I help Lance with his homework. Lance sighs like Dad whenever we finish a problem, as if he’d just completed the world’s most demanding task. I tell him he’d better get used to it. His eyebrows are two little caterpillars fighting on his forehead. I want to tell him about the bullfrog and about pitching with your eyes closed.
My cell phone rings and Lance ducks under the couch cushions. He thinks he’s funny. Caller ID says it’s Tom, my boyfriend, and I crawl under the cushions next to Lance. Lance giggles and tries to push me out, kicking me in the head and chest. Tom hasn’t called me all week. I hold the ringing phone against Lance’s ear, and mock screams mix with his giggles. My last date with Tom was a movie. We watched the previews intently. During the movie, I wouldn’t let him stick his hand into my jeans. I told him to stick his hand in his own pants. I thought I was funny. He pouted the rest of the night. I don’t and won’t answer Tom’s phone call. I’m going to break up with him. He’s starting to scare me. Lance and I emerge from the couch after the phone stops ringing, and Lance rushes through the rest of his assignment, his eights looking like crumbling buildings.
I go upstairs to the computer. I tell everyone that I’m going to break up with Tom before I tell Tom. Tom hears it from somebody else and he yells at me through cyberspace: capital letters and multiple exclamation marks and no smiley faces. I make jokes about him masturbating to porn. I make jokes about the size and smell of his dick. I don’t do any homework for Mr. Sorent’s class.
All eight of us in Mr. Sorent’s special class, our grades aren’t good anymore. We are not in good academic standing. Some of us drink. Some of us smoke. Some of us will fuck anyone and everyone, or we punch and kick and destroy, or we drive really fast and late at night, or we stay locked in our rooms. Teachers openly talk about the changes, our senior slides, our early spring fever, and they pretend to be more knowing than they are. But they don’t know anything and they won’t do anything.
Mr. Sorent has stopped teaching us AP American History because we don’t listen. Most days he sits at his desk and reads the paper, smelling of old cigarettes and something else, something organic none of us cares to identify. His hair is greasy and formless. His jeans don’t fit his waist correctly, not cut to the length and style we want. He doesn’t shave and his beard grows in patchy and rough. He wears old glasses now, the lenses too big. He is an old man trying to act young. He’s a fraud. He knows nothing. He can teach us nothing. We know this now, even if we didn’t know it then. We’ve stripped his podium of the bumper stickers, stolen his CDs and his miniature bat.
We only listen to Mr. Sorent during the special lessons. One class he showed us a PowerPoint presentation of crime scene photos: there was a man beaten to death with a bat, only his sausage-sized lips were a recognizable part of his face, and there was an old man hacked to death with a samurai sword, and there was a woman who shot herself in the chest with a shotgun, she was a junky and so withered you couldn’t tell she was female, even with her shirt off. Another class was war footage, soldiers and civilians in pieces and burnt and eaten away by the chemicals neither side was using. Another class was snuff and torture films and the sound was the worst part. In other classes we saw the Columbine video, terrorists beheading kidnap victims, grainy newsreel stuff from Chernobyl and Hiroshima, and from Auschwitz and Cambodia and Rwanda and Kosovo and their endless piles of bodies.
And there’s still the floating-boy video. Moving only frame to frame with each new day. Some days we can believe there has been no progress, as if that boy will be trapped in the amber of TV forever, but that’s not right. He has progressed. He’s almost at the wall.
No one talks at dinner. Just forks on plates. Mom says she already ate and then goes out wearing heels and sunglasses and not her yellow sweatsuit. Dad takes off his tie and unbuttons his shirt and dumps Lance in front of the TV with his dinosaur plate and Spider-Man fork. Lance has dark, purple circles under his eyes, his skin carrying something heavy. In all the hours of TV Lance has already logged, I wonder if he’s seen the floating boy. Dad disappears into his bedroom, and then the master bathroom. Both doors shut at the same time. I’m the only one eating at the table. Maybe this is how it always was. I go upstairs. Online I find my friends arguing without me. Tomorrow is our last class with Mr. Sorent. Its arrival will be unheralded and inevitable. I still haven’t written anything in my notebook. I can’t decide if I want that to mean anything. If I were to write something down, I’d tell Mr. Sorent about the bullfrog. No, maybe I’d just tell him about me pitching in the Little League game. Tell him how when I closed my eyes, I hoped the ball would stop somewhere between me and the catcher and just float. I would hope so hard I’d believe it was really happening. With my eyes closed, I’d see that ball just hovering and spinning and I’d follow the path of those angry red stitches along with everyone else; we’d all stare it for hours, even when it got dark. But then I would hear the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt, or the bat, or the dull thud of the ball smacking into the batter’s back, and open my eyes.
Mr. Sorent has shaved and cleaned himself up, has a new mini-bat, bumper stickers back on his podium. He’s a cicada, emerging fresh from his seven-year sleep. He says, “You think you know why I’m doing this. But you don’t,” which is something so teacherly to say and utterly void of credibility or relevance. “So let’s begin again.”
We’re tired and old, and we’ve experienced more and know more than he does. We know we can’t ever begin again. We hand in our special notebooks. They are decorated and filled with our blood, except for one notebook that is empty. One of us closes our eyes after releasing the empty notebook, refusing to watch its path to the teacher’s desk.
Mr. Sorent turns on the TV and the floating-boy video. The boy’s head is only inches away from the wall. Some of his classmates are watching now, but they probably don’t know what is really going on, or even what is going to happen. We hope they don’t know. We hope they aren’t like us. The teacher has retracted her arms and is facing the boy and the wall. Her face is blurry and because we haven’t seen the entire video at normal speed, we don’t know if this means she’s trying to look away or if it’s just a quirk of the video or if there’s some other meaning that we haven’t unearthed, or if it’s all meaningless.
Mr. Sorent rewinds the video, the boy flies backward and into the teacher’s embrace. We know it won’t last. He says, “I need a volunteer.”
This isn’t fair. He is trying to break us apart, turning we into me. Doesn’t he know that we’ll hate the volunteer? The volunteer won’t be able to rewind back into the we. We will never be the same. Maybe we are being melodramatic but we don’t care. We believe the volunteer to be irreversible; there is no begin again, Mr. Sorent, why can’t you understand that? But I volunteer anyway.
I leave our circle and it becomes their circle. I walk to the front of the class, next to the TV, and I imagine the floating boy finally hitting his wall and then smashing through the right side of the television and into me, into my arms.
“Stand here and face that wall.”
I do as he says. I feel their eyes on me. Them who used to be we.
“Please walk halfway toward the wall. Everyone else watch the video.” I take four steps and stop; the TV is behind me so I can’t see the screen. “Please halve the distance again, Kate.” I take two steps. When I move I hear the DVD player whir into action and then pause when I pause. “Again, Kate.” I take one step. I could touch the wall now, if I wanted, and rip down the movie posters that we once tore down.
“If you keep halving the distance, Kate, will you ever get there? Is forever that far away, or that close? What do you think, class?” He says class like it’s the dirtiest of words. I close my eyes, and take a half step, then a quarter-step, an eighth-step, and I still haven’t hit the wall.
“That’s good enough, Kate.” I don’t move, but not because of what he said.
<
br /> “Go back to your seat and we’ll let you decide whether or not this little boy will ever hit the wall.” I don’t move. My eyes are still closed and I’ll stay here until I’m removed. I haven’t touched it yet, but the wall is intimately close. It’s impending, and it’s always there. Mr. Sorent says something to me but I’m not listening and I’m not going to move. I’ll stay here with my eyes closed and pretend that where I am is where I’ll always be. Where am I? I’m at the dinner table discussing days with my dissatisfied parents. I’m helping Lance and his caterpillars with homework. I’m at the computer instant messaging secrets to secret friends.
“Return to your seat so we may finally watch the video, Kate.”
No. I’m staying where I am. I’m the baseball pitch that stops before home. I’m an empty notebook. I’m half the distance to the wall. I’m the video with an ending that I won’t ever watch.
The Two-headed Girl
1
I have to keep swinging an extra fifteen minutes before I can go downtown and to the Little Red Bookstore, because Mom wants to run the dishwasher and the blender tonight. I wonder if my time on the swing will generate enough extra juice for those appliances, or even if she’s telling me the truth. I’ve been having a hard time with telling-truth or truth-telling.
Anne Frank is on my left again. I only ever get to see her in profile. Whenever I’m around a mirror she is always someone else. Today, she’s the early-in-her diary Anne, the same age as me. Anne spent most of my swinging afternoon pining for Peter, but now she wants to talk to Lies, her best friend before the war.
She says, “I feel so guilty, Lies. I wish I could take you into hiding with me.”
I get this odd, stomach-knotty thrill and I pretend that she really knows me and she is really talking to me. But at the same time, I don’t like it when she calls me Lies. I say, “I’m sorry, Anne, but I’m Veronica.” The words come out louder than I intended. I’m not mad at her. I could never be mad at Anne. It’s just hard to speak normally when on the downswing.
Anne moves on, talks about her parents and older sister, and then how much she dislikes that ungrateful dentist they took in.
“Nobody likes dentists,” I say and I want her to laugh. She doesn’t. I only hear dead leaves making their autumn sounds as they blow up against the neighbor’s giant fence and our swing set and generator
Mom sticks her only head out of the kitchen window and yells, “Looks like we need another fifteen minutes, sorry, honey. I promise I’ll get Mr. Bob out here tomorrow to tune everything up.”
This is not good news. My back hurts and my legs are numb already. She’s promised me Mr. Bob every day for a week. She’s made a lot of promises.
“Hi, Veronica.” It’s that little blond boy from across the street. He’s become part of my daily routine: when I come out, he hides in our thick bushes, then sneaks along the perimeter of my neighbor’s beanstalk-tall, wood plank fence, and then sits next to the swing set and generator.
“Hi, Jeffrey,” I say. Anne is quiet. Jeffrey has a withered left arm. Both of us try not to stare at it.
He says, “Where’s your Dad?” His little kindergarten voice makes me smile, even though I’m sick of that particular question.
“I don’t know, Jeffrey, just like I didn’t know yesterday, and the day before yesterday.” I try not to be mean or curt with him. He’s the only kid in town who talks to me.
Anne says, “My Dad is hiding in the annex.”
Jeffrey stays on my right, which is closer to my head. He only talks to me. I know it makes Anne lonely and sad, which makes me lonely and sad, just like her diary did. I don’t remember what came first: me reading the diary or Anne making a regular rotation as my other head.
Jeffrey says, “You should ask your Mom or somebody where he is.”
I know Jeffrey doesn’t realize what he’s asking of me. I know people never realize how much their words hurt, sometimes almost as much as what isn’t said.
I say what I always say. “I’ll think about it.”
“Can I ride on the swing?”
Anne is mumbling something under her breath. My heart breaks all over again. I say, “No, sorry, Jeffrey. I can’t let you. You’d have to ask my mother.” I find it easier to blame everything on Mom, even if it isn’t fair.
Jeffrey mashes his fully developed right fist into his cheek, an overly dramatic but effective pantomime of I-never-get-to-do-anything-fun.
I say, “Do you want to walk downtown with me when I’m done?”
He nods.
“Go ask your parents first.”
Jeffrey runs off. With his little legs pumping and back turned to me, I let myself stare at the flopping and mostly empty left arm of his thin, grey sweatshirt. He scoots onto his front lawn and past a sagging scarecrow, a decoration left out too long.
My legs tingle with pins and needles, and Anne is crying. I wish I could console her, but I can’t. Now I’m thinking about the question I’ve always wanted to ask Anne, but never have because I’m a coward. I could ask her now, but it isn’t the right time, or at least, that’s what I tell myself. So we just keep swinging: a pendulum of her tears and me.
2
Jeffrey and I are downtown, playing a game on the cobblestones. I have to step on stones in a diagonal pattern. Jeffrey has to step on the darkest stones. I’ve seen him miss a few but I won’t call him on it. I’ll let him win.
Anne is gone and Medusa has taken her place. She is my least favourite head but not because she is a gorgon. I wish she were more gorgon-esque. Medusa is completely un-aggressive, head and eyes always turned down and she doesn’t say boo. I feel bad for her, and I hate Athena for turning Medusa into a hideous monster because she had the audacity to be raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Athena was the one with the big-time jealousy and beauty issues, kind of like my mother. I used to try and talk to Medusa, to make her feel better about herself. I’d tell her that her physical or social appearance doesn’t measure her worth and that her name means sovereign female wisdom, which I think is really cool for a name, so much cooler than my name which means true image. But she never says anything back and when I talk her snakes tickle my neck with their forked tongues.
Jeffrey shouts, “I’m winning,” even though he keeps falling off dark stones onto light stones. Balancing with only one arm must be difficult.
I say, “You’re really good at this game.”
It’s getting dark and I know Mom will be mad at me for being so late, but I’m allowing myself to champion the petty act of defiance. We make it to the Little Red Bookstore with its clapboard walls, cathedral ceiling, and giant mahogany bookcases with the customer scaffolding planks jutting out at the higher levels. There are people everywhere. Customers occupy the plush reading chairs and couches, the planks, and the seven rolling stack-ladders. I hold Jeffrey’s hand as we wade through the crowd toward the fiction section. No one notices us.
Jeffrey is as patient as he can be, but soon he’s tugging at my arm and skirt, asking if we can find dinosaur books, then asking if we can go home. I need a stack-ladder to go after the books I want. They’re still all taken. Even if I could get a ladder, I can’t leave Jeffrey unattended and he can’t climb the ladder and walk the bookcase scaffolding with me. So I grab a random book, something I’ve never heard of by someone I’ve never heard of, because I have to buy something. Then I walk Jeffrey to the kid section and to some dinosaur books. He sits on the ground with a pop-up book in his lap. He knows all the dinosaur names, even the complex ones with silent letters and ph’s everywhere, and I’ve never understood why boys love the monsters that scare them so much. Above my heads, people climb in and out of the ladders and platforms and book stacks.
I say to Medusa, “I think they look like bees in a honeycomb.” Medusa sighs and doesn’t lift her head.
Jeffrey
sounds out an armored dinosaur’s name, an-kie-low-saur-us, ankylosaurus, then he stands and swings an imaginary tail at me.
I say to Medusa, “Come on. Tell me what you think. Something. Anything!”
Medusa’s snakes stir, rubbing up against my neck. She says, “Unlike my sisters, I’m mortal.”
Everyone in and above the stacks stops what they are doing and looks at us, looks at Medusa, who for once returns their stares. No one turns to stone, at least not against their will, and I know it’s time for us to go. The customers are upset with us, likely because we’re talking about mortality in a bookstore.
I brush a particularly frisky snake off my neck and I say, “Me, too,” but enough time has passed so I’m not sure if Medusa knows I’m responding to what she said. Communication is so difficult sometimes.
We walk to the register and pay for the book I don’t want.
3
It’s dark when I get home. Mom is sitting at the kitchen table. She’s dressed to go out, even though she won’t, wearing a tight candy-red top, the same red as her lipstick, with a black poodle skirt. Her black hair bobs at her shoulders. She could be my sister back from college ready to tell me all she’s learned about life and love as a woman. But she’s not my sister.
There are two white Irish-knit turtleneck sweaters on her lap. On the counter, the blender is dirty with its plastic walls dripping something creamy. The dishwasher is in a loud rinse cycle. My dinner is on a plate, hidden under a crinkled, re-used piece of tinfoil.
In the Mean Time Page 2