The Mirror Refuses To Testify

The first mirror I remember studying seriously was in the Aloe Vera dormitory at F.G.G.C. Abuloma. I was a girl in boarding school with low-cut hair, an A-line pinafore, and enough white Enchanteur talcum powder on my face to leave evidence on my green baby check daywear.

I would stand before the mirror, rubbing powder across my cheeks, forehead, and the bridge of my nose. Sometimes, I applied another layer during break and yet another after school at 2:10 p.m. The powder left my face pale and dry, but that never stopped me. I always had my mirror in my bag, powder on my face, and "wet lips," or lip gloss, as Gen Z would call it.

Beauty, as far as I understood it then, required whiteness, patience, and enough lip gloss on my lips to cream the rest of my body for the day. It also required a willingness to ignore the evidence in front of me.

Looking back now, I think I was asking the mirror for some kind of verdict. I never explicitly used the words “Mirror, mirror on the wall, am I the fairest of them all?” But silently, I think I asked, “Am I beautiful yet?”

Unlike the proverbial mirror on the wall, the mirror in front of “Room One” in the Aloe Vera dormitory and the ones I carried in my bag refused to testify.

More than two decades later, I now wear my hair in locs, dyed a blend of starlight purple and midnight blue. Even the Enchanteur talcum powder had been replaced by foundation, concealer, setting powder, eyeliner, lipstick, and products the girl in the Aloe Vera dormitory had never heard of.

Yet, the only constant was the mirror and the one who had stared into it nearly every day of her life for three decades. 

Over time, I learned how to sit before a mirror and meticulously contour my face to accentuate my already high cheekbones. I’ve discovered how to shape my eyebrows, darken my lashes, and conceal the evidence of swollen eyes from crying all night. And my lips are no longer wet with gloss; they are now matte, and the transparent lip gloss has been replaced with bright pink lipstick and purple lip liner.

I also knew which side of my face photographed better and how to tilt my chin towards the light. Before interviews, I would stand before the mirror and practise answers until confidence sounded almost natural. “Tell me about yourself,” I would say to the woman in the glass as I watched my mouth form the right words. I adjusted my expression whenever uncertainty appeared. By the time I was ready to leave, the woman looking back at me seemed capable, prepared, and absolutely certain of every decision that had brought her into the room.

Sometimes, when I returned hours later to the same mirror, I was unable to meet her disappointed eyes. The mirror became the only witness to every version of me. It became a testament to the woman who left believing her life might change and the one who came home wondering why it had not.

The mirror knew the difference between my face and my presentation, even when everyone else believed they were the same, but it still refused to testify. Only I and the mirror knew how many versions of a smile I had acquired. There was a polite smile for strangers and a reassuring one for family. Then there was the smile I used only when nobody was watching.

Every morning, before I remember who I am supposed to be, the mirror is already waiting. Before I decide if I’m Chiamaka the writer and editor, Chiamaka the shoemaker, Chiamaka the artist, or Chiamaka the lover, the mirror just stays still, accepting each version of me and each façade I choose to present. It holds my figure between its four corners and returns it to me without a word or explanation.

The mirror in my room has seen every version of me that has lived in this house and watched me dress carefully for places I believed would change my life. It has watched me prepare for beginnings that became endings and seen me search my face for signs of failure, age, and exhaustion. I always assumed it noticed those things before I did.

One day, dissatisfied with my reflection in the mirror in my room, I stole a quick glance at myself in the side mirror of a car parked on the street. As I adjusted my collar and inspected my teeth, the car window suddenly rolled down, much to my dismay, and I heard “You look good.” That was the first time the mirror spoke to me, but alas, it was the voice of a man.

Unlike the teenager in the boarding house, the woman in her two-bedroom apartment mirror looks composed. Yet she still studies her reflection with the uncertainty she carried into the dormitory mirror many years ago.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Alice steps through a mirror into a world where familiar things appear altered and her identity questioned. But the mirrors I had stared into all these years offered no testimony after they had witnessed every transformation.

For years, I believed they were withholding something from me, and after thirty-something years of looking into mirrors, I have become suspicious of them. How can something witness so much and yet refuse to testify?