* * *
—
Stupidity is one thing. Vandalism is another. Nobody had ever defiled my locker before.
I saw the graffiti from down the hall. And of course, people saw me seeing it, so they averted their eyes and cleared the area. Such courtesy. Now I was alone with this lovely little message. Two messages. Some bigot with the artistic skills of a toddler and the intelligence of a primate had scrawled in indelible black marker RACE TRAITOR and TOWEL HEAD GO HOME.
This was a first. I’d gotten plenty of nasty looks and whispers, but nothing written. No lasting, visible, inscribed articulation of the thoughts behind the fleeting glances and mutterings. Rage welled inside me. At least it was tempered by the desire to laugh at the idiocy.
Seriously: race traitor? I don’t know what that means. To look at me, you’d say I was as white as Michelle.
So…what, then? Good luck pinning me down. Dad’s side is an enigma. Yes, he’s North African, Berber—Riffian to be exact—but he looks white, specially with his red hair.
Mom’s even more complicated. A few years ago she took a swab test from one of those ancestry sites. Conclusion? She’s a global hybrid: Scottish, German, Irish, Scandinavian, Eastern European, Greek, 1 percent South Asian. And she looks even “whiter” than I do. She’s so white that the DAR keeps soliciting her to join them. Yes, that DAR: the Daughters of the American Revolution. But why wouldn’t they? Her mother, my grandma Thiede, had been a member; her side of the family has a veteran in every generation dating back to the War of Independence. And while most in the DAR are like Grandma Thiede was when she was alive—a high-society Southerner who promoted patriotism and general do-goodery—a few of them also promote waving the Confederate flag in the name of “heritage.” To this day, Mom fantasizes about joining just to be a secret progressive among them. She once even prepared a lecture for the DAR about the forgotten history of American Muslims in our armed forces.
I scowled at the graffiti. Bet you’d be shocked to learn about that, you assholes. Whatever. The race thing made no sense, but TOWEL HEAD GO HOME was truly moronic.
First of all, I didn’t wear a scarf. Well, unless Mom made me.
Secondly, hijabis got style. Why don’t others see that? Of course, the question was as stupid as the graffiti itself.
And the GO HOME part! Go home? If by “home” they meant “go to a different country,” then sorry, buddy, but no can do. I was born and raised here. America is my home. If they meant “go home” in a literal sense, then hey, I’d gladly oblige and skip the rest of this gloomy piss-poor day.
It’s true that I share some fundamental beliefs with the billion or so Muslims out there. But scratch beneath the surface and things get complicated. Real quick. Besides, Islam is not a “foreign” religion by any stretch. Nearly a third of the millions of slaves dragged here from Africa were Muslim. Of course, acknowledging that piece of U.S. history required a little honesty and intelligence.
I took a deep breath.
It’s your senior year, Salma. A lot is riding on this.
I fought to stay calm, sensing people returning to the hallway. I could feel the presence of multiple eyes staring at my back, my locker, my space. My gaze wandered to a black Sharpie I kept on the top shelf. Impulsively I grabbed it. I wouldn’t call what I did next Zen doodling; I hardly felt mindful and composed, but I did feel as if I were in a different state of consciousness. I even managed to forget about all the curious stares.
Within seconds I transformed the slurs into a jumble of tiny swirls and butterflies. I was particularly proud of how I used the “R” in “RACE” to create half of the biggest butterfly of all.
Butterflies are a long-held obsession. I wear the obsession. Mom gifted me an open, spiral ring set with a tiny hand-carved butterfly the week I was first diagnosed with EDS. We’d just returned from the hospital. I was five years old and a sobbing wreck. (A suspicion I’ve never shared with her—not that she would confirm it anyway—I actually think she picked the ring because she mistook the butterfly design for a ribbon tied into a bow. She wanted me to view my condition as a gift. I was “stretchy!” She used that word a lot in the early days.) Since then it had gone from barely fitting my thumb to tightly squeezing my left pinkie.
Over the years, the butterfly has come to signify more than “turning my EDS-frown upside down.” Mom’s words again. Truly awful: a shocking low for her. But maybe even then she knew that one day I’d see kinship in the butterfly-as-caterpillar, how it’s a lowly pest in its first form, yet all about the possibility. How the caterpillar embraces the dark, wrapping itself in a chrysalis of solitude, then morphs into a new entity—a majestic, winged beauty…how could anyone not be enraptured? And do you know how that happens? The morphing part? Through cannibalism. Self-destruction. The caterpillar turns into a stew of enzymes and literally feasts on its own body, following a genetic instruction code that scientists call “imaginal discs.” In simpler terms, it means that a worm (no bigger than a speck of dirt) dares to imagine a higher existence.
In simplest terms, though, it means that butterflies give me hope.
* * *
—
On my way to my next class, I kept my head down. I turned down a stairwell just to avoid the crowds; whatever, I’d take a different stairwell back up. I couldn’t help but contemplate how lame humans can be compared to other life forms. Especially when I heard someone yell, “Bet she’s got a bomb in there!”
I almost laughed again. Then a heavy hand shoved my backpack.
Off balance, I tumbled down the last few steps and crashed to the linoleum floor.
I wasn’t hurt. Only shocked. Numb. Besides the outrage and humiliation, I felt instant panic. Crap. My computer. I flung my bag around and checked my baby just in case. Solid. It was fine. This could have been bad. It had sensitive material on it. Like proof of my hacking into Dr. Muhammad’s server….I raised my eyes, hoping to see if the asshat that did this to me had the balls to stay, but he or she didn’t.
No one stuck around. The bell rang and people were scurrying to class.
As I tried to stand, my left knee buckled. There was a loud pop, followed by an intensely sharp shooting pain up and down my left leg. I winced and collapsed onto the steps. Shit. I knew exactly what was wrong. It wasn’t the first time I had laterally dislocated my patella.
Now I wouldn’t be able to get onto my feet without help.
I forced myself to take a few deep breaths. Overall, for me, EDS isn’t that big of a deal. I’ve gotten used to—or at least learned to live with—the constant anemic headaches, lethargy, and random bruising. Sometimes, just for fun, I even enjoy grossing others out with my super bendy fingers, curling them backward and saying, “Oh, my fingers!” I would have liked to gross out the jerk that pushed me. Or showed them the middle. Whoever it was. I doubt I’d find out. The hallway and stairwell were deserted. Not only had I been shoved down the stairs and abandoned, I’d been injured. But maybe that was the point.