by C.T. Millis
Chapter 17
James was pulled out of the classroom at 11 a.m. every Tuesday. He always made sure he walked through the art hall on his way to the counselor’s office. He liked to look at the paintings and pottery behind the glass cases in the hallway. He took as long as he could, he would stop to tie his shoe, to count the canvases. He started thinking about how big numbers got. If he added two and two together, he got four- if he added four to four, he got eight. Eight and Eight made sixteen, sixteen and sixteen made thirty two. If he added thirty two to thirty two, he got sixty four. Sixty four and sixty four made one hundred and twenty eight. James untied and tied his left shoe while adding up one hundred and twenty eight with one hundred and twenty eight,
“Two hundred and fifty six,” he whispered to himself as he entered the counselor’s office. There was already a girl with dark hair that fell around her face, and a boy hopped in right after him. They sat down around the counselor, who always wore big skirts with white socks and pulled her hair back so tight her face seemed suspended by it. She had a pencil and a chart on her lap,
“How do you feel today, Sarah?” the little girl’s eyes darted up- she was in James’ grade, but a different class.
“I feel good.”
“James, how do you feel?”
“Well, I’m a little cold- but I just came in from outside, I should feel better soon,” the other boy, a year younger, chuckled, and the counselor asked again;
“But how to you feel, in here-” he pointed at her chest.
“I feel good.”
“Sam, how do you feel?” the other boy smiled,
“I feel great!”
“I feel good, too,” she pulled a smile across her face. “So, Sarah how do you feel about your grandfather today?” The little girl sat back in her chair and started playing with the ends of her long dark hair.
“I was coloring yesterday, and I was thinking about how much I used to like coloring with my grandpa.”
“You can’t color with your grandpa anymore, can you Sarah?”
“No, I can’t-”
“Why not, Sarah?”
“Because he died of cancer.”
“Is there anyone else you can color with?”
“Yes.” she looked out the widow.
“Who?”
“My parents, my aunts, my baby brother.”
“That’s nice, Sarah- James how do you feel about your father today?”
“They just keep getting bigger!”
“What- the feelings James?”
“No! The numbers! If you add two and two together, it makes four,” he sat up straight in his chair, “if you add four and four together, it makes eight! Eight and eight is sixteen! Sixteen and Sixteen is-”
“Thirty two!” the other boy exclaimed, “and thirty two plus thirty two is-”
“Sixty four!” the girl with dark hair said, James came back to it,
“If you add Sixty four and sixty four together, it makes one hundred and-”
“James!” the counselor stopped him, “How do you feel about your father?”
“... and twenty eight.”
“James, what you are doing right now is distracting yourself,” she leaned close to him, “because you’re trying not to think about your father.”
“You’re lying.”
“James-” she got stern.
“I think about him all the time, I think about him when it’s snowing and when it doesn’t snow- when I’m trying to go to sleep, when my mom makes dinner, when my mom cries.” His hands turned into fists at his sides, “I think about him when I’m alone and when I’m in class, I think about him when I have to do dishes and I think about him when I’m outside.” the counselor was sitting back in her chair and writing down everything. He continued, “I’m thinking about him right now- you can’t just say I’m not thinking about him when I am.” The room was quiet for a while.
“Okay,” she turned to Sam.
“Sam, how do you feel about your mom today?”
“I’m angry at her.”
“Why, Sam?”
“Because she made it so we were poor, then she went away.”
“Where is she, Sam?” The little boy got a little hyperactive in his seat,
“She’s in the hospital-”
“Why?”
“Because of drugs.”
“What do you think about drugs, Sam?”
“I hate them,”
“Why,”
“Because they took my Mom away.”
“Is there anyone who lives with you, who doesn’t take drugs?”
“Yes,”
“Who, Sam?”
“My dad, my grandma, and Jibs” the counselor turned her chart back a few pages and looked up at him,
“Sam, who is Jibs?”
“My dog!” at this everyone laughed. She wrote ‘Jibs- pet dog’ in thin curving grey letters.
“Okay, James- we’ll try again,” she turned to him, “James, how do you feel about your dad today?”
“I feel a lot.” He looked up at the counselor, and she wanted him to say more, “I mostly want to tell him what is going on, what I am doing in school.”
“James, is there anyone you can talk to about what you do in school?” James thought about his mom, shuffling around the house in her bathrobe, face swollen from crying-
“No.” The counselor looked at her charts a few pages back,
“What about your mom, James?”
“She’s just-” he remembered he did not want the counselor or the other kids to know about his mom. “She’s just-” he thought about her making his breakfast and going back to her room. He remembered having to wrap a blanket around her when she was shivering on the couch- eyes blank. “She’s great, I talk to her all the time.” He looked out the window.
“See,” the counselor began, “The people you lost are so important to you, but there are still people left behind who are still there for you- who love you.” the little girl nodded and her dark hair shimmered in the florescent lights, “They all love you, and it isn’t the same as having your mom, your dad, or your grandpa around, but it’s nice, isn’t it.” Everyone nodded.
James took a different way back to class so he would not walk past the art. He looked out the windows and stood still for a while in front of one. He could feel the warmth of the school’s heating system behind him, but as he stepped closer to the glass, it emanated a cold against his face and arms.
He looked out above the tree line and saw a green helium balloon darting up. James followed it with his eyes, and wondered where it was going. It looked more like it was being pulled. He imagined his father’s spirit drifting up like that, after the helicopter-
The balloon disappeared behind some of the wool winter blanket of clouds. James looked down at the crayon portrait in his other hand. He turned so the light of the window washed on it as he pulled it closer to his face. He had trouble making that ‘skin,’ color. He ran the orange marker over the stretch of it lightly, followed by yellow, and smeared by white. It was splotchy, the hair James grew on the top of his father’s hair sat on his father’s head like it was a separate creature. He used mostly brown, but tried to show that some of his dad’s hair was grey with a grey crayon. The grey was overshadowed by all of the brown. James drew a blue shirt for his dad, instead of his uniform. Behind his father, he drew a desert island, with palm and coconut trees dotting the horizon. James imagined his father walking along the shore, picking up seashells. He saw him thread nets and catch fish, scale the trees for coconuts. James imagined his father collecting driftwood, imagined him starting to build a boat.
When the counselor asked the kids in the group to draw pictures of those they lost, most of them drew their whole family with stick limbs and butterflies. The girl, Sarah drew her mom in a different house. Sam drew his grandpa waving from some clouds.
The one thing James didn’t get close to right in the picture was
his father’s eyes. He could not remember the exact color. He remembered they were blue- but not what kind of blue. He looked out the window and tried to remember if there was any grey in them, any green. James looked back at the picture. He could not get the shape right at all. He could not remember how far away from one another they were, where they sat on the face exactly, if they sloped up or down, if they were big or small. That is why when James was done with the session, he stole a black crayon. James went to the bathroom before stopping at the window, and colored his father’s eyes black, from the eyebrows to nearly the nose.
In front of the window, James lifted the portrait closer to his face and his shadow fell over it,
“Hey, do you have a hall pass?” a hall monitor donning an orange sash shouted loud enough to shake James’ concentration. James put the portrait under his arm,
“Yeah,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellow folded note, “that’s it.” The hall monitor grabbed the note and read it for a little bit before saying,
“Just go right back to class after your meeting, don’t lounge around.” James took the pass back,
“Yeah,” and walked back to class.
The doorways that lined the halls that held the classrooms were steel and red. Ms. Hopke’s door was lined with primary color hand prints, and had a poster about recycling stuck to it. At James’ eye level, he could read the cardboard cutout of her name: Ms. Hopke. James turned the knob slowly, so as not to get too much attention. He knew that as soon as a door opened in class, everyone would turn around to find out who was there.
When James opened the door, it was free time. Not many people turned from what they were doing because it was not silent enough to hear the shudder of the door opening in the classroom. James started walking toward the corner where the books were, where he and Sophie would usually read magazines, though they would look up and talk to one another for most of the time.
When he got there, Sophie was not there. He looked out over the room, and he did not see Sophie at any of the learning stations. James heard Sophie laugh; he smiled and looked over to where the laugh came from. Sophie was surrounded by four or five girls, James walked over to her. He heard one say,
“You’re so pretty,” while another asked,
“Do you wear makeup?” when Sophie shook her head no, she asked, “do you have a boyfriend?” when she shook her head no, the same girl said, “you could have one-” she saw James, “but not him,” pointing, “he’s not cute.” The girls laughed and cackled, and Sophie said,
“I’m going to go read now,”
“Can we come?” asked one of the girls. Sophie looked at James and he shrugged,
“Sure, there are enough magazines to go around.” On his way back to the corner, James folded the portrait of his father and put it in his backpack. They all sat down in a circle and held magazines,
“Sophie! This one has pretty hair like you!” a girl said pointing at a drawing of a princess in one of the magazines.
“Thanks!” Sophie said, “You’re pretty too!”
“Not as pretty as you are,” the other girls nodded. James saw Sophie’s smooth clear cheeks blush like the color of pink crayons, bubble gum, sunsets.
“No, no.” she smiled. There was a ruckus on the other side of the room, a boy came bounding over. He looked at Sophie, laughed, and ran back to his group of friends. The girls in the group exploded with laughter, surprising James a little and making him jump,
“He likes you!” they squealed, Sophie blushed and kept looking at the pictures of the magazine in her lap. She was not wearing her glasses, so she could not make out the words. There was booming laughter from across the room where five or six boys, Sonny among them, were gathered around.
When Ms. Hopke called class back into session, everyone meandered back to their desks,
“Five, four, three,” the kids began to scramble, James sat down right away and looked at his watch. Two more hours. “Two-” everyone was sitting down at this point, “Good.” Ms. Hopke said, pushing up her glasses. “Everyone clear your desks and get out a pencil, we’re going to take a test,” there was a unanimous groan.
After class, James walked with Sophie towards their houses.
“Those girls are weird,” James said,
“Yeah, but they’re nice, they don’t know any better.”
“What do you think about those guys?” James asked, looking at his feet.
“Waste of time,” she smiled, “my parents were so weird today, and they hovered over me all morning.”
“Yeah?” James looked around, most of the snow was melted, that was probably all they would get for winter.
“Yeah, they know I only have trouble seeing things far away without my glasses, that’s why I sat up front.” she looked at James, “but they were both worried about my grades, started bickering about if they would change or not,” she crossed her arms, “I don’t understand, I only am going without glasses for this week, it isn’t a big deal.”
“Yeah, you can see ok, right?” She nodded,
“They said they want to talk to me after school, so I should probably go in alone-” James asked,
“Is everything okay?”
“I think so, they’re just being strange,” she started walking to her door, “you have to tell me how meeting with the counselor went, was she as crazy as last time?”
“Worse!” he shouted after, and they both laughed as he turned away.
