I Am Me

by Ram Sundaram

  Peter and me was always together; our teachers at school said we looked like we was glued at the ship, but I never found out what ship that was. The other boys teased us sometimes, and whenever they did Peter pushed me away and told me not to talk to him. Peter had lots of friends but I didn’t have any, so I followed him around at recess, except on those days when he told me not to. Those days I walked around the school grounds, climbing trees or picking flowers. Sometimes I’d be so into picking flowers that I’d miss my next class. Then Mr. Marcus, the Vice-Principal, would call me into his office to yell at me. I liked Mr. Marcus, even when he was yelling, ‘cause he was a real friendly person. He was always putting his arm around students, especially the girls, or else he was slapping them on the backside, and I even saw him kissing some of them. I wished Mr. Marcus was that nice to me, but I reckoned he would never like me enough to kiss me. That’s good though ‘cause his moustache would have tickled.

  Mr. Marcus was the first person that said I had cheese for brains. Peter got mad when I told him he said that and threw stones at Mr. Marcus’ car after school. He got caught though, and got suspended for two weeks. Ma had to pay a big fine she couldn’t afford. Peter said he would get Mr. Marcus back, but I don’t reckon he ever did, ‘cause a week after Peter came back to school, someone took a bunch of photographs of Mr. Marcus giving special lessons to a girl after class, and he got fired. It was around the same time that Peter borrowed Ma’s old camera, so I reckon someone stole it from him and took pictures of Mr. Marcus giving those special lessons. But I never understood why a teacher would get fired for giving special lessons, and Peter said I wouldn’t understand until God mailed me the other half of my brain.

  Peter looked out for me. He said that’s what big brothers was supposed to do, and that if I had a little brother, I’d have done the same. Peter was a good brother; he got me a Mickey Mouse pencil sharpener for my birthday once. It was the first gift he ever got me, and I reckon it was the only gift I ever got. I thanked Peter and said he was a good brother, but that made him uncomfortable and he said it was too bad the sharpener wasn’t bigger, or else I could have stuck my head into it. Peter didn’t like it when I talked about my feelings, or said things that was “semimental.” He said I was too “semimentally” attached to everything to turn out a real man.

  Peter said friendship had a price. I asked him what that price was, but he said every friendship had a different price. “That’s why you go through life bargaining back and forth with everyone you come across,” he said. “Sometimes you catch a break, and sometimes you don’t. But one thing’s for sure,” he added, leaning in closer, “It’s always more than you can afford.”

  I like to believe Peter and me was friends, more than we was brothers. He said we wasn’t friends though ‘cause we didn’t need each other. I told him I needed him, but he said that was only ‘cause I was too dumb to go through life alone. But he never said he needed me.

  Until I was nine years old, I never had friends. Ma told me it was ‘cause everyone was jealous of me, but I don’t know why they was jealous—everyone in town had a mickey mouse pencil sharpener. When Peter left for boarding school, I had no one to sit with at recess and that made me lonely. So one day I told myself to make friends with the first person I saw in the cafeteria. Well the first person I saw was a boy named Jimmy, who was the most popular person in our school. Jimmy was real good-looking, and he spoke well and played sports and Peter said once that all the girls had a rush for him, though I don’t know what they was rushing for. Well I walked up to Jimmy and asked if I could sit with him. Then everyone at his table started laughing, but I never made a joke. I told them I never made a joke, but they laughed harder.

  “You got fifty cents?” Jimmy asked, rubbing his chin.

  “I think so,” I said, and pulled out the drawstring pouch I kept in my underwear. The people at the table started laughing again. I gave Jimmy the money.

  “Go ahead, sit down,” Jimmy said, pocketing the coins. So I sat next to Jimmy. He never said nothing to me after that, and no one else at the table said nothing neither. It was like I was… what’s that word now? Indivisible? I was indivisible, so I sat and ate my lunch until the bell rang.

  I sat next to Jimmy every day for the next few months. I gave him fifty cents every day and Jimmy always took the money without a word. I reckon he and his friends was used to me now ‘cause they never even laughed at me anymore, but they didn’t speak to me neither.

  Ma gave me three dollars a week but I still never had money ‘cause I spent most of it paying Jimmy. I didn’t tell her that ‘cause she would have gotten mad. So she figured I must have been wasting my allowance on something bad and stopped giving me money. I still had some coins saved up though and I paid Jimmy with that, but one day I clear ran out of money. So when I went up to Jimmy that day and he held out his palm, I told him I didn’t have any money. He said I could pay him tomorrow. But I said my allowance was cancelled, so I couldn’t pay him no more. Jimmy shook his head and said, “Well, then you can’t sit here anymore.”

  Jimmy was the only friend I had besides Peter, so I was sad I couldn’t sit with him no more. I tried to get a job so I could pay him again, but the pastor said I couldn’t clean his windows ‘cause God hadn’t meant for me to work with glass. And the librarian said she would rather hire a monkey. I even wrote to Peter asking him for the money, but he said he was about as broke as me. So I lost my friendship with Jimmy and I was very lonely.

  Ma died my last year of school. She died a day after she told me I had missed-a-point-at her. I asked her what point I missed, so she spelt it out for me: d-i-s-a-p-p-o-i-n-t-e-d, but I reckon she spelt it wrong. She said she thought me being dumb didn’t mean I couldn’t be something, but that I proved her wrong. She said I was too soft in the head and too soft in the chest to be something. The next morning she wasn’t in the kitchen for breakfast. I went up to her room and saw her lying on the bed, not moving. That was the first time I ever cried, was when Ma died. I sat by her body for two days until the pastor came over to see why she missed church.

  Peter came home for her funeral. That was the last time I saw him ‘cause he took a job out in Minnesota after that. I was eighteen then, but I was still in school ‘cause I failed three times. The good thing was I was old enough to live alone. When he left after the funeral, Peter gave me a hug and said we would always be brothers, forever and ever. I asked him to stay.

  “I would, bud, but I got work to take care of.”

  “Ain’t we friends, Peter?” I asked him. “Can’t you stay for your friend?”

  “We’re brothers,” he told me. “And I would stay for my brother, but like I said, I got me a lot of work. Tell you what, I’ll come back one day and take you with me. How’s that?”

  I believed him, ‘cause I didn’t think Peter would lie to his own brother.

  After the funeral life became quiet. I didn’t see anyone except when I was at school and no one talked to me there anyway. I went weeks without saying a word and no one seemed to really notice. I didn’t know how to cook so I didn’t eat much except for bread and cheese. I wrote to Peter a lot, asking what he was doing and where he was. He wrote back sometimes, and that was nice ‘cause I got to know he was okay. He always said he would come visit me soon.

  The only person I saw was the pastor, and that was ‘cause he brought me groceries every Sunday after church. He brought me milk, bread, cheese, and some fruit. He talked to me for a few minutes, but he was always leaving, even when he was just coming in. I reckon he only took care of me for my ma, ‘cause she would have asked him to if she was alive. I don’t think he liked me much, or maybe he just didn’t like talking to me. I wish he did ‘cause I didn’t need bread or cheese as much as I needed a friend. I reckon Peter was right about friendship having a price and all, ‘cause I could afford bread, but I never could afford a friend.

  But
then one day I met a girl named Emma in school. She was sitting next to me in math class, and when the teacher asked a question I didn’t know, Emma explained it to me. The other people was laughing ‘cause I was dumb, but Emma didn’t laugh. She was kind. She listened when I spoke, and so I spoke a lot and I spoke things I never spoke before. She didn’t laugh except when I was funny and even then her laugh wasn’t mean. She was the nicest person I knew, except for Peter and my ma, but I didn’t have them in my life anymore. Emma said I was like her brother who died in the war. She said when she spoke to me she felt like she was speaking to him. I asked if he was dumb too and that made her laugh. But then she said both of us weren’t dumb, and that I shouldn’t let anyone call me dumb.

  Emma was real pretty and when she smiled at me I forgot where I was. She was nice to me, even though her friends never was. I was never smart around her though, and I always said wrong things. One time I came up to her when she was reading in the park behind school. She looked up at me and smiled. “Here, sit down,” she said, patting the bench.

  I reached into my trousers for the drawstring pouch. Emma smiled when she saw it, and said her grandma had a pouch just like that. Then I gave her two coins and sat down by her.

  “Fifty cents?” she said, looking at the coins. “What’s this for?”

  “For sitting beside you.”

  Emma laughed. She had a pretty laugh—it sounded like a song. “You think you have to pay to sit next to me? What do I look like to you, some girl from an escort service?”

  I didn’t know what she meant, but I said yes ‘cause I was confused. But that made her angry, and she called me a jerk and walked away. I followed her when she went back into the school and then when she went home. I followed her so much that she stopped and told me to stop following her. “Stop following me,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “But I paid you.”

  She looked more angry now. “You’re not a gentleman,” she said. I was confused ‘cause she had tears in her eyes even though she was angry. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re pretty.” Her eyes rolled, but I didn’t know if that meant she was more angry or more sad, so I kept talking. “I think you’re nice to me, when no one else is. I reckon you have a big heart, ‘cause you smile a lot and my brother Peter says it’s more hard to smile than to frown. So I reckon you got to have a big heart to smile more. And you smile good, Emma.”

  She looked surprised now. “Thank you,” she said. “But why did you give me fifty cents?”

  “My brother Peter said every friendship has a price. And I paid fifty cents to my last friend every day, so I reckon I ought to do the same for you. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “Your brother was wrong,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Friendships come free. Trust me.”

  So I did. I trusted Emma and we became friends, and I never had to pay her nothing.

  I sat next to her at recess after that. She was different from Jimmy, ‘cause she actually spoke to me. She spoke to me about her life, about things she had seen and things she wanted to see. She said talking to me was like throwing stones into a well. The more stones she threw, the more “semimental” feelings I had inside came up. I reckon that was true ‘cause I even cried around Emma a few times and I never cried around no one else before except Ma. Sometimes I talked so much around Emma that my throat closed and then she would tell me to calm down and get me water. She said I was always getting excited and that I should be calm. But I told her I only got excited when she was around and that made her laugh.

  Emma and I was friends even after school ended. We was good friends, and I made her laugh a lot. We took long walks and we swam in the lake and saw movies. Emma was a lot like Peter, and when I was around her I didn’t miss Peter much. I still wrote to him lots—I told him about Emma but he reckoned I was making her up. He said no girl who had all her marbles would be friends with me. I showed Emma the letter and she reckoned Peter was mean, but I told her he was just being Peter. “That’s how big brothers are,” I said.

  Emma said things I didn’t understand sometimes. We was sitting in a meadow once watching seagulls fight over bread crumbs and I said this was romantic. Emma said it couldn’t be, ‘cause there was nothing romantic about our friendship. I think she thought romantic was something between lovers, but I thought anything was romantic whether I was with a friend, or my ma, or a stranger, or a hundred strangers, or even if I was just by myself.

  She said that romance was anything from a nice song to a bouquet of flowers, or even just a piece of paper with the words “I love you” on it, as long as it was between lovers and not friends. That confused me ‘cause I always thought romantic things was bigger than life.

  That moment with Emma was special ‘cause it felt like it was bigger than my life. In that moment, I forgot my ma was dead, that I hadn’t seen Peter in years, and I even forgot I was stupid. I think any moment that makes you forget everything is romantic.

  I reckon Emma was romantic, ‘cause she made me forget everything. In fact, when I was around her I only remembered good things. I felt love for Emma and that scared me, ‘cause I never felt love before. I wrote Peter asking him what love felt like, and he said if I felt something funny in my pants, then it was love. But I reckon he was wrong about that, ‘cause my pants never told jokes. So I asked Emma what love was.

  “It’s a drug,” she said, and smiled. “Be careful you don’t take some of it, because you’ll forget where you’re going and where you came from. Know what I mean?”

  I didn’t know what she meant ‘cause when she smiled then, I forgot if I was coming or going. I told her that and she laughed, ‘cause I reckon she figured I was making a joke.

  One day I told her that I felt love for her, and that made her uncomfortable. She acted the way Peter did when I talked about feelings, and then she said she didn’t love me, not the same way I loved her. I asked if she was my girlfriend, and she said she couldn’t be ‘cause we wasn’t right for each other. I didn’t understand what she meant, ‘cause I thought we was right for each other. But she said it was like how you go shopping for hats; you got to find a hat that’s the right size, the right colour and the right look. She said I wasn’t the hat for her.

  “I know what you’re saying, Emma,” I told her. “You’re saying I don’t have fifty cents.”

  I was real sad I wasn’t Emma’s boyfriend, but I was happy she was happy, ‘cause she found a boyfriend a little while later. When she told me about him I saw a look on Emma’s face I never saw before. She spoke about him like he was the only man she ever saw, and I figured he was very rich ‘cause he could afford Emma’s love. I told her that and she said it was wrong for me to keep calling her a hooker. I told her I didn’t call her no hooker, and I meant it; Emma sure wasn’t some kind of a ninja or a fisherman.

  She married a real nice man, tall, handsome and rich. They had lots of children too, and they had a happy life. Some folks said she was sad ‘cause he was cheating on her, but I don’t know how you can cheat on a marriage, so I reckon they were wrong.

  After Emma was married we didn’t see each other much. So I stayed home most of the time, where I felt like Ma and Peter was both still with me. I didn’t have a job but I lived off the money Ma left me. The pastor got me work sometimes, mowing lawns and cleaning gutters and building fences, but I always seemed to lose the jobs, even when I was working hard. Peter wrote me a letter once a year, telling me what he was doing. He had a wife and children now. He said they would visit someday, and that made me happy, ‘cause I wanted to see Peter again and I wanted to see his family. Then for two years he didn’t write me at all, until last week, when he sent me a letter saying I should come see him. So that’s why I was here. I was real excited, too.

  Sitting on the swing, waiting for Peter, I thought about all the friends I had and
all the friends I lost. I thought about my pa, my ma, the other boys in my class, the girls I tried to talk to, the teachers that were nice to me, and the teachers that weren’t. I thought and I thought, and I thought until my head hurt. I thought that I paid everyone in my life to keep them with me, and the ones I couldn’t pay left me. Pa left me ‘cause I was stupid and useless. Peter left me ‘cause I was too dumb to go along with him. Ma left me cause I missed-a-point-at-her. Jimmy left me ‘cause I ran out of money. Emma left me ‘cause I wasn’t good enough to marry her. I was alone now ‘cause I didn’t have nothing left to pay no one else. I never talked to God before but I wanted to talk to him then; I wanted to ask him why I was so poor I couldn’t buy a friend.

  But then I thought that people had paid me, too. Ma paid me by taking care of me; Peter paid me by explaining things to me; Jimmy paid me by sitting with me, and Emma paid me by being nice to me. I started to understand what Peter said about friendships having a price. Only, I think people pay each other when they’re friends, and not always with money.

  The maid came out then with a pretty woman who was Peter’s wife. I said I was Peter’s brother and she took me into the house and showed me their children. They was beautiful, just like their ma and Peter. Rose and Samuel they was called, and they was four and six. They was real smart, too. They told me stories, showed me games and sang songs.