Where are you from?
Arkansas.
Don’t you know how to make a book cover?
She finds two grocery bags and starts cutting, tiny hand holding blue, blunt safety scissors.
She laughs. You did it wrong! She points at the image on the outside cover of the book, the writing. Everyone’s gonna know you shop at Save-A-Lot! You’re supposed to do it backwards.
She teaches me to turn my covers inside out.
* * *
Are those daisies? How come they’re so little?
They’re wild. Nobody picks them. If you don’t pick them, they never reach their full… I stop, and roll my eyes.
Their full what?
Never mind. They’re just little daisies.
* * *
Where are you from?
Texas.
I love your accent! It’s so cute! Say something.
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. The words suddenly weighted.
* * *
When we reach the channel, she heads away from the bridge and towards the concrete embankment.
Let’s go down!
The other kids keep going, home to watch after school specials.
It smells like tadpoles and diesel, like the dirt at the construction site where my grandfather works.
Where’re your parents?
My mom’s at school.
What about your dad?
I don’t know. Corsicana, I think.
Don’t you have a babysitter?
My aunt comes at 7.
You are so lucky. My parents would never let me stay by myself.
* * *
I wake up to unbearable pain, not like the normal pain that eases simply by changing positions, or running to the empty channel where the dirt smells like diesel and construction. It gets worse with each breath, and this makes me breathe faster. After an hour, my uncle comes over and has a very adult conversation with my mom. I watch her get dressed, putting down her books. The bathroom door remains open just enough so that we can see her apply a line of eyeshadow. My uncle picks me up, holds me, carries me outside, lays his jacket around my shoulders. It’s the only time I ever know what it feels like to be held, carried. The pain is still there, but the fear, gone, replaced by something warmer.
* * *
Where are you from?
New York.
One kid asks me if I’m Jewish. Another asks if I get into a lot of fights.
No. Not really.
They wander off, suddenly uninterested in the new kid.
I’m very slowly learning the secret of fading into the background, standing in, instead of standing out. Quietly setting my own modest goals, nothing to draw attention. A dubious achievement. My highest point, as though I were Kansas.
* * *
In trying to reach me, she says the sweetest things. Words that won’t weigh enough until far too late. Words that haunt me, and burden me with what ifs.
You were sentenced to feeling this way, baby. Let me serve your time. Let me feel that way for you.
* * *
Where are you from?
We kept moving. All over, I guess.
Where are you from?
All over. I told you.
Tag: Antiphrasis
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