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Herbert keeps only one photo of himself. It isn’t to say that photos of him don’t exist , but they’re scattered. A yearbook picture, a face in the back of a group photo for a club, a few newspaper articles (those being of both positive and negative attention). His parents have a few photos of him on the walls, but none before his adoption. And Herbert has never been particularly vain.
There’s no real reason to keep the one photo he does have. It represents something... Untoward. Inconvenient if it were to be found. But Herbert doesn’t just leave it laying around. And besides, Dan doesn’t seem much of a snoop- if he is, he isn’t a very good one. Or maybe he just has the sense not to go rifling through another man’s drawers.
Maybe nostalgia is the culprit. Though Herbert has never felt that particular emotion all that strongly, he is human after all. But it’s difficult to imagine mourning that period in his life. At least not mourning it in the sort of way as to will it to rise from its grave.
It can’t be said that Herbert doesn’t hold some degree of pride. Some might say a very large degree, but he’s earned it, hasn’t he? So that could be it. The photo of a younger self, clutching a cheap plastic trophy denoting victory at the science fair. Still scowling at having a photo taken. It’s not much of an achievement, but it’s the first step of many. The sort of memory people hang onto.
Herbert had been considered precocious as a child, but that stopped being charming to adults after a time. Whoever took the picture was probably trying to get him to smile. There’s a teacher beside him, just out of frame and cut off at the shoulders.
What grade was this? Maybe 5th. He can’t remember what school that must have been, either. The uniform isn’t recognizable, a scratchy-looking wool blazer over a sweater vest.
The face in the photo is soft with baby fat. He can pick out his features easily. His too-pink, too-pursed lips, here pressed in a thin line. Glare from the fluorescent lights nearly obscures the wide eyes behind his glasses. Those are the same. Thick frames, coke-bottle lenses. The thin brows of a child. Pert nose, long, limp black hair, singular mole barely noticeable beneath the grain of the photo. Staring down the camera and clinging to the trophy tightly enough that it couldn’t be wrenched away at a second thought.
Herbert had been very good at braiding. It was something to keep his hands occupied, methodical. He didn’t need to be neat, but he needed to be respectable. And if his hair had to be long, at least it could be managed and ignored by keeping it tightly braided and unwashed for days until someone scolded him for it. The merciless brushing out of tangles and hair-pulling in class could be put up with.
He doesn’t let his hair grow past the nape of his neck anymore.
That could be another reason. As a reminder of the differences. His memory, biased, can’t deceive him into believing he hasn’t come very far at all. It’s self-evident. He wonders if anyone would recognize him in the picture at all.
And he’s worked for it, too. He’s fought tooth and nail for respect, for recognition. Every shot, every corrected document, every change he’s cataloged is another defiance.
Herbert holds up the photo to the light, considers the face in the mirror beside it. Tilts his head this way and that and allows for a moment of vanity. He adjusts his glasses. Yes, it’s more than acceptable. Worth all the trouble. The photo is carefully folded up again along its creases and tucked backed in among the notebooks in his sock drawer.
And where did that trophy ever get to? Probably lost or discarded somewhere along the way. He’s never been very sentimental.