Free Life Sentence by Kim Paffenroth

from behind,
setting her alight, igniting her golden hair into a crown around
her half-face with its bone-white skin. She reminded me of the
stars I’d seen the other night, before my thoughts turned lonely,
when I had seen them as perfect needles of light in the cold dark
of the sky. She was the most beautiful thing I think I’d ever
seen.
    I finally shook myself loose from all this rude
staring and brought my gaze back up to hers. I stood up, but then I
made an awful mistake. I just couldn’t help myself, and I raised my
right hand to pull back her bloody hair. She growled and bared her
teeth as she pulled back from me and batted my arm away. I quickly
withdrew my hand. I was aghast at my own behavior, and how she
might not trust me now. I thought I needed to make some kind of
amends, so I pushed the box of clothes towards her with my foot.
She looked at it quizzically and suspiciously. Then she tried to
reach down to it, but her joints seemed stiff and she let out a
pained moan as she first tried to bend at the waist. Then she tried
to kneel, and the sound this time was a horrible squeal. She could
accomplish neither of these movements and both seemed to cause her
pain—I suspected not only from physical discomfort, but from the
indignity and shame of not being able to make her body do what she
wanted, what she needed it to do. I could see her clench her fists
and start to shake.
    I knew just how she felt, so I reached over to her
and—being very careful to put my hands on her arm and shoulder and
not bring them near her face—I helped her sit on the sofa. Then I
picked up the box off the floor—causing some significant pain to
myself—and set it next to her, so she could go through it without
moving around. She eyed me first, and I felt myself melt again
under the gaze of that one tiny, perfect globe. She nodded to me
slightly, and I was glad; it seemed I had made up for my terrible
indiscretion before.
    She went through the box much more carefully than
the others had, even perhaps more carefully than I had, pausing
over several items and not just immediately picking the first
things that might fit her. She was small all over, and for some
reason I estimated she was a size four, though I again had no idea
from where such knowledge came. Now that she was seated, her
movements were very smooth and fluid, not jerky and halting like
those of the rest of us, and not pained, as her movements had been
when she was standing. Her hands were tiny, and of the same
exquisite hue as her face—a pure, guileless white like unfired
porcelain. She could use her hands much better than I could,
grasping things with just her thumb and index finger, while I had
to sort of scoop them up with my whole hand. She made a pile of
clothes in her lap, then went through this pile and returned most
of the things to the box.
    She tried to stand, but again she had difficulty. I
thought she was getting up to go somewhere else to put the clothes
on, and I knew there were other people now wandering all over, so I
didn’t think she’d find much privacy. I also didn’t think she could
manage to change clothes while standing up. So I stood up and waved
at her to stay on the sofa. She stopped trying to rise, but still
looked at me plaintively, not knowing what to do. I went outside
the storage cubicle and slid the door down till the bottom of it
was about two feet from the ground. I thought she’d still have
enough light to see that way. I heard a wheezing sound that seemed
affirmative from her, and I waited there. I could hear her moving
around and moaning—some motions obviously still caused her pain. I
heard the affirmative wheeze again, and I slid the door all the way
open, though slowly, in case I was wrong and she hadn’t finished
yet.
    She had managed to stand up on her own. I can’t say
she had chosen the things I would have picked for her to wear, but
I’m sure she had her own desires and judgments of what would be
comfortable or