Stand Tall My Sweet Dandelion Girl

by Jimenez, Javier

  Much like the walls, floors, and washrooms here, the beanbags were kept more than clean. For every beanbag, only one person could fit. One was a cream color, another was a chocolate color, and the third beanbag was a tan color.

  I walked over to the shelf and shuffled through picture book after picture book. All of the picture books were nothing out of the ordinary and were captioned with places, times, titles, etc. I had already seen most of them, and so I grabbed a new picture book. The book had the work of only one photographer. His book consisted of 50 pages, and he only took pictures of metropolitan cities. He captured the busy and crowded life of people shuffling from one bus station to another, or the traversing of crowds on the streets that contrasted with tall buildings covered in advertisements. After skimming the first few pages, I took a seat on the tan-colored beanbag, and began to observe the different pictures. One was a picture of a city with tall skyscrapers and a lot of traffic. Another city had a lot of smog and pollution, but it was apparent that people inhabited the area. Another city showed the balcony view of a parade on the streets with a very large number of people walking as confetti and other small objects flew through the air. Another city showed a building that was abandoned and remodeled into a market. Another city illustrated train tracks with markets stationed dangerously close to the rails. At the very bottom of the page was a very small description that said, “When the train goes through here, all the vendors quickly pull their tents and move away from the tracks to avoid being hit by the train, and quickly place everything back once it passes to continue selling.

  I kept flipping through city after city, some amazing and beautiful, others with very large populations and what seemed to be unsafe conditions. A similarity that I noticed between the cities was that the pretty and lively cities had no stars—probably because their lights were always on. The cities that tended to look inhospitable didn’t reveal a clear image of the sky either because there was such thick pollution in the air. In one of the pictures, a woman was seen wearing a gas mask. The clouds of smog were nothing like the clouds we had here in America. Their clouds were unnatural and tainted.

  I kept flipping through page after page, viewing the different lives of these highly populated cities, when all of a sudden; I noticed a woman entering the commons area and began walking to where I was sitting.

  I flipped to another page, where buildings were covered in lights and where it seemed like no one ever slept at night.

  I could hear her faint footsteps and looked up from where I was sitting in my beanbag. She was both looking and walking in my direction. As she got closer, I became more confident that it was me that she was looking at. She was more than twenty feet away, but something quickly stood out that separated her from the rest of the people here—her uniform. It wasn’t like ours. Our uniforms were a pastel green, and that’s what we usually wore. Her uniform was different. It was still green, but it wasn’t pastel or a light green. Her uniform was a rich, dark forest green.

  With every step she took, she stood out more to me, her behavior slightly differed from everyone else’s. Her jet-black hair was loose and had a small amount of volume towards her right side. It was free flowing, but could have easily been mistaken as disorganized, or not well cared for. It was very difficult to distinguish which was most accurate.

  This woman’s walk was so peculiar and caused me to hesitate a little bit. I felt as if a knot had almost formed in my throat.

  She walked slowly, almost with a sort of boredom in her step. With every step she took, her hair bounced a little bit, as if she was trying to keep herself entertained or amused. She didn’t walk in a straight motion; her legs didn’t automatically go straight towards a fixed destination. The way she walked—she put one foot directly in front of the other one and walked at her own leisure. It’s like she had no direction with every step she took, but somehow it was clear that she headed towards my area.

  She looked like someone who did not give a single ounce of care towards anything. This woman in her dark forest green uniform looked like she was up to no good and was looking for a way to amuse herself.

  Finally, she was within a five feet distance from me. I was still looking at my picture book, and my vision had become completely unfocused as I was staring right through the page, thoughts running riot through my mind—I was avoiding contact.

  She was at a standstill, and so was I.

  Chapter 8

  This woman. She looked me up and down, sizing me up, like I was a spectacle to look at, some display of some sort. Her ruby-red lips stretched menacingly to reveal her pearly straight teeth. Her mouth soon formed a smirk. If snakes could smile, I was definitely looking at one.

  “You there,” she said, with a narcissistic and amused tone in her voice. The near perfect and tranquil silence was broken by her intrusion. I was consumed by a world where the sun seemed to stop moving and where time had stood still.

  Sunbeams still covered the room and were interjected by shadows of small columns in between every large window panel.

  I held my tongue and was debating whether I should break my glance from the picture book on my lap. She stood there like some sort of menacing sentinel. It seemed like she wanted something from me and had no intention of retreating from whatever snake pit she crawled out of.

  So I bit my tongue even harder and looked up, half-heartedly. I was not sure what to expect.

  “What’s your name, dear?” she demanded.

  The way her tone rose when she said ‘dear’ made my skin crawl.

  She gave an even bigger and mischievous smirk and shifted her body slightly so that she was walking near the edges of the square floor where I sat.

  She began to take very slow walks on the edges, being careful not to step down to my level. As she moved one foot forward, she placed it directly in front of the other foot. The sunlight that emanated from the room was still illuminating the room, and that’s when I noticed that her dark forest green uniform was slightly tighter than the rest of the uniforms everyone else here wore. She had these petite feet and black slip-on shoes.

  Her slow walk became more of a strut, as she aligned herself near the edge. She looked like some sort of clown with nothing to live for, just passing her time with the entertainment she found for herself. She looked like some sort of Harley Quinn, the red and black-checkered, side villain to the Joker.

  She stopped. She was now right between the sunbeams and I. The golden rays pushed against her body and transformed her into a silhouette. I could not discern any of her facial features—only the outline of her darkened body.

  This woman was different from any of the other people here. Her uniform had a slimming effect, almost as it had been altered to fit her perfectly. On further speculation, I noticed that the outline of her body was much more curvy than anyone else here, which was only magnified by her slim uniform.

  There was a gold chain bracelet on her wrist. She flipped her half-tangled hair back. It flew past her shoulder as the golden sunlight gleamed off her golden bracelet momentarily. Her arm dropped back down.

  I made a last attempt to examine any facial features on her darkened face—but I had no luck. Who was she?

  “You okay, dear? You look lost.” She said again in a high-pitched and narcissistic tone.

  I realized that while I was trying to read her dark face, mine must have been completely illuminated as the sun exposed my confusion at trying to make sense of her.

  My face relaxed, and I looked away as her dark outline contrasting with the sun became too much strain for my eyes.

  She continued her walk on the edge till she finally reached the corner of the square. I still hadn’t said a word.

  I closed my eyes, not fully sure how I should respond to her.

  “You silly girl. I am talking to you!” She broke in one last time.

  “What do you want?” I said with loud assertiveness.

  “Geez. Don’t you ever get bored here? I mean look at you. Sitting on s
ome boring colored beanbag reading early in the morning. What’s there to do around here?” She said again, with a derogatory attitude.

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I make do with what I have, I don’t know what else to tell you.” I said, making sure that I manifested no sympathy for her.

  “God. It’s so boring,” she seemed to groan.

  She stretched her arms and let out a sigh.

  I held my breath for a second in frustration. I was far from focusing on the illustrations anymore.

  “What in the world are you looking at?” She said with the sort of astonishment someone would use to embarrass you.

  “Cities,” I answered.

  “How boring of you. That’s so ridiculous. What’s there to staring at buildings? It’s all just stone, metal, and concrete. You don’t understand how silly you look staring at concrete, you silly girl.”

  If there was one thing about this woman, it was that she found a way to completely derail my focus and she quickly became a nuisance. If there was any way to destroy any intelligent thought or conversation, she seemed to find a way to do it.

  “Listen, I am sort of busy, so how about you leave me to my reading please?” I said, with a bit of frustration—not quite yelling at her, but clearly annoyed by her presence.

  She pulled out some red lipstick and applied it slowly. It seemed to be this very dark shade of ruby red. She puckered her lips and rubbed them together until she felt she had enough.

  “The name is Malory Laventure,” she said to me. It was completely the opposite of what I wanted. Instead of leaving me to my books, she imposed her name on me. She was no longer a stranger that I could easily flick away. She gave me her name instead.

  “I am a French descendent, you know,” she proclaimed as she brushed her lips together again.

  “Is that so?” I said, showing no true interest.

  “Yes, I have French blood.” She said braggingly as if it were some sort of title, or award even.

  “Are you from there?” I asked her.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Are your parents from there?” I asked her with a bit of curiosity towards the origin of her last name.

  “Nope, just some French ancestors from there,” she revealed.

  “Oh,” I said with not much left to say.

  “It’s so calm here,” she said. “So tranquil,” she said as her speech began to slow, “So… so… very… tranquil. It seems it would be easy to disrupt this serenity, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I suppose,” I began, “but tranquility can be found anywhere—anywhere where there is peace of mind and silence.”

  “You’re an interesting girl. You make it seem like tranquility is so easy to come by—like it’s going to last,” she challenged.

  “Well, yeah, you just have to look for it. Silence helps a lot,” I responded.

  “You know what’s easier to come by,” her mischievous tone rose again as she continued, “than tranquility?”

  “Well, I can’t really imagine much. Silence can be found in many places and finding contentment in oneself helps create tranquility. It’s just that easy. We humans define tranquility—a peace of mind in the environment.”

  “Eerrnn!” She shrieked like some sort of buzzard. “Wrong answer, silly girl!” she said loudly and amusedly. “Tranquility never lasts long, dear. It’s not something that can last for a very long period of time. People often find themselves running around everywhere. Rushing to places, intimidated by deadlines, struggling to do things by certain dates, times, hours, minutes, seconds. We mindlessly and methodically complete tasks to please others. As long as we have some sort of responsibility, we will never be tranquil. Just look at the book you’re holding”

  I looked down again, and there it was on the left side of the page. The picture was captioned “Japan, Tokyo. Japanese men and women taking crowded subways to get to work.” It had station managers pushing Japanese adults into subway carts. They couldn’t fit. It was inhuman and grotesque. Men and women holding suitcases stood near the door of the subway cart and waited for the station managers to push them into the already full and packed cart. It was like hens being pushed into small cages that had no room for their bodies. No way to move.

  “There is no tranquility. There will always be something that will prevent it, if not, disrupt it,” she said, and began laughing, amused. It’s like she didn’t care about these men and women being shoved into already-packed subways; she just used it to prove a point and showed no sympathy.

  Her laugh taunted me as it grew louder. I held my breath, not knowing how places like that can ever be tranquil. I could not argue that those subways had any peace of mind. Her manic laugh grew louder and louder, and it made me uncomfortable, it made me uneasy, it made me nervous. I panicked and hesitated.

  “Well! I’m sure they are happy at other times! People have to do these things to maintain a living. Even though they are being rushed, they at least have somewhere to go at night where they feel safe. In life, we have to trade things to get things. They go to work in subways so that they can pay their bills and have somewhere to live, somewhere where they feel safe and can find a peace of mind!”

  “Pfff!” She exclaimed and continued with an aggressive chuckle, finally adding, “There is no suitable tranquility in life. We rush everywhere pretending like we are important. We try and find a justification in living, that we ourselves are important, but to be frank, there is no justification. Whatever we do and don’t do doesn’t really matter in the end, because our impending death looms over us all. You can never find true serenity here, not when humans have heavy responsibilities in their chests and rush around everywhere. They wear themselves out thinking that there is a sense of importance to what they are doing. It’s all hectic and chaotic, and for nothing. It’s all damn nonsense.” And after a quick paused, she ended with, “And there is very little time for your tranquility, silly girl.”

  I was aggravated; this woman—Malory—was impossible to please. “You’re wrong,” I said, making one last attempt, trying to make sense of it one last time. “If people can’t find some sort of happiness—“I paused, not sure how to justify having inner peace or why it was important. “Look, happiness is hard to come by, and being content with yourself is one of the only things that can get people through a day. Sometimes being happy is all we truly have.”

  She wasn’t laughing anymore, but she gave one last smile as the rest of her facial expressions relaxed. The way her ruby lips stretched—and the way her eyes were looking down on me—I swear she had a sympathetic expression, but why did she choose to sympathize now?

  Her lips moved calmly and said, “We are haunted by our past, silly. To forget our past is hard, but to accept our past is even harder. We are all white canvasses that have been ruined by our decisions and time. As long as we carry our troubles in our ribcages, there will never be any reconciliation with ourselves—no tranquility.”

  Chapter 9

  I shut the book closed, stood up, pushed the book against the beanbag, and walked off as quickly as I could away from her.

  “Where are you going, silly?” She shouted again in her high-pitched tone.

  I turned my back slightly and shouted back, “My name is Sam, dammit!”

  I was several feet away from her now, but I managed to see that she continued to do her petite walk on the edges of the square again. Not a care in the world did that woman give.

  I was so mad and upset, I sprinted towards the entrance of the dining area and shifted back to my quick walk again. I couldn’t stand her; I had to get away from her.

  Everyone was finishing breakfast, and they were returning their dishes to the counter. I was walking straight to the wooden staircases on the other side of the dining room, zigzagging through all the other people.

  I sprinted up the staircase, holding the rail. It was empty again; no one seemed to be anywhere near the stairway. I finally reached the second floor were all the rooms
where located and the soft but quick pats from my Cordones echoed through the hallway as I started to sprint again.

  I must have gone up the stairs too quickly because the hallway became unusually dark. My vision was a little warped and the hallway seemed to have darker walls. My heart started pounding against my chest, the hallways seemed to shift back and forth, and I was getting frightened. I kept running, but my sprint soon became awkward—I would stop right in the middle of my sprint—and continue again. I began having difficulties finding out where I was in the hallway. The number of doors seemed to stretch; I couldn’t make sense of it. I just knew that there were a lot of doors. I found myself leaning against the walls, making sure not to fall or lose my balance as the hallways began shifting to darker shades.

  I alternated between walking quickly and abruptly stopping, as the warping of the hallways made me hesitant. Every time I stopped, it seemed like it took me a lot longer to start walking again. I kept touching the doors in search of my room number.

  My head felt heavy and I could have sworn I heard something coming from the staircase that was now several feet away from me. A jumble of sounds eroded from the stairway that seemed to echo into the hallway and drew closer to me. The thumping sound in my chest grew louder as my heart rate increased. My palms began to sweat, and finally, I reached my room number.

  I quickly grabbed at the doorknob and opened it. I hastily pushed myself into my room and closed the door again. The sounds intensified and I momentarily closed my eyes so as to not get dizzy from the strange and ominous shadows that danced upon the hallway walls.

  I shuffled to my bed, almost falling; I wrapped my hands around my head and threw myself onto the cool bedcover.

  Then the sounds reached me; whispers floated around the room and surrounded my head. There were a lot of inaudible and incomprehensible voices.