Gorgons
I remember the first time I realized what it meant to be a girl. My 3rd-year class was on a field trip to a museum I don’t quite recall the name of— more important things stood out to me. I was seven. I was seven and I was staring at a statue of Medusa. We were told about how she was a monster, a Gorgon. At the time, I thought Gorgon was another word for girl . They told us about her jealousy and how her eyes molded others into stone; how her hair was coiled, made of snakes. I thought it looked beautiful. I turned to the girl next to me with long, dark locks woven beautifully.
“She looks like you,” I said with shiny, young eyes.
The girl’s eyebrows furrowed, confused, maybe even offended. It was only when she looked up at the statue and then back at me that her irritation turned into understanding. She smiled at me and her eyes squinted slightly. She didn’t say anything after that, but I could tell she felt seen.
Seven years old and already desperate to be seen.
We became friends soon after. I learned her name to be Dorcas. Dorcas Meadowes. What a girlish thing to have your last name be covered in flowers, I thought.
She introduced me to her friends and I introduced her to mine. Although I didn’t know it at the time, with each meeting and interaction we had with each other, I learned more about girlhood.
***
I met Lily and Mary the summer before— which is quite fitting for them. I was at the park as my guardians watched over me. They were taking turns giving each other piggyback rides. I saw them then as what I’ve always known them to be: light . They were loud and they were kind, and, although I was a very shy child, they felt welcoming. I went up to them with little needed courage and asked if I could play too. Neither of them batted an eye before they smiled a genuine smile and said: “Yes.”
They told me their names: Lily Evans and Mary Macdonald. Mary had tightly curled hair that bounced when she walked. Her skin was the color of caramel and her eyes matched, only slightly darker. Her cheeks were round and full— she never really did grow out of her baby face. Lily was a ball of fire. Even then, her face, arms, and legs were covered in orange freckles. Her hair was bright and orange as well, which would eventually fade beautifully into copper, but what struck me the most were her eyes. They were the darkest, deepest shade of green I’d ever seen. Up until then, I thought only luscious forests could look that rural.
Mary was caring, making sure neither of us fell, and Lily held my hand through the rises and falls of the swing set. I was shown a kindness that I didn’t expect from someone I didn’t know. Mary was warm and she was soft. Even today, I remember her presence feeling like being wrapped in a warm blanket. Everything to her was intentional. Orange . Lily, alternatively, felt like a breath of fresh air. She was awkward and clumsy, but she was natural and raw. Green .
I learned about kindness that day. Kindness and how sometimes people felt like colors.
***
I introduced Lily and Mary to Dorcas on the same day that Dorcas introduced me to Pandora and Narcissa.
Pandora had ringlets of icy hair and her eyes were black as coal. She seemed to float across the ground, every movement in perfect harmony. For a child, she was grace. I didn’t think it was possible for her to grow to be even more harmonious, and yet, she did.
Narcissa struggled to meet my eyes, but I desperately wanted her to look at me. She had brown hair and I wanted to know the color of her eyes. I stared at her like a pleading child. It took a few minutes before Pandora softly lifted Narcissa’s chin, noticing my gaze. There they were, her grey-green eyes surrounded by shades of purple and pink that pigmented the skin around them. They were like sea glass.
Pandora Lestrange and Narcissa Black. Dorcas had been friends with them for only a few months before now, but they were the ambitious type, and they taught me how to be.
“Now that we’re all best friends,” said Pandora to the group of girls, “we shall make a club.”
I hadn’t heard a child our age use “shall” before that day. I don’t think I entirely knew what it meant. They were loads smarter than me. I imagine they still are.
The next day, we acquired a committee. We sought out girls around town that we thought would make a nice addition to our club of friends. Isn’t it silly that we made a club to become friends?
Perhaps it was faith.
“My mum said a nice girl just moved in with her family next door to me. Shall we check her out?” Lily proposed, mimicking Pandora’s wording.
What is ‘shall’? I thought but never asked.
The girl next door to the Evans’ house was a feisty Korean girl with bangs that, I assumed, had been cut by herself. They were choppy and uneven and perhaps even a tad too short. However, when we saw her, we knew she was going to be special to us.
Her name was Marlene and she was walking her dog up and down their driveway. She was hopping with the pup as if dancing to silent music. She switched from one leg to another, never letting both touch the pavement at the same time.
Lily’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I like her.” She whispered. We all had the same thought.
When we walked up to her, she immediately started talking like she’d known us forever.
“Hey. My mom won’t let me walk the dog around the neighborhood yet. She said there's an old man across the road and she doesn’t want me getting napped.” Marlene’s hands were exaggerated and she rarely made eye contact. “So I said, ‘Mom, the dog needs air!” And I brought him out here. I don’t think he notices that we’ve barely moved.” She extended her hand. “I’m Marlene McKinnon.”
Marlene blended into the group swiftly and wonderfully. She and Lily became close very quickly. Even at such a young age, Marlene was confident and sure.
***
It took a few more months for us to recruit our last official member. Almost all of us had turned eight at this point and we were looking forward to summer holiday. The ice had melted weeks ago and the sun was peeking through the clouds again.
Marlene’s mother had taken us to an ice cream shop next to the skate park that was just outside of town. Dairy was innocently falling from our pink and blue lips when we heard something across the way. We all turned our heads, customarily curious, to see a girl out-skating a group of boys, and she was headed our way.
Her round glasses were so large that I could tell they took up her entire face even from… fifty feet? Thirty feet… twenty feet… ten feet… how close was she now? (I wasn’t quite skilled in spatial awareness at the ripe age of eight.) There was a crash and boom as she attempted to jump over a curb. The fall allowed the boys to catch up to her, but instead of crying as any child would do, she stood right back up, ignored the scrapes on her knees and elbows, and threw a punch at the boy lunging at her. He fell and cried as the other boys comforted him.
I looked over to Narcissa, who was sitting beside me, to see that she was wide-eyed and impressed. “We need her,” she said. The rest of us agreed.
Her name was Alice Prewett. She had an abnormally long neck and ashy brown hair that looked like it hadn’t been brushed in days. She wore boys' shorts and ribbon bows on her shoes. She had a beauty mark on her face that reminded me of a fantasy. I thought she looked like a fairy with a magical mark on her cheek. I wondered if she could fly the way she skated, and if so, why did she fall?
I learned about strength that day because she got up. I mourn the days in which I thought strength was as simple as that. Getting up after a fall.
***
We all grew together that Summer. We walked around town, asked questions, and played games. Pandora would walk around barefoot no matter how badly the concrete burned her.
“Dorcas everyone listens to you,” she’d say, “If you don’t wear shoes with me then everyone will think it’s cool.”
“My mum would have a fit,” is how Dorcas would respond each time. To both of them, it was never about the burn.
We all begged our parents for sleepovers, but they all had the same reply. We were too young. The only problem was, we didn’t feel young, so being told this made us revolt one day in late summer.
“We’ll start a war!” Lily raised a stick into the air as if it was a sword.
“Yeah!” Alice joined her. “They’ll have no choice but to let us do what we want.”
Dorcas stared at them both with her usual bored expression. Marlene was about to join in until she noticed Dorcas’ disapproval. Marlene worshiped Dorcas in a way, even at that age, and had a funny way of showing it.
Marlene jumped on Lily and shouted “I’ll start a war!” as she brought her down to the ground. They were rolling around in the grass for a while before Mary separated them, laughing along.
Meanwhile, Alice had lost her interest and found it somewhere else; in Narcissa. She was on one knee, proposing with a flower ring she’d just made out of petals and grass. The two girls were giggling, and Narcissa finally came out of her shell for the first time. Her scared smile was downturned, and her eyes glistened over. We held a fake wedding for them that night.
We were playing with the lightning bugs, and the ceremony was going well until Narcissa’s mother found us behind her house in the garden. I remember thinking she was angry because we had trampled over the flowers but seeing her face turn red at the sight of Narcissa and Alice. Neither of us understood why she was yelling at us, and frankly, neither of us wanted to know. All we wanted to do was apologize because that’s what you do as a child in need of parental validation. However, Pandora was the exception.
Pandora grabbed Narcissa’s right hand and connected it to Alice’s, then grabbed her left hand with her own. Pandora stared down Mrs. Black as she shielded Narcissa and Alice from her. Somehow, she knew that the woman’s wrath was misdirected, she could feel it, so she guarded her friends from the fire. Pandora never said a word. The rest of us apologized without knowing what we did wrong. But Pandora knew, and she disagreed.
We started the day thinking our revolt would be disapproved of because of its childishness, but we ended the day not knowing that our true revolt was love.
***
When summer went away and the colors of the Earth began to change again, we stayed together. I don’t think I ever thought we’d make it past a few months, just because I’d never had a friendship last— before then. I never had a lot of things before them.
We would all hang out every day after school. Before we knew it, our fourth year was behind us as we were turning nine. Our birthday parties consisted of only each other that year. We refused to let any siblings or parents participate. Although the parents were the ones that actually let it happen, we didn’t need to know.
We enjoyed relishing the freedom we thought we had. We talked of dreams, of fairy tales, and of animals. We asked questions and we answered them without second guesses (despite being very rarely correct). I learned about friendship and how snow falls. My memories of this time are foggy, but I cling to them with every sheer will I have left.