Devastation, Beauty, and the Passage of Time

Dark whispers creep into the dark crevices of my room at midnight. 

When the light’s gone low and voices soft, a weight latches itself onto my heart, and it takes a while, but I do eventually name it.

Devastation.

“Silver Echoes” by Rebecca Rosenberg

 

“Silver Echoes” by Rebecca Rosenberg explores themes of mental illness, recovery, and the falling apart that precedes it. We follow Silver Dollar Tabor, a woman with high ambitions and little support, and Baby Doe Tabor, a mother investigating her daughter’s death. The once-rich family found themselves in poverty when their mine, the Matchless, costs more to maintain than it profits. Silver Dollar is depicted to have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Her alter, Echo, seems to have a bit of a danger streak. While Silver and Echo constantly yearn for companionship and independence at the same time, her mother yearns only for one thing: to know what happened to her child.

The thing about Devastation is that it manifests differently for everyone at different times. Sometimes, it’s the war I lose against my own tears on the subway, leaving dark rivers of eyeliner down my flushed cheeks. Other times, it’s simply silence and the ache in my heart, reminding me of how deep some fractures run.

“You. Did. Not. Deserve. This.”

It’s funny. Just as I sit in the subway station, trying to reroute home after getting on the wrong train, a man already seated looks at me, smirks, and asks if I’ll read him a story. Something in his eyes tells me he’s not interested in the words that left my mouth if I did. I tell him no. He asks again. I say I’m not allowed to, and that’s what stops him. Not my choice, my feigned instruction.

A tale as old as time: the female experience acting as a betrayal to female existence.

The story unfolds across two timelines: 1920s Chicago, where Silver and Echo fight for recognition and control, and 1932 Colorado, where Baby Doe battles to hold onto the Matchless mine. In both stories, the women are subject to the whims of men. The latter try to tame them, dictating Silver’s shows (when, where, and to whom she performs) and the Matchless Mine (when they dig and what). Silver’s end rests in flames, and Baby Doe’s in more secrets—the very thing she meant to avoid.

We cannot control our circumstances. And the world can be crueler than kind some nights. Nobody deserves the pain.

But it’s our responsibility to carry it.

“Your fire is your gift, but also your lesson. Your spirit has power beyond your imagination, but it can either pave your way or set your path ablaze.”

I’m well-acquainted with the heartache that meets me in bed at two in the morning. It doesn’t matter what happened that day or with whom, the shadows will whisper all the ways I’m wanted by picking apart the one way I am.

I was told from a very young age that I was sexy. So young, in fact, that I don’t remember the first time. Only that it happened. A constant reminder of the way I looked, and that, somehow, it was the payment for my existence. 

I resented it.

I starved my body, hoping to shrink the curves that began to show. I stayed inside, in clothes that showed nothing. I wore baggy sweaters in ninety degree weather and leggings so nobody would see them. I didn’t want to pay a price for existing; I didn’t want to be pretty. I wanted to be smart. To be kind. To be trusted.

But all people ever saw was pretty. And when I talked about science instead, they looked surprised.

Silver Dollar and Echo use their shared body in a similar way. Echo sells it out at night, while Silver Dollar uses it to attract an audience for her shows. She’ll paint her flesh with tiger stripes and call it clothing, if it meant getting her big break. There was no other selling point she had, it seemed. Echo knew this and took it one step further, taking clients to bed to make extra cash for drinks to flood out the loneliness that came from giving too much for not enough.

There was something powerful in being pretty, and I don’t mean in makeup or surgeries. I mean the way people light up when they’re called pretty. The way people smile more when I compliment them after I’ve dolled up versus before. There’s power in that surprised gaze, the underestimation of my mind in favor of distraction from my body.

“If all I am is arm candy, then I’m gonna be the most irresistible arm candy I can be, for as long as I can.”

It’s temporary, or so they say.

Devastation.

Silver gets older, and her boss tries to sell her show after growing bored of her. She’s up in flames not long after, gone to the world. Trapped in eternal youth through having never been seen old.

(One day, we won’t look the way we do. What then?, ask the whispers.)

I look at my self-portraits and notice the way my cheeks lose their roundness. I see the creases in the corner of my eyes, and the lines by my lips. A life I lived, smiling so much it’s left marks on my skin.

(Who will want us then? Devastation.)

They say it’s temporary. And maybe it is, to some. I’ll be able to sit on a subway bench and have no one catcall or attempt to flirt.

But I’ll look in the mirror and see reminders of my whole life. Of every smile.

They say it’s temporary. Youth.

But maybe pretty never fades after all.