Tales of an Unremarkable Girl

The Scar

The memory isn't really mine, at least not really. I don't remember it exactly but I remember it because of how many people have told me how I got it.

I only have a vague memory of how it happened, what I remember most afterwards is not being able to open my eyelid because of the scab. I remember desperately wanting to pick at it.

It felt so big at the time. I was so small though. It must not have been. The scar is small, not even noticeable unless my eye is closed and you are up close and personal.

It doesn't show up on camera, I barely see it but I know it's there. I see the faint ridges, the way it is slightly different from the rest of my skin.

I don't remember how young I was but I couldn't have been more than five or six. My mother and my oldest brother were fighting.

I must have been hiding behind her, expecting her to protect me. Expecting her to comfort me. I must have been scared.

I don't remember if she went to slap him and he pushed her hand back, or if he tried to push her away.

I don't remember the pain of the cigarette burning my eyelid. I don't remember what happened after.

My mother tells me that my brother still feels bad about it but I don't get why. It was an accident, it wasn't his cigarette.

She says he feels bad but he's never said it to my face. I doubt he even remembers it happened. I think she just says that because she feels bad about it.

I think she says it because it's her who feels guilty, not him. It was her cigarette after all, her daughter, and her son.

I don't think I've ever heard her say that she felt bad about it though. Not in many years I've had it. I don't think I've ever heard her take any blame in it.

It is always my brother. Always his fault. Never hers. Never theirs.

Just his.

My brother was stuck with all the blame just like I'm stuck with this scar.