The Lizard Woman
By: Svetlana Smith
Tags: Childhood, Bullying, Trauma, Fiction, Short Story

The Lizard Woman

Reflections show Eloise her true self

Photo by Selin Şahin on Unsplash

In the mirror, I am a lizard. I spray my hair into a wig, apply my make-up, my clothes. I moisturise and cleanse, pumice my feet and paint my nails, but still, I am a lizard. I wonder sometimes if people will notice. The bus driver, the woman who sat next to me this morning. Do I have a lizard smell? And what do lizards smell of anyway? Something cold-blooded and unblinking. Something which basks in the sun with a forked tongue, instilling fear and revulsion in passers-by. Kept as a pet by those who want to seem interesting. A step-up from a hamster, but not as good as a dog.

My perfume smells of flowers. Cute ones, a lizard wouldn’t smell of sweet flowers after all, but something more primeval. A Venus Flytrap perhaps, if there was such a scent. My boss loves it, she asked me for the brand name, and now she smells the same as me. It makes me feel great that she does, validated. I am doing it right.

I was 11 when I first realised. At school, in the playground, as so many of these realisations are made. We were playing rounders, and I was snoozing on third base. No chance of anyone except Melanie Evans being good enough to get as far as me after all, when Ms. Smythe yelled: ‘Stop basking like a lizard on a hot summer’s day Eloise, catch the blumming ball!’

It had flown past my nose, unnoticed, and sat, with two fingers up, on the grass a few feet behind me. The class tittered as I spun around to throw it.

‘Throw with your legs!’ Ms. Smythe yelled. ‘Not just your arms, your legs. Even lizards have them, Eloise, do try and remember!’

For the rest of my time at school, I was Eloise the Lizard Girl. Cold-blooded, never weeps, never laughs. Stands there with her mouth slightly open, watching the world go past.

I’m not cold-blooded. I do mind. So what if I don’t weep at the drop of a hat like Bryony Hampkins, or hit people like Rory Blaine? Swear and storm out of classrooms like Ellie Masters. Does that make me less human? Apparently, it does.

Job interviews and dates are the worst. I’m sat opposite people who stare at me for an hour or more. I find myself becoming aware of how often I blink, mirroring them, desperate to get it right. And then, if I get the job, I spend a week working out who the most popular person in the office is, and dressing like a toned-down version of them. Or toned-up, on the odd occasion that they’re the mumsy one. You have to get it right, don’t over-state it, it can’t be an obvious homage, they mustn’t notice. I mean, what sort of grown-up can’t dress for themselves? Only a lizard woman would need to copy a human to see how it’s done. And so, we know what I am.

‘There’s nothing wrong with you darling,’ my mother would say. ‘Do you want me to have a talk with your teachers? Who’s saying the bad things, you can tell me.’

I did once. I told her. I explained that it was Melanie Evans and Hilda Nieuwstraat. That they pinned me up against the wall behind the maths block and demanded to see my knickers. To see what a lizard girl looked like down there. She stormed into school, there were meetings all around, I was denounced as a liar, and no one ever spoke to me again.

It was the last time I told my mother anything.

It takes its toll though, living in a false skin. At weekends I drink, so much that I forget about my strange popped eyes and forked tongue, and then spend the next day asleep, or eating crisps and drinking lemonade to ease the hangover, before waking up on Sunday refreshed and cleansed. My mind silent for once. Able to listen to the music on the radio, to watch a film. To absorb myself in someone else’s drama, rather than my own. I feel the pain in soap operas and the love. The joy of a wedding and the hope of a new relationship.

I will have one, I think. I will let someone in. I will be myself around them, I mean, how hard can that be? And I go back online and wink and swipe right. I chat and arrange to meet, and then, getting ready for the date, I look in the mirror once more.

One day I will wake up as me. I will wake up free of spines and spikes. My tail will fall off and I’ll shed my skin. One day I’ll sunbathe without revolting myself. One day I’ll meet someone who understands, who’ll rub off my scales and sharp edges and set me free, to be the me that I was, once more.

But until then I put makeup on, I spray perfume. I paint my nails and moisturise my skin. I set off on my date as a lizard woman in human skin, hoping against hope that they won’t see, or smell, what I really am.

Svetlana Smith 2020