Brave New World
by Michelle Nedboy
I remember wearing itchy Old Navy jeans that I hated to school and burning holes into them every time I dove or slid on the playground’s wood chips, or in the school’s warm glossy gym. I remember that playground, with the two (or was it three?) red slides in the middle that stretched out like octopus legs, and we’d stand at the top of them and try to eat the tree leaves that dangled over our heads, like we were dinosaurs. And we would suck the little bits of honey out of the white honeysuckles that grew in and out of The Fence that ran between us and somebody else’s yard; we did it because we thought it would “refuel” us during an aggressive game of tag. I remember being told by the playground monitors not to do that because they might’ve been sprayed with pesticides, and how none of us ever listened. And there was the dog, a brown boxer, on the other side of The Fence, with a collar, and one of the girls in my grade thought they were lost, even though they clearly weren’t, and ordered all the other kids to take note of the collar’s number and to “look” for the owner. I remember the dead mouse under the radiator, some kids disgusted, some intrigued, others absolutely saddened now that they had seen death; we named it Mickey, to be funny and because it was our “pet.” One year my best friend threw up on the playground and it became an awful “rumor” that spread like wildfire. Kids can be so mean. The throw up looked like egg yolk and Jordan had to go home, and I remember feeling guilty that I too found it disgusting, and that I didn’t do my part in sticking up for her. Kids didn’t like her. They called her fat and stupid behind her back and I didn’t know what to do. I loved her for all the fun we had. We both loved SpongeBob, we’d act out entire episodes at recess, word for word. I remember us kicking a basketball through rain left on the blacktop, and naming the basketball “Porky” because of the spits of water that’d shoot off of it, like porcupine spikes. We gave life to a lot of things. The giant rock behind one of the older playsets and that sat against another, less popular section of The Fence. We would sacrifice littler rocks to it and stuff them wherever we could, amongst the weeds and the bent wiring. We would wrap pipe cleaners around popsicle sticks and call them “wormies” and show them off during Show & Tell to a confused audience. During games of dodgeball, at afterschool, we’d go up to the gym and stay in the back, avoiding the actual game. When we were seven we rushed into the bathroom together and pecked each other on the lips because we were curious and because we were kids. One time, we decided to sneak out at night and to meet up in the village (I’d take my trike with the red wagon attached to it). That night I lay in my bed thinking about it and promising myself that I’d do it, though I didn’t. The next day, when our classes passed each other in the hallway, we came clean, relieved that the other had done the same and had stayed home.
Then we moved back to the city. I was promised a cat to get over the shock—the apartment was stuffy and only had one bathroom, so that was a big fat lie. It was such a betrayal. At my grandma’s, before the first day of school, because the apartment was still being moved into and she lived across the street, I stayed up watching America’s Funniest Home Videos, which she thought barbaric. I went to school the next day, P.S. 40, wearing black and white plaid and jeans. I thought I had to be tough, but the kids were nicer here, and now I was the scrappy one. I detested the move for a while. During Music, when we sang “Fifty Nifty United States,” at the end when we went, “in our calm objective opinion... New York is the be-e-st! of the Fifty Nifty...” I would always say New Jersey. It was horrible. I eventually got around though. The blizzard of 2010, with kids sledding down the stairs in sleds they’d bought from the grocery store, how everything turned brown in only a few hours, how it looked like genetically corrupted cookie dough. I remember how cold my feet felt, after walking through piles of snow, and the fort we made, how I was having fun and putting some distance between this me and the me that had cried for two whole weeks, in the beginning. I remember the feeling of sweat rolling down my neck and into my armpits as I’d put on my gi for Karate during afterschool (they called it Wingspan here); I was the oldest, being in the fifth grade, and there were two girls much younger than me who always took too long in the bathroom, and they reminded me of myself and of Jordan. I remembered, sadly, how I was bullied out of that tight friendship, by a girl named Arlene. She was awful. Evil. She came out of nowhere, and she would always say the meanest things about Jordan behind her back. I was older then and wanted to stand up for her, but everything I said, about how Arlene was a total two-face, was reshaped into me being jealous, unable to share. What?! WHAT. When Jordan’s little sister got poison ivy on a class field trip, and Jordan was crying, Arlene made it so she looked sorry. Then, once Jordan left to dry her face and to get a cup of water, she turned to me and called Jordan’s sister stupid, that she had deserved it for not following directions. She did this all the time. Waited until I was alone with her and then told it all to me like it was nothing, like I agreed. I defied her, but she had me. I was so gullible, and now, Jordan saw me as needy and whiny and insecure, like I couldn’t ever imagine her with another friend. Before we moved, I told Jordan about how I’d be leaving, during lunch, and she might’ve been sad, but it wasn’t really shown. I felt devastated, like I wanted to cry, but couldn’t.
But back to my new school, with my new friends. I remember how cool and free I’d feel once out of my gi and playing in the school’s courtyard, the occasional misplaced glove from recess buried into a dirty corner; we’d stand over one of the giant grates and stare down into the mess of pencils, toys, rocks and sticks, money, stickers, bracelets and pieces of paper and homework thrown down there. I remember hearing the fourth graders (who respected me and became half of my friend group; the others were girls, in fourth and third grade) curse and flip each other off because one of them called the others’ moms fat. Their faces turned pink with rage, and they spat when they spoke. I remember the roach that was in my shoe after Karate and how I screamed and fled and felt violated by mother nature. Then, nearby, my best friend and I would get cookies at our pizza place; they were huge, flat, and burnt a little on the edges, their softer middles dipping into themselves. I learned one day how she was adopted, like me, but that she didn’t really wanna talk about it. I’d go over to her house on 19th street, right behind the school, and feed her turtles (in the backyard, with the fake grass and the little circular pool) and swing on her swing set. Her babysitter, twenty-six and her friend’s older sister, gave high fives when we farted and walked us through the excruciating pain of giving birth, even though she’d never done it. She told us to imagine the shape of a tinnnny lemon (she formed a tight O with her thumb and pointer finger, and squinted through it) and then a bowling bowl pushing through it. Awful. We played, made her Barbies have sex, traded Scooby-Doo fruit snacks and giggled over trading a “Velma for a Velma.” I remember climbing up into her “tree house” that seemed to lean on old wooden pieces and grow out of the neighbor’s tall wooden fence, and we’d sit and spy on their small little backyards with their metal tables and weeds and warm outside lights, and we’d dare each other to go and climb down into one of them; we’d imagine how we’d do it, by climbing along the wall that separated them from the other neighbors and dropping ourselves down, though it’d be like the subway and there’d be no way out; so we never did it, but we imagined.