I'll Be Sure to Dream of You

Although I am not exactly sure what I was made for, I don’t believe I was made for the dark. There was a time when I used to be bathed by the light, held in its warmth, and allowed to shine within it. I was once told that I was beautiful and that I was pretty, but those times seem so distant now. I remembered feeling proud to have such compliments given to me but the well of that feeling had dried as the years had passed.

I had lived the later half of my life cloaked in such darkness, a seemingly neverending absence. Not by choice, of course. When I am shut away like this, memories come back to me, but sometimes they like to be tattered. Bits and pieces of a life scattered like fallen, spring petals approaching summertime. Pretty little things they are, but they go away so fast.

When everything had become dark, a handful of memories always surfaced in my loneliness. They are some of the few memories I have that still hold such deep seeded roots within me, not allowing forgetfulness to touch it. When I think about them, I feel an overwhelming happiness but the remembrances always seem to hurt just as much. One set in particular always hurts the most.

It was the day where my eyes had first opened and I had experienced the world with fresh feelings and a bit of a naive wonder. Before then, there was nothing until I was roused awake by the sound of a key twisting and the persistent winding of the inner mechanism laid underneath me.

click...click...click...

A soft, pleasant tune became my voice while the frame of my body began to spin alone in the curtains of dark. Streams of hazy, warm light spilled through the cracks by the silver hinges that held me in graceful concealment. As the top of my box was pulled back, I suddenly was held within the gaze of an audience gathered for a birthday party. As I danced to the sound of delighted gasps and murmurs, I was dazzled by the sight of round, shiny balloons and fanciful wrapped gifts.

The wind up box allowed me to sing a silver pitched melody for those who watched. The sheen of the pearl resting gracefully on the top of my hand was captured vibrantly in the light. Children who gathered around me wore funny, pointed hats with a fluffed up ball at the top as the adults sat around. They talked amongst each other while the smoke from their cigarettes lazily hung in the air with the streamers. Ice clinking against crystal cups filled with chilled, red liquid.

“Mommy-- LOOK! She’s so pretty!” A child exclaimed, her eyes as wide as the moon as she held me in the small cups of her hands, gentle as could be.

She held me as if one slight move would shatter me entirely. The pastel ribbons on the ends of her wispy hair bounced as she turned her head, a pure smile of excitement lit up her face. She looked through the crowd until she found someone, proudly showing me off before holding me close as she softly touched the powder blue, bobbinet tulle of my tutu in awe.

Her mother, who sat off to the side with a lit cigarette fixed between merlot nails, looked towards her and finally to me. An eyebrow slightly raising above an uninterested gaze. “Oh, so she did send something.”

The end of the cigarette glowed as she put it between her lips for a moment, smoke spilling from the corners of her mouth like fog lingering above a rainsoaked road. The cushions of the couch bounced up as she rose, the bottom of her heels piercing through the loops of the shaggy carpet as she made her way over to her daughter. Hands adorned with gold rings and jewels came down to pull me away, holding me firmly in her grip.

“Clara, this must be from your grandmother, darling. Let’s try our best to be careful with it.” Her tone was shallow as the point of her heeled shoe motioned abruptly towards a box decorated with ribbons and a bow. “Why don’t you go and see what your Aunt Sherry bought for you, hm?”

The way it was spoken was certainly not a question, but a command. With me in tow, she quickly stepped past the children crowded within the space of the posh living room as the next gift was unwrapped. As we traveled, my view of the child I was gifted to became partially obscured as I was placed on a side table. The adults around me briefly watched me dance to my song, my porcelain figure forever fixed into a first position, arabesque pose, before looking back at the celebrations. The melody that flowed from my box as I spun around and around upon my miniature clam shell stand soon slowed and came to a halt. Almost as if she was silently beckoned, a well dressed lady came to join her at her side as Clara’s mother turned to glance at her, pointing down at me with her manicured finger.

“Mitzi, look – I told her not to get her something fragile and what does she do? She goes and does it anyway. Not that that’s at all surprising.” Her words were terse as she shook her head tiredly, speaking in a hushed, irritated tone. “It’s as if what I say does not matter, not even in the slightest.”

“Hmm…” Mitzi’s heart shaped lips pursed before popping open to speak with a hush. “At the very least Donna, your mother appears to have great taste in the finer things. You might get a pretty penny down at Carlsworth’s for it, I’m sure Clara wouldn’t look too hard for it if it went missing. I mean, goodness, look at all the gifts she has gotten this year.”

There was a moment of silence between them as the chatter of children and party go-ers around them commingled into one big noise. The woman I now knew as Donna watched me carefully, emotions and thoughts twisting in smoldering, umber eyes before she sucked her teeth after arriving at a silent decision.

“I would if my mother didn’t have a certain penchant for calling the house whenever she likes. I’m sure she’ll ask Clara about it so I suppose we’re stuck with it.” Her voice was low, just above a whisper. “If she doesn’t mess it up, I’m sure it’ll have great resale value later. It must be worth something, knowing who it came from. Certainly doesn’t look, you know, cheap.”

The cadence of their voices caused their words to plant themselves within my mind like a dagger stabbed in the heart. What exactly was my worth? At the time, it seemed as if it was something of importance but I did not know what it truly meant. It seemed like being a cheap object was bad, something to avoid becoming entirely. From their conversation, I knew that I wasn’t cheap or bad. In fact, I was the very opposite and I thought to stay with Clara, I had to be just that.

As the seasons began to change, after the fanciful celebrations stayed to linger forever in the past, we carried on with the humdrum of life as it approached us. In those years of soft bliss, I spent my time basking within the bright sunlight that poured through the window next to the dresser I was placed upon. It was there that I shone the most as the rays of the sun danced through viridian leaves as the wind gently shook them. The lacquer of my wooden box and the gloss of my polished porcelain twinkled as time carried on from the gentle sunrises to moody sunsets, causing the color of my tutu to fade softly.

Those days seemed so good back then. I can remember pieces of memories from that room when I was loved. I can still see the brilliance of Clara’s smile from when she had her friends over to play within her room. I can hear their childish secrets being whispered and the lithe movement of her feet as she danced across her room in worn ballet slippers to the joyful sounds the radio would play. I can remember the day, as clear as glass, when she accidentally dropped me onto the ground as she tried to move me to clean and the tears that fell from her eyes from panic as she rushed to grab a bottle of her father’s glue.

As I laid there, on the hard surface of the ground, the fragments of the conversation between Donna and Mitzi came back to haunt me. Their words swimming in the depth of my thoughts, jumping out to take hold of me. Serving as a reminder that my form could never be as it once was. I was different. I was broken. What would I be worth to Clara now? But as I lingered in shock of my sudden change, I heard her come back and whisper something through sorrowful breaths as she apologetically petted the curve of my sculpted hair as I was placed back on the dresser.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to —” Her soft voice warbled, suddenly cut off by a hiccup. “I promised Grandma I’d take good care of you, I…I hope you’re not mad.”

She paused and sniffled, wiping her reddened eyes on her linen shirt sleeve, before shakily glueing my broken arm back on. The bottle of glue soon disappeared to hide in the front pocket of the corduroy overalls. “Don’t worry, you’ll be good as new. I know if Grandma was here, she’d think you’re still beautiful too.”

Her innocent consolation brought me out of my spell, telling me that I was still beautiful to her despite the rough crack in my forearm. They were words that held space within me, something secret and safe. But those moments of happiness and reassurance that once blossomed before me soon withered, as everything seemed to do.

Time seemed to march on faster than I could keep up with, the beat of its drum increasing every second. The warmth of the room quickly dwindled into smoldering cinders as Clara’s presence began to recede during the next set of years. Her existence flittered erratically like a hummingbird’s flight as I barely could keep track of when she would come home to stay. The moments of her absence became deafening to me after moving through years of her life with her. The environment of the room I lived within became something else entirely as she grew and matured to where I could not recognize it any longer.

Pieces of clothing were strewn about, littered in piles and obstructing the panels of the floor that she used to dance upon. The soft lavender hued walls that hung pictures of her youth and friends were taken down and loud posters with heavy contrasted colors soon took up their space, covering the discolored outline of the frames. The spotless dresser that I sat upon quickly became obscured from objects that were absently deposited from the pockets of her leather jackets. Stubs from wrinkled tickets, empty wrappers of candy, tarnished coins, crinkled bills of money, a half emptied lighter and a dwindling pack of cigarettes. These unknown pieces from the outside world traveled to me and kept me shrouded as they crowded around me and spilled into the dust lined trays of my box.

I often wondered what I was to Clara at that point in our lives, knowing that one day she would eventually grow up but I didn’t think it would come as fast as it did. Everything seemed so eternal back then in the past, almost as if time could not reach us in the golden days of endless summer. But in these new moments, it was different. I was no longer a music box ballerina in the care of a child. The only song I knew could not soothe the pain she had felt from the world and from her home.

In fact, I did not know what could solve it. That much was apparent on a night that marked the last time I had ever seen her. The room seemed to come alive within the darkening twilight as Clara suddenly swept into her room like a storm, her voice screaming in a shrill at her mother whose presence was coming closer from the hallway. A worn backpack was laid open on the bed as it was becoming stuffed with clothes and trinkets that Clara would fish up in her river of emotion before her mother came to confront her. Wrinkled hands set with the same adorning jewels and rings from before now holding tightly onto a strap of the backpack.

“Do you realize how much has been given to you? That all of this has been provided to you?” Donna’s voice rasped, a desperation and disbelief screaming within her eyes. “Do you even see how much I have spoiled you? I have given you everything you had ever wanted, and this is how you act?”

Clara’s head seemed to swivel on her shoulders as she barked a sharp laugh and shot a look towards her mother, one with the ferocity of an unmanned coal fire.

“Please, don’t make me laugh, Mom.” Her gaze smoldered under layers of dark eyeliner, smudged and running down the length of her cheeks. “Don’t even do it.”

“I’m sorry, do what? Tell you the truth, Clara?”

“Oh yeah, sure, sure that’s what you do – tell the truth, right? Since when did you ever do that, Mom? ‘I love you, Clara’, ‘I hear you, Clara’, ‘This will always be your home, Clara’. What a bunch of bull. You know what? Now I see why Dad left you, you know it too, don’t you? I’m surprised he even lasted that long married to some stuck up, crazed –”

Her voice was cut off by the sound of fabric ripping as Donna frantically pulled the stuffed clothing out of the backpack, the aged fingers trembling as her knuckles became white in her grip. Lifting up a tattered shirt, she would shake it in her child’s direction as anger seethed from her.

“You’re NOT taking anything from this house, do you hear me – these are NOT your things to TAKE!” Her voice wallowed, the bass of her tone booming against the walls. The cage of her chest rose and fell with adrenaline.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I felt the surface of the dresser quake as the collection of trash scattered away from me. Clara’s fingers pressed themselves firm against the bottom carvings of my music box, squeezing tight before I suddenly became weightless.

“THEN GO AHEAD AND TAKE THEM! I DON’T WANT THEM!”

I sailed across the air past her mother as her voice thundered before I crashed against the surface of the opposite wall. The music box within me made a wicked, painful twinkle of sound as picture frames fell and clattered around me. The top of my box laid in an obtuse angle as I was pointed towards the door, feeling the vibrations of the thuds from the thick boots Clara had worn on her feet before they stomped out of the room, down the hall, and out into the world. The only sound I heard after was the quivering wheezes of Donna’s breath before they broke into a shrieking sob as she left the room after her daughter. From then on, only shadows remained as all else fell silent.

Sometime after that night, when the orange leaves outside of the window fell and the branches became bare ten times over, strangers came into the room with tan boxes and crinkled, black bags of plastic. Before I knew it, the top of my box was shut, sealing me in a vast darkness I’d only seen once before. There were no shadows of the branches of the fruit trees outside of the window from the light of the moon. No small reflections on the pale lavender walls or the soft glow of fireflies resting on the glass of the windows. I heard the thick clunk of things being placed on top of my lid, weighing it down, as I was kept from the light for longer than I could even imagine. It seemed excruciatingly endless as I entered the outside world for the first time, all of it hidden from view as I was shuffled around, carried, and then finally tossed into a place where the only sound I heard for a while was the buzzing of flies and the squeaks of mice. I don’t hear anything like that now.

I can’t remember how long it has been since I’ve been open. I wonder when it will be the next time I will see the light and where I will be. Sitting in this darkness, I feel as though those moments were simultaneously a moment and forever ago. Looking back on it now, my actual worth didn’t mean a thing. A price tag is meaningless when you are in fact priceless to someone. All that matters to me now is that for a time, I was able to bring happiness to someone who was special to me and we shared in that joy. Even if she wasn’t able to know it.

I think I'll go to sleep now and when I do, I’ll try to dream of that birthday party again. It’ll be a dream where bad memories have no place there. A dream where I’ll see Clara’s smile again and my music box won’t be so broken so I can play it for her. Maybe this time, I'll step off of my shell and dance with her in a pas de deux. Wouldn’t that be nice?