Watched by belladet
I got lost in a department store at 7, and it felt a lot like this. I remember stepping through a clothing rack in Von Maur, fitting my tiny body in between swaths of expensive fabrics, brushing against my shoulders, swallowing me whole. Someone was playing the piano on the first floor. Vivaldi hung in the air, harmonizing with the distant sounds of people's voices. A couple is arguing over a painting in the home decor section; two brothers want to go home and continually complain to their mom. The yellow ceiling lights reflected off the shiny yellow wallpaper onto the pristine beige carpet. I knelt on the floor, my nobby knees pressed hard into the carpet, and traced my fingers onto the swirling pattern. Around and around, in flowers and leaves and weird shapes I didn’t know to name.
I was old enough to know I was lost, but wasn’t lost. I was toy-in-your-room lost, not homework-fallen-out-of-your-backpack lost.
My mom was calling my name from somewhere close by. “BE-lla,” she whisper-shouted, enunciating the beh. My fingertips became tingly from repeatedly tracing. “BELLA!” She shouted over hurried footsteps pacing around circular racks of discounted Lily Pulitzer. Before she could call my name a third time, an attendant came to help and led my panicking mother to the desk, where they used the intercom system to call my name. It was like God had come down and spoken. “Bella Detwiler, your mother is looking for you. Please, come to the Sales desk. I repeat, Bella Detwiler.”
Annoyed, I abandoned my mindless task and stood up. Knees red, I brushed off imaginary dust and sighed, glancing around. Where was the Sales desk? I’m barely 3’8, the racks still tower over me. With no Sales desk in easy sight, I followed the sound of my mom's frantic screeching. She was on the phone with my dad. Aw man, not my dad.
“No, Bill, she was right h- Isabella Noelle Detwiler!” I round the corner of a shoe display. Uh oh, the full name too. She pulled that card out faster than I expected. “Don’t you ever, and I mean ever run off like that again, do you hear me?” Run off? Who did she think I was, Sonic? “Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady; you are in big trouble.” She snatched my arm in her southern-mother grip and hauled me out to the parking lot where the berating of all beratings awaited me.
I still feel that sometimes. I know where I am; I’m not missing-girl-on-CNN lost; I’m freshman-year-away-from-home lost. Away from my parents for the first time in a new city with 8,000 other lost 18-year-olds. Like summer camp, without adult supervision because apparently, I was the adult now. I could run away, I could go to a club, I could buy Indian food for dinner without my mom saying she didn’t like Indian food. I could kill someone and be tried as a legal adult. I didn’t, but I could.
I wander Ann Arbor. Out and about, I call it. With no real idea of where I’m going, just the vague sense that I will be somewhere, eventually. Maybe I stop at a café or record store and walk the aisles, flitting through albums like I used the record player I have. As if the only song it didn’t play was Dust by Lack of Cleaning. I’d leave in a flurry of winter wind, stray scarf strings, empty bags, and a new song stuck in my head.
I carry Lost like a hole in my chest. The hole doesn’t fill, but it gets smaller, changes shape, and fills for a week or two only to hollow out twice its original size all over again. Sometimes, I find things to fill it with. One week, I get really into remixing, or I fall in love with the guy in the window across the street, or I get the Wordle in 1. Other weeks, it’ll fill with jealousy, insecurity, or the eternal angst of my oncoming period. Sometimes, I fill it with cornbread, but that only lasts an evening.
I carry Lost like a hole in my chest. I let the wind blow through it to feel the air inside me. I wonder what it means to be found. One day, I hope to find the silver Pandora tiara ring my mom gave me at 12, lost in our old house before the divorce. Or, I hope I find the courage to be unequivocally myself in professional settings. And maybe I’ll find the love to save someone like Chihiro did, even though he’ll turn into a river and leave me.
I carry Lost like a hole in my chest and know that nothing can ever fill it but me. I just have to find myself and tell her.
