You're Welcome, Universe

by Whitney Gardner

  I never thought I would be thankful to see Yoga Pants walking toward me, but here I am. I wave at her and smile. She barely nods and keeps walking. Shit, was I that harsh in gym? I wave at her again with a bit more enthusiasm. She heads over to us.

  “This is my friend,” I sign to Casey.

  “Really. You’re friends?” Casey asks YP without signing. YP looks over to me, her eyebrows screwed up and confused. I smile and nod, pleading with my eyes.

  “Sure, why not.” YP signs the word for friend.

  I sign and Casey jumps at the chance to interpret for a peer: “Julia wants to know if you would like to go to Dairy Barn with her.”

  “Oh, Julia! That’s your name?” YP blurts. Come on now, play it cool, we’re “friends,” remember?

  “This is YP,” I sign to Casey, introducing her.

  “YP? What?” Casey signs with that puzzled look of hers.

  “It’s her name sign.” Another lie, but whatever, it’s a fine name sign.

  “You gave her a name sign?” To YP: “She gave you a name sign?” Crap. Casey has been bugging me for one since I met her. I’ve kind of resisted on principle.

  “What’s a name sign?” YP asks us both.

  “It’s a sign for your name,” Casey explains. “So you don’t have to fingerspell your name every time you say it. You can’t make up your own, you have to be given one by a Deaf person.” Casey can’t help but teach her.

  “How do you sign yours?” YP asks Casey. I’m tapping my feet, trying to ride out the good feelings from drawing earlier. This is about to be a buzzkill.

  “I don’t have one yet.” Casey looks so disappointed, and I feel the slightest pang of guilt. Look, I’m not going to just give a name sign to everyone who asks, as if it would make them some sort of official member of the Deaf Club. I wave to get YP’s attention.

  “My name sign is—” I’m signing to her, but I can see Casey translating.

  I show her how to make the hand shape for my name. Mee gave it to me when I was little, and sadly it stuck. It goes along with her whole “my girls are precious jewels” thing.

  “Let’s go!” I point to the road, changing topics.

  “Can we walk?” YP makes her fingers into little legs and wiggles them. “It’s so nice out.”

  “Sure.” I nod yes and head far away from Casey.

  —

  It’s true, the weather is golden. It’s one of those fall days where you start out wearing a coat but forget it on a bench or something because why would you have brought a coat, look how nice it is outside! We cross the street and head toward Dairy Barn.

  We don’t have a Dairy Barn in my neighborhood in Queens Village. I’ve never even gone to one before. Greenlawn has at least three of them. At home I’d just go to a bodega, but there aren’t too many of those out here in the suburbs. I’m not exactly sure what the appeal of Dairy Barn is, but it seems like everyone goes and gets either chocolate milk or iced tea. I didn’t even think about it when I asked YP. It’s ingrained into the Finley subconscious: Want to hang out after school? Go to Dairy Barn, get iced teas.

  “How’s your head?” She points to the back of mine.

  “Fine,” I sign, mouthing the word for her. YP immediately copies me. This is going to be another long-ass beginner conversation. I take out my cell phone and mime for her number. I plug it into my contacts and text her.

  JULIA: Hey. Easier to chat if we text.

  YP: Cool!

  JULIA: Thanks for covering the “friend” thing.

  YP: What do you mean?

  JULIA: Just thanks for sayin that.

  YP: Yeah sure.

  Both of us look at our screens, walking, neither of us really knowing what to say. She was nice enough in the locker room, but I’m not really sure we have all that much in common.

  JULIA: Your aspirin really saved my head.

  YP: Np - that sucked.

  JULIA: Kyle makes me ( ∩)

  YP: Ha. Yea.

  She looks up from her phone. Her shoulders droop as she exhales. What now? Something I said?

  JULIA: You OK?

  YP: Hes my ex.

  I knew that Yoga Pants wasn’t exactly the kind of girl who would run with outcasts like me. She could easily have been one of those thicker cheerleaders who holds the featherweights up in the air. She could be on the softball team, or not even play a sport, she’s pretty enough to score a cute guy and be popular by association. However all that shit works.

  But dating KFS? I was just starting to think she had more sense than that. He doesn’t even try to hide his doucheness. Doesn’t have to, I guess. It’s a letdown, YP going for someone like that. The confession is a bummer, but she doesn’t owe me anything.

  JULIA: His loss.

  YP: I guess.

  JULIA: I know.

  She sighs and signs to me, pulling her hands far apart and then bringing them together like a book.

  “Long story.”

  “OK,” I sign. Probably best to drop it.

  “Maybe I———learn—-alphabet. ———-help, right?” she asks.

  JULIA: U don’t have to.

  YP: Why not?

  JULIA: ¯_(°_°)_/¯ Dunno. seems like a lot of work or whatever.

  Every time someone offers to learn ASL, they bail. They realize that it’s actually a whole language and give up when it gets hard. Suddenly I’m not so fascinating anymore and they move on to some other obsession. It makes me miss Jordyn, and Kingston for that matter. Just being able to talk without having to figure out some workaround. Jordyn and I would sit up and talk until my fingers hurt.

  Dairy Barn is a funny place. It really looks like a little barn, painted red with a fake silo. There’s nowhere to sit inside except for one stool for whoever’s working there. The whole store is like a supermarket dairy aisle, except as a drive-thru. Donovan’s nightmare, I bet. But they don’t have an intercom: you pull up, tell the attendant what you want, and pay all in one go. I type out on my cell:

  TWO LARGE ICED TEAS

  We walk up to the window and I hold up my phone and debit card. The man working at the window chuckles.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he asks. It always baffles me when people think I’m just typing things out to be different. Or lazy. My new favorite is when they say it’s my generation. Damn millennials, never off their stupid phones! No, you ableist jerkwad. This is how I’m going to communicate with you.

  I point to my ear and mouth the word deaf. This usually is enough to get my point across. His nose turns red, his eyes glance back and forth between me and my phone. He realizes he screwed up.

  “Oh, sorry, sweetheart, -—-no idea.”

  I lift my arms as if to say, Oh, well! YP looks mortified. I just wish he hadn’t called me sweetheart.

  “Here, it’s on me,” he says as he nervously hands us each a cup. Normally, I would complain and tell him not to treat me differently than any other customer, but hey, free drinks.

  YP: Whoa, he was pretty embarrassed huh?

  JULIA: Oh well! TB.

  YP: ??

  JULIA: Too bad

  She gives me a funny look, but obliges anyway, and we “clink” Styrofoam cups. One sip of the famous iced tea and my mind explodes. Bye-bye, Red Bull—this stuff is like crack. It’s insanely, sickly sweet, but you can still taste the lemon and tea flavors underneath. Unlike the stuff that comes from the school vending machine, this doesn’t have a bit of sour aftertaste; it doesn’t coat your tongue in that syrupy, chemical way. It’s amazing. I’m so busy swooning over bliss-in-a-cup that I almost miss it: my tag on the crossing sign. My little love note to Donovan in Zombie Green.

  Someone wrote over it.

  It hasn’t been buffed off or anything—someone’s calling me out. They’re dissing me.

  My heart skydives into my stomach. So soon? I haven’t seen any good graff around here, and already someone’s trying to throw down? YP looks up at the sign with me and points.

  “Huh,�
��—-kind—cool, no?” I stop reading her lips. What is she even talking about? Cool? More like insulting. I’m not HERE? Where, then? Why not? Who are you to tell me what and where and who?

  “Um…come on.” She pulls me away from the sign and I let her, not wanting YP to catch on to me. Maybe it was some toy acting stupid. I’m jumping to conclusions. That’s all it is. Some punk kid trying to step to my game, and making a fool out of themselves, frankly, because they turned my writing into a drippy mess.

  As we head back to the school, I focus on the weather and the walk and the iced tea, concentrating on sipping and not chatting. It feels good to give my hands and mind a rest. They make reading lips look so easy on TV: every deaf character has absolutely perfect lip-reading superpowers. But in reality it’s inaccurate, and exhausting. Not all of us are good at it. People don’t get that.

  “This is your car?” YP dances over to Lee and puts her hands on the trunk. “It’s amazing! I was————-whose it was. I———-—might be Mr. Katz’s.—-into this———thing.”

  “Really?” I sign.

  “Totally, it’s so beautiful!” I guess she’s talking loudly because two girls start watching us from across the parking lot.

  “—-—-bad I don’t have a car, I would—” One of the girls glares and snickers. They huddle closer, talking.

  “Oh—” YP stops herself midsentence. “I should --- -----. See you in history.” I place my hand on her shoulder as she’s about to go and pull out my phone.

  JULIA: Don’t worry…I’m used to it.

  YP: Theyre not laughing at *you*

  All I can think about during dinner is what happened to my tag and what I should do about it. The takeout from Rajdhani’s isn’t much of a distraction. If some toy wants to come along and wreck my work, I’m just going to have to make it more challenging. It was my first tag in town and the paint was barely dry before it got done up. My chicken makhani is cold by the time I take another bite.

  “I got a call this afternoon.” Mee snaps me out of my fog.

  “You haven’t been…?” Ma looks shocked.

  “No!” I sign with extra emphasis. Not anywhere the school would know about, anyway.

  “No, no, this isn’t about that.” Mee looks over at Ma, then back at me. “What happened at gym class?” she asks, probably knowing full well what happened. Is this why she cracked and got us Indian again this week? She knows it’s my comfort food, so she’s trying to soften the blow of her planned confrontation? I guess the school finally figured out how to make a Video Relay Service call. I was kind of hoping they wouldn’t, so my hearing teachers and Deaf parents would never, ever communicate. I wonder who interpreted that call between an angry hearing teacher and a pair of Deaf parents. Did the terp take my side or theirs? Probably neither.

  “Just some dude, mainstream-garbage stuff.” I break eye contact and chew on a lukewarm slice of naan.

  “Is that all?” Mee leans in, trying to squeeze info out of me like Mr. Howard. Do all adults use this tactic? They should just come out with what they know and let you apologize. Don’t hand me a shovel and make me dig the grave deeper.

  “I was upset, he was rude. They called you for that? I’m fine now. It’s over.”

  “Casey says you yelled at a teacher,” Mee continues. She’s obviously very concerned. Her brown eyes droop and she brushes my hair off of my shoulder.

  Ma places the clear plastic lid on top of her container of biryani, signaling she’s ready for battle. “You did what?!” Ma signs. “You couldn’t be peaceful and respectful, after everything that’s happened?” Ma, a teacher herself, will always side with one. This is the worst thing for her to find out right now and it shows. Her hands, so similar to mine, sign with purpose. Every movement is sharp and swift. She chews on her bottom lip when she’s especially angry. Like now.

  “Ma, you don’t understand!” Casey wasn’t even there, and now she’s calling my parents? This is way, way out of bounds. Usually my mothers would see that, and they’d put an overstepping interpreter in her place. But of course, just as I suspected, they’re using Casey as an extra set of watchful eyes on their little vandal. No wonder they didn’t go through the system to find an interpreter. They have Casey in their pocket. Why should they trust me? I’m only their daughter.

  “I do! I do understand,” Ma says. “You knew going to a mainstream school would be difficult, but you brought this experience on yourself. You don’t get to act out when things don’t go your way.”

  “That’s not what happened!”

  “What am I going to do with you? We work so hard to—”

  “Cara.” Thankfully, Mee cuts her off. I’ve heard this speech way too many times since leaving Kingston. “Even though she’s made a mistake, that doesn’t mean she can’t feel upset.”

  “There is no excuse for yelling at a teacher!”

  I stand up, ready to fight. Why does it feel like I’m always fighting lately? But Ma’s eyes are wide and alert; this isn’t one of those nights where she’s had a few glasses of wine and I can make a dent in her argument. Ma is on an unshakable streak, standing up for teachers everywhere. She won’t hear me or Mee. Debating her will only make things worse. Once again, I’m forced to surrender.

  “You’re right. Won’t happen again.” I shove my chair against the table and head for the basement.

  —

  How am I supposed to unpack this day? Sweating, I yank my hoodie over my head and hurl it across the room. I start turning on my lamps one by one. I hate the harsh overhead fluorescent lighting we have in the basement. It was never meant to be a workspace, only storage. It’s not one of those nice finished, hang-out-with-your-girlfriends, have-a-sleepover-type basements. Even so, I keep begging my parents to let me turn it into my bedroom. I spend 90 percent of my home life down here anyway.

  I collected the lamps from some thrift shops. One is this old cracked faux-Tiffany glass thing; another is a bunch of illuminated plastic balloons, a little clown holding the strings. And a huge purple lava lamp, the catch of a century that Jordyn and I found in someone’s trash. I remember having to carry it for thirty blocks because Jordyn didn’t feel like waiting for the LIRR. She gabbed and gabbed the whole way home, but I can’t for the life of me remember what about. I do know that I couldn’t really respond with more than a nod, because this beast of a lamp is heavy as shit. I don’t turn that one on. I don’t know if I ever will again.

  I sink down into my work chair. Mee bought it for me ages ago. It’s my command center. I do all my work from here.

  She said she doesn’t care if I get paint or ink all over it, that it was mine to make use of. When I got expelled, I only felt guilty about one thing: letting her down. Mee’s never told me not to draw or pursue art. Even when she doesn’t understand my work, she tells me she loves it. When she found out what I did, though, a ten-foot-tall slab of concrete went up between us, and I dare not paint on it. Before, I kind of thought she might even like the fact that I was going public, but yeah, not so much. The boots were the one sign that forgiveness is possible.

  I click on the last lamp that hangs over where I sit. One of those round crinkly paper lanterns, big and yellow, it shines over me like the sun. It’s the only place I actually appreciate a spotlight, where I don’t wish some fog would roll in and envelop me in obscurity.

  I take out my X-Actos and a charcoal pencil from my lucky mug with all the strawberries on it and get to sharpening. I like really hard pencils and charcoals—5H is primo. I’ll settle for HB if I have to, but anything softer than that, and I can only draw for sixty seconds before I’m sharpening again. Soft pencils just don’t last, and when you buy your own supply, you need that shit to get you through more than one drawing.

  As I hack away at the pencil, every crappy thing that has happened to me the past few weeks replays in my head. Over and over.

  Getting expelled.

  Shunk.

  Getting expelled over art that no one even re
members.

  Shunk.

  Being assigned to the world’s most annoying terp.

  Shunk.

  Having to need a terp at all, at a stupid mainstream school.

  Shunk.

  A school where people think I’m an idiot.

  Shunk.

  Where I can barely talk to anyone at all.

  And when I do they can’t understand me.

  And give me shit for it.

  And throw things at me.

  And get away with it.

  And I get the blame.

  Shunk.

  Shunk.

  Shunk.

  Shunk.

  Shunk.

  SHIT.

  Blood flows from my left index finger. I grab my hand tightly, double over in pain, and cry out. I slide off of my chair onto the floor, pencil shavings clinging to my black leggings. Sucking air in through my teeth, I let the pressure off my finger and assess the damage: it’s still attached but it’s dripping red. Holy shit, it felt like I cut the damn thing off. I stick my finger in my mouth and it fills with that weird metallic taste. Taking deep breaths through my nostrils, I try to calm myself down. I’m shaking. Blood and I don’t really get along.

  When my finger quits throbbing against my tongue, I take it out for a closer inspection. So much blood for such a minor cut. I might have a tiny scar, but it’s really not too bad. In the open air it starts to sting and pulse again. I wrap the finger up as tight as I can in the hem of my shirt, willing the pain to go away. I thought I could handle it. I’m supposed to not care.

  Tears find their way into the corners of my eyes but I refuse to let them fall. I bury my face in the cushion of my beautiful armchair, my command center, and scream. Over and over, my throat vibrating and crackling with fire. Nobody comes to see what’s wrong. Nobody can hear me.