Trying to Float

by Nicolaia Rips

  With that he set off to find the right monologue.

  And find it he did. After searching through the theater section in our local library, he reappeared with a couple of handwritten pages which he had copied out of a book.

  In the passage my father gave me, a teenage girl attempts to tell her family about something amusing she’d seen on Oprah—an interview Oprah had done with twin sisters. The parents of the girl aren’t listening, choosing instead to shout at each other. Frustrated by being ignored, the girl’s description of the interview becomes more and more manic.

  It seemed funny to me, and Father’s argument about boring the judges with things they’d already heard made a certain amount of sense. Then again, most of what my father said had a small amount of sense packed inside it. The bait in the bear trap.

  At the last minute, I decided that I would also apply to the voice studio. Choosing a song was much easier. My godfather, who had a career in musical theater, introduced me to a song that Carol Burnett had performed on Broadway when she was a young woman. The song was “Shy” and I loved it, as I loved everything that Carol Burnett sang.

  An advantage of the song was that no one else was going to perform it. The girls who were applying to LaGuardia were more likely to sing something contemporary, like a song by Taylor Swift or Adele.

  On the day of the audition, my parents accompanied me to LaGuardia. The audition was at 8:00 in the morning. Leaving the subway on Sixty-fifth street, we walked the several blocks to the school. I began to go over what I’d prepared for the audition, but I didn’t get very far, for we were immediately interrupted by other kids, with other parents, moving in the same direction. As we approached the building, we ran into a wall of kids who had arrived well before us and had already formed a line which, beginning at the school, ran around the block.

  “Twenty thousand,” one of the students whispered to me as I took my place in line.

  I shook.

  Directly in front of me was a short boy with dreadlocks. He was wearing a black suit and white shirt. His tie was poorly knotted and his cuffs frayed. He had no parents with him. Under his arm was a portfolio of drawings.

  Two kids in front of him was a girl whose grandfather’s name was embossed on a building down the street.

  Never before had I seen so many kids from so many different parts of New York. Each of us would be required to perform, and if the judges were interested, we would be called back for another performance and interview.

  But the important thing was the performance, and for that, it did not matter who you were or where you came from. The idea was thrilling and terrifying.

  I glanced at my parents. If I was not mistaken, it was the first time I saw a dent in their optimism.

  I, on the other hand, had been prepared for the worst but this exceeded my greatest fears. And isn’t that the hellish thing about life: there is only underestimating the worst.

  An hour and a half later, I was inside.

  My first audition was for the vocal studio. I sat in the long line of chairs outside the auditorium. I had gone over the song many times, and I knew it. I also reminded myself that Mom had a beautiful voice and that, if I had inherited just part of it, I had a shot.

  As I drew closer to the door of the auditorium, I could hear the other students performing. Each voice seemed better than the last, and the first was better than mine. But there was one thing that I had and they didn’t: while they all performed the same pop songs, I would be performing an ancient gem, “Shy.”

  I was now sitting right outside the auditorium. The girl before me—a thin young girl with a quiet manner—had just walked in. She began, as all others had, by introducing her song.

  “Today,” she announced, “I shall sing a song by Mary Rogers . . . ”

  What, what?

  “Written in 1958 . . . ”

  Wait a minute . . .

  “Titled . . .”

  It couldn’t be . . .

  “ ‘Shy.’ ”

  No!

  She began. And within a few stanzas, you’d have thought Ethel Merman had bolted from her grave. The room shook with this girl’s voice. And with the room shaking and my mind spinning, I was unable to get to my feet fast enough to run out of the school.

  My name was called. I had no choice but to march into the room and keep my chin up.

  On the plus side, I got through it. Though there was a spark of snickering from the judges at the beginning, this was quickly doused by disinterest.

  As I left the auditorium, filing past the others who were waiting for their chance to sing, I wondered how many of them were going to sing “Shy” or something like it. How many of them were like me: kids who others considered weird, backward, and unlikable? And was this possibly, just possibly, a school for such characters?

  But I didn’t have much time to think about this. There was still the audition for the acting studio. I rushed to the basement, where three judges waited for me in a small classroom.

  When I announced the name of the play, two of the judges leaned forward. Obviously no one had performed it, let alone the student just before me. A good start.

  The attention of the three judges did not move from me, and as soon as I’d finished, they began talking among themselves with energy. Seeing that the discussion needed more time, they asked me to step outside. This could only be a good sign.

  Upon being called back into the room, they asked if I would answer a few questions. Of course. I was feeling confident. I’d heard that acceptance notices would not be sent out for another couple months, but perhaps they made exceptions for the especially talented.

  “Do you know anything about the play you performed?” was their first question.

  My father, you will remember, had only given me a couple pages he’d copied from a book, but he’d given me enough of a description of the rest of the play for me to take a shot at an answer.

  “The main character, my character,” I began, “is a young woman . . .”

  But that was as far as I was going to get.

  “A young woman? Are you certain?”

  There was a click in those words—the sound of a safety being flipped off a rifle.

  “A youngish woman . . . ” I sputtered.

  “It’s my recollection,” a judge interrupted, “that she was forty.”

  “The new fourteen?” I tried.

  Not a chuckle. I was now in their crosshairs.

  “For your information, Miss Rips”—this from one of the two judges who’d perked up when I’d mentioned the name of the play—“there is little funny about the play: the protagonist just had a miscarriage and is an alcoholic—the result of having married a Jewish man whose family hates her because she’s Christian.”

  Father! my mind screamed.

  Now it made sense. He had only given me a couple pages of the play because he knew that if I’d read the whole thing, it would be clear to me that the role was not for a thirteen-year-old girl.

  But it was my fault. Why had I listened to him? For that matter, why had I ever listened to him? He nearly murdered my first crush, caused me to be diagnosed with an eye disorder, and initiated countless other failed schemes and misadventures.

  “And those sisters you were making fun of in your monologue were Siamese twins,” the same judge added.

  So the play was not only inappropriate for my age but was politically incorrect, and that, at a public high school in New York, was inexcusable.

  “Pardon me,” I managed. “Are we finished?”

  I should have seen the whole thing coming. What had possessed me to think I could go anywhere near this school? I could blame my father but, honestly, it was my delusion which led me to the auditions in the first place.

  I was a fool.

  THE PLAYING FIELDS OF WEST CHELSEA

 
I VOWED THAT before I left middle school, I would get myself invited to one of the soccer games that the popular kids spent their afternoons playing.

  The key to that invitation was Joseph, my Stoner Corner companion.

  A good-looking boy, Joseph was unusually lazy. While others as popular as Joseph spent their time making fun of kids like me, Joseph decided that making fun of others took too much energy.

  Joseph was lethargic, but you’d think he would have bothered to learn a thing or two about his own anatomy; evidently not, since one day in health class, upon being questioned by our teacher on some special part of the male body, he sat shocked, and glanced toward me for the answer.

  The question was how many “gonads” do boys have.

  I felt sorry for Joseph and whispered my best guess.

  Wrong.

  That did not stop good-natured Joseph from thanking me for trying to help him, and I knew that he was the sort who would return the favor.

  So just weeks before school ended, Joseph and I strolled onto the soccer field in west Chelsea together.

  In addition to the pretty boys, there was the usual crowd of attractive female onlookers: Penelope Brewster, Ana Penny, and Greta (who by then had dumped Joseph).

  But there was someone else there that day . . . the Schnoz.

  The Schnoz hadn’t been included because he was well liked (he was too odd for that and, of course, there was the whole problem with the slootz), but because he was from Europe and knew how to play soccer.

  After nodding to the Schnoz, I joined the girls on the sidelines. They appeared to accept my arrival as some sort of strange end-of-middle-school doomsday situation and continued on with their conversation about high schools. Acceptance letters would arrive any day and it was all anyone could talk about.

  Just before the game was to start, I spotted a speck moving across the field. As the speck drew closer, it remained a speck, defying the laws of optics until immediately before us. It was none other than my first crush—Uhura.

  My presence at this event was so unlikely that Uhura walked right up to our group and greeted his friends without realizing I was there.

  In case any of us had forgotten that he was smart, he announced how well he had done on the test to get into what was said to be the best school for science and mathematics in the city. This was especially bothersome to me because I was facing certain refusal at the only school I applied to.

  “It couldn’t hurt,” I pointed out, “that you were named after the communications officer of a starship.”

  Noticing me, he flinched. I’d infiltrated his lair, and he wasn’t pleased.

  He turned to Penelope Brewster.

  “My girlfriend wanted you to know that she’s sorry she couldn’t make it today. Her family is on the Island.”

  The point here was that her family was rich.

  “Staten Island?” I asked innocently.

  “No,” he snapped. “The Hamptons.”

  I was about to release my most dismissive “The Hamptons, Uhura? Really?” when the Schnoz bolted toward us. The game was about to start, and he saw this as his last chance to win back the affection of the girls who once adored him.

  “Helloooo, slootz!”

  Uhura glared at the Schnoz, offended by the interruption.

  “Today I show you slootz something special,” the Schnoz announced, taking no notice of Uhura.

  Uhura, who had been staring at the Schnoz, was now focused on me, his sneer replaced with something else. It looked a little bit like respect.

  But why?

  Then it came to me. Uhura thought the Schnoz was my boyfriend.

  And why wouldn’t he think that: in my last conversation with Uhura, I’d assembled a Build-a-Boyfriend which looked a lot like the Schnoz—tall, beautiful, and foreign.

  Now I was torn. On one hand, the appearance of the Schnoz would convince Uhura that I had a boyfriend and wasn’t stalking him. On the other hand . . . well, I’m not so sure what the other hand was, but there had to be something.

  I was going through the possibilities when I noticed that everyone, including Uhura, was staring at the Schnoz.

  Just in back of me, the Schnoz had flipped himself upside down. Supported by his hands and the top of his head, he stretched his legs straight upward.

  From there, slowly, slowly, he brought his legs down until they were perpendicular to his body. A human right angle.

  And in this position he remained until, suddenly, he jerked his knees toward his torso.

  Straightening his legs out again, he repeated the contraction. This he did two more times and then . . .

  Kaboom.

  His head buried in the grass, he cried out to the girls:

  “I fart. You smell!”

  Releasing one of his arms, he waved his hand around his buttocks.

  “You smell. I fart.”

  Another jerk of his legs.

  Kaboom.

  “I fart again. You smell again! Sì, slootz?!”

  He laughed maniacally.

  Uhura was standing within inches of the Schnoz and received the worst of it. As he reeled, the Schnoz used his legs to scissor Uhura’s head, drawing it into his crotch.

  Racing away, we looked back at Uhura. There was no saving him.

  Uhura took the final blast to the face.

  From then on, I had no desire to see Uhura, his image forever attached to the carnage of that afternoon. I was cured of Uhura as he was cured in the fumes of the Schnoz.

  MR. CRAFTY MOVES OUT

  COMING HOME FROM school one day I noticed that Mr. Crafty’s seat in the lobby was without Mr. Crafty. My first thought was that he’d had another stroke and was in the hospital or worse. I asked the woman behind the front desk where he had gone, but she had no idea.

  If there was anyone who had the answer, it would be Uber-Crafty, his best friend, who lived on the fifth floor. I ran up to his apartment. He was there, painting, and wasn’t pleased to be interrupted. But he invited me in.

  His apartment was so full of paintings that there was nowhere to sit. Everything but his bed and his canvases had been cleared out. I stood in front of a brightly painted nude girl whose head was turned on its side, resting atop her own shoulder. The first layer of the canvas was thousands of postage stamps.

  But I was not there to admire his work. He knew that. Mr. Crafty, he told me, had left the hotel and would not return.

  Mr. Crafty had received a call from a woman who claimed to have been a friend of his from high school. He didn’t recognize her name.

  They arranged to meet in the lobby of the hotel, and when they did, he remembered that this woman was someone with whom he had once been very much in love. As Mr. Crafty’s story spread further into his past, he was awakening things in himself. And on that day, he got up out of his chair, walked slowly out the front door of the hotel, and never returned, leaving his friends forever, including his best friend, Uber-Crafty.

  It was rumored that the woman lived in a beautiful home in Connecticut, where she would care for Mr. Crafty and help him to overcome his paralysis.

  I asked Uber-Crafty how he felt about all that had happened with his friend. Uber-Crafty smiled and delivered the ultimate declaration of respect and affection.

  “Crafty.”

  I would like to think that Mr. Crafty knew, on some subconscious level, that memories are not linear or static, but overlapping, twisting, and dynamic. And that one needs to add the fuel of new memories to keep the whole thing churning. I believe that Mr. Crafty left to create his own memories, but that he took some of the Capitan, Uber-Crafty, Crafty One and Two and, hopefully, me with him.

  AT LAST

  WE KNEW IT was coming. But not like this.

  Let me take a step back.

  There is a period between the application
deadlines for high school and the arrival of acceptance letters. That period is long enough to allow tensions to subside, and there is a general sense of good feeling. Even one’s enemies seem to lose their bite.

  It was in this atmosphere that we were enjoying ourselves when an announcement was made on the loudspeaker that we had to report to the cafeteria immediately. The cafeteria doubled as the gymnasium, and after lunch, the tables were pushed aside, the basketball hoops lowered, and various gymnastic equipment returned

  Around three o’clock the sweat from the athletes mixed with the odor of cooked vegetables and luncheon meats.

  It was in this environment that the principal had gathered us. With the temperature outside above 80 degrees and the room now stuffed, we felt nauseous.

  “Students,” the principal began, “when I say your name, raise your hand.”

  As the principal called our names, the vice principal walked into the crowd of kids and handed each of us an envelope. Was this part of our graduation? Our diplomas?

  Then a cry. A cry sharp and slicing. The world came crashing down on Atlas’s feet: it was not our diplomas; not even our report cards. It was our high school acceptance letters.

  Nothing could have been crueler. Instead of allowing us to absorb our disappointment alone, in our homes, with our families, we were being outed in front of every other kid in the school.

  The wailing began immediately. Followed by cursing. The few who’d been accepted to their schools of choice were sensitive enough to keep quiet, so the dominant sound was of inflating pain.

  But word of those with good news could not be suppressed, and onto the bonfire of disappointment was tossed the gasoline of jealousy.

  Some kids yelled at each other, others pounded their fists against the walls. But no one wanted to leave the room. We were the battered fighters who insisted on staying in the ring, eyes swollen, mouths filled with blood, until the end.

  I didn’t know what to do. The principal was still at the start of the alphabet, so I had time to think. I wanted to avoid the suffering. Then I remembered a promise I’d made months before: my mother had made me swear that I would not open my envelope until she was with me.