One time, p.5
One Time, page 5
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, really, that’s what I saw and what I wrote. You can read it if you want.”
I didn’t know what to make of it. I no longer had a deluge of words to pour forth. I think I said, merely, “Wow.”
“Yeah,” he said. “See ya later.”
Lasagna
My parents stood in the middle of the kitchen, flailing their arms this way and that. “Look,” Mom said. “More!” Casserole dishes and bowls lined the counter. “Lasagna, spaghetti—I can’t take it! I can’t eat any more pasta.”
“Maybe you should say something,” I suggested.
“To—?”
“To Antonio’s grandmother. Tell her we can’t eat all that.”
“Maybe you should say something,” Dad said.
“Oh no. I couldn’t.”
“I guess we’ll need to visit the Frails again.”
And so we did.
Miss Marlene:
Oh, my!
Miss Judy:
More lasagna—
Miss Marlene:
And spaghetti.
They blinked at each other.
Miss Judy:
We are going to get—
Miss Marlene:
So fat!
Miss Judy:
But thank you!
Miss Marlene:
So thoughtful!
The next day at school, when we heard Miss Judy calling out “Ciao!” and “Hello!” in the hallway, Miss Lightstone said, “That woman is so kind. Do you know what she brought the faculty today? A big pan of lasagna!”
“Lasagna?” Freddy asked. “What’s that?”
“You don’t know what lasagna is?” Margie said.
“Is that a crime?”
“No, I just meant—well, I thought most people would know what lasagna is.”
“Well, I don’t. So what is it?”
As we floundered around trying to explain lasagna, Miss Lightstone left the room and returned with a small square of lasagna on a paper plate. She displayed the sample as if it were a rare artifact.
Antonio turned to me but he didn’t say anything.
Renaldo added the word lasagna to the board, maybe to make Freddy feel better about not having known what it was. “La-zon-ya,” Renaldo said, rolling the syllables around in his mouth. “It’s a cool word.”
Images
“This time,” Miss Lightstone said, “choose one of the images and immerse yourself in it. Imagine you are there. Describe what you see and hear and feel. Write fast again, see what pops up.”
Audrey asked why we had to write fast. “Why can’t we write slowly?”
“Because your brain moves very fast and when you follow it, you can discover intriguing connections.”
“Or not,” Freddy said.
“Or not,” Miss Lightstone agreed. “Maybe your brain is sludge today. That’s okay. Describe the sludge.”
She was wearing a long, bright yellow skirt (“Do I look like a banana?” she had said when Ruby commented on its brightness), a deep purple blouse sprinkled with yellow curlicues, and orange flats. With her red hair, she seemed like a poster for radiance.
“Don’t overthink it,” Miss Lightstone said. “Just choose one that pops out at you.”
I had thought I’d choose the moon over the water, the mångata image, but then another one intrigued me. It was a painting of a wide expanse of tall green grass extending far into the distance. A narrow, winding road led to the horizon. It was a quiet painting in soft greens and browns and pale blues and grays.
“Remember, you are there. Describe the scene. How does it feel? What are you thinking? Why are you there? Five minutes. Fast. Ready? Go!” And off we went.
Out poured another deluge of words, easier to capture this time because I already knew the scene that I was going to describe. I wrote so fast my writing was barely legible. I imagined myself there on that winding road. The grass grew taller and taller as I walked. Soon enormous red flowers were blooming (these were not in the original painting). They dripped yellow pollen onto my head. Suddenly it was night. A white light lit up the sky. Was it the moon? Was it a pancake? A pancake?
When Miss Lightstone called “Time’s up!” I stared down at my paper. What had happened there? Where had the tall red flowers come from? The nighttime light? A pancake?
Around the room, others seemed either dazed or puzzled as they reread what they had written.
“That was weird,” Margie said. “My brain was humming.”
“Did I write this?” Arif asked.
Claire pouted. “I couldn’t make my brain or my hand move fast.”
Miss Lightstone walked around the room. “It looks as if most of you really got into that,” she said, stopping by Antonio’s desk, “and had deluges of words. Care to comment, Antonio?”
He said he had chosen the one with the tall green grass and the winding road. “The calm one,” he said, “with the pale colors, and I thought because it was a calm scene that I would be walking along there, all peaceful and content, but as I walked, enormous green stems shot into the air and were topped by velvety red blossoms and then this strange yellow light with an orange halo swept across the sky.”
He turned to me. Probably my mouth was hanging open.
Freddy said, “I had barely started when my mind jumped somewhere else completely—into another painting. Is that okay?”
“Of course it’s okay, Freddy,” Miss Lightstone said. “It’s not only okay, it’s imaginative.”
I had never seen Freddy look so pleased with himself.
“Maybe we could do it for ten minutes next time, instead of five?” Freddy said.
“Yeah,” Renaldo agreed. “You just get started in five minutes and then the time is up.”
“Ten or fifteen would be better than five,” Audrey said, blushing. “Well, I got into it. I was finally writing fast, and I started seeing things that weren’t in the painting. And you said we could fix these later, if we want, right?”
On Miss Lightstone’s face was the slightest smile. “Yes, you’ll have a chance to revise whatever you like.”
“What about the fictional family trees?” Antonio asked. “Are we still going to do those?”
Miss Lightstone glanced at the door while considering Antonio’s question. She seemed less enthusiastic about this idea than she had been when it was first suggested.
“I’m not sure. Let me think about it. Mm?”
Pancakes and Porcupines
That night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I remembered that one of the first conversations I had with Antonio was in our backyard, when he was looking for evidence of something he had seen during the night: a white light in the sky that changed from round to thin, like a pancake.
So that’s where that pancake had come from. I tried to remember what else he had described—there was something about giant red flowers—ah, yes, the flowers dripping yellow pollen.
It was unnerving to think that what he had seen was now so embedded in my brain that it felt, when I was writing in class, that I was seeing it, too, without any recollection that the scene had come from Antonio. It was also unnerving that we had chosen the same word (deluge) on the first day of writing experiments and the same image on this day and seen such similar scenes in our minds.
I tossed and turned. I couldn’t sleep. Such a tangle of thoughts and images rolled around in my head.
The next morning, I was groggy. From the kitchen window, I saw a porcupine eating licorice—the red, whippy kind.
I poured cereal into two bowls and put them on the table.
Mom said, “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, absolutely.” I poured us each a glass of juice.
“Do you mind if I don’t eat the birdseed?”
“What?” I glanced at the contents of her bowl. “Oops.”
“Maybe you should go back to bed, Gina.”
“Yes, maybe I should.”
I slept all day.
Fictional Trees
One misty, foggy day, after we’d had tests in several other classes, Arif asked Miss Lightstone if we could finally do fictional family trees in her class. She seemed distracted and less energetic than usual, but asked Arif to put an example on the board, a template that others could follow.
At the board, he tapped his fingers against his legs for a minute. “This is just an example, right?” He didn’t wait for anyone to answer but instead, in meticulous printing, he offered this suggestion:
Arif turned and faced us, grinning. “Well, okay,” he said, “you can see the problems there: people of different time periods and ages; names mixed up. Would J. K. Rowling have been J. K. White? Would Bruce Springsteen have been Bruce Picasso?”
“Wait,” Margie said. “So in that example, are you saying that your mother is J. K. Rowling and your father is Bruce Springsteen?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got one,” Renaldo said, joining Arif at the board. “This one is with titles, not names.”
Ruby elbowed Renaldo and Arif aside. “Maybe you don’t turn out to be what your parents and grandparents are or were.” She wrote:
Freddy raced to the board. “Okay, okay, then, what about this?”
“See?” Freddy said. “You might be nothing like your parents or grandparents. You could be anything.”
I used to think that I would like to try many different jobs, each one for six months or a year, like waitress and teacher and heart surgeon and cashier and even coal miner because what would that be like, being down inside the earth, making tunnels while people above go on with their everyday lives? But then I realized that it would take years to become a surgeon, say, or a teacher, and it would take many more years to become really good at what you do, so I couldn’t just try on all these jobs for a few months at a time.
I used to think it would be fun to be a singer or actor or athlete—something where you could entertain people, cheer them up or soothe them. But then people might be bugging you and trying to be your friend even if they weren’t nice or sincere and you would have no privacy and couldn’t just go to the store when you wanted or get angry at someone in public and you might always be worrying if you were a good enough singer or actor or athlete.
And what if What could you be? didn’t have anything at all to do with your job? What if it meant what kind of person you would be and what contributions you could or would make to the wider world around you?
I looked around the room. Why couldn’t we all do noble things, important things? Why wouldn’t we?
Why wouldn’t I?
My own attempt at a fictional family tree resulted in many erasures because I could not decide what I might want to become.
Antonio also seemed frustrated. At last, he went to the board and drew a giant question mark.
“It was harder than I thought,” he said.
For the rest of the class period, he remained silent and appeared preoccupied.
At lunch, I stood behind him in line. “Maybe,” I said, “the less you know about your ancestors, the more free you would be to become anyone or anything.”
He thought a minute. “But if you had too much choice—”
“Sometimes that is harder than too little choice. Isn’t that what Miss Lightstone said?”
Who would he be?
Who could I be?
Predictions
Audrey, who was stick thin and white-pale and who had a soft heart and almost always wore light blue clothing, timidly approached Miss Lightstone one morning and said, “I didn’t think redheads, like us, could wear that—that—orange color.”
Miss Lightstone said, “Here is a secret: We redheads can wear any color we like. We can wear purple or black or aquamarine or carmine red or pink or yellow or any old color we like. Isn’t that brilliant?” She smoothed her orange polka-dotted skirt and her orange blouse.
Audrey nodded appreciatively, taking in this revelation.
“And,” Miss Lightstone continued, quietly, “blondes can wear any color they like, and brunettes can and even gray-haired people can, too.” She looked to the left and right as if she were revealing secrets and did not want to be overheard.
Audrey’s mouth opened. Later, it closed.
Freddy asked if we could do fictional family trees again.
Miss Lightstone again looked left and right and whispered, “Yes. Not graded.”
It felt grand, like a little mutiny.
At lunch, amid a clump of other students, Margie asked, “Well, what would I be or what could I be? I am having a hard time with that, even when I imagine that my grandfather was a king and my mother was an actress—”
Arif joined in. “Right. You wouldn’t necessarily be like them at all.”
Renaldo: “Or maybe, like if your father was a king, you would have to be a prince and later a king and you wouldn’t have any choice, would you?”
Freddy: “Unless you defected. You could defect.”
Margie repeated, mournfully, “What could I be?”
Antonio, who had been listening quietly, locked eyes with Margie and said, “You are very curious and you will make great discoveries about the moon.”
In the quietest of voices, Margie said, “Me?”
“What about me, Antonio?” Arif asked. “What could I be?”
Antonio nodded, considering. “You will make great discoveries about our planet.”
Freddy scoffed. “So is everyone going to make great discoveries, Antonio?”
“No,” Antonio said. “You, for instance, will be celebrated for other reasons.”
“Like being an actor? Like I wrote on the board?”
Others gathered round, curious about Antonio’s “game,” and a chorus of “Me? What about me? What could I be?” followed.
We learned that Ruby could—or would—work with animals and that Audrey (who had thus far not exhibited any musical ability) would be a singer. Renaldo would be a comedian or a teacher.
“A teacher?” Renaldo said. “Me?” He stood, hands on hips. “All right, everybody, listen up! Pay attention! We are never, ever having any more tests!”
More students gathered around asking, “Me?” Antonio studied each one briefly and then quietly but firmly announced his prediction.
Claire, who had been listening with a smirk on her face said, “So, everyone is going to be important. Everyone is going to be so—so—special.” She glanced around at Antonio’s audience. “Right,” she added sarcastically.
“Not everyone,” Antonio said, looking pointedly at Claire, who instantly deflated.
“That’s mean,” Claire said.
“Not intended to be mean—not everyone wants to be seen as important or special. Some people want to move along peacefully and quietly, without being slotted into any one mold.”
Claire did not know what to make of this explanation. She stood up from the table and said, “If I want to be important or special, I will be.”
At the end of the school day, as everyone was gathering books and jackets, Antonio stopped me.
“And you,” he said, “why were you so quiet at lunch?”
“I was listening.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t ask me what you could or would be.”
“And why not?” I expected him to feign horror, to tell me that my future could or would be too awful to contemplate.
He leaned toward me. He had the blackest eyes. He said, “Because you are a mystery.”
“Good,” I said.
Komorebi and Pasta
September and its train of warm days and nights had vanished, and into its place crept the cooler days and cold nights of October. Trees blazed orange and gold and red, and nearly every day when the sun filtered through those leaves, I stopped to acknowledge komorebi. I was not alone in that. At the bus stop, inevitably someone would point out the light through nearby trees and the dancing shadows on the ground.
“Komorebi—over there!”
“Komorebi!”
Soon the winds of November would arrive and send the leaves flying. Was there a word for that? Cascade? Deluge? Neither was quite right. The word needed to combine the cold, the wind, the whirling leaves.
At home, Dad kicked the furnace and shouted unmentionable words at it. We struggled to close stuck windows, accompanied by more unmentionable words from Dad.
“Do not listen,” he said. “Do not use these words. These are words only for frustrated older people.”
The weekly parade of pasta creations from the grandmother next door continued, despite my parents’ attempts to stop them.
“Maybe you’re not forceful enough,” I suggested. “What did you say to her, Dad?”
“I said that her pasta was delicious, but that it was too much for us. She said, ‘Nonsense! You can never have too much pasta.’ She sounds just like Auntie Pasta.”
“Maybe you need to say we are getting too fat.”
“I tried that. She pinched my stomach and said, ‘Well, only a little, but the povera Gina, she needs more fat on her!’”
We snuck portions out of the house to take to the Frails, but they no longer seemed so enchanted with our offerings.
“Oh, more—”
“Pasta.”
“How very—”
“Very—”
“Um, generous—”
“And thoughtful—”
“But really there are others—”
“Yes, others who would benefit—”
“From your exceedingly generous—”
