We are the Gray- Chapter Two
‘Hey Rachel’- As it is
“One second makes a memory, two seconds shatters a friendship, and five seconds realizing your in love.”
Fourth grade began with the fire of hope. My teacher Mrs. Gillsby a prudent young woman with dirt hair and teal eyes had a rumor for dishing out hard work but treating kids well. Amanda and I separated this year because the school found our social attachment unhealthy like how schools are taking out ice cream from lunch menus due to health issues.
My first year without Amanda is a lot like the year without Santa Claus. The desire to learn flooded away within two days. Mrs. Gillsby caught the whiff of defeat on me quicker than a dog can sniff up its treats. She called me after class to tell me that I wasn’t alone and lunch or recces would be more than enough time to be with my best friend. Her hands shoved over to me a bright pink diary and I made a promise to track my feelings in it. If only that habit stuck with me -
Mrs. Gillsby assigned the classroom with the first group project of the year. Form the solar system in a creative way. Among the many groups naturally uniting there was a group of two who needed a third person. Braving the awkward air I gave the pair walked up to me in desperation for a better grade.
“My name is Rachel.” Her leafy eyes held a curiosity equivalent to a cat’s upon seeing first snowfall. “I just started here due to my move over the summer.”
“Where did you move from?” Folks around here only move to Kingston for military, hospital, or executive position jobs. The shy boy next to her held his creamy hands behind his back as if he was roped into coming over.
“A tiny state. It kind of looks like a square with a little squiggly line.” Laughter chimed from the boy’s lips as he ran his hands nervously through thick dirt hair. I guess not knowing what state has a squiggly line is amusing.
“A squiggly line. Got it.” We forged a triangle in the corner of the room nearest the window that looked out on a wood chipped, and black pavement playground. Behind my desk a line of brown cupboards holding used storage for class hugged the wall. We are the nobodys. The group scrounged together as other kids colored, plotted out ideas, and began their work on the blank page. Other kids had friends. All I have are these annoying newbies to town.
“This here is Daniel.” Her switch of topic quick like a cat’s pounce on its prey. “He transferred elementary schools.”
“What are we going to create?” Daniel butt in his tone reminiscent of a southern Chinese farm boy. “I mean we can’t outright draw the solar system.”
“The animal kingdom. Pick an animal for each planet, and mark the stars as the animals home.” Rachel fessed up using a light blue colored pencil to sketch out her sudden plan.
“We could use the color of the planet to help determine the animal.”
“Perfect. Detail the creatures, homes, and colors of planets to form it. Anyone got a name?”
“Animal solar system?” Rachel chimed in but the name fell short compared to the names of other students projects being whispered about.
How about the ABC’S of the Solar system?” Daniel’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. Agreement unanimously seen by our nods of agreement. To think this project would later define our friendships like a ring of of promise. The tide of school life is changing..
The black paper’s length of three desks became the background for our project. Rachel detailed out each planet’s animal, color, and survival needs on plane white paper like a journalist outlining the hottest news for the day.
We finished. Rachel ran the project up to Mrs. Gillsby’s desk cluttered with all the other completed ones. Everyone else had already fled off to recess. We slipped our hands together passing tarnished pools of teal green walls till we escaped to the stairs that are as blue as a clear summer sky.
Amanda’s thin arms folded in front of us as if she had chosen to waste twenty minutes waiting for my arrival. “Alana,” Her tone like an ice berg collision.
“Wanna play tag using a stick outside.” Danial broke the tension. A lone hero.
“Sure,” Amanda’s answer sounds like a no but with no other friends to fall back on she grabbed Rachel’s hands giving a meager introduction to her.
From this day forward we would remain tight like family holding each other, catering to one another, and causing trouble. This same day defined my future like an Earth rattling quake defines a Tsunami.
I rode the bus home with Danial who mumbled about how traveling is like throwing him out to the fields to beg for rain. I guess he’s a country bumpkin like all our classmates said. He pointed out the window towards my street as the bus headed towards it like a snail. Dancing Christmas lights, and loud sirens met my ears. Thunder beat as reality broke through our childhood window pane.
The side of the road littered with cop cars, and walk-i-talkies could be heard blaring through the window. Our big lemon bus had to veer around the corner to drop me off making the route for the rest of the kids longer.
Huffing as I walked towards blaring noise and ignoring my guts desire to run my mother sat on the front lawn with her hands to her face. A common scene these days. Its like watching a bad crime drama except you see no silver lining at the end. Just a lot of darkness, and Christmas lights.
Her curly crow hair looked smeared to her neck. I could see blotches of wet on her jean jacket. ( Yea, mom’s a bit of a seventies disaster still.) What drew me in to the idea of a serious problem is my brother who was nowhere to be seen like a ghost. Fleeing the scene like Sergeant Cooper.
I inched forward like a cat preparing to pounce. Words hardly making sense to me. My mother kept her head down as a sheet laid over the emergency bed body coming out of our house. I stood there like a deer in headlights as all the commotion around me bickered on, and on to a sweet hum of poison. The officers tried to cover my eyes. But my hands batted theirs away. Nothing adults could see needed to be hid around me.
Minutes passed. My mother talked up a storm in a rasp to a man dressed in black. He reminded me of the Grim reaper as it takes souls away. My backpack clunked to the ground as if lifting a weight off my shoulders. Chuckles soon turned into giggles, and then into straight out laughter. I could feel the stares of outrage at me from everyone else, but I knew the true man couldn’t hold mom down anymore.
My hands swung around with drops of happiness flowing down my cheek. I wasn’t sure what happened. But by the looks of it Daddy could no longer make law in the house. Mom’s a mess still as vehicles fled the scene, but I was dancing as if rain pounded against the pavement.
Word traveled to the school about as fast it took over the news for the town. Cops lost another brother. But not on duty. The best kind of gossip. Its all over the news. Chitter chatter along lone streets. Mom kept us home for a week. She needed time adjusting to losing income, and figuring out what in gods name we would do next.
Flowers, letters, family gifts, and other items got sent to our door step. Mom only left her room when it meant going to the bathroom. My brother stuck to being a boy taking the litter of crap that everyone gave us and throwing most of it into the trash as fast as it was delivered.
A black dress with little pink flowers that blossomed upwards from the tail adorned me at the memorial service. My brother wore a plain black suit trying to keep himself in the background. Mom didn’t want the world to remember him for being addicted to snow. She wanted him to be a memory for his lack of service as an officer.
The memorial held inside Kingston’s funeral home. A common one used by rich folk even though we were anything but. Outside the home had two wide pillars with Gargoyles on them donated by a family in the past to guard over the dead. The grass freshly cut, and the door made of Old Oak where you smell the dust radiating from it like plumes of smoke.
Words like rain poured by me. Sorry spread around like a disease and the adults treated me as little more than a hugging stone. Bending down to hug me only to whisper words that would later be forgotten. I stood next to the open casket. My face dry, and plastered in a frown. Its hard pretending like I was sad around people.
Officers chatted about Dad, family gave fake hugs, and by the end of the day they would all walk out strangers again. A man known for being the best priest in town stepped outside in front of me. His robe like static from a television box with a white flannel under it. Did he even count as a priest?
The casket kept open halfway leaving my father’s thinned out face, and cherry lips for the world to see. I couldn’t help but yearn to slam the casket shut. Out of the corner of my eyes a little girl in a frilly black dress with curly strands of thin charcoal hair. Rachel. A man held her hands with sandy flecks of hair popping out of his Navy baseball cap. Others arched eyebrows whispering about the strangers.
The man sat in his seat as he watched the priest set down a book on a metallic stand like a leader of an orchestra. He cleared his mouth trying to shush out the hums in the room as he began to read the Eulogy in his hand written by my God Forsaken uncle that pretended to care about us.
“If I should go before the rest of you, Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone, Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice, But be the usual selves that I have known. Weep if you must, Parting is hell, But life goes on, So sing well.” Words spoken brought tears to my eyes as I imagined father bending down to read me poems before bed. Few of my memories of him could Jar me into tears like this one as most had moments of severe dislike for him in them.
Tiny hands wrapped around me smelling like sweet bubble gum. Someone’s bad ability to follow protocol. I latched my fingers with Amanda’s as she dragged her mother half-way across the city just to check up on me. Her fingers wiping away tears off my face relentlessly.
Time edged by as if it was dangling from a ledge. I just wanted everyone to fade away. Words zipped around me as the two hours slugged by, and people began to disperse in tears. Both Rachel, and Amanda remained as the crowd shriveled before me. Mom sat beside the casket asking why…why he succumbed to the snow.
Year in passing
My suitcase flew into the back of our green Volkswagen trying not to think about leaving home. Goodbye diamond picket fences, fake interests, and sad words trying to life me up. Hello to downtown’s innermost hood, and welcome to gang world.
Our Volkswagen filled to the brim with only appliances, pictures, bed supplies, and toys that made us leaving a perfectly flawed place to somewhere less safe. The smooth black top road switched to a crusty, bumpy one that made my light coral colored Game-Boy advance nearly slip out of my fingers. Plumes of factory air flew through our windows making my asthmatic brother hack out a lung while taking a sip of Pepsi.
Sprays of soda fell onto my device as I tried to move my came away. “Can you not hack all over my game?”
“Oh, come on, you know you love this scent of destruction from out window.” He covered his mouth with his sleeve as a show of kindness towards the screen.
“I don’t smell anything aside from your rotten breath.” Mom began to chuckle as if I made a hit joke. Pulling over to the side of the road along a neighborhood filled with metal fences, boarded up houses, glass on the ground, and garbage littering the sidewalk- I found it nothing like the diamond life. I already like it.
The building made of old rose bricks had wedges of grass stuck between them with crooked stairs that looked wobbly. Inside, our floors were clean wood with sea-like tiles for the bathroom, and a magnificent marble floor for the kitchen. Not quite perfect. But perfect with its imperfections. The stairs creaked a little as I climbed up them.
“Hey Alana, I think I found something for you.” My brother tossed a snake plushie around my neck as he sped past me with a box.
“Keep your snake, or I’ll just leave it on the stairs to collect dust.” I hefted my box up a little continuing my journey to my room.
The apartment like an old smokers domain had walls discolored into a faint beige for the kitchen. Our floor made of a floral tile pattern that collected dust in-between the cracks. Next to it the living room’s rug greeted me with a fuming maroon color with dark splotches everywhere. The static television wide-screen fitting against the pale beige walls of the living room. From here it split off into an open hallway with a bathroom tainted by baby pink, and a sink made of rust. Houston, I think I left Kansas for the Ghettos.
I chuckled finding my room slightly smaller than back in our castle of glass. My room with a stick on sky ceiling meant for a one year old. Along the walls a history of crayon families, drawing of younger children lined every corner. A small charcoal television that you slap in order to get the static to go away rested in the left corner. Underneath the table a console similar in color called a Nintendo Sixty four sat. The cushions on my bed pressed up against the window.
Throwing down the box in my hands I yearned to travel back to the car for the bookshelf. I needed my books that I divulged into before bed like Belle from Beauty and the Beast to keep me sane at night. Packing is a full on process. Amanda lived a block away…guess my mom knew a bit or two about keeping friends within reach.
A curse if you ever ask me. Day of the damned be made.
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