CHAPTER 10 -WHERE DO FEELINGS GO?

Photo by Roberto Sorin on Unsplash

I spent kindergarten trying to shine in the eyes of my pretty teacher, Mrs. Johnson. When Mrs. Johnson thought I was a sweet girl, I was a sweet girl. 

I was a lot like a dog. A joyous giddiness exploded in me as we approached the school on the yellow bus. Mrs. Johnson would be at the door, greeting everyone. She was tall, with a bun the size of a grapefruit, often in a dress with bright flowers. Her eyes sparkled with eyeshadow, and her eyeliner flipped up at the edge way more than my mom's. She looked like a fashion model to me. 

During nap time, all that serotonin became melatonin. I'd put my blanket on the cold tile floor near her desk and fall into slumber whether or not I wanted to. 

At the end of the day, when Mrs. Johnson put us on the bus, I'd scramble to find a seat on her side so I could wave as we drove away. 

One day, during coloring, I drew a picture for her. I had been experimenting with drawing - without a coloring book, on my own. Pavel had shown me how to do bunnies. 

It came out great. I thought. It had everything: bunnies, flowers, a rainbow, and Mrs. Johnson and her bun holding my hand. We both had smiles with cross-hatched teeth. 

Mom picked me up from school that day. After a weird moment of disjunction, of seeing my gorgeous mother out of place, I ran and showed her the picture I had made for Mrs. Johnson.  

 "Wonderful, Vanda. Why don't you go give it to her?" 

Mrs. Johnson was helping the kids onto the bus. I stalled. The stakes seemed so high. But I loved her so much, and my abject enthusiasm won out. I ran through my fear and handed it to her. 

"I made it for you," I said, staring at her like a small serial killer. A halo of sun radiated from behind her bun. 

"Oh, Vanda, it's beautiful!" She crouched down to look at it with me. "It's a gorgeous work of art."

I pointed out who was who. 

"I'm tickled," she nudged me with her elbow and leaned toward me. Warmth flooded my heart. 

The following year, I had Mrs. Adams for first grade. Mom told me she liked Pavel, so I was hopeful. 

She was old, with grey hair and no make-up on her pinpoint eyes. 

She had been a nun, and I imagine now she was so old she remembered when mortification of the flesh with whips was a thing.

The new system at school was that teachers couldn't lay a hand on us. Instead, Mrs. Adams crept up alongside our distracted brains and smacked our desks with a ruler. She was nothing at all like Mrs. Johnson, right across the hall.

The desks were alphabetized. From where I sat in the M's, I could lean my chair back and glimpse Mrs. Johnson's slender figure across the hall through the rectangular window in the door. A deep girl crush shot through me. 

One day, I finished my spelling test early. Then, an idea came to me like sunshine. I would draw a picture to win Mrs. Adams over. Using the back of the test, I went to work, my head near the paper, pushing the pencil into the thick pulp to draw heavy lines. I lost my mind in it the way you sometimes do --when you can be drooling and not even notice it.

Thwack. I jumped like in a horror movie, my eyes wide. 

"Miss Mikoloski” she barked. "You are not supposed to be drawing on the back of your spelling test. Your brother would never have done that." 

How could I have been so wrong? It was the exact opposite reaction I had wanted.

How do you process a 'fuck you' when you don't even know those words yet?

Around this time, I got grounded to my bedroom by my father for something I didn't do. He was sure I had dumped glue -white and runny- down the side of my vanity onto the frills on the bottom. Not only was he sure I had done it, but he was also sure I was lying about it. His accusation was a betrayal that landed like a sucker punch in my gut. I thought he was my buddy. 

"See, Dorothy?" Dad showed Mom how easy it was to get us to behave, diminishing her efforts. He wasn't drunk. He might have been hungover.

I sat on my bed, squeezing a doll's head from my stupid international doll collection. Extreme emotion spread from my stomach to my fingers. I ripped the traditional garb of the Polish peasant doll. It was a painfully gorgeous summer day. 

I looked down from my bedroom window to see my siblings, on horses and go-carts, damn near frolicking past my window. 

A few hours later, my father let me go outside. Bryan was with Jimmy and Joey Resczinski, nobody important, just neighbor kids. 

"Vanda Mary Monkey Face!" Bryan sang, taunting me as he screeched around the corner of the house on his go-cart. 

I wondered if my face looked like a monkey. I knew my chin was a little pointy. That could be what he meant. 

Joey was on roller skates. He made circles around me. Then he whipped a plastic beachball, hitting me square in the face. The shock caused the word 'Don't!' to come out of my mouth, and I cried the screwed-up-face cry I couldn't control. I wanted to stop, but I hadn't developed that muscle yet. I cried like a baby. 

"Baby. Look at the baby crying!" Joey said to Jimmy, and I felt his whole stupid family insulting mine. 

 Jimmy repeated, "Baby." 

 "I am not!" I exclaimed. My tears mixed with snot. 

Through that haze, my big brother put his finger at an awkward angle near Joey's face like a tough guy barking. Joey barked, too, but leaving. Bryan muscled it all without touching him, just with a power generated for my benefit. As Joey left our property, something ascended through my young body, a fluttering of wings, redemption, or love. It was so simple, the gesture, the finger. Bryan did that for me. A lightness rose to my head, and I knew then that someone could defend someone, be a hero. 

My hero stood next to me, watching the neighbor boys leave. My crying slowed, but with a life of its own, like the hiccups. Just when I thought I had finished, another one came. 

"C'mon, Van. We don't want to play with them anyway. They're stupid." Bryan spit out the word. 

Something felt so right inside for the first time in a long time. I felt a loyalty to Bryan that was absolute. Maybe that's what happens with a "fuck you" before you know the words "fuck you."