Just Scribbles

The year is 2012. I’ll be 20 in December. It is only March. The autumn is rolling in off the shores, bringing with it chilled winds and dying leaves. The city is dead quiet at 4 am, except for a stray cat roaming the streets. Even the breeze is dead quiet as it floats lazily into this small room. Magna shifts behind me in the small cot. The sheet is tangled around her legs and I can hear her snore softly. The day is a few hours away. The sun will rise soon and the city will awake. People will hurry away to work, like mice a-skittering and a-scattering. My papa will leave for work too, rushing his and mama’s morning kiss because he is afraid he’ll get caught by a traffic jam. Mama will move slowly about the housework, like a drifting river, slow and steady. Magna and I will be packed off and sent to University. The tube will carry us there, rattling like an old man’s dentures in winter. Magna has already laid out what she’s going to wear today; it’s draped across the desk chair. She loves clothes. I might too, if they didn’t itch like they do.

Magna is more like you than me. She likes the way you live, what you wear and how you act. She copies you very well. I can’t. I’m not very good a copying. If it weren’t for Magna I probably wouldn’t fit in at all. My parents are good at copying too; behaviours and mannerisms. Papa is very important at work. He is relied upon. At university I am just Magnas strange friend. I am not relied upon at all. That wasn’t always the way. I was once well thought of and relied upon by everyone in our community. But the community doesn’t exist anymore. It was too dangerous papa told us, so everyone went their separate ways. Magna came with us because her family were going back to France, and she didn’t want to. She loves it here in this city. This dirty city lit by false lights and cigarette butts.

We live like you. We live among you. But we are not like you. We are separate from your society and outside of your understanding. We are ventrelli. But you already know this. You discovered us when we acted foolishly. You gave us names; creatures; supernatural; elementals; freakish; deformed; mutated. I stick with elemental. It feels like the only word in your language that describes us best. Magna is an elemental too. She works with the winds. She creates; tornadoes; hurricanes. But she doesn’t do that here. In this city she is just a dance student with petite hands and hazel eyes. She is one of you in this city. My parents are one of you in this city. I envy them. I disagree with them. I am not one of you and I never will be.

At night I always sneak off, out the small window, and fly away far from this small room. I visit the place that once was a home to me. It is bound by yellow tape and papa says it’s forbidden to go there. Who has it been forbidden by I ask. He never answers. So I sneak off to my old home and lie down on the dewy grass. There are never any stars above me, just an eerie blackness. I used to wish that a star, one mere star, would fight its way through and twinkle at me for a moment, just one moment. I still watch the blackness but I don’t wish for a star anymore. I’ll be 20 in December, I can’t dream forever.

My side of the cot is cold and uncomfortable. Magna has stolen most of the sheet. I pull a small corner of it around me and close my eyes. The sun will be awake soon and the city will start up with a cancerous coughing, like an old motor vehicle. Mama will come in with silent steps and shake Magna awake; she sleeps like the dead. Mama will then disappear downstairs to make up breakfast, while papa curses in the shower because he has dropped the bar of soap again. Magna will spend the morning complaining that she has no money for new clothes. I will get up, rattle along with the tube and sleepwalk through a day at London University, before sneaking off to lie under the sky and watch the blackness.     

The tram is full again this morning. People squashed together like seeds in a pod. I think the pod will break one day and all the little seeds will burst out a-tumbling and a-toppling. A tall man stands to my right. He is wearing a suite, fitted and well cut as Magna would put it. To my right is Magna. She is wearing something different from what she laid out last night. Her favourite purple coat with brass buttons is being crushed; it will have wrinkles when we get off. I hold onto the yellow band a little tighter as we pull into a station. I know as soon as we stop the world will move one way and then the other, like the pendulum of the Ben clock. The feeling makes me dizzy and sick. Magna doesn’t even notice it.

I part with Magna at a cross road. She doesn’t go to the same university as I do. The place she attends teaches dance. The place I attend teaches many things. I watch as Magna disappears down the road. She doesn’t even look back. The breeze picks up. It’s cold. I glance at the spot where Magna stood moments ago and feel empty. She belongs in this city, with its strange buildings and with you. The university isn’t far and I arrive at my class early. I steal a seat next to a window. Watching the sky is what I do most days. Classes don’t interest me, and I don’t understand most of what is taught. Who is Monet? And why did he paint waterlilies? Did he see the world differently as I do? Does he understand feeling trapped?

There will be a storm tonight. The wind has picked up and the clouds are heavy with rain. Electricity is causing the air to crackle. There is a tension building, slowly. The sky will grow darker and darker as the hours progress. I hope it doesn’t start until I’m free of these concrete slabs. The beginning of a storm is beautiful to watch. The storms energy is impatient to erupt and the pressure of the air squeezes your lungs. The lightening rips through the sky, a sudden burst of fire. The thunder responds in bass tones, thrumming like the strings on a guitar. They continue calling and responding, while rain is carried to the ground and forms puddles on the road side.

The class is relatively small I think. There are only ten of them and me. Most of them are female. There are only a few males and they don’t associate with anyone, unless it’s to remark upon nudity. I don’t understand them at all. I watch them every day. Their behaviour is bizarre. There is one female in the class that dresses in tight garments that prevent her from breathing, and always talks about people who have passed on. Another girl wears nothing very much at all. She would be very pretty if she didn’t paint her face like the canvas in front of her. One is always on her phone. One constantly argues with the teacher about paint fumes and pollution. One only paints fruit and there is a boy with shaggy brown hair who paints his boots. They are a different pair every class.

I used to tell Magna these things. She always said that what I observed wasn’t normal human behaviour because all art students were abnormal. I once pointed out that Magna painted her face like the girl who wore nothing much at all did, and therefore she was not normal either. Magna didn’t speak to me on the way home that day. I never mention anything to her anymore. Instead I tell it to my place behind the yellow tape. I will try and sneak away after Magna has dropped off to sleep.