The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 31
“Who are you supposed to be?” he asked, his finger so close to my face that I could smell the potato chip crumbs stuck underneath his fingernails. I did not know what he was asking so I dropped my head and stared at my desk until he walked away. I had never seen any group of children as merry and energetic as the children in my classroom that day. I did not have any friends whom I could ask about what was so special about the day or why they were dressed foolishly, so I remained quiet at my seat in the corner of the room and eavesdropped on their fascinating conversations. As they spoke, I mimicked their words and intonations under my breath so that no one would hear me. After being consistently teased for my accent, I realized that I sounded as different to them as they sounded to me.
“Caaan-dy,” I murmured, extending the first syllable like the girls in the front of the classroom. I laughed to myself at how it sounded.
When Ms. Proctor entered the classroom, two boys who wore matching blue capes and eye masks ran up and down the aisles parallel to my desk.
“Okay, settle down,” Ms. Proctor said. “Sit down.”
She was a pale old woman with a long neck and gray hair that she tied into a bun behind her head. She showed no interest in my difference. But on the annual teacher’s day when our second grade class was allowed to bring gifts, when I nervously placed an apple on her desk (since I could not afford to buy her anything else) and I sat back down, I noticed that she was still smiling at me, in a way that only people who had told me they loved me had smiled at me before.
When the class was entirely seated, Ms. Proctor picked up a piece of chalk from the board and started to write something, but quickly erased it with her fingers. She wiped the chalk on her skirt and turned to face us with a smile.
“Okay. Who can tell me what today is?”
The lobster claws and superhero gloves waved in the air. I did not want to be the only student who did not have her hand raised, so following the lead of my classmates, I raised my hand as well.
“Oh, good. Yes?” Ms. Proctor pointed at me. My defeated classmates dropped their hands. At first Ms. Proctor smiled at the fact that my hand was actually raised, but after noticing the crestfallen look on my face, her face dropped and it was clear that she was sorry for her decision.
“Th-Thursday?” I answered, ashamed of the sound of my own voice, after a brief moment of silence.
Before I finished speaking, as expected, the entire second grade class fell back in their chairs in laughter. Some turned around and shook their heads at my obvious foreignness; others pointed and laughed until Ms. Proctor demanded that they get quiet again.
“Thursday?” one of the boys with a cape said, mimicking my accent. I was unaware that I sounded that way, and touched my lips while staring down at my desk.
“That’s enough,” Ms. Proctor said. “That’s enough.”
“I know,” a fairy gloated in the front row.
“Good,” Ms. Proctor said, wanting to get over the revelation. “What day is today?” She looked at the girl while rapidly batting her eyes.
“Halloween,” the girl said, and as I lifted my head she was turned to face me and looked as if she would never need to win anything again.
Ms. Proctor wrote the word on the board as the class spelled it.
“Halloween,” I murmured to myself and wondered if I sounded like them.
My sisters were also quiet on our bus ride home, so I imagined that we had all had similar experiences with our classmates. Mam stood on the front porch waiting, and at once we ran to her, impatient to share the news of the wondrous new day that had just entered our imaginations.
“It’s Halloween!” we said simultaneously, almost immediately after reaching my aunty’s yard. “It’s Halloween!”
“Yeh, I know. Come inside,” she said, holding the door open for us with a straight face.
“But—”
“Go wash your hands so you can eat, yeh? Then go to the basement for homework.”
I felt betrayed and wanted to inquire further, but instead I walked up the hardwood steps opposite the front door to the attic where my family slept to drop off my things. We had only been there for a few months and every day I waited for Papa to return from those embassy lines, those employment lines, those immigration lines where he was ritually treated like a nonentity, to tell us, finally, that it was time to return to Caldwell. But that day never came, and our second home was in an aunty’s Connecticut attic, an aunty who knew better than to stay in Liberia for as long as we did. We had two rooms facing each other. One for me and my sisters. One for Mam, Papa, and the baby.
We were told to be careful of stepping on the hand-tufted rug and discouraged from touching the glass windowpanes of our aunty’s cherry armoires. Mam preferred that we not sit in the living room, for fear that we would leave food and finger stains that she would be too embarrassed to explain.
“Go get your book bags and go to the basement,” Mam said as soon as we were finished swallowing the last of our snacks.
“Mam?” K said, standing up from the coffee table.
“Ask me after your homework, yeh? Go get your books and go to the basement.”
I knew what K wanted to ask. Mam insisted on keeping a regular