Where We Are, page 12
Micah, wherever you are, are you sleeping?
Micah, I hate that I’m in my house sitting on my bed not doing anything. I get into bed and I pull the quilts up and I stare up at the skylight and every time I start to get sleepy it feels as if I’m betraying you.
Step one: Don’t panic. Panic will accomplish nothing. You can figure this out.
I decide to switch my thoughts away from the fact that the more time passes, the more dangerous it is for him. I decide to imagine that he’s here next to me and we’re talking, but that instantly reminds me that he’s not here and we’re not talking. It hurts too much.
My grandmother used to ask me a question about hurt. “Are you hurting either yourself or the world, Sesame?” If the answers were No and No, then… fine. Go ahead. That was why she would have been all right with me transferring out of regular high school and into New World Online Academy: I was not hurting myself—she knew I hated being on anyone else’s schedule—and I was not hurting the world. I mean, did the world care if I finished high school online? No.
In the wake of her dying, I sometimes pretend I’m her. I ask myself the questions that she used to ask me. Are you hurting either yourself or the world, Sesame? If the answers are No and No, then… okay. You may proceed, Sesame.
But, Grandma, here’s the thing. Maybe it’s bigger than that. Saying No and No to everything starts to feel small and sad. What about Yes and Yes?
Are you being good to yourself, Sesame? Are you being good to the world, Sesame?
Maybe those are better questions.
It hurts way too much to think about my grandmother and Micah.
I decide to think instead about the paper I have to write for school. I’m already past the deadline, but the teacher said I can turn it in anytime over winter break. School is neutral. Homework is neutral. At New World Online Academy, all subjects flow into each other. Whatever you choose to study, you and your teachers figure out how words and art and math and history and science and movement—which is the term they use instead of phys ed—are included on an essential level. “Essential level” is another of their terms. New World was designed for working adults who have not graduated from high school but who want to. Who want to very much.
Question: But couldn’t you just get your GED if you don’t want to go to regular school? That was Inky and Sebastian, when I told them I was sick of normal high school, that I was going to finish high school at New World, after I explained how it worked.
Answer: Yes. But I wanted more than my GED, and so does everyone else enrolled at New World. A high school diploma from New World Online Academy is a door opening onto the future, and a GED is a door closing on the past. They’re both good, but they’re good in different ways.
Everyone works alone at New World, but we all know of each other’s existence. We all know that we are out here in the city, roaming the streets, working at our jobs and school at the same time. We meet up in our online classes, which are held at unusual times, like 5–7 a.m., or 11–1 a.m. p.m., or 4–6 p.m., or 9–11 p.m. Times when the rest of the world can possibly do without a working adult, or a second parent. Times when a determined person can squeeze in a couple of hours to focus on a teacher, to take notes, to ask questions. And then figure out how to construct and complete a project that “will reflect and synthesize what you have learned in a way that is personally meaningful and socially significant.”
We all have avatars. They’re animated. C. Lee’s is a rainbow unicorn. D. Mobry’s is a feral pig. J. Abebe’s is a dancing apple pie. S. Potter’s is Princess Leia. Mine is Goth Hello Kitty. I chose Goth Kitty in honor of the notebook that Vong gave to Micah.
One year left to go at New World.
My paper’s topic: “The Personal Impact of Anonymous Poems Given as Gifts.”
You can do all your homework for New World on your phone. That’s how I do it, anyway. Research, document, write your papers, send them in, check for your grade. Simple. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and if I can’t get back to sleep, I work on my papers in the dark. Me and my glowing electric fireplace and the skylight glowing down on my glowing phone, where my fingers are picking out the words one letter at a time, like right now.
I flip from my paper to my messages to make sure nothing randomly popped in without notifying me. Nothing. I check again. And again. And again, because I’m a robot who can’t stop checking. This is what panic does. Stop, Sesame.
I open up my photos instead. Swipe and swipe and swipe and swipe.
See this photo of my grandmother? Can you tell what she’s holding? It’s kind of shadowy, I know. A plateful of dumplings, that’s what. That black spot is the little bowl of dipping sauce.
See this one of Inky? It’s before she cut her hair. Her hair was crazy. I loved it but she didn’t.
See this one of Sebastian? Look at his feet. He’s hiding behind the table, but you can still see his hairy toe poking out. Loud and proud, men who wear Birkies.
See this other one of my grandmother? She just got home from work. Still wearing that white apron. She didn’t bother to take it off, usually. So when I think of my grandmother, she pops into my head wearing a white apron.
See this one of Inky and Sebastian in the conference room? They’re sitting straight up like that and not smiling, because they wanted to look like members of the board. That’s also why they’re each holding a pen in their hand, and also why Sebastian’s feet are tucked behind his chair. Members of the board don’t wear Birkies. At least we don’t think they do. None of us really know what a member of the board is, or does. Or what it even means to be a member of a board.
See this one? Tell me which one is Prince. That’s right, the one with the purple bandanna. We’re standing on the western shore of Lake of the Isles. That thing in the background is Minne, the Minneapolis lake monster. She appears in the spring and makes her way from lake to lake. I tried to get those pups to look menacing, but it’s not in their nature. At the last second Peabop put her paw on top of Prince’s. I know. It almost makes me cry to look at it. She loves him.
See these two guys? Tell me who they are. Correct. James One is on the left and James Two is on the right. Neither dog is in the photo because I wanted a photo of just the Jameses. This was taken after I had just started working for them. The reason they look serious, which they almost never do, is because they had found out my grandmother had died. They wouldn’t have found out except that James Two handed me my check, and suddenly I thought, She’ll never see this check, and for some reason I started crying. I mean, who cares if your grandmother sees your check, right?
See this? It’s dark, because it’s often kind of dark in my house, but can you tell what it is? That’s right, it’s the recliner that my former neighbors Brian and Chee gave me before they moved to China. You can’t tell from the photo, but it’s dark red, like a wine-red leather, and soft and smooth. Peabop and Prince would love that recliner. So would James One and James Two, come to think of it.
See this? Guess what it’s a photo of. No. It is not an abandoned garage. But I’m glad you think it’s one, because that’s what I want you to think. This is my house.
See this one? It’s a screenshot of Goth Hello Kitty, my avatar at New World Online Academy.
This one? It’s me and Micah in my house late at night. Look close and you can see a slightly less-black squarish thing. That’s the skylight. This photo was taken last fall, during the first snowfall. We were lying on the bed next to the fireplace, looking up. First one snowflake, then another, then so many that the sky was blotted out and so was the skylight. No one but me and Micah would ever know what this is a photo of.
This one is Micah hiding behind the R in LIBRARY behind the Walker Library. It was August and we had just come from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, where Micah hid behind the spoon of the Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture. We walked back to Uptown from there. Along the way Micah hid behind things—the bus stop shelter, the concrete wall by the Y, the brick pillar by the Uptown Theatre—and I took photos of Micah hiding. No one looking at these photos would know that Micah was in them, but Micah and I do.
We stopped at Kowalski’s because Sebastian was Employee of the Month, and then we stopped at Spyhouse Coffee because Inky was working.
This one is a photo of Sebastian at Kowalski’s, posing on the stairs by his Employee of the Month photo. No one but the three of us—Sebastian, Micah, and me—know that Micah was standing sideways behind Sebastian and that Sebastian’s body entirely hid Micah’s.
This one is a photo of Inky standing in front of the counter at Spyhouse Coffee with her arms spread wide, singing “Ave Maria.” No one but me and Micah would know he was actually hiding behind the counter.
This one is a photo of Micah walking backward down Hennepin ahead of me, holding his ice cream cone behind his back. No one but me and Micah would know he had one in his hand.
This one is a photo of Micah standing in front of the huge lilac bush a few yards away from the bus stop at 34th and Hennepin. No one but me would know that he was about to kiss me, and then kiss me again, and then decide that he didn’t need to go home yet, and then walk to my house holding my hand, and wait until I slipped around the side of my house and went in first, and then he followed, and shut the door.
The thing about photos is they’re as much about what you can’t see and don’t know as what you do.
15 Micah
WHEN MY PARENTS took down the artwork and photos, I should’ve called them on it. When they whitewashed all the walls, I should’ve called them on it. When they quit their jobs, I should’ve called them on it. When they laid their phones down on the counter without a word of protest and followed Deeson out into the freezing night, I should’ve run like hell.
When you don’t and don’t and don’t call anyone out on their shit, shit just keeps happening.
And you end up somewhere, you don’t know where, belowground and cold and hungry and almost out of points and wondering how the fuck you got there. How everything went to shit. Every daynight, which is how I think of time now, points are being deducted.
Deeson: “That’ll be another five points, Stone.”
Me: “Why?”
Deeson: “Infraction.”
Me: “For what?”
Deeson: “Insubordination.”
Me: “What happens again when all the points are gone? I get cast out of eden, right? Something like that?”
Deeson smiles. Says nothing.
A Deeson smile without an answer is another sign, a sign of nothing good. The box is closing in. The points are evaporating and so is my body. You used to say I was skinny for a guy whose native language is Food, Sesame, but this is what skinny looks like. This right here. Ribs and joints that poke out, that are countable, that skin is stretched tight across. The cement floor is cold, the cement walls are cold, the dripping white robes drip cold, and cold has settled into me.
Sometimes I think, What if I die down here?
They only unlock the door now to announce a new infraction in front of everyone. Deeson and the prft herd me to the Room of Reflection. All the Lights are there, in their white robes that I have washed for them, and they all hold hands. Bless the child, bless the child, bless the child. Maybe they’re starting to forget all the words they used to know.
“Hey, I washed that robe,” I say as Deeson and the prft march me past everyone. “I washed your robe, and your robe, and your robe, and your robe, and your robe, and…”
Except that’s a lie. I don’t say anything. I don’t even look at anyone. And no one but the prft and Deeson and my parents look at me. There’s a weird look in my parents’ eyes when they look at me. It’s like I’m becoming a ghost to them. Like they’ve given up on me.
Sesame, I don’t know where I am. I’m getting confused. It’s daynight and it’s cold and Deeson and the prft hate me.
Sesame, I’m working on a theory—that life is like a series of concentric boxes. There’s the box you live in with your parents, and it has its own rules and rituals, and they’re in charge. Then there’s the box that surrounds that box, and it’s made of school and the city you live in and the government, and they’re all in charge. Then there’s the bigger, invisible box that surrounds the other boxes, and it’s made up of what you believe plus how people perceive you. That one’s a powerful box. It can be made of religion. Or megalomania, in which someone has delusional fantasies of wealth, power, and omnipotence. If this box surrounds you, it’s hard not to succumb.
The box of megalomania has to be counteracted with another box, Sesame. I need another box. A bigger box. A more powerful box.
Am I making sense?
Hello Kitty is still hidden in the crawl space behind the vent.
So is the potato.
I will not eat the potato.
If I eat the potato, that will be a sign I have given up.
Because if I eat the potato, the potato will cease life.
All the potatoes it could have produced will be lost along with it.
It’s like the future would no longer exist.
I will not eat the potato.
I’m waiting for a sign.
Things are bad.
How to Cope
Don’t panic. Distract yourself from panic. Panic won’t solve anything. Think of you instead.
Me: Who’s your favorite poet, Sesame?
You closed your eyes and shook your head. You hate this question. Too many poets, too little time.
Me: You want to go re-poem tonight?
You nodded. Yes to re-poeming. Remember the night we went re-poeming in the first snow? Each of us with pockets full of scrolled-up poems printed out on pink and yellow and green and blue paper. Easter egg colors in November. The streets are magical in first snow. Our footprints made dark tracks behind us, the snow was that light and soft and new. No wind. No gloves, no jackets. We untacked a blanket from the wall and wrapped it around both of us, and up and down the alleys we went.
We were alley people. You taught me that, Sesame.
“There are sidewalk people and there are alley people,” you said.
“And we are of the alley,” I said.
We hunched down underneath our blanket and prowled the alleys like cat people. We were the cat people of the alleys. We were the poem people of South Minneapolis. Catch us if you can.
“It’s hard to be a cat-poem person of the alleys when you have to share a single blanket with another cat-poem person,” I said.
“Hard, yes,” you said. “Hard for sure. But not impossible.”
Sesame, do you remember which blanket we had with us that night?
I can’t remember. I’m getting confused.
Remember how the first day in the alley between Bryant and Colfax you stood there all suspicious? Keeping tight hold of the leash even though it was clear the dogs weren’t afraid of me? It was just us in the alley. No cars. No one walking out from their backyard to their garage. I remember that the Lunds bag in my arms didn’t feel light or heavy. In fact, I had forgotten I was holding it.
“What’s in the bag?” you asked me.
“Potatoes,” I said.
“I like potatoes,” you said. “Mashed are my favorite.”
That changed things somehow. You changed from a suspicious girl into a girl who liked mashed potatoes. You looked familiar suddenly, like you were a girl I knew, or should know. You stood there with the dogs and the leash and something in your hands. Later I knew they were poems, and that you were on your re-poeming rounds, but I didn’t know that then. Prince lay down at that point, he was that unconcerned. Then I realized that I did know you. You used to go to Lake Harriet. You used to sit on the far side of the room from me, next to the window that Ms. Adebayo kept cracked open year-round. Fall winter spring, you sat next to that window and I sat next to the door. Opposite sides of the room, except maybe it meant the same thing: we both needed to be near an exit. An escape. A way out.
You shifted a little, then. You lifted a shoulder. You were standing there so still. I wanted to keep talking to you, continue the potato conversation.
“Mashed are good,” I said. “Baked are good. So are fried. It’s hard to ruin a potato.”
You stood very still. But you smiled. I wanted you to keep looking at me and talking to me. I wanted to keep hearing your voice. If I could hear your voice again. That’s what I remember thinking, or feeling: If I can keep hearing her voice.
* * *
I try not to challenge him, but it happens. It happens over and over. Because words, Ses. Words matter. Conjugate is not the same as contemplate. If I used the word “conjugate” and you knew I meant “contemplate,” and you said, You mean “contemplate”? I’d be happy. Grateful. Thank you, Ses, for correcting me.
Not so with the prft. He’s not correctable. Any correction or suggestion or hint that he’s not perfect, and his entire sense of identity is threatened. Look at him, poor guy who has to believe that he’s a god among men. Poor guy who has to think that he and he alone knows the truth. Poor guy who has to be surrounded with a crowd of adoring sycophants—know that word, prft? I’m guessing not—or the world will fall apart.
It’d be sad. If it weren’t so fucking dangerous.
I’ve had a lot of time to conjugate my future, and it looks like this:
(A) I’m alive and underground
(B) I’m dead and underground
(C) I’m alive and aboveground
(D) I’m dead and aboveground
Those are the four conjugations of Micah. I’ve come to believe that dead is a distinct possibility. That’s not an overstatement. If he could get rid of the thorn in his side, the single unbeliever in the midst of his fearful throng, he’d do it and he wouldn’t think twice. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I don’t believe in the prft, but I believe that the prft would kill me in a heartbeat if he could get away with it. Have me killed. Would have me killed. Will have me killed. See? I can conjugate. I’m really good at conjugating.
