Audacious, page 2
Jeanette Cheung called me a “lezbo”
So I pushed her into a urinal.
I wore a floaty hot pink vintage dress
To a black and white ball
All the other girls were in little black numbers
I glowed in the dark.
And something happened, something foul-smelling
That I can’t quite recall.
Someone found me crying somewhere.
There was alcohol involved.
St Francis of Assisi High School
I drew Christ on the cross
Naked and well endowed
I wrote Jesus Loves Gays on the blackboard.
I put a macro into the library computers
Every time someone typed cu
(As in cu l8tr) while chatting
It would add a well-placed nt.
It’s not like
That word
Was unfamiliar
To me.
SUNDAY MORNING: PART ONE
Dawn comes at 6:30
And wakes me.
The ink of night fades into pink lemonade
A line of orange slices the horizon
The sun peeks up slowly
Rays bisect the dusty sky
Long thin strips of cloud, like stretched-out ribbons
Illuminated by fire
Drift away, their night-time condensation dissipated
By the heat of morning,
By the rising sun,
By the new day.
SUNDAY MORNING: PART TWO
It is time to go to church.
I’m still wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt.
Hardly Sunday Best.
Mom yells up the narrow staircase
Get dressed!
I’m not coming, I reply.
I hear the tension ooze silently up the stairs
Followed by Michaela.
She resents being the conduit between Mom and me
But sucks it up.
Tell her I’m unconfessed, I say.
Who’d sin with you, is Michaela’s tart retort.
But she oozes away
And moments later
The front door slams.
I lie in sultry silence
And try out my voice against the slanted ceiling.
I’m not sure if You’re listening, I say
But I don’t think You can help me anymore.
And in that moment, I shed that biblical autograph
That angelic designation
And am reborn
As Ella.
chapter three
MANDALAS
RAH RAH
This was me:
The one who said the wrong thing
Who crossed the wrong person
Who had the wrong hair
The wrong body
The totally wrong clothes
The wrong attitude
The
Wrong
Color
Dress
The WRONG friends.
I was born in the wrong decade
In the wrong country
To the wrong family
I couldn’t do anything right
Except draw
(The wrong pictures)
Which I do
With the wrong hand.
Ella will be different.
ART
I decorate those slanted walls.
Not for me, glossy, fat-haired singers
With inviting smiles.
In a cardboard tube, tucked in amongst our furniture
My life in art has traversed half a continent
And thus deserves an audience
Even if it is only me.
I unroll the painted sheafs.
“An abstract geometry of gouache
After Mondrian”
I flatten it under books.
A pencil seal cub, poking its sleek head up
I couldn’t quite capture the curiosity in the eyes.
I roll it backward and pin it up.
A charcoal sketch
The life model, a treat for one class only
Wore a modest bathing suit.
I sketched her nude, regardless
Small round nipples
Like coins balanced on pert breasts
A tuft of hair, arrow of promise.
Mrs. Kott tucked the sketch into a stiff envelope
With a smile
And asked me to take it home.
A watercolor
Bland, floral
There was a sub that day
And I couldn’t be bothered.
An acrylic on paper
A bearded man looking in through a window
His eyes were silent lies is scribbled on the back.
And a grade: A+
It’s vaguely unsettling to remember
I painted this one in Religion, not Art.
I don’t remember
Making Him look so insipid
Impotent
After all
He is OUTSIDE the window.
I pin Him across from the nude
So He’ll have something to look at.
YET ANOTHER LIST
These are my school supplies, which I lay on the
futon:
Six pencils, sharpened to lethal points
Six pens—three black, three red
I don’t care for blue ink.
One large binder
Five dividers
One ream of loose-leaf, divided into five
A geometry set
A ruler
A calculator
All things suggested by a list from the school
For grade elevens, it says
To these I add my own suggestions
For grade elevens:
Chewing gum and mints
Because bad breath is a conversation killer
Tampons, just in case
And anyway, a loaned tampon
(As if you’d want it back)
Is good for a week of superficial kindness
From all but the haughtiest girls.
Chocolate, because sometimes if I feel like crying
Chocolate stops me
Like an inhaler
Stops an asthma attack.
I would like to take an asthma inhaler
Because kids are always losing theirs
And surely saving someone’s life
Is worth even more than a tampon.
But inhalers are by prescription only
And Michaela needs her spare.
Lip gloss,
Which is actually Michaela’s recommendation.
Dry lips make you feel nervous, even if you’re not.
She’s thinking of dry mouth
But I take the lip gloss anyway.
It tastes like grapes.
Maybe if I get hungry
I can eat it.
CLOTHES AND HAIR
Michaela tried eight ways of doing her hair
Asking my opinion of every one.
I’m just grateful she has a uniform.
What are you going to wear, she says.
Clothes, I say, maybe underwear.
Don’t show them to the boys, she says.
Maybe I’ll wear them on my head, I say,
To save the boys the trouble of asking.
She knows about my plan
For mismatched shoes.
I think she secretly approves.
But I’m having doubts.
Mismatched shoes
Are more of a Raphaelle thing.
Ella just wants to blend in.
I tell Michaela about my new name.
She’s delighted
And scandalized
And wants one of her own.
Ayla?
Ella and Ayla? I don’t think so.
Mickey?
Sounds like a baseball player.
I AM a baseball player.
Okay then.
Kayli?
Too cutesy.
I’m cute.
I fall silent.
She’s right.
Kayli is perfect.
THE PLAN
No scenes
No pranks
No vengeful practical jokes
No culture jamming
No hacking
Nothing inappropriate.
I will seek out a middling girl
One not too pretty
But not too weird
And befriend her.
Avoid the popular clique
Too much temptation
And risk.
Join an uncontroversial club
Chess maybe
Or Scrabble
NOT debating
And dear God
Not Bible study.
(But secretly I long for the chance
To do it all again
To see the looks on the faces
As cherished ideas are deflated
Faith is lost
Morals are challenged
I long to curse, and paint nudity
And reveal lies and weakness
And stupidity.
I long to draw the eyes of others
To themselves
And their failings
And away from me
And mine.)
FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
No one
Looks at me
Or talks to me
All day.
At Starbucks
A boy with deep brown eyes
Who might have been in my art class
Serves me chai.
HOW IT REALLY IS
Kayli brings home two giggling girls.
Their pleats swish down the stairs
To the watermelon palace.
Squeals of delight resonate upward.
Kaaaayyyliiii! I love love LOVE it.
It’s SO AWESOME!!
They only emerge to phone their homes
Seven o’clock? No way! Ten!
Okay eight-thirty then, whatever.
No I’ll walk.
Jeez the sun will still be up! Chillax!
And slide a frozen pizza into the oven.
Mom and Dad and I
Eat chicken.
HOW I DREAM IT
The Starbucks boy has been saving up his pay.
I leave the mudroom door open.
He climbs the narrow stairs
And in the moonlight, he sketches me,
Nude of course.
We make love
(That part is hard to imagine)
It’s his first time too.
He has a tattoo and a pierced navel.
And calls me Mi Bella
Because the brown eyes mean he’s Italian I suppose.
We take his money
And steal away
East into the night
East until we reach the sea.
We embrace on the sand
Salt water swirling around our feet.
Then I become a mermaid
And swim away.
DREAD
Dawn sears through my eyeballs
At a godless hour
And makes me think
Here on the Plains
With no trees or mountains
To filter the sun
Maybe all the hours are godless.
One school day done
288
Or so
To go
Until I graduate.
288 days to find
A niche, a hidey-hole
A slot to fit into like a coin.
288 days to avoid the kind of crisis
That always seems to find me.
Dad bolts out of the house
Briefcase swinging
Grinning.
Kayli swishes off
With a girl from two streets over
Giggling.
Mom sips coffee
And unpacks another box
Sighing.
I walk to the bus stop
Eyes down, determined
But dreading.
TUESDAY
Lacks the promise of Monday
The resignation of Wednesday
The despair of Thursday
The full strength stop-me-before-I-gouge-out-my-
own-eyeballs-with-a-blunt-piece-of-chalk
Of Friday.
Tuesday is the day he says:
I saw you at Starbucks, right?
MANDALAS: PART ONE
Ms. Sagal, who teaches art—
Miz, she emphasizes if we slip
And say Missus
I am already privy to the gossip
That she’s a single mother by choice—
Gives us squares of blank paper and pencils
And instructs us to draw.
The page must be filled, she says.
We scratch away.
I sneak a look through my bangs.
Puffy Blond is drawing a sunset
Freckle Arms is drawing a flower
Buzzcut is drawing a cross section
Of the Enterprise
Not the Starship, understand,
The aircraft carrier.
I carve my paper in quarter sections
Then line by line
Dot by dot
A mandala blossoms
Like frost on glass
And fills my page.
An hour passes.
Sign your drawings, Ms. Sagal says,
And pin them on the board.
Although he sits well away from my desk
Starbucks boy has drawn a mandala too.
And signed his name:
Sam.
TENURE
Dad was a high-school history teacher
And ran a camp for nerds in the summer
Night-owl nibbling at his PhD.
Now he is a professor
Full Professor with tenure
Whatever that means except
I’m pretty sure it means a lot more money.
He used to work school hours
But over The Bridge
So he’d trail in
Slug-tired
Traffic-addled
About an hour after Kayli and me.
Now he works strange hours
Night classes
Meetings
And grading in his den
At midnight.
He has a club
For Byzantium enthusiasts
That meets on weekends
And four graduate students
Who call almost every day
Tenure: from the Latin tenere, “to hold”
They certainly seem to have a hold on him.
LATCHKEY KIDS
We were latchkey kids, my sister and I
We walked from the school along the beach
Then eight blocks up. She’d want to try
To turn the lock, but I had to, since she couldn’t reach.
Mom loved books, you see, and wasn’t happy
Baking treats or mopping floors or growing roses
And nor were we, with her always feeling crappy
Nothing more exciting in her life than snotty noses.
She bought a suit on sale and some shoes
And ventured out in search of inspiration
Because a woman is allowed to choose
Exactly where she wishes to apply her dedication.
The public library was the beneficiary of her gifts
And we two girls soon learned survival skills.
Housewifery’s like that, I hear, some it uplifts
The rest, like my poor mom, it nearly kills.
All this has a point. In this new city:
The library has no jobs, Mom says at dinner
My dad looks up, and says, Oh? That’s a pity.
And this is when my mom starts getting thinner.
DERIVATIONS
Freckle Arms and Puffy Blond don’t like me.
This has been made clear in several ways:
They snigger when I come into French class
They nudge each other in the hallway when I go by
They sneer at me in the lunchroom
A silent warning:
Don’t sit here
As if I would even try.
I’m wary of them
Their glossy lips hide sharp fangs
And I have been bitten
One too many times.
Freckle Arms and Puffy Blond
Think they’re popular
I recognize the desperation
The careful measuring of every word and move
The calculation
Can I afford to slip today?
Where am I on the populometer?
They recognize me too
A liability with my mismatched shoes.
Which I wore BY ACCIDENT
Believe it or not.
Me, they know, they can’t afford
At all.
What’s Ella short for? Elephant?
It’s a cowardly attack.
We’re alone in the art room
Apart from Sam.
Shut up, Eugenia, he says.
Not all names are short for something.
Freckle Arms, who signed her flower “Genie”
Glares at him
But shuts up.
They scuttle to their seats
Like scorpions.
Sam leans forward.
What IS Ella short for? he asks.
I hesitate
…Raphaelle
The strange name floats above my desk
Like an unfamiliar scent
A wisp of frankincense.
Sam nods. Biblical, he says,
The way some kids might say “radical.”
You can talk “Samuel.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth
I try to gasp them back.
Sam smiles and sits back.
Actually, it’s Samir, he says.
Oh,
I say.
Oh.
SAMIR
It’s a Muslim name—NOT Italian.
I looked it up.
I’m ashamed to say
I never met a Muslim before today.
Catholic School is my excuse.
We had some Chinese kids
Who didn’t pray
And once a Jew, but she moved away.
MANDALAS: PART TWO
Ms. Sagal talks about our mandalas
She asks us why we chose
To draw something abstract.
I’m feeling bold.
I like them, I say,
The process is meditative
It feels primal.
Someone get me a dictionary, Freckle Arms whispers.
I try to smile congenially
I mean, what have I got to lose?
