A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman

     Her great-grandparents lived in a cottage, in the north, but not terribly far north - a small, plain abode nestled between the dense forest, a quaint garden of lilies, tulips, and hydrangeas, and the lake. Often they drove out, in late summer, and when they arrived the girl would head immediately for the lake, nearly flinging her shoes off and tiptoeing into the dark, tepid water, careful not to disturb any minnows. It was the minnows that she especially liked and which she would catch and and pour into a bucket only to later dump them clumsily into the lake. When the minnows were in hiding and the bumblebees cared not to hover lackadaisically about the tulips, she would be listlessly wandering inside the cottage. Sometimes, the girl would sit cross-legged on the navy blue armchair, her feet still rough and cold from the lake water, and watch her great grandmother solve a crossword puzzle. Perhaps it was the boredom, or perhaps it was the slow, elegant way with which her grandmother scribbled on the page; nevertheless, she would get lost in this quiet observation for half an hour at a time. She thought it would be a sad life, her grandparents living in this cottage, since she was able to amuse herself for a week, but could not imagine staying there for an eternity.
      There was one food which she would eat at the cottage and never at home, and that was strawberries and cream. She would lean against the kitchen counter and address her grandmother in the politest tone she could muster, "Cottage grandma?" - as her great grandmother lived in a cottage and the girl was unable to distinguish between her grandmother and great grandmother - and her grandmother would reply, "Yes, peaches and cream?" The girl thought this particularly strange and wonderful, how her grandmother would call her peaches and cream, as she's never had peaches and cream before, only strawberries and cream. Peaches and cream this, peaches and cream that. It sounded good coming from her grandmother's mouth, her grandmother who smelled like flower-scented soap and lake water.
     Boredom was a continuous feeling during this time spent in the north, one that the girl combated with surprising ease. She had two movies that she enjoyed: Matilda and The Little Mermaid. She would lie, feet interlocked in a portrait of childlike leisure, on the pine-scented quilt on the bed beside the window over-looking the lake. She would watch these movies on the small television over and over again until she was able to recite the lines backwards and forwards. Matilda was the story of a little girl with selfish parents that treat her terribly, and one day Matilda realizes that she has telekinetic powers which she uses to her advantage. Sometimes, as the girl was eating brown sugar and oatmeal at the cramped dining room table, she would try to make her oatmeal move in the slightest just as Matilda had with her Cheerios. One day, she swore she saw the soggy bowl of oats jump.
    The next summer went by and the girl didn't visit her grandparents at the small, plain cottage in the north. The reasons why were unclear to her, but the same foreknowledge which had before simply brushed the lining of her mind now laid a heavy weight on her skull. Her grandparents were old, and the cottage was difficult to maintain. She now understood why her heart sagged and her chest stung when she considered what it would be like to stay there for an eternity. A somber dusk like that of the sky at the cottage hung in her mind as she remembered the pungent smell of bug repellent being sprayed on her knobby knees and bruised legs and heard the soft, elegant scratches of the pencil on the crumpled newspaper in her grandmother's lap.