A question I often asked myself whenever someone tried to talk to me.
At first it started at second grade many years ago. My teacher, Mrs. Miller, decided to do a project about frogs and their living conditions. How to preserve their habitat and what we can do as human beings to keep the environment clean. We had to prepare a cardboard and print out pictures of frogs, what they like to eat, where they are living and their natural enemies.
I was paired with the class bully, who liked to pull on my braids and call me mean names. For the first time, I looked at this boys face to see only his eyes, nothing else. It scared me so much that I started to cry heavily, asking to get picked up by my mother. When I told her about what I saw, she only shrugged it off to me fantasizing too much.
On my 10th birthday, I celebrated in my yard with friends from the neighborhood and family. My brother and my mother prepared the cake for me, we played fun games and it was a great day overall. I didn’t mind that my father wasn’t here. He was always working late, but Mom promised me he would gift me something later, he promised her that. Before the party ended, a parent from one of the child guests started to record us dancing to some music and when he set the camcorder down, he also lacked an entire face, only his eyes were visible. I knew no one would believe me, so I sucked it up with a pounding heart and tears welling up at the corner of my eyes.
One year later. My schools cheerleader team were auditioning for newcomers and a classmate of mine recommended me to try it out, since I was always so athletic in sports. When the day of the audition came and I made my way towards the sports hall, my gaze fell on two coaches talking next to the entrance. I shook in fear yet again, when both of them fixated their eyes on me, mouth, nose and eyebrows missing. I retracted quickly and went the opposite direction, never auditioning in the first place. I told my mother again, maybe she would listen this time. But even if her expression told me something didn’t seem right, she shrugged it off yet again.
It happened more frequently over the years, but I learned to keep it to myself, mainly because there was possibly no cure for whatever I went through.
Then the day came, when I asked myself the question again. How do you really look like? When police knocked on the door to retrieve the dead body of my father from our home for forensic testing. Homicide. He was found shot in his office multiple times. The weirdest part was that he had a ski mask on.
A police officer questioned me about my whereabouts (I was at school at the time) and who could have a possible motive to kill my father. They also wanted me to testify that the corpse was really my father’s, so they brought me over to the morgue to positively identify him. When they opened the zip of the body bag, my father had still this ski mask on. After removing it I gasped out and had the shock of my life: faceless, with just his open eyes looking straight up.
I had the urge to vomit and seeing me being so distraught, the officer brought me back to the interrogation room.
How did my father actually look like? I couldn’t remember. He was always working, only coming home late at night. Why didn’t I remember how he looked like? Why was his face, beside those horrible looking eyes, entirely missing?
Then another police officer entered the room to announce that my mother confessed to the murder of my father. I was completely shocked. What?
The officer whispered into the others ear, then they both looked at me. I grew more nervous as the minutes went by. And then the officer sat in front of me with concern on his face.
“This is a question that you don’t need to answer. It’s super personal and I might be… triggering. But it’s important for the investigation.”
You nodded silently.
“Did your father sexually assault you?”
My face went completely blank. And my body started to shake. Because everything came crushing down. The late night shifts. Him coming home. Him entering my room. His face hidden behind a ski mask, only his eyes visible.
The investigation conducted that my mother found out about the abuse I went through starting at second grade and took matters into her own hands. My brother and I had nothing to do with the crime, so I started to live with him until I graduated from school.
How do you really look like?
A question I started to ask myself again, when I woke up one day to find my brother cooking in the kitchen and he was looking at me. Was he happy?
I wouldn’t know. He’s only looking.