by James Bird
“Ninety-four. So, what do I do now?”
“It seems to me that you both have stories to share with each other.”
“Okay. That’s if I survive my first day of school,” I say.
“You’ve survived many first days of school. What’s one more?”
“All it takes is one more to be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing you’re not a camel. And look at it this way … You have the advantage over all the other students.”
“How so?” I ask.
“You have more first days of school than anyone there. That’s called experience. And experience wins battles.”
“You really think I can do it?”
“Yes. Now, how dry do you want that plate?” she asks.
I look down and see that I’ve been wiping the same plate this entire conversation. I put it down with the rest of the dishes.
“I should shower,” I add.
She sighs in relief. But not just a normal relief. A very embellished sigh that is very much an overreaction, in my opinion.
“Phew, I wasn’t going to say anything, but…”
“Seriously? I smell?”
She laughs and turns off the light. “There’s the understatement of the century. And you wonder why Grandma hasn’t come home yet,” she says, holding her nose and exiting the kitchen.
I sniff my right armpit and kinda agree. Wow.
No wonder Seven has kept her distance this evening. Once I’m in the bathroom, I pull a towel down from the towel rack. What is with me forgetting to ask people’s names around here? I completely forgot to ask my mom what that girl’s name is.
I keep myself busy thinking about her to distract myself from the terrifying fact that tomorrow I’m the new kid in school again. Ugh.
I run the shower, undress, and fill my open palm with the shampoo sitting on the ledge of the tub. I lather it up in my hands and cover my greasy head with it, something I’ve always done to save time since Southern California was in a perpetual water drought. It smells like honey straight from the hive. I step in headfirst, but the water is way too cold—so I jump right back out. I turn the lever all the way to the right and stick my finger in the flowing stream. I wait. Will it ever get warm? The shampoo foams up from the brief encounter with the water and runs down into my face, stinging my eyes. Shoot. I quickly douse my entire head under the shower’s mouth and shake, rinsing out my eyes.
There’s a knock on the bathroom door. “Better hurry. It only stays hot for three minutes,” she shouts.
“Forty,” I shout back, and fully step into the water.
It’s warmer now. That must mean I have about two minutes left. As if my life depends on it, I scrub my entire body as quickly as possible, but as I reach my ankle area, the water goes cold. I guess my feet will have to wait until tomorrow. I turn the water off and wrestle the towel over my body for another minute. The mirror above the sink is completely fogged up, so I open the small window beside the shower, releasing all the white heat.
Like trapped spirits, a long stream of steam floats out of the window and meets the cold air. And just past the steam, I see the tree house in the next yard.
It’s lit by flickering candlelight, and I make out her silhouette. A faint trace of music floats toward me and she is slow dancing to it. I watch her until she moves out of view. I lean my head out of the window to get a better angle.
I still can’t see her well enough—just her elbow, shoulder, and the side of her head from this position—so I climb onto the sink and lean the upper half of my body out of the window. I know I should respect her privacy and not sneak peeks, but I’m the one almost naked and fresh out of the shower, so if anyone needs privacy right now, it’s me.
The sound of drums rings through the air as I stretch my body out of the window as much as I can. I must look silly, but right now, I don’t care. I just want a better look at her. I lean out even farther and hear another sound competing with the rhythm. It’s her voice. She’s singing. They aren’t words I recognize. They sound more like chants and mouth exercises I’ve participated in during my many sessions at speech therapy. Is this Native American music? It sounds beautiful, but as happy as my ears are, my eyes are still not satisfied. I need to get closer.
I hold on to the windowsill and stretch my wet body as far out as I can, but I’m clumsy, and so it happens—I lose my grip and completely fall out of the window.
“Ahhh!” I shout as I crash-land. Not do I just fall, but I literally face-plant into the dirt.
I launch back to my feet and shoot my eyes up to her, hoping she didn’t hear my shriek, but she did. Her shadow stops dancing and slowly walks toward her open window. Oh man. She looks out toward my house. I quickly hide behind the nearest bush. Her eyes search my yard. I can’t believe I screamed like that. Maybe she thinks it was a shrieking cat?
I follow her eyes toward my open bathroom window. Wait … why is she smiling? Oh no! What is my towel doing there? It must have gotten caught on the window frame as I fell out. Then it hits me … I’m outside, and I’m naked. And it’s freezing out here.
After a few moments, she gives up and returns to her song. I watch her until I’m overtaken by the cold. I feel goose bumps crawling all over my body. I count to three and make a mad dash toward the window. I reach up, snatch my towel, and climb back into the house. That was a close one. In one day, I managed to break a fence, injure my leg and head, and fall out of a one-story window. Perhaps counting letters is the least of my problems.
I wrap the torn towel around my waist and open the bathroom door. My mother is standing in the hall, waiting for me. She must have heard my scream. But she doesn’t look concerned at all. In fact, she looks like she is about to laugh. Then she does. And she doesn’t stop for a good minute.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Do people not know how to shower in California?” she asks.
“What makes you say that?”
Her eyes squint, like I’m missing something blatantly obvious.
“Look in the mirror,” she says.
I turn toward the mirror, rub a circle of steam away, and see my reflection. My face is covered in dirt.
CHAPTER TEN
MY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. AGAIN. (33)
I’m fully awake and prepared for battle. I’m in my signature black shirt, black pants, black shoes, and gray earmuffs. My mom wanted to do my hair, maybe for all the years of missing out on it, so I let her. She combed it all to the side and made it look “neat.” That was her exact word, so as soon as she put down the comb, I shoved both my hands into my hair and moved my hands like I was trying to put out a fire.
After two bowls of cereal, I’m ready for school … or at least I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I kiss Seven goodbye and walk her to the backyard. When I let her out, I notice the fence I broke has already been fixed. I wonder who fixed it. My grandma? My mom? Great. Now they are going to think I can’t even clean up my own messes.
A loud honk snaps me out of my daze. I slide the door shut, leaving Seven to explore the yard until I’m back. I rush out of the house, toward my mom’s idling truck.
“You don’t want to be late on your first day, do you?” my mom asks.
I climb into the passenger side and fasten my seat belt. “Better never than late.”
She laughs and peels her truck out of the front yard.
“It will only be as bad as you make it,” she says.
That’s a weird way of convincing me it won’t be so bad. But my dad always said that, and he was always wrong. So maybe my mom is onto something. Maybe it’s up to me how today turns out. But I doubt it. It’s not like I can control how people treat me.
“It’s too early for Native wisdom, Mama.”
“Native wisdom, where’d you hear that term? Another one of those cowboy movies?” she asks.
“I guess. Why? Aren’t all Native people wise like you?”
/> She laughs, but her laugh isn’t because I said something funny, it’s more of an “I can’t believe you just asked me such a foolish question” laugh.
“I’ve known plenty of Native Americans who were total boneheads. And I’ve known plenty who were very kind and very wise. You’re still thinking on the surface, where the skin lives. You need to dig deeper, into the bleed, and see that it’s not because of what they are that makes someone wise, it’s because of who they are.”
Even though I count her letters, her words grab me. She makes perfect sense. I can apply everything she said to my life. People see me as a freak. A walking calculator. A human math problem. But that’s because they’re looking at the surface. But if someone got to know me, the real me, they’d see I’m more than that. What that is, I’m not sure yet, but other than my counting, maybe I’m not so different from all the other kids.
“So I just have to get to know everyone’s story before I can judge them?” I ask.
She smirks. “Yes. Hear them out before you slap a label across their forehead.”
I’ve learned more from my mom in the last five minutes about myself than I did from my dad all the years living with him. Maybe because with him, I was so busy trying to be someone else, someone he wanted me to be.
“Did Grandma teach you all of this?”
“She did. And now I’m teaching you, so pay attention. Your teacher happens to be an incredibly wise Native American,” she says with a gloating grin.
She turns onto the unpaved road that leads to the main highway. This town looks like it hasn’t been disrupted by America yet. Back in Huntington Beach, every year it seemed a new shopping mall or parking lot would spring up where there once was a park or field. By the time I left, our neighborhood had two new car dealerships and a Walmart. But here, there are people on the side of the road riding horses.
My mind drifts away from all the wisdom talk and floats up into a tree house. Her tree house. Great. I’m thinking about her again.
I might not get another chance to ask and I need to know, just in case I don’t survive my first day, so I clear my throat and speak again.
“Do you know her name?”
She smiles. “Yes. I know her name.”
Is this a motherly trait? Do all mothers want to embarrass their kids a little bit, more and more, each day?
“You can’t just answer me, can you?”
“I answered your question. If you don’t like the answer, ask a different question,” she says.
I say and choose my words carefully … after I count her letters (sixty-four), “You’re just as annoying as I am.”
“Maybe it’s in our blood,” she says and shoots me some side-eye.
“You’re seriously going to make me ask, aren’t you? Fine. What’s her name?”
“Orenda. If you want to know anything else about her, you have to ask her,” she says.
“Fine,” I say, and lean back into the seat.
“Can you—”
“O-r-e-n-d-a. Six letters, like yours,” she cuts me off, smiling.
Orenda. I’ve never heard that name before. A fellow six-letter. We already have things in common. It’s fate. And if it’s not, it’s at least a conversation starter, which I’ll need next time I see her, along with a helmet. I try to hide my smile by staring out the window. But my mom still somehow senses it and lets out another laugh. I can’t believe how happy my mom is. She’s literally the opposite of my dad. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work between them. Sometimes opposites attract, but clearly not always.
There are a few cars on the road, but it’s nothing like the jam-packed California traffic. My mom rolls down her window and cranks up the radio.
“My favorite station kicks in right around … here,” she says through the static.
“How far is—”
I am cut off by the sudden burst of music. An old classic rock song rattles the speakers. Wow, I live somewhere where there is no radio reception. That’s weird. She sings along at the top of her lungs, whipping her black hair left and right through the wind barreling into the truck. I watch her in awe. She is so full of life. So free.
“Sing along,” she says, dancing wildly in her seat.
“No thanks,” I say.
But she chooses not to hear me. Instead, she grabs my hand and swings it through the air to match the swaying drumbeat. I wonder if she and Aji did this every day on the way to school. My dad would never do this. He’d only listen to men shouting at each other about immigration or the economy. Then he’d get so upset, he’d turn it off.
But with my mom, there’s no OFF button. She lives life like it’s a song and invites the entire world to sing and dance with her.
After two more songs, we pull up to the North Duluth Middle School. The campus is two large brick buildings, and both are swarming with students. I’ve never seen so many flannel shirts and camouflage pants in my life.
The good thing is that many of the kids are wearing bundled up layers and hats, so my earmuffs won’t stand out. The bad part is, I’m going to be stuck in a class with about thirty of these kids at a time and my earmuffs won’t be able to save me during roll call.
I hate roll call.
“Why can’t I just go to school where you teach? I mean, at least I’d know one person on campus won’t think I’m a freak,” I say.
“You can … But you’d have to go back to fifth grade. We teach grades K–5. At least that way you’d be the smartest kid in class … maybe,” she says jokingly. “But definitely the tallest.”
“One hundred and twenty-one. So, I’m on my own, huh?”
“Yep, just you and hundreds of other kids who don’t feel like they fit in,” she says.
We stop behind a yellow school bus and wait for our turn to pull up to the drop-off zone. It surprises me how no one is in a rush to get where they need to be. In California, everyone was in such a hurry, and they’d let you know by holding down the horn when they were behind you. But here, it’s super chill. Not one honk.
“After school, you can take the big green horse back to the rez border. I will pick you up there,” she says.
“Okay, big green horse bus. Got it,” I say, and nervously open the door.
She turns down the radio and leans closer to me.
“Remember. Normal people are jealous of special people. It’s been that way since the first day the sun shone down on us,” she says.
“Thanks, Mama. But it’s your job to say something like that to me, isn’t it?”
“Oh, is someone paying me? I don’t feel money being stuffed into my pocket. So I guess it’s not my job after all. Maybe I’m telling you this because it’s true. Now go be special by being you,” she says.
I tally her number and send it back to her. “I don’t want to be special. I want to be brave,” I say.
She waves her hand above my head like a witch casting a spell. “There. You are now brave. Now get to class, and I’ll see you later.”
“Okay. See ya.”
She turns her head and leans in, closer to me. Why did she do that? What is she waiting for?
“Kiss,” she says.
“Four.” She wants me to kiss her? No way. I’m not a kisser.
“Now,” she says.
“Three.”
“Hi,” she adds with a smirk.
“Two,” I say.
“I.”
“One,” I say, and it clicks.
Oh, my mom is clever. She just made me count down to our kiss. Well played, Mama. I look around and make sure no one is watching and then I lean in and plant a kiss on her cheek.
I see the happiness dancing in her eyes. I can’t help but think that she misses getting goodbye kisses from Aji. She lost a son and gained a son, and now I’m the one that will be giving her these goodbye kisses. It was probably as natural as breathing for Aji, but I have never kissed my dad. This is like learning a new language for me. I think a kiss on the cheek translates to “have a good day a
t school today” in Kissish. She smiles and revs the engine. I step out and shut the door. She drives off to another song.
As I step onto the curb, I realize that other than Seven, that was my first kiss. And it was with my mom. Most kids have probably been kissed by their moms so many times they hardly notice when it happens. It’s like opening a door or tying your shoes. Just something that happens every day. But I’ve never been kissed before. Not even when I was sick and my dad had to bring me soup and tuck me into bed. He’d pat my head and turn out my light.
I’m way behind kids my age. They’re so used to kissing that they’ve branched out and started kissing people they have crushes on. I’m nowhere near that stage. I just got my first kiss from my mama. I probably won’t be kissed by someone who isn’t related to me until I’m much older. Not that I’d want to be kissed or anything. I mean, someone’s lips touching you is pretty weird if you think about it. We eat with those things. But my dad once told me that when I’m older I’ll meet someone special and we’ll be so busy kissing, I won’t have to worry about us talking. It was his way of trying to find something positive about my future with this counting condition. Obviously, I haven’t met anyone special yet. But to be fair, I haven’t exactly had the opportunities most kids my age have. I’m never invited to parties. I’ve never asked anyone to be my valentine, and I’ve never played spin the bottle before. On the rare occasion a girl has found me cute enough to send a note to my desk—it was over as soon as we had our first conversation at recess. But that was the old me. This is the new me. Everything is about to change … I hope.
I put my earmuffs on but don’t play music. I want to hear these new surroundings. I walk toward the larger of the two brick buildings, weaving through the crowd, trying to pick up on the differences between this school and every other one I’ve attended. Sadly, not much differs at all. Everyone is still separated into the cliques—jocks with jocks, nerds with nerds—and the hot popular girls all band together in the center of it all for all the above-mentioned groups to see. School is school, no matter where you are.