by Aimee Herman
“As I was driving to school today,” she said, “I had all these words for you guys, but I guess I . . . lost them.” She sort of smiled, as though part of her mouth didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to lift. “It’s difficult to know what to say when . . .” The rest of her words vanished.
I don’t know how to feel. I just know I want to feel anything else but this.
“So, here’s the thing,” she paused. “We’ve been reading and taking apart poems in this class and addressing the complications of language, the feeling of being shut out or angry or emotional. There are times that it is just so hard to make sense of it all.”
“Like Shakespeare?” Tiffany added.
“Sure,” she smiled with her whole mouth. “Listen, I want to put aside today’s lesson and introduce something else. Who here keeps a diary or journal of some sort?”
A few hands tentatively rose. I used to keep a diary many years ago and then lost interest. It was mainly just secret crushes or complaining about unfair rules. I guess not as riveting as I hoped it would be.
“Starting today, I’m going to ask you to keep a journal. I won’t look at it, I promise. But I think it would be beneficial for all of you, especially with regards to losing one of our classmates this weekend. See it as a chance to reconnect with your thoughts and react in a safe space on paper. More specifically, I want you to write to someone. Anyone. Someone you’ve never met, someone you love. Whoever you’d like. By having a focus, it feels more like a conversation, except without the interruption, of course. I’m hoping it will be meditative, a chance to be with your inner thoughts. A destination toward healing,” she paused, looking around the room. “So, uh, take out your notebook, if it’s not already out, and start writing. Begin with ‘dear’ and then whomever you are writing to. This is more generative than anything else. What I mean by that is this doesn’t need to be formal. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Just let your thoughts and words fly. Roam. Be free.”
“Are you collecting this?” Deanna asked.
“No, I’m not. Allow that to give you permission to write without edit, without judgment, without fear. And I want to encourage you to keep this going. When tragedy happens, writing can be one of the best medicines to make sense of things.”
Behind me, I heard someone say, “Which one was he? I don’t remember a James.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I think he sat by the window? Maybe he had black hair?”
I stared at my blank page. Turquoise straight lines. I used to write letters to Dara when she went to summer camp. I loved feeling like I could say whatever I wanted without any interruption. I’ve written letters to Dad, even though he’s just thirty minutes away. I wrote to Shirley when she was in the hospital. Sometimes I write to Greta. I didn’t think I’d miss her when she went away to college, but I do. So much.
Ms. Raimondo is a newer teacher at our school, younger than the others. Sometimes I feel like I can see her thoughts grow inside her, but maybe that is just me staring way too hard because I think she’s so pretty. When she walked into the classroom on the first day of school, I couldn’t believe she was the teacher. She looked so cool, with double-pierced ears and purpley lips like she had eaten a whole bunch of pomegranate seeds before she arrived. On the first day of class, she had us write love letters to ourselves, which I thought was really strange. Then, we put them in an envelope she gave to us, which we had to address. She promised she’d mail them to us, eventually. When we forgot. After school that day, I went home and told Shirley all about her. She thought Ms. Raimondo sounded like a hippie, which I wasn’t exactly sure was a good or bad thing. Shirley can be quick to judge at times.
I peered around the room and noticed a few people already writing. In front of me sat Aggie, slightly hunched with her dark glistening braid leaning on her right shoulder. Sometimes I forget Ms. Raimondo is even talking because the back of Aggie’s head mesmerizes me. I’ve spent most of September trying to think of something to say to get her attention. She talks in class, but I haven’t seen her talk to anyone else yet. She’s new to this school, though I’m not sure where she’s from. I’ve written pages of poems just about Aggie’s braid. I wouldn’t dare show them to anyone, of course.
It hurt to allow myself to think that James was gone. And then I couldn’t quite understand why I was feeling this way. We weren’t friends. The only words he flung in my direction were mean ones. But I guess it’s that he succeeded. He did what Shirley has tried to do so many times. That’s when I knew whom I needed to write to.
Monday, October 18, 1993
Dear James,
Ms. Raimondo looks like a grasshopper today, dressed in a long, tight dark green skirt and lime-green blouse. You used to be in this room, but of course we never spoke to each other. I kind of hated you. Or I was scared of you. I guess a little bit of both. You never raised your hand or spoke at all really. But I can hear your voice because it used to make fun of me. It’s so strange being at home without Greta. Quieter. I miss her more than I call my mom Shirley because I think Ms. Raimondo is really beautiful when she wears her hair back and I can see her ears. I still have a difficult time trusting Shirley since she Why did you kill yourself?
Tuesday, October 19
Dear James,
Something happened today in study hall. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I figured I might as well tell you, since, well, you know.
By the time I get to study hall I’m so hungry, but lunch isn’t for two more periods, so I often sneak in some kind of snack to eat while the teacher isn’t looking. We aren’t allowed to eat or talk, which is super annoying. Sometimes, though, I’ll stick something in my pocket and sneak bites. Usually just loose cereal that I suck on to eliminate the loud crunching sound. Is that weird?
Today, I dipped my hand into my pocket and found only crumbs. I tried slyly emptying it out, dropping bits of flesh-colored preservatives to the floor.
“You know, if we were outside, birds would eat that. In here, you are basically just encouraging the cockroaches to come out of hiding.” Aggie had tapped me on the back. She was sitting behind me, diagonally. That’s right, two classes together, though not sure study hall counts as a class. And homeroom too, although that’s just like a half hour or whatever.
I couldn’t believe she saw me do that.
“Yeah, I . . . I was just . . . hey . . .” Wow. Real smooth, Eleanor.
Her voice was deep, not like the ocean, but more like Shirley’s, whose vocal chords have been charred from decades of cigarette smoke.
“It’s not like I’m judging, I’m just noticing,” she said. I took all of her in. This was the first time I really could, since she was looking directly at me. She didn’t exactly match, but from what I noticed through my many weeks of watching her, she never does. She had on a shirt with lots of stripes and an oversized vest (her father’s?), a long skirt, and a tie that went well beyond her waist. “I’m Aggie, by the way,” she paused and moved a little closer to me. “Agnieszka,” she whispers, “but only my dad calls me that now. I feel like you’re in all my classes and yet we’ve never talked to each other. Fromme comes before Glackhzner, so you sit in front of me in homeroom.”
Agnieszka Glackhzner. A mish-mosh of letters. A song.
“Oh, uh . . . yeah,” I dribbled out.
“My dad is a garbage man. ‘Sanitation worker’,” she emphasized proudly, using her fingers to wrap around those last two words. “I’ve been brought up to locate garbage cans like exit signs. I’ve never had to make my bed, but I’ll get punished if I’m caught littering.”
I smiled. “Jeez . . . sorry. I mean, yeah, I didn’t realize.”
“It’s all right,” she smiled back, and I suddenly forgot how to breathe. “Eleanor, right?”
I nodded.
“Who are you writing your letters to? You know, from English class?” Aggie smiled. Her lips spread wide, and I quickly noted all her teeth, so white and slightly crooked.
“Oh, uh .
. .”
“I mean, you don’t have to tell me.” Aggie brought in the corner of her mouth and bit down on her lower lip. Why couldn’t I breathe? The air had asbestos in it. Mold. Cancer. What was happening? Why couldn’t I stop smiling?
“I’m writing to Richard Brautigan,” she said.
“Is he an uncle or something? Or . . .”
“No, no. A poet. And storywriter too. A friend of mine I used to go to school with in Staten Island gave me a book of his. Oh man, I love his stuff. You’ve got to check him out. When Ms. Raimondo said to write to someone, he was the first person I thought of.”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” What?
“You’re funny. Hey, I wanted to tell you in English class that I really love your new hair. It’s awesome.”
“Thanks.” Finally, a word. “I’m writing to—”
“Sshhh,” Mr. Greggs widened his eyes at us.
“Anyway,” Aggie whispered, “you can borrow a Brautigan book, if you like. I’ve really got to stay focused this year. Second chance.”
Second chance?
Wednesday, October 20
Dear James,
We had hamburgers with homemade french fries for supper. Not every letter needs to be about something.
Okay, fine. Maybe there is always something that can be talked about. Something of substance, I mean. What would you have said about my hair, James? Would you have pointed and laughed? What clever joke would you make of it? Would you call me cranberry bog or menstruation face?
The thing is, I guess I was distracted by you on Monday, and then Tuesday I couldn’t stop thinking about my conversation with Aggie, but something else happened on Monday. After school.
Dara missed the bus in the morning, so I didn’t see her until math—the only class we have together this year. When I walked in, she was already there, and she gasped. Really. Like out-loud-lungs-filling-with-everyone’s-dead-skin-cells type of gasp.
“Eleanor! Oh my god! What happened?”
I threw my fingers on my head and felt around. “Oh, this? Yeah, I guess I made a mistake?”
“I almost didn’t recognize you. You look like . . .” James, if you were in the room, I bet you would have laughed. Maybe you would have even egged her on. “You look like a lesbian.” She whispered it like “lesbian” was a curse word.
“W-what does a lesbian look like?” I still can’t believe I said that. I mean, Flor is a lesbian and she just looks like—I don’t know—a person. Actually, she’s the first lesbian I’ve ever met. Or know that I’ve met, I guess. She has short hair, but do all lesbians have the same haircut? I’ll have to ask Flor.
Flor gives off a soothing aroma of peppermint and coffee. When she isn’t drinking coffee—which happens all throughout the day, even at dinner—she is popping little peppermints into her mouth. Usually they are the kind you get from that giant bowl at the diner after you pay your bill. Flor always takes giant handfuls, stuffs them in her pockets and delivers them to a bowl in her house. Gret and I call them urine mints, and do not dare eat them, even when they are the kind with delicious bits of hard jelly in the center.
“They’re always kind of damp,” Greta once told me. “And you know why?”
I just shrugged.
“Because people go to the bathroom, hands damp from wiping not washing, and then they grab a handful of these. Pop ’em in their mouth. Gross,” she said, sticking out her tongue. “Never eat them. No matter what, okay?”
When I first met Flor, I wasn’t sure if I liked her. She is eccentric (I can’t remember how I learned this word) in ways I have never experienced before. First, she’s obsessed with the mail. Since she’s no longer working—Shirley mentioned something about disability—she makes sure to be home every day the mail comes. Sunday is her day off. It is also a wasted day—her words: “A day without mail is a day unworthy of breakfast, showering, or conversation.”
“I can’t even housesit because I worry I would just open up mail that isn’t mine, just to see what’s inside. It’s like a daily birthday present,” she once said.
“But isn’t it just bills and junk?” I asked her.
“Yeah, but someone still took the time to lick that envelope, tear off a stamp, and slip it through a blue mailbox. Time and appreciation, Eleanor.”
Flor used to keep even her junk mail until Shirley went over to her house and saw the piles and piles of magazines and envelopes, half-torn open.
“You can’t just keep everything,” Shirley said between cigarette inhales. “You’ve got to let go.”
Maybe this is why they’re such good friends; they aren’t afraid to tiptoe around each other. They just tell it like it is.
“I’m a lesbian, Eleanor,” Flor said a few months after our first meeting, “So I’ve learned to get used to making room for myself in spaces that try to exclude me.”
This was the moment I knew I really liked Flor. I liked knowing someone who understands how to exist even when others don’t want her to because of stupid reasons like just wanting to kiss girls or whatever.
What happens when we say something out loud? Does it become more real? Is it any less real when we keep it to ourselves?
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Then math class started, and it was super awkward between Dara and I, and we didn’t see each other again until our bus ride home. We always sit next to each other and we still did, but most of the ride was in complete silence.
“Hey, listen,” I started, “it’s . . . I don’t know . . . I left your house and I just wanted to scream. Didn’t you? I mean, we didn’t really know him, but he was our classmate for so many years. And then I thought about Shirley and almost losing her in the same . . . anyway, so I just cut my hair. That’s it. It’ll grow back. Who cares?”
“No, yeah, I know, Eleanor. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . say what I said. I think I have a gay uncle so . . .”
“So . . . what?”
“So, a gay person is probably related to me. So, it’s not mean.”
“I don’t understand. And anyway, so what if I was a . . . a lesbian?”
James, I can tell you this because you’re not my bully anymore, you’re just a piece of paper. Before I became an atheist—my parents know, though they wish I’d reconsider—I had my Bat Mitzvah. That was kind of the end of my Jewishness. I was newly thirteen, begrudgingly (vocab word!) finished Hebrew school and completed the whole experience. I lead the minyan, read from the Torah, all of it. Anyway, at the party part, my friend Kelly kept asking me to dance. When Good Vibrations came on by Marky Mark, she grabbed me, and we just swung our limbs around like animals. It was incredible. I mean, everyone was dancing. When it was over, she yelled into my ear that she wanted to give me my present. I told her she didn’t have to get me anything, but that I could just open it later. But she kept insisting. So, we left the room—my Bat Mitzvah was in this giant hall where, like, weddings probably happened. We went down the stairs and into this smaller room. I just looked at her because she didn’t seem to be holding a gift, and then she kissed me.
You probably think it’s lame or gross to imagine two girls kissing. I could tell you that I was shocked. I could tell you that I immediately pushed her away and wiped my lips, but the thing is, I wanted only one thing for my birthday and it wasn’t until Kelly kissed me that I realized what it was. It’s like my whole body opened up and I became something else. I remember walking in on Greta and her high school boyfriend Vegetarian Todd kissing and I couldn’t get over how gross it looked. But I guess it’s gross until it happens to you by someone who means something.
So when Dara called me a lesbian, it was like something got louder in me. After my Bat Mitzvah, every time Kelly and I saw each other, we kissed. A few times, Kelly took off her shirt and let me stare at her and once, she even let me touch her. She never really wanted to touch me. She called me her secret boyfriend. I didn’t think much of it then. I just liked how she made me feel. Less than a year later, she moved away. Her dad got a jo
b in Texas, and we wrote for a little while, but then she stopped, and I stopped and well, I guess it went away . . . you know . . . the feelings.
“I just think it’s weird, El,” Dara said. “I mean, you cut your hair and made it . . . purple. I guess it’s not like you.”
“Okay, well, maybe it isn’t. But maybe I don’t even know what I am or who I am or . . .”
“You weren’t even friends with James.”
“Dara, are you kidding me? It’s so much more than that.”
“Just tell me if you are. That girl Jacqueline who was in our science class last year? She shaved her head and then told everyone she was bisexual. I mean, you and I have had sleepovers. We’ve slept in the same bed! I changed in front of—”
“Okay! Okay. Yes. I am. A . . . lesbian, or whatever. Jeez. I don’t know, I never said it out loud. Can we just . . . can we not—”
“Oh my gosh, you are? Wait, I was just . . . I mean, I didn’t think. Eleanor, I . . . I’m not sure how I feel about this.”
“We’ve been friends since we were seven. Why does this even matter?”
“I’m not sure. Can I think about it?”
“Can you think about how this doesn’t even affect you?”
James, there’s no need to continue the rest. I can’t believe I told Dara something I barely ever thought about (actually, even as I write that, I know it’s not really true—I’ve thought about it more than anything else) and now suddenly it was apparently the end to our friendship. I mean, I guess I kind of have feelings for Aggie, but I just saw it as like, a friend-crush, even though she’s not exactly my friend and . . . oh, you wouldn’t understand anyway.
Thursday, October 21
Dear James,
Tonight, I had my suicide support group. We meet every Thursday. Flor came along and while we were on our way there, I asked her about what it’s like to be a lesbian. Super weird, I know, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“What’s it like to be a fifteen-year-old?” she immediately asked back.
