Still Life with Tornado(3)

Everything I see from the bus window is the same. The streets, the sidewalks, the people are all the same. Homeless people sit on corners. Businesspeople walk with purpose. Tourists look at maps, trying to find the Liberty Bell or Betsy Ross’s house. Half the people are looking at or talking into their phones. Other people are holding their devices as if they could ring any second—like soldiers in wartime—guns always at the ready. But nothing ever really happens.

It starts to drizzle again and I think back to Miss Smith’s art class two weeks ago. I couldn’t draw the pear. I couldn’t draw my hand one more time. If someone asked me to draw anything right now, I wouldn’t be able to do it. My hands do not work. Not in that way. Mom tells stories about patients in the ER who need amputations. Arm/hand/multiple-finger amputations. People who drive with their arms out car windows. Unlucky motorcyclists. Lawn mowers. Snowblowers. At least I still have hands. I have nothing to complain about.

I can’t draw a pear, though. Or anything else.

My hands ran out of art.

I am simply Umbrella. I am the layer between the light rain and a human walking down Spruce Street talking into her phone, maybe finding out her cat just threw up on the new Berber carpet. I am the barrier between the bullshit that falls from the sky and the humans who do not want bullshit on their pantsuits. In eight days of riding around, that’s what I’ve discovered. It’s raining bullshit. Probably all the time.

Twenty-three-year-old Sarah gets on the bus again. She sits next to me and smiles, just like last time. But now, there’s something condescending in her smile. Unsympathetic. It says I am silly and dramatic. We don’t say a thing to each other and when we get off at the stop near home, the rain has started again and she opens her umbrella and walks north. I walk south and let the rain hit me until I’m soaked.





Dropout



“She told me that we should let her drop out for the year,” Mom says. “She could do summer classes and then she’d be able to come back next year and reenroll as a junior.”

“No,” Dad says. “She’s sixteen. She’s talented. What about her future?”

“That doesn’t seem to matter to her,” Mom says.

“You said you’d back me up on this. We made a parental deal. She can’t drop out of high school.”

“It’s that or expulsion. Expulsion would stay on her record.”

“I should have called. You’re a shitty communicator,” Dad says.

I sit soaked and cross-legged on the hall carpet at the top of the stairs and I zone out. This is the most unoriginal conversation I ever heard. Two parents discuss their truant daughter and within five sentences, one of them is blaming the other for something that isn’t even relevant.

And yet, this conversation is a novelty. They are rarely awake or at home at the same time. Today, Dad was only home before seven to meet with some guy about inspecting the roof for damage. There was hail last week, and Dad is in insurance. He’s a fanatic about maintaining fa?ade and building-envelope integrity. He knows all about code and how our kitchen bathroom does not meet code because it’s too small. I do not meet code because I’m not going to school. Mom doesn’t meet code either because they made a parental deal and she’s not keeping up her side of the bargain.

As I listen to them bicker about who should have called the principal and who’s busy keeping a roof over my head, I notice they call each other by their real names. They never do this in front of me. In front of me they call themselves Mom and Dad, and frankly, it’s annoying. But when they argue, they call each other Helen and Chet.

Example: “Why do I have to do all the important stuff, Chet?”

“That’s the problem with you, Helen. You never give me credit for all I do around here.”

“Shove your credit, Chet. I save lives every night and I never expect shit for it, but you take out the garbage and you need a gold star.”

We eat dinner together. It’s a quiet dinner and I shove food into my face as if I’m starving, because I am starving. I didn’t eat lunch today. I don’t think I even ate breakfast.

Dad says, “I heard you didn’t keep our deal.”

Mom turns to me and says, “The school called.”

Dad says, “Just one day, Sarah. For me?”

Mom mumbles something under her breath and I don’t hear it. Dad does. He gives her a look I know all too well. It’s like someone scraped his face off and replaced it with a guy who hates us all. Her, me, even himself.

I imagine I will go to school tomorrow.

? ? ?

Last week, on the third day of bus riding, I decided to transfer every time I saw the same bus shelter advertisement twice. It seemed like an original game. Eventually, I ended up in a neighborhood I’d never been in, in front of a boarded-up high school. It was an old building with graffiti-covered columns at the front entrance and the name of some dead educator carved in stone over the doors. I decided this would be my new school.

A guy in skinny jeans, curated high-tops, and chunky, hip glasses was standing on the sidewalk across the street staring into a camera on a tripod. He kept pulling his face away from the eyepiece and looking around. I could tell he was nervous. It wasn’t the nicest part of town. I decided he had to be an art student. They infest this town like hipster cockroaches. Every one of them thinks they’re original.