be able to see her again, to hold her in my arms, to hear her voice, because neither of us has made that a choice to choose. 
   Dead and estranged. With my daughter, really, what is the difference? The thing that pains me the most is that, at first, we had chosen this. Death did not force her from my arms twenty years ago and cut the string of time that we could’ve had. I watched her walk away before I turned and walked in the opposite direction. The wall of time and hatred and grief and sadness that we built between us didn’t give us a choice to turn back around. Our shared pride and stubbornness didn't even allow either of us to acknowledge the border. 
   During the fifteen years of our estrangement, Death decided to usher her away from me. And then there really was no choice. No more going back. 
   I lost my daughter, and then, I lost my daughter. 
   “Grandma?” I realize that the giggling in the room had stopped. My Isabella’s giggling. My daughter’s giggling. 
   “Yes, darling?” I look up to meet Isabella’s eyes in the mirror. 
   Isabella is frowning. “You stopped.” 
   It takes me a blink of an eye to realize what she is referring to. 
   “Ah, yes, darling. I apologize.” 
   I continue to trail my fingers through her dark hair, and Isabella starts to giggle again.
   My beautiful, beautiful granddaughter. But not my daughter. 

— 

   Grandma looks sad sometimes. I can tell by the way her eyes start to look heavy like she was really sleepy and how her mouth settles into a frown. I try to distract her. I try to get her to keep on brushing and brushing and brushing my hair. It makes her happier. I bounce on the bed so she can shake her head in laughter. I pretend not to notice when she looks at my funny faces in the mirror so that she can smile too without having to reprimand me about how my face will stay that way if I keep on making such silly faces. 
   Why is Grandma sad? I get sad when I cannot play at the park for longer or when the sun steals my ice cream from me or when I remember Mommy.
   Mommy was so pretty. She was the prettiest lady in the whole wide world.
   That is another reason why I like spending time with Grandma. Grandma looks like Mommy. Grandma acts like Mommy. Grandma brushes my hair like Mommy used to. 
   Mommy used to look sad like Grandma does sometimes. I used to wonder why she was sad. Now, I wonder why Grandma is sad. 

Fifteen years later 

   My heart feels heavy. I feel my shoulders droop from the weight of it like I am carrying a bag containing the world. But I can’t just drop it. My heart stays in my chest, beating, beating, beating. And I will lug it around until it feels lighter – until my happiness plucks this sadness from my heart and allows for me to finally breathe. 
   I wonder if this is how I felt when my mother passed away. I was only five. I can’t say I recall how I felt, if I even comprehended what was going on. I mean, death: how would a five-year-old comprehend that when here I was, twenty-five and struggling with the fact that Grandma was gone? 
   Sometimes I think about how strange that is: for my mother to have died before my grandmother. It’s like life chose to yank the natural road of life from under my feet and flip it around. I’m sure my grandmother thought about that too – how she outlived her daughter. That she, the gray-haired, was forced to bury her daughter, the dark-haired. 
   I cannot recall a time from when I was really young that I ever saw my mother and Grandma together. I remember what a foreign concept a grandmother was to me, though, when those government people told me who I was going to be living with. My mother’s mother? Mommy has a mother? 
   And now I’ve lost them both. Or I’ve lost lost them, as Grandma would’ve put it. She explained that concept to me when I was fifteen – it didn’t make much sense to me. How their estrangement separated them like how death separates people, and even in my mother’s death, my grandmother hadn’t told me anything until ten years later. It made me frustrated at her, at my mother, at the fact that they could’ve had those years together if they hadn’t been so stubborn. I remember how I yelled at her. I saw the pain that filled her features, the shock that I’d lashed out at her, yet how familiar my anger was to her. Because I was just like my mother.
   I remember how I felt every time she used to comment on my striking resemblance to my mother. I remember wondering how Grandma loved me if she supposedly hated the person I took after. 
   I don’t think Grandma really hated my mother. I don’t think she could. She could’ve rejected me, denied me, but she didn’t. She nourished me with the love that she missed giving to my mother. Every word of comfort, of encouragement, of advice that Grandma gave to me was another word scribbled out for her to send to my mother: a letter of apology and of love. 
   That thought makes me smile as I feel my happiness reach into my heart and take a bit of my sadness out. 

— 

   I exhale, letting the air expel from my body like I am trying to get to the bottom of a pool. I am sinking, sinking. I open my eyes. It’s too dark down here. I will my body to go back up to the surface where the light shines brighter – brighter than the sun, yet I can stare directly into its face. I know that face. My dear, dear Isabella. A hand reaches for me. I resurface, drawing in a breath and allowing myself to study the face closely. My dear, dear daughter.