George Lawrence, who is dead and gone now. At seventeen. We rode the same school bus, we were even in the same class, in Stuyvesant’s MSI, and in 67. Sometimes, when I pass by the Douglaston Bay, when I’m walking and it’s an inky black night, I think about his body, and the way they found it, bloated, his face floating down. Somewhere, in the vicinity of the Triborough or was it the George Washington? I can never tell the difference. I wonder what he would have looked like now? I wonder if he would have gone away to college? I wonder if we would have ever been friends? And now, I’m wondering why my handwriting has gotten so bad. It used to be beautiful and uniform. I used to try and imitate the Korean girls’ neat and small bubble print. It once read somewhere that a person’s handwriting reveals a lot about his or her subconscious, semi-conscious or unconscious. Well looking at mine, I guess I’ve come under a lot of stress, it looks hurried and uneven with the N’s and R’s difficult to differentiate. I have one very clear memory of middle school. We had no lockers and were expected to lug our textbooks to school. Except the popular girls didn’t or carried only one in their fancy designer purses. I, on the other hand, not only had my Jansport bookbag filled with textbooks, notebooks, and school supplies, but I was also lugging a huge white and blue striped beach bag full of books, and it was heavy, so I put it down on the sidewalk to wait for the school bus except I didn’t realize the ground was littered with smashed mulberries. I got on the bus and was met by pointing fingers, snickers, and laughs. No one would offer their seat to me. So I stood up for the duration of the bus ride. I had not only stained my bag, but my pants as well, and I heard someone cackle and say, “she looks like she’s on her rag!” I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I remember my bus number was 1092, and the bus driver was Pete, and he wore Cool Hand Luke style aviators. He told them to knock it off without saying so many words. I so so crushed more and more everyday by the fact that I had to sit alone. Finally, my dad agreed to drive us because we were always running late, and he was pissed, usually hung over, coked up, and driving like a maniac, and handing us $40 dollars each for school lunch. I hated the bus, so I started walking home. It wasn’t ridiculously long, about a mile and a half, maybe two. And, it was a relief not to be on that bus. I had time to think. Observe flowers, and think, and compose films in my thoughts. Mostly openings with natural montages, set to Classical music, Mozart and Bach usually, on my darker days, Beethoven. They used to even fun of me in English class, Mr. Blais’s 812 even though I was quiet. Don’t piss off the quiet kid, you never know what they’re going through, I wish I had known what I know now. I would have told them my story. I would have told them about my home life. I would have definitely brought up coke and my father. I could see it now, a silence would settle so thick, you could have heard a pin drop. Instead I just sat there, and was so nervous I barely spoke or raised my hand to respond to questions, I always had the answers to. I’ll never forget their faces the day I answered a question that had been plaguing our teacher for years. The phrase, I cannot remember where it was from was, “his eyes beaded like tattoos.” A few people attempted, and finally, I mustered up the courage, choking back fear, and swallowing like a gigantic lump had formed in the back of my throat. The answer after he had shared the phrase to the class, seemed quite simple, and I thought maybe I was grossly mistaken, and that I was wrong, but I thought well, we see with our eyes, and tattoos are permanent, so he saw an image that was permanently ingrained in his mind. He couldn’t erase it even if he tried. Silence. I suddenly felt really stupid. People had stopped snickering, when I had first opened my mouth. Mr. Blais took a few steps closer to my desk, and announced that my answer was like a 5-year-old explaining the Theory of Relativity to Einstein. I was beaming. It was the first time I felt intelligent and valued, and it was the first time I wasn’t a laughing stock for participating in class. I felt intelligent and loved. Like none of them could touch me. It was brief and fleeting, but all these years later, I still haven’t forgotten it.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 04:15:44 +0000
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