BELONGING CH 3

Chapter 3

             



         The droning bell broke me free from dwelling on my nightmares.  I left the student services office with my backpack over my shoulder and new schedule in my hand.  I’d barely glanced at it and now, in the stream of students sliding around me, I had to stop and look.

         After spending years in freedom and sunshine, school is still foreign to me.  The lights buzzing in the ceiling hurt my eyes and I despise the stale taste of the recycled air. My grandmother, my Sha’Kai, tried to prepare me for these concrete walls, but I think even she knew this would be as hard for me as the seats I have to sit in six of the seven periods each day.

         It didn’t have to be this way.  When I was a young girl, we were a small, close family.  My Dad served in the military while Mom kept the house and looked after me, the youngest of three.  We moved around frequently enough as my Father transferred from base to base, but always stuck together.  On the weekends we could, our parents would take us on hikes and picnics.  Elizabeth, my oldest sister, would sneak a book and read it while Dad and Jeremiah tossed a ball around and Mom tried to keep me from eating the flowers.  All in all, we were typical, happy family.

         Then the army rousted Dad’s platoon for a tour of duty in Afghanistan.  I remember him kissing me atop the head before boarding the jumbo jet.  Mom cried and held onto Elizabeth while Jeremiah and I waved. 

At first, it seemed fine. It was supposed to be eleven months and he’d be back. Mom took a day job answering phones.  It kept her busy while we were in school.  Elizabeth kept a “Days Until Dad Comes Back” calendar that she’d cross off every morning.  Jeremiah and I were too young to really get what war meant.

Until day 51, which is when the two uniformed guys showed up at our doorstep to tell Mom that our Dad had been captured by enemy forces.  Elizabeth circled this day and day 56 when a video was released to the media showing Dad tied up and beaten blue.  We weren’t allowed to watch television after that.

Waiting for the news drove my Mom down a long path of despair.  She started chewing on her nails and stayed in her pajamas all day.  Elizabeth made sure we dressed, made lunches, and went to school.  We’d often come home to find Mom locked up in her room and we could hear the news on.  She stopped going to work.

The crosses on the calendar stop at day 73.  On that morning, two uniformed men appeared on our doorstep to offer their condolences.  We were lucky enough that his body had been found at all.  I still don’t know under what circumstances he died.  It’s one of the few things I’ve never learned.

Now a single, widowed, unemployed mother of three children, my Mom made an attempt to put it together.  She had to find us a new place to live, without base housing to lean on anymore.  She found a steady job with just enough money to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.  Around us, she tried to hold back on the tears and put on a strong face.  We just might have been okay.

But then Elizabeth up and ran away.  Mom disintegrated before our eyes.  The nervous trembling never stopped from the moment Mom reported her missing.  My brother and I tried to take care of her, but it’s hard to buy groceries alone when you’re six years old.  Mom lost her job.  She started drinking.  Notices appeared at our door.  The police came when someone heard her screaming at us and smashing dishes on the floor.  They took us away.  I was six years old.

After a few foster families, the judge granted custody of us to our grandmother, Dr. Mira Cihlar.  My grandmother is an anthropologist and has built her career studying native African tribes.  While she’s as tough as granite, she has a bright smile that reaches up into her blue eyes.  Around her permenant home in the Ozarks, she liked to walk around barefoot in her strapless blue dress with a big, blue pendant around her neck.

Normally my grandmother would visit us in between her rounds of university lecturing and travelling to Africa. We had visited her at work before, but rarely and for several weeks at a time.  She’d already had a research sabbatical approved when we came into the picture.  She delayed only long enough to get court approval to take us overseas to live with her and the elusive Sumi tribe she intended to study.

We spent two years in African back county with very short breaks back to the United States.  We lived, worked, and travelled with the tribe.  They tended to stay in a place for a few weeks, then run on to the next place, rotating around so as not to deplete the area.  When they moved, they ran.  Their feet never seemed to touch the ground.  Even standing still, they looked in motion. 

The Sumi welcomed us with open arms.  They quickly nicknamed grandmother Sha’Kai, which means “beloved grandmother.”  We both have birthmarks that apparently made us “special ones” according to their folklore.  Sha’Kai and I both have a chocolate-colored mark on our chest best described as a flower opening up.  Unlike grandmother, I have the same mark inside my ankles and on my back, and I also have two circular marks on each wrist like a snake has bitten me. When we first arrived, the Sumi poked and prodded at all of the birthmarks.  I’d often be running along with the kids only to have someone stop me by grabbing my wrist to inspect the circles or poke my chest.

I joined right in with the young kids in the tribe.  We’d wrestle and roll in the dirt and chase each other around until someone whacked us with a stick.  Then we’d all work—finding insects, digging roots, getting water—whatever it took to survive.  I grasped the language quickly and soon could sing their songs and play the games.

Living with Sha’Kai was a whole new world.  The only time we’d foray into civilization was for Sha’Kai to send off her letters and notes while picking up supplies used for documenting the Sumi way of life.  A few times a year we’d fly back home for court hearings, and then plunge right back into the wild.  I was always amazed at how Sha’Kai could bridge the gap between two different worlds.

I loved it; Jeremiah hated it.

As I fit right into the tribe, Sha’Kai would let me go on ahead with them when they moved, leaving Jeremiah and her to plod along behind with the pregnant and older members of the tribe.  He lacked our unique birthmarks so no one treated him as special. He remembers the sun as boiling his skin while I recall basking in the hot sun after jumping around in a watering hole.  He complains about the bugs—the biters and the ones we had to eat.  He whined about the workload, the travelling, and the sleeping out under the stars with only a fire for protection.  He hated having to pluck the feathers off birds we’d shoot and despised eating the “choice” meat—the eyeballs, the tongues, and the brains.  He would beg to go back into a town and get bug spray and real food.  When we’d go into a town to drop off notes and pick up supplies, he would write Mom long letters detailing how awful Africa was and how much he wanted to be home. 

It inspired Mom to start piecing her life back together.  She stopped drinking and took counseling seriously.  She managed to find work as a teller at a bank and started saving money to rent a place for us all.  She met James Watson.  Eventually, he asked her to marry him.  The court agreed Mom was stable again and could regain primary custody of her children.  Jeremiah left the bush quicker than a snake lunging for a rabbit.  I stayed a little longer and flew back with Sha’Kai in time for the wedding.

My parents refused to let me return with Sha’Kai.  After the wedding, my stepfather and Sha’Kai had a falling out.  Sha’Kai exploded at him with more venom than I could ever have imagined stored in her small frame.  He kicked her out of the house and forbade any contact with her.  He burned her letters to me.

I’ve been stuck here every since.  School, eight hours a day.  Psychologist after psychologist, meeting after meeting, with no end in sight.  I am trapped living in a life I despise.

         New schedule in hand, I walked in and moved straight to my usual seat--back row, farthest corner, and closest to the window.  Several startled faces followed my stroll into the room.  A hush trailed me to my seat.  Only Ms. McCullough seemed unaffected as she finished signing off another student’s planner.

         “Sit down.  Pencils out.  Read the board and get started,” She commanded.  Startled, my classmates whirled around in their seats before Mrs. McCullough could scold them for staring. Nonetheless, for the rest of the class I watched them peeking back at me.  I ignored it and alternated between staring out the window and writing my essay.

         I survived my next class, gym, through lunch, and into math class without any other incidents--a miracle for me.   

         After math, I forgot if my next class was science or reading, so I stopped in the hallway to dig out my schedule.  I'd become so accustomed to walking in my own giant bubble with people squishing against each other to stay out of my way, that I'd stopped trying to navigate the hallways and just did my own thing.

           Seeing reading on the schedule, I shoved the paper into my pocket and turned around.  I smashed into something small and warm. I bounced onto the ground before I could catch myself.

         Traffic screeched to a halt around me. Angrily, I pushed myself off my back. Papers floated through the air and colored pencils escaping from an open case rolled along the tile. At my feet scattered worn notebooks covered in doodles. Scrambling hands tried to collect the runaway pencils and accidentally brushed my ankle. An electric jolt shot up my leg.

         "What do you think you're doing?" I snapped.

         "My-my-my glasses," trembled the boy. He was so focused on finding his glasses, he didn't even look up. His twiggy arms roamed across the floor, collecting pencils whenever he touched them.

         People laughed in the background. My face burned. The edges of my vision began oozing red. Someone wondered aloud if I'd punch the kid. I growled, but no one scattered--if anything, they pressed in closer.

         The mousy boy finally found his glasses. He sat back on his heels and shoved the thick brown rims onto his face. Now he looked like a wide-eyed lemur--all skin and bones and big eyes. His floppy black hair fell over into his eyes and obscured his face. Able to see, he began shoving pencils into the case and shuffling the notebooks together in a frenzied rush.

          "I'm sorry!" He breathed.

         "Aren't you going to hit him?" someone called.

         "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

         "Buzz off!" I snarled, raising my fist at the crowd. "Or I'll show you a fight."

         That seemed to put the fear in my classmates because they went from circling their prey to scattering like leaves in the wind. That, or the threatening presence of the hall monitors caused them to flee, because it was suddenly just me threatening with my fists and the skinny boy stuffing his papers back into his binder. I lowered my hands and bent over to pick up my bag. At that moment, he looked up at me. His thick lenses magnified his emerald green eyes that sliced me into tiny little pieces.  The hallway turned blisteringly hot under his intense gaze.

         "Do I...know you?" I whispered.

         His hand latched onto my hand with a speed I didn't expect from his twiggy limbs. "No," He said quietly as he used my arm to pull himself onto his feet. "We've never met." He never broke eye contact. Why was I sweating buckets all of a sudden? When had the hallway started to swirl?

         I blinked and the small boy vanished. I felt slightly confused, but brushed it aside as the warning bell rang. I made it to class just in time to overhear gossip about how I'd almost started a fight in the hallway--and then Mr. Tanner swept into the room, putting an end to the buzzing conversation.

         There went an uneventful day. I buried my face into my arms and hoped Mrs. Wilson didn’t call me up again.  The last thing I needed was for her to call home.