I stare at her briefly,
not sure how I got so lucky.
“Pretty sure The Trio have it, too,” she adds.
“Great!” I roll my eyes.
“I’m in a club!”
We erupt in laughter—
the kind that turns to tears—
as others on the bus
stare at where we sit,
but I don’t care
because we’re just two voices floating up and out
the half-lowered,
rectangular
windows.
22.
Down the aisle of the bus, I wobble
with a smidgeon more confidence than before,
and just as I turn to wave at Camille,
who makes a Call me
gesture with her hand,
“Army brat!” is spat
from the mouth of somebody I pass.
That’s how we described ourselves
at some of my other schools—but this doesn’t feel
like that now, this label that’s not my name.
I spot Jacob, Camille’s neighbor,
and a pack of smirking boys at the back
who start to snicker.
To my surprise, Jiman
suddenly seems to see me,
looks directly in my eyes and semi-smiles
just as I bolt past her.
Or did I imagine that?
Maybe she was smiling
to herself.
The confusion I feel
is for real
and can’t be erased
from my easy-to-read
open-book
face.
23.
At home, I perch on the corner of the couch,
behind my hair and my latest sketch.
I draw when I can’t handle my thoughts, imagine my art
hanging somewhere cool, like the school’s hallway,
with a circle of friends surrounding me,
saying, “Nice work, Abbey!”
Dad sits like the Lincoln Memorial,
upright in his reclining chair.
He’s purchased some “female gear”
and deposited it, in a brown paper bag,
on my bed while I was at school.
Beside it, he’s placed a new sketchbook.
Neither of us mentions this.
Instead, we choose to stare straight ahead.
Still no sight of Aunt Rose’s face on the TV.
The 24-hour coverage shocks and shocks:
the Twin Towers collapsing into themselves,
the dark cloud hovering, people fleeing,
and the planes crashing over and over again,
as if perhaps this time by accident
but aimed so perfectly.
“I just don’t get it,” I whisper.
“They’re terrorists,” Dad tells me,
matter-of-factly, but his voice catches
and he coughs
and switches the channel again.
New York has never seemed so close—
yet Mom so far.
On another station, they say:
“We’ve been attacked on our own soil.”
I know a few things about war,
from Dad—
Germany, Hiroshima, Vietnam,
but not here.
“You shouldn’t be watching this.” Dad finally snaps
it off, grabs his combat boots to polish
since it’s something he can do with his hands.
I know he wishes he were there,
in New York. Instead of here,
with me.
24.
On the phone,
Camille makes small talk and tries to cheer me up:
“You move a lot! That’s all Army brat means.
It was probably one of those jocks at the back.
Or one of The Trio—Angela was back there.
She’s probably just jealous.”
“Yeah, right!” I sigh
and kick a pillow from my bed, thinking of Mom
and Aunt Rose and Uncle Todd and my cousins
in New York, and trying to recall
if the voice on the bus belonged to a girl or a boy.
I don’t mention that Jacob was among them
since I know how Camille feels about him.
“How do people know my dad’s Army?”
“Henley’s small, Abbey,
and lots of people around here are Army.
Plus, it’s obvious—
you’re a world traveler.
You’ve been places.
Look at me! I’ve never
left this Podunkville.”
“Yeah, but at this rate, I’ll have whiplash
by high school.”
25.
My dictionary offers up all it knows:
1. brat /brat/ - noun. somebody, especially a child, who is regarded as tiresomely demanding and selfish in a childish way
2. brat /brat/ - noun. the son or daughter of a serving member of one of the armed forces
which is really nothing,
more or less what I already knew.
26.
In a dream,
I’m falling,
like a body from a building,
falling away from something I need to hold on to,
falling from an unfathomable height,
falling away from others,
from the faces I recognize—
pushed to the edge of bleachers,
out of group pictures,
squeezed to the back of lines,
staring from a car’s rear window
as we drive away again
from everything
I think
I know.