Kissing Doorknobs (3 page)

“Hawney!
My
mama
and
daddy
and aunties and uncles did
not
risk their lives
fightin’
for civil rights so that I could sit next to
Kristin
here whining about not looking like a straw with a
head.
If we’d a known that y’all were gonna talk so
stupid
, we’d a
begged
for
separate
schools.”

By fifth grade, Keesha was already no one to be taken lightly.

Anna was the jock. The summer before, Anna had taught Keesha and Kristin to dive in perfect arcs off the high dive at our local community pool. It was so amazing to see someone with the ability to do beautiful, athletic, incredible things with her body and the mastery to teach others how to do it too.

I myself never tried. I said I was scared of the height, but actually I thought that swimming pools were communal toilets. Spas for germs. So even though there was enough chlorine in the water to turn us all into summer blondes, I hung out on the side of the pool, where it was dry and germs would have to travel into my system by air.

My friends didn’t push me, though. Our relationships were easy. We knew each other’s parents. I even felt comfortable enough to bring up the subject of my fears during a lunchtime conversation about horror movies.

“Freddie Krueger,” said Anna while eating her sandwich
and spraying us with tiny wads of bologna and spittle. “I had nightmares about those nails!”

“Pffft!” scoffed Keesha. “Nightmares about a creep who needs a manicure? Now, Dracula, he was something to worry about, girl.”

“Did anybody see
Interview with the Vampire?”
Kristin asked.

We all screamed happily. “Um … I’ve got something to ask you guys,” I said. “And I’m serious, so listen.”

Keesha, Anna and Kristin turned toward me. There was a dramatic pause. “Do any of you ever get scared of your own thoughts?” I asked. My friends looked at each other and shrugged silently. It felt as if years went by as I waited for an answer. It was the first time I’d ever admitted that my thoughts scared me.

“No,” said Keesha. Then, after another long moment during which my stomach felt as if it was doing a figure eight on a roller coaster, Keesha added, “We always been scared a
your
thoughts.”

Everybody laughed. Even me. Keesha put her arm around my neck, kissed my cheek and stole a chocolate chip cookie from my lunch box. Then the bell rang and we had to get ready for my most hated subject—gym. I groaned.

“Come on, Tara, I’ll show you how to put on a gymsuit,” laughed Anna, and we tumbled out of the cafeteria.

I knew how to put on a gymsuit. In fact, the exertion of putting on my gymsuit was usually the extent of my exercise. I was terrible at gym. When my school picked teams, the jocks picked kids in wheelchairs before me.

But I didn’t care. I liked daydreaming and hated running. I didn’t want to learn how to dribble or volley or press my own weight.

“Tara! Let’s go,” screamed Wendy, the captain of our volleyball team. I mumbled something about how stupid it was to have gym after lunch. Then I threatened to hurl, and took my position on the court while sticking my finger down my throat. Almost everybody laughed. Not Wendy, though. She wanted to win.

The ball was served and then, as usual, instead of paying attention to the game, I found myself counting the number of times I heard the ball make contact with the floor, a fist or even the occasional head. I never knew why I was so interested in the sounds of the ball being played, but the thud was pleasant to me. And the game was
boring.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. The gymnasium smelled like sweat, perfume, disinfectant and something sour … rotting shoes? I guessed this smell must be an olfactory turn-on to jocks. I wondered if cheerleaders or sponsors of the Olympics had ever tried to bottle it.

“Tara!”
The ball grazed my ear and fell at my feet, and the other team scored a point and cheered.

I looked at my friends and said, “Ouch.”

Wendy went ballistic.
“That’s the last time! That’s it! What’s up with you, Tara! You didn’t even try to hit the ball!”
Her face was red with anger. I looked around for our teacher, Miss Susan, who often cut out of our games to smoke outside the building.

“Giiirrrlll!”
said Keesha, and everyone giggled. I shrugged at Wendy and glanced at Anna, the jock, who looked torn between agreeing with Wendy and being my friend.

“That’s it!”
screamed Wendy. “I’ve had it. That was your ball and you were somewhere else in your head again! You’re off the team!”

What luck! I’d never dreamed I’d have the good fortune to resume my place on the sidelines with the physically handicapped, who, admittedly, didn’t look all that happy about getting me back. “Okay,” I said evenly, trying not to show my joy. “Thanks.” But Wendy grabbed my arm.

“Not so fast. I gotta know,
why didn’t you even try to hit the ball?”

“Because,” I replied, and the gymnasium went silent. “Because, what’s the point?” I asked.

“What’s the point?”
Wendy’s eyes were slitted with hatred.
“What’s the point?”
I could feel the entire class’s eyes on us.

“Yeah. I don’t see the point. If I hit it back to them, they’ll just hit it back to us. So why not just keep it, as long as they insist on hitting it over here?”

Even though they were on my team, Keesha, Kristin and Anna laughed until they cried. Wendy ran out screaming at everyone and eventually got a note sent home about her bad behavior. Keesha nicknamed me Jordan, after Michael.

I’d always liked daydreaming more than sports, so I didn’t feel bad about my gym status. In fact, I would have liked to be more casual about my other school-work. But I was as rigid in the classroom as I was easygoing in the gymnasium. If my handwriting wasn’t perfect, I’d erase and do it again … erase and do it again … erase and do it again, until …

“Tara?”

“Hhhiiiyyyaaahhh!”
I was always so startled when
interrupted that I could have leapt to the ceiling and hung from the tiles. “Sorry. Yes?”

“Everybody else is finished.”

“Okay,” I said, handing over my test and thinking,
But everybody else’s is probably sloppy.

Although my tests were neat, they were almost never finished, because of how much time it took to make them look perfect or because I really
thought
about the questions.
Really
thought about them. I was in an advanced reading class and the work was challenging. Multiple choice was very time-consuming. As an example:

31. Larry and his friends decided to______all modern conveniences and camp out as the pioneers used to.

a. forsake b. justify c. belittle d. exploit

Although I could see that a. was the answer that my teacher was looking for, I couldn’t help considering the ramifications of b., c. and even d. I thought of how people regularly
exploited
modern conveniences while
belittling
them and then tried to
justify
doing so. Unfortunately, with all that thinking, I wasn’t coloring in enough dots to finish.

“Tara?”

“Hhhiiiyyyaaahhh!
It was a rerun.

“Sorry. Yes?”

“Everybody else is finished.”

“Okay.”

But despite the good things in my life, and for no reason, I began to worry again. Constantly. About everything.
I worried so much that I worried about worrying. And I didn’t know why. Worries just popped into my head. I’d see a squirrel and imagine it smashed by a car and then I’d imagine other car accidents with smashed and bloody humans. I imagined terrible things happening at home while I was at school and unable to help. My father could die. My mother could die. My sister could run away. And what would I do without them? How would I be able to stand their loss? I knew my worries weren’t normal. I knew because my friends had worries too, but they were nothing like mine. Mine were perpetual. And horribly vivid. They came between me and the real world. Also, I had a nagging suspicion that maybe I was responsible for the bad things that were happening in the world … like maybe I could be doing something to stop them. I just didn’t know what.

To distract and comfort myself, I started to draw large, safe, happy families in the margins of my workbook or test papers. Then I started drawing rope around the families. Instead of just drawing them together, I tied them together. I drew smiles on their faces. My teacher noticed. My grades were starting to slide a little. She wrote a letter to my parents hinting that I might have some attention deficit problems.

“I pay attention!”
I hollered at my mother. “I pay attention to
lots
of
stuff.
…
more
than
most
of the kids! I
have
to pay
attention
to all different stuff …
at the same time!
I think I have
attention overload!

It was true. For as long as I could remember, I’d been an advanced student, able to pay attention to both the world around me and the one in my head. It was like playing two video games at once or watching television
and listening to the radio. It was noisy. It was exhausting. It was stressful. It was not attention
deficit!

My mother clicked off the television program she was half-watching. “Then stop drawing.”

I put my head in her lap and smelled detergent and something else … perfume? “Okay,” I promised. “I will.” And then I thought how pleasant it might be to be tied to my mother, how secure it might feel. I wanted the umbilical cord back again. I doubted she’d feel the same if I told her.

“Is there something bothering you?” she asked, so sweetly I almost smelled flowers.

“No!” I lied. “No!”

I didn’t tell her I was worried all the time. I didn’t want to worry her. Anyway, I didn’t like to say my worries out loud.

I did keep my promise to stop drawing pictures in class, though. But right after that, I started to collect troll dolls. Little naked fat people with short legs and long punk hair. I lined seven or eight of them up on my desk and whispered to them in class.

“Pay attention,” I’d tell them in a strict voice. “Come on … turn around … look at me. What are you thinking? Are you happy? Are you thinking that you’re naked, with weird hair? Are you worried about falling on the floor, getting stepped on … being separated from the others? Well, don’t. I’ll protect you. I promise.”

They made me happy. They never changed. They always looked the same. They were always smiling.

Troll cheer notwithstanding, my worries got worse. By January, school was becoming difficult. For the first time in my educational career, when I looked at the
blackboard, I discovered that I didn’t understand most of the math problems.

Unfortunately, my perfectly reliable, always smiling troll family couldn’t prevent my teacher’s expression from changing when she saw that my workbook page was blank.

“All right, Miss Dizzy Dame.”

I looked up from my trolls and examined Mrs. Prack’s frown lines.

“Huh?”

“If you don’t want to participate, you can just go in the closet.”

Without so much as a glance at my classmates, I flew into the closet and hugged myself in victory. I was free! I could hear everything that was being said but I didn’t have to participate. Mrs. Prack didn’t know what to think, but my classmates thought I was funny. I could hear them laughing as I examined their coats, hats and scarves.

Although everyone could see I had a lot of odd behaviors and was gym-challenged, I was still well liked and social. So even though I was disruptive—or maybe because of it—I managed to be popular. More class clown than crackpot. I thought everyone guessed I wanted attention, that I was getting something I needed to compensate for something I was lacking. And I was more than willing to meet them halfway.

During a lecture on drug abuse, I tied all my troll dolls together using an entire container of dental floss that someone had left in the girls’ bathroom. I dangled them from my desk.

“Tara!”

“What?”

“Why are your trolls hanging from dental floss?”

“I think they’re high on drugs,” I said with a straight face.

Everyone laughed. It took Mrs. Prack quite a while to restore order. I repaid her by paying strict attention for the rest of the day. It worked. She liked me, appreciated me, let me be me, even though she didn’t quite get me.

My mother was working on her computer when I got home after school. “How was your day, honey?” she chirped.

“Good,” I said. “We learned about drug abuse.”

“Hmmm. What did you learn?”

“That drugs kill your body. And that lots of people are addicted to drugs. Maybe even people we know. People who need help. Mrs. Prack asked us what we’d do if we found out our parents were addicted to cocaine. Would we call the police to have our parents arrested? Would we talk to our parents? Or what?”

I didn’t mention that I had tied up my trolls with dental floss so that they didn’t accidentally get separated.