The Girl in the Window
Spying a world through the pane.
The girl in the window.
The blonde girl in the window.
But it was also a single-glazed portal in a two-up, two-down terrace house, dressed with net curtains.
Clean, crisp ones.
The girl’s hair wasn’t only blonde. It had specs of red flowing through it, inherited from her grandma whose blood also flows through her.
And she wasn’t only in the window, she was sitting and observing the people — her neighbours — who traipse by with heavy shoppers and insulated coats in summer.
They weren't only neighbours either, they were her friends. For the girl, let’s call her Rachel, hadn’t yet been out in the world to find others.
This window, clear glass with toxic lead piping it would later be discovered, was a portal to another existence. One where Rachel could sing the alphabet to her friends (she knows how despite being only two years old) and find meaning beyond this rain-spattered glass.
The girl in the window is Rachel, who sits gazing at a world, edging her way through the pane. Her mind is a butterfly under a glass; too weak, too vulnerable to escape, but content in the seeing.
Through and beyond.
Both are sat longing to break out but, for now, they are protected from the long death that lies beyond, yet unseen.
Rachel Palmąka Mace is a literary fiction and creative non-fiction writer, singer, artist, spoken word performer, lapsed academic, and feminist. She is the editor of the feminist-led magazine Subtle Sledgehammer and her new project ‘Around the World with 80 Women’ (AW80W) — which shares the narratives of women from Somalia to Scotland — will be published in Autumn 2023.
