Audacious (2 page)

Which also seems to fit.

Two more days.

I nod silently

And history hangs between us.

New schools, full of promise.

A bloody nose

An empty bottle

A locked steel door

A letter sent home in a sealed envelope

Which I tore open

Right in front of that self-righteous blowhard.

The look on his face still makes me smile.

Raphaelle

Is not adjusting well

We think some therapy would be swell

Or maybe drugs those often work

For those whose teacher is a jerk

Without treatment she may go berserk.

The letter didn't rhyme.

That part I made up.

NEW SHOES

Michaela's feet have grown.

To keep the peace, I get new shoes too.

We trundle to the mall

Dad wanders around looking for the pay-parking

meter

Heat dazed

Until he realizes parking is free.

We deposit him in the coffee shop,

Like a child to day care

Michaela and I take our fifty dollars each

She bolsters hers with pocket money

And birthday money

And buys fat white and silver sneakers

The logo gleams fit to blind me.

I take mine to Walmart

And buy canvas ballet flats

Two pairs:

Red-and-gold-striped and blue and green polka dots.

I plan to wear one of each.

With my leftover money, I get my nails painted black.

Only when we get home

Does Mom remember

We'll need snow boots.

PUBLIC TRANSIT

I will get my driver's license one day

But not today.

Today I practice getting to school.

We have made a decision, my parents and I

Michaela will go to the Catholic Girls School

Wear the knee-length blue pinafore

The gray cardigan

She will be, apparently,

Allowed to wear the blinding-white shoes.

The school is walking distance from the house.

I will go elsewhere.

The Catholic system and I agree to disagree.

And a school full of girls, frankly

Fills me with dread.

I'm going to the public school.

It has an
alternative approach
,

The brochure says, mysteriously.

The bus stop is outside Starbucks.

Caffeine soaked and foam flecked

I board the number 12

Whitmore
, the bus reads.

With more what, I think

Dyslexically.

Then lament for ten minutes

That the bus isn't called Whitman.

It rumbles past a park, a mall, a church, a parking lot.

The plan is for me to stay on the bus

Let it complete the loop

The scenic tour of town, and get off again at

Starbucks.

But instead I ring the bell when the school is in sight.

Disembarking in the heat, I feel a slip of fear

Alone on an unknown street.

JOHN CRETCHLY COLLEGIATE
HIGH SCHOOL

It screams

BUILT IN 1962!

Low, bland, utilitarian.

Like a cheap frying pan.

The flag waves listlessly on a rusty pole.

I still have Walt Whitman on my mind.

I make a pact with you

John Cretchly (whoever you are), I say

I have screwed around long enough.

I come to you a reformed girl, in mismatched shoes

Who has a softhearted father and a resolute mother.

I'm perplexed enough to try again

I don't know what you did

To deserve a school named after you.

But now that you are words carved into stone

I will try to learn from you.

ANOTHER LIST

St. Margaret's Preschool

I wanted to play with the boys

They wanted to see my underwear

Who was I to disappoint them?

St. Pius X Primary

Jackie Wengerwich stole my raincoat

So I put worms in her sandwich

And only told her after she had eaten it.

St. Patrick's Elementary

Katie LaBelle laughed about my bloody nose in gym

I opened her locker and let the blood drip

All over her best skating dress.

St. John the Baptist Junior High

I argued in class about the Resurrection

Jeanette Cheung called me a “lezbo”

So I pushed her into a urinal.

I wore a floaty hot pink vintage dress

To a black and white ball

All the other girls were in little black numbers

I glowed in the dark.

And something happened, something foul-smelling

That I can't quite recall.

Someone found me crying somewhere.

There was alcohol involved.

St Francis of Assisi High School

I drew Christ on the cross

Naked and well endowed

I wrote
Jesus Loves Gays
on the blackboard.

I put a macro into the library computers

Every time someone typed
cu

(As in
cu l8tr
) while chatting

It would add a well-placed
nt
.

It's not like

That word

Was unfamiliar

To me.

SUNDAY MORNING: PART ONE

Dawn comes at 6:30

And wakes me.

The ink of night fades into pink lemonade

A line of orange slices the horizon

The sun peeks up slowly

Rays bisect the dusty sky

Long thin strips of cloud, like stretched-out ribbons

Illuminated by fire

Drift away, their night-time condensation dissipated

By the heat of morning,

By the rising sun,

By the new day.

SUNDAY MORNING: PART TWO

It is time to go to church.

I'm still wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt.

Hardly Sunday Best.

Mom yells up the narrow staircase

Get dressed!

I'm not coming, I reply.

I hear the tension ooze silently up the stairs

Followed by Michaela.

She resents being the conduit between Mom and me

But sucks it up.

Tell her I'm unconfessed, I say.

Who'd sin with you,
is Michaela's tart retort.

But she oozes away

And moments later

The front door slams.

I lie in sultry silence

And try out my voice against the slanted ceiling.

I'm not sure if You're listening, I say

But I don't think You can help me anymore.

And in that moment, I shed that biblical autograph

That angelic designation

And am reborn

As Ella.

chapter three

MANDALAS

RAH RAH

This was me:

The one who said the wrong thing

Who crossed the wrong person

Who had the wrong hair

The wrong body

The totally wrong clothes

The wrong attitude

The

Wrong

Color

Dress

The WRONG friends.

I was born in the wrong decade

In the wrong country

To the wrong family

I couldn't do anything right

Except draw

(The wrong pictures)

Which I do

With the wrong hand.

Ella will be different.

ART

I decorate those slanted walls.

Not for me, glossy, fat-haired singers

With inviting smiles.

In a cardboard tube, tucked in amongst our furniture

My life in art has traversed half a continent

And thus deserves an audience

Even if it is only me.

I unroll the painted sheafs.

“An abstract geometry of gouache

After Mondrian”

I flatten it under books.

A pencil seal cub, poking its sleek head up

I couldn't quite capture the curiosity in the eyes.

I roll it backward and pin it up.

A charcoal sketch

The life model, a treat for one class only

Wore a modest bathing suit.

I sketched her nude, regardless

Small round nipples

Like coins balanced on pert breasts

A tuft of hair, arrow of promise.

Mrs. Kott tucked the sketch into a stiff envelope

With a smile

And asked me to take it home.

A watercolor

Bland, floral

There was a sub that day

And I couldn't be bothered.

An acrylic on paper

A bearded man looking in through a window

His eyes were silent lies
is scribbled on the back.

And a grade: A
+

It's vaguely unsettling to remember

I painted this one in Religion, not Art.

I don't remember

Making Him look so insipid

Impotent

After all

He is OUTSIDE the window.

I pin Him across from the nude

So He'll have something to look at.

YET ANOTHER LIST

These are my school supplies, which I lay on the

futon:

Six pencils, sharpened to lethal points

Six pens—three black, three red

I don't care for blue ink.

One large binder

Five dividers

One ream of loose-leaf, divided into five

A geometry set

A ruler

A calculator

All things suggested by a list from the school

For grade elevens
,
it says

To these I add my own suggestions

For grade elevens:

Chewing gum and mints

Because bad breath is a conversation killer

Tampons, just in case

And anyway, a loaned tampon

(As if you'd want it back)

Is good for a week of superficial kindness

From all but the haughtiest girls.

Chocolate, because sometimes if I feel like crying

Chocolate stops me

Like an inhaler

Stops an asthma attack.

I would like to take an asthma inhaler

Because kids are always losing theirs

And surely saving someone's life

Is worth even more than a tampon.

But inhalers are by prescription only

And Michaela needs her spare.

Lip gloss,

Which is actually Michaela's recommendation.

Dry lips make you feel nervous, even if you're not.

She's thinking of dry mouth

But I take the lip gloss anyway.

It tastes like grapes.

Maybe if I get hungry

I can eat it.

CLOTHES AND HAIR

Michaela tried eight ways of doing her hair

Asking my opinion of every one.

I'm just grateful she has a uniform.

What are you going to wear
, she says.

Clothes, I say, maybe underwear.

Don't show them to the boys,
she says.

Maybe I'll wear them on my head, I say,

To save the boys the trouble of asking.

She knows about my plan

For mismatched shoes.

I think she secretly approves.

But I'm having doubts.

Mismatched shoes

Are more of a Raphaelle thing.

Ella just wants to blend in.

I tell Michaela about my new name.

She's delighted

And scandalized

And wants one of her own.

Ayla?

Ella and Ayla? I don't think so.

Mickey?

Sounds like a baseball player.

I AM a baseball player.

Okay then.

Kayli?

Too cutesy.

I'm cute.

I fall silent.

She's right.

Kayli is perfect.

THE PLAN

No scenes

No pranks

No vengeful practical jokes

No culture jamming

No hacking

Nothing inappropriate.

I will seek out a middling girl

One not too pretty

But not too weird

And befriend her.

Avoid the popular clique

Too much temptation

And risk.

Join an uncontroversial club

Chess maybe

Or Scrabble

NOT debating

And dear God

Not Bible study.

(But secretly I long for the chance

To do it all again

To see the looks on the faces

As cherished ideas are deflated

Faith is lost

Morals are challenged

I long to curse, and paint nudity

And reveal lies and weakness

And stupidity.

I long to draw the eyes of others

To themselves

And their failings

And away from me

And mine.)

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

No one

Looks       at                  me

                 Or      talks        to          me

All            day.

At Starbucks

A      boy      with    deep  brown eyes

Who might    have    been    in    my    art    class

Serves me chai.

HOW IT REALLY IS

Kayli brings home two giggling girls.

Their pleats swish down the stairs

To the watermelon palace.

Squeals of delight resonate upward.

Kaaaayyyliiii! I love love LOVE it.

It's SO AWESOME!!

They only emerge to phone their homes

Seven o'clock? No way! Ten!

Okay eight-thirty then, whatever.

No I'll walk.

Jeez the sun will still be up! Chillax!

And slide a frozen pizza into the oven.

Mom and Dad and I

Eat chicken.

HOW I DREAM IT

The Starbucks boy has been saving up his pay.

I leave the mudroom door open.

He climbs the narrow stairs

And in the moonlight, he sketches me,

Nude of course.