I Remember It Like It Was Yesterday

I was only learning to hold a pencil, tracing shaky letters that looked like writings of someone who was dyslexic. My teacher’s impatience grew instilling fear in me. I kept trying but her patience ended in the crack of a whip. It sliced my tender skin, carved fire into my right leg, and left blood streaming through my white sock. The realization hit her that it wasn’t something she could easily cover up and she asked me to lie when my mom came that I fell.

I remember limping into mama’s arms that afternoon when she came for pickup, her eyes widening as she peeled back the black socks my teacher had pulled up to my knee to cover the injury. Mama was furious and she called the police on her. Her name was Miss Ann. I couldn’t lie to mama because I knew my teacher hated me and I didn’t want to be in her class anymore. I was taken to the pediatrician after the police arrived.

And then, the ward.

I can’t especially remember the decor but it smelt like antiseptic, sharp and unforgiving. Children’s cries echoed like trapped birds. My mother’s hand gripped mine as though to anchor me from floating away because I dreaded injections.

The doctor’s hands were gentle, her voice soft where my teacher’s had been harsh. Cold water, metal instruments, the sting of stitching, it all blurred into pain and comfort. I was bleeding, but for the first time that day, I was also being healed. The pediatrician offered me candy for managing to be a good girl.

It’s been years, yet sometimes that memory drags me back. I remember it like it was yesterday yet they say kids don’t remember things from childhood. They do especially the traumatizing memories. I wonder if that ward still stands, or if it has been swallowed by renovations, painted over into something new because we relocated from that state. But even if the walls of that place where I got stitches are gone, I know the ward survives, in the less visible scar etched on my leg, in the echo of fear that still lingers when I watch another child hold a pencil trying to sketch letters.

That lost ward is not a place I can identify on a map. It is the chamber of memory where pain and healing touched me at once. It is the ghost I carry quietly, stitched into my skin and it reminds me that not all wounds are visible and not all scars fade.

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