Thu 9 Oct 2008
Leonard tapped his fingers against the coarse, wooden desk, watching them walk their way across the surface like two isolated legs. He heard an imaginary beat in his head, a cacophony of sound that obscured all other noise. The voices of other students were lost to him, the sound of their feet drumming against the floor.
How he wanted to do that. How he wanted to run.
The teacher had left the room, and the students were playing some sort of makeshift football game. As their “football” (a wadded up paper ball) flew too far, someone came careening into him. Patrick’s heavy body crashed into Leonard’s wheelchair and thin desk, sending him tumbling towards the floor. He felt nothing in his legs, but that was not a new sensation. He hadn’t felt anything below his waist since the accident. But he felt the pain in his arms, in his head, in his back. The old scar, that curved laceration across his back, it screamed in agony.
The floor was sideways in front of him, parallel to his eyes. Through a blurry haze of tears, he saw the feet of cloudy figures moving up towards the ceiling. Why were they all sideways? No, he had it wrong, he was the sideways one. Leonard had always been the one on his side, the one on the side of everything. Even before those flashing lights, that menacing laugh. He choked back a sob, forcing back the memories, not wanting to humiliate himself in front of the others.
Sound had returned to the world, that faint, unreachable beat had vanished, and Bess was standing above Leonard, trying to help him up.
“Come on, Patrick, help me!” she snapped.
Her soft hands wrapped around Leonard’s wasted torso, and he closed his eyes, resisting the urge to embrace her, to give in to his sorrow and cry. He felt for his glasses on the floor and picked them up just as Patrick was righting the wheelchair.
“It’s his own damn black fault,” said Patrick. “He wouldn’t get out of the way.”
Leonard bit back a retort, knowing it would get him nowhere. Some people would never change. The bell rang, the teacher still gone, and the children filed out quickly from the classroom. Bess lingered by the doorway, turning her head to wave goodbye to Leonard. He didn’t respond, and after she left, he felt a bitter taste in his mouth for all the things unsaid, for the things in his past he wished he could undo. He wanted love, not pity. He wanted acceptance, not tolerance.
****
The small girl named Ming Li stood by the bus stop, a morose figure in the pouring rain. Beside her, an elderly man sat on the bench with a new, dark colored umbrella. Ming looked at him beseechingly, and he frowned at her, moving a little further away from her on the bench.
“Who let you out of the shop?” said the man scathingly.
She felt something strange in her ten-year-old heart, not quite sure what the feeling was. It was deeper than just sadness. It was a byproduct of rejection, of a cancerous prejudice rooted in the soul in the man beside her. It made her sick, and she turned away to hide her tears. As she looked down the long, gray street, she saw a wheelchair-ridden boy rolling towards her. The bus pulled up, driving past him and sending a spurt of water spraying all over him. He didn’t seem to mind, as he was already soaking wet. The bus doors opened, and the elderly man hurried in, trying to distance himself from Ming. The driver gestured at Ming in annoyance, clearly not about to wait for the boy in the wheelchair, who was halfway down the block. Ming shook her head, and the bus left. She walked forward to meet the boy.
“Why didn’t you get on?” he asked suspiciously as she held out her hand.
“I don’t know, I felt bad I guess. You were stuck out here without anyone in the rain, and with your…wheelchair,” she replied, stumbling a little over her words.
“Just what I need,” he growled. “More pity.”
“I’m Ming,” she said, holding out her hand.
“I don’t care,” he said, pushing his wheels to move past her.
Undeterred, she followed him, surprised at the speed at which he moved. Almost jogging, she asked him why he was so angry.
“Because I’ve had a bad day, okay?” he snarled. “And you coming here and not getting on your goddamn bus just because you ‘felt bad,’ how do you think that makes me feel? Do you think I want to be pitied? Do you think I want your attention? I want to be treated like everyone else, not like some special freak!”
Ming was quiet for a little while. Then: “I’m sorry. I just wanted to help.” She touched him lightly on the shoulder, biting her lip to stop the tears for the second time today, and then she walked away.
****
The stench of cigarettes and sweat pervaded the air around Carlos’ nostrils. He wiped his forehead, feeling the stubble of hair on his head as he did so. His maroon eyes stared out at the dark world in front of him under his dark eyebrows. He was sitting against the fence, a hammer in his left hand and his right hand resting on his knee.
“Can you guys put those out?” he asked the men around him. “I’ve told you before, I can’t stand the smell, and I don’t want to die of lung cancer. I got two kids.”
“Why don’t you learn to speak English before you rag on us, beaner?” jeered a white man. Carlos looked to Jose for help, but Jose shook his head ever so slightly, a nod almost imperceptible. And so Carlos stayed silent.
They were building a fence for a particularly rich man in town, by the name of Jared Ingleberry. He owned a riverside house, and he complained that the “dirty homeless” would come up from their makeshift homes by the river and sleep on his lawn. Though they all claimed to remain outside his property line, Jared was adamant that they be kept out. And so the homeless wandered back to the river, staring at the water with sad eyes. They were eyes that knew more than many in the world, thought Carlos. They had seen too much, lost too much, but even those that had turned to drugs were wiser than the ruthlessly ambitious politicians or the lazy scholars. He had spoken with them, urged them to pick up their lives. While some spoke incoherently and mumbled nonsensical riddles to themselves, many wished to work, to get a job. But once they had slipped this far on the slippery slope of life, they had no hope. It saddened Carlos seeing how brilliant some of them were.
All it takes is one mistake, and your whole life can be thrown away. Because while one year, two years, thirty years can go by without cessation, change occurs in seconds, in mere moments, fragments of time.
Time is a fragile vase, and it shatters at the slightest touch, the slightest crash, and then it’s all disappeared until you can’t even see yourself anymore, until you look in the mirror and what you see is a prophecy of your future.
