It starts to rain outside and I go to my room. I try to read a book but I’m distracted by the music coming up through the vents from downstairs. I wonder what they are doing down there, and I desperately want to go and look. I am lonely and feeling left out. I go into the kitchen and steal one of my mother’s cigarettes. I grab the lighter and light the tip bringing the filter to my mouth. I pretend to be my mother and cross my arms and strut my hips. I feel awkward but powerful. The cigarette gets limp and wet in my mouth as I try to inhale like my mother. I inhale too much and cough. I wonder when my father will come home. He’s often gone touring for long periods. I wonder what he will bring this time. Last time he came home, I waited on the rug by the back door for him all day long in anticipation. He brought me a blanket. It was soft and white with little balloons and stars on it. I put out the cigarette and go to my room to retrieve the blanket. I wrap myself in it and fall asleep watching TV on the couch.
In the basement she enters the further room with the locked door and shuts it carefully behind her. On the walls there is draped black velvet as a background and lights are stationed against the room. She grabs the camera from on top of the silk stand and begins taking pictures of Kiki. Kiki straddles the tiny horse rider that she bought for her daughter. “Reminisce with me darling” She says. The click of the camera fills the room and the laughter between the two women billows up. She turns to the stereo and turns on a heavy synth of discrete sexuality. She intends to sell these pictures through her magazine. She is the founder of a lesbian pinup girl outfit that entices clit across the country. She places down the camera on the silk pedestal and pauses to drink a glass of water. These will be featured in the next issue. Kiki will be the centerfold. Kiki spreads her legs in a wide ‘V’ exposing herself in the open seat of the chaps, “A little pink” she claims, “for all my thirsty fans.”
The next day is Monday and I have to go to school. When I arrive we start with several worksheets that we pick up at the front of the class. Today, our worksheets are about Thomas Jefferson and how he wrote the constitution. I sit at my desk and begin filling in the missing words. My desk partner is Adam. His clothes are worn out and he’s dirty. My clothes are neat and I take a lot of time in the morning to make sure that they are just right, just like my mother. My hair is short too but its shoulder length so I simply wear it down. Adam keeps distracting me from my worksheet. I like that he distracts me but I need to keep my focus so I take my pencil and stab him in the thigh. He doesn’t say anything, he just laughs. The lead breaks off and I go to the front of the room to sharpen my pencil. He doesn’t tell the teacher and I respect him for it.
At recess, I walk around the perimeter of the playground with the wind blowing against me, and I start to sing. I sing to the wind in unutterable words with all my might. I love the wind. The playground is large, first there is blacktop, with foursquare and basketball courts. To the left, there are the swings with wood chips beneath them. To the right of the swings there are three large pine trees, shaved up to the tops, I call them the three wise ones. To the right of the three wise ones are the grass yard, it is as large as a football field or so it feels. There is a fence outlining the entire yard and to the left trees from the park overhang it. There’s a fenced in area with heating and cooling machines near the school building and next to that there is a small picnic area with a table. I am walking along the fence at the right under the trees.
There are these strange girls who hang around the picnic area. Sometimes, I probe into them and question them. They tell me they will give me a screaming lesson. I scream with them for a while but they tease me and tell me I’m not doing it right. Then they go back to playing Sailor Moon, I don’t watch that TV show, I watch Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don’t feel welcome to their game, they already have all the characters picked out so I drift away and decide to go and visit the three wise ones. They form a triangle of dirt on the yard. It’s large enough to fit twenty kids but I am the only one sitting on the exposed knotted root, my feet making mandalas in the dust. I tell the wise ones about the screaming lesson. I tell the wise ones I miss Kiki and that I have no friends. I sit there until the bell rings and then I go and stand in line with the other kids.
At lunch I work in the library sorting books with Brady and Danielle. Danielle has a crush on Brady and wants him to be her boyfriend. Someone has returned the Guinness book of World Records, and I look through it at all the baffling accomplishments of the human race. I will never break a world record but I want to now. I think about the man with the longest fingernails and wonder if I could beat him. My mother always cuts my nails too short until they hurt, so I chew them down now. She would never let me grow them that long.
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