prologue
There’s a natural pace to a school. Not just the bells, the teachers and staff, or the kids with their hormones that make everyone hate them, forget that they were once with a finger up their nose; but the building itself. First it starts in the basement, where the heater amps up with a supply turned on by one person, the one no one likes because they’re creepy wearing those overalls, and then there’s the floors that are swept and mopped, the hinges that are oiled, the chairs that are placed back on the floor, even the corners are dusted. Everything starts with that routine for most of the building, and tends to flow into the lunchroom near midday, but the morning routine stops when everyone enters, and the night routine ends when the last person locks the doors.
There’s a routine, is what I’m trying to say, and that routine doesn’t come to an end just because someone acknowledges it. I’d like to be that way, just because someone acknowledges me, doesn’t mean I make a dwindling fool of myself in front of rich folk, those who wear the suits I cannot afford, or get their nails done, a French tip, even if everyone swears it’s not a hodgepodge when they’re lined up the exact same for every fucking person. I’d like to be the building that I rest outside of to eat my lunch, watching and waiting for the wind to hit it on this warm nearing-fall day. I’d like to be inside the building and feel at home, because I know it so well, treat it as the mentor I wish was offered here for me. I want to be a building, and somehow, I’m not inside four walls of padded white.
I only say all of this because I’ve recently been admitted into the walls of prestige, the walls not even my mother could ever afford, not with her thrifted finds, not with her perfectly hidden dark circles or fine lines or age that she hates, not even with her college-tongue of words that I’m starting to learn in my second year of this high school. There is a succinct schedule, one I’ll find easy no matter how hard they push me, one I’ll ace no matter the day, one I’ll recite like the grooves in my knuckle or ache in my back, each knob of my skeleton. There is a pattern here, and this is her only-ever wish for me, the life of my future which is a hodgepodge these people are familiar with; some wealth, some status, all privilege. She wants it all for me, and in turn her, in turn it always helps her.
I remember it exactly, the day I took the entrance exam with that same gap in my front teeth I refuse to get rid of a year later, with drawing of hearts on my pulse point to pass the time, replaced now with cursive of my name lining the heel of my palm. My entire body, if politics to this place, this Earth run by those who think they can own it with pieces of paper dedicated to racists and misogynists, will have every part in my success in death, in living until there is no more to experience. No more faith in humanity. That’s hopefully long away though, those moments of my demise, since I’m still a kid; I am my mother’s child in a school I don’t want to be because I’m hers no matter where she is, where I will always be for her.
That day prolonged for her pleasure and my misery, found me outside of the office, found me with my mother’s voice ringing out from an office chair. I was outside on the hard bench as I heard what I could not see from the fogged window ahead of me. Her voice changed me, her passion for the pride I have to rest on my shoulders, never her own. “She will get in.” There was a moment of maybe paper shuffling or a concerned crook of a brow before the admin quired, “How do you know” It was silly, to hear someone so unsure of my mother, incredulous of her passion, her faith in my ability to hold her up, to be her only child. “She is my delinquent, admin, my only daughter.” She doesn’t use contractions, something I do no matter where I am, try to for my own act of rebellion. At least when my mother is not near, I feel something life off of my chest, something that doesn’t squeeze it wondering how much blood will come without much pressure, with only an imprint before I’m horridly scarred.
My mother never uses contractions, so I only know how to condemn myself in full sentences with my tongue, though in my heart I feel I’ll never so much as speak a rhythm not cut up into my own chunks. This building gets me, this building starts with me, clandestine, and this building lives with my mother, polished, proper with forgotten appreciation for work. I am this building, this building is me, but this school isn’t. So long as I breathe my contractions and think of them, harp on the desires I’ll never be in this school or any school alike, anywhere that’s not my phone and the pictures I’ve taken, the harm I’m going to do to myself, continue to, I mean, I will know what it is like to be nothing and everything all at once. I’ll never miss it, but I will miss the peace of being outside of here, of eating a sandwich dipped in butter and fried, now a bit soggy because I’ve never been good at storing things, something my mother will never find out.
She doesn’t have the luxury I begrudgingly have, take as I sit here and find peace, as I’m not bothered, as I’m alone and at home. I finish the sandwich on a piece of cement with the water finding me behind, tantalizing as I sit alone and find a home that will never find me again. It’s an oxymoron in my mind, but in the real world it’s not uncommon to find yourself in a wishing fountain without coins, with the trickling of clear water that shouldn’t be flaunted like this, that should be used but never will be, just like me, but my mother will never know that. I’m her delinquent, her only pretender. I finish the sandwich here like I always have, and I move to put it away as I always have .This building is as it always is, I am as it always is, but there is always going to be that one moment when it’s challenged, and it’s always when I never need it, when I could just taste as difference of my being in the sogginess of cheese melted on butter. When I could still taste my capitulation of misery, I find some bought of lightness in my mother’s shadow. “Howdy.” I peer at the figure, letting my fingers fiddle with the buckle of my backpack, something worn, something not new, something not mine that I will never want. She’s staring at me, she’s spoken in a language that’s not mine, she’s with me when she shouldn’t be. “Howdy…” I’m not from the south, she’s not, I can parse just from the prim and proper tone of her tongue, but I don't’ make a comment on it, and she doesn’t, either, on me.
“I’ve never noticed you around. Are you new?” No, and I move to say it, but there’s something about her that makes me stop, that makes me find her hues of a deep, coffee-brown and stop, refreshing my tongue with my thoughts and supplying, “Why do you want to know?” She shrugs with a smile to her glossy lips, one a darker brown than her bottom one. “Why not?” There is always something with the school, something that makes it desired, and there is something about me that makes this girl talk to me, so I let my gaze leave hers for my backpack, for the strap of it I tug and hall onto my shoulder and the snack-sized plastic bag I’ve rinsed and reused one too many times. “I have to make my way to class before I’m late. We have a test of wits and will, I hope you understand.” She’s taller than me by less than a head, but it feels insurmountable knowing her clothes match, knowing she doesn’t have a sob to hide as she finds her body growing too quickly for the grey fabric, as she finds herself forgotten in the school that was never meant for her, if only she wasn’t her mother’s last chance at life.
Only, when I move to leave her by the tower of fallen water, try to discard my garbage crinkling in my hand in the garbage can near me, just a few moments away, she utters, proclaims, “Tove.” And I find myself finding her again, noting how she looks under the sun, a few inches away from me, breathing the wind that passes us. Her afro dances nominally in the wind, a striking white that the sun beams through for her round features, cat-liner of black and wisps of lashes that seem to flutter in the wind. She’s gorgeous, talented and she’s my age, only rich and with glass skin. ”I’m Tove Norman.” Only nothing like me, only better. My mother would’ve loved her more than me, had they ever met. I turn to the garbage can, letting my garbage crinkle out of my hand into the hole in the middle of the polished black. Everything, even meant for dirt, is taken care of. I look to my hand, a bit red, a bit sweaty from holding it, and I proclaim, I admit the defeat of a lonesome poor girl, “I’m Aime Emerson.” I look back to her. “G’bye.” With a nod, I leave her as she parrots just I did her greeting, our greeting, “G’bye.“