Through My Brothers's Eyes (continued 1)

 

The lady in the blue dress was startled when I walked in.  She jerked her head up and scowled at me. I closed the door and heard it bang shut, and felt the door’s interior latch click loudly. I stood silently for a brief second as everyone in the classroom gawked at me. I kept my attention focused on the lady in the blue dress, trying not to be distracted by all the staring white faces. Then I slowly trudged the long distance from the door to where she sat, the deafening sound of my own steps echoing back at me. I clung desperately to the large brown envelope which identified who I was. When I finally made it to her desk I handed her the documents. That was when I noticed the dark palm prints on it made by the sweat from my hands. The lady in the blue dress hesitated a moment before reaching out to take the envelope from me.

She didn’t say anything and the look in her eyes didn’t reveal her inner feelings. She opened the envelope and read for a moment. I stood silently, not knowing what to do with my hands or my eyes. Finally she raised her head from the papers she had extracted from the envelope and said, “You must be Mr. Arthur Miller.” I stood frozen, a thousand eyes staring at me--no, staring through me. I tried desperately not to notice the rows of kids sitting right in front of me, but their presence hung heavily around me. The lady in the blue dress sat stiffly in her chair, behind an old wooden desk that had piles of papers and books stacked in one corner. A green ink blotter lay haphazardly in the middle of the desk. It had odd doodles and pencil scratches from earlier usage. She tried a tight smile but it came from her lips, not from her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m Arthur Miller.” I tried to smile back at her, but from her reaction I knew I must have grimaced.

“Are you okay?” Her alarm was evident as she quickly backed away from me, her smile immediately draining from her face. “You look like you might be sick. You’re not going to throw up on me, are you?” Disgusted. That was how she looked. Disgusted, disgusted with me.

“No, ma’am. I’m fine,” I quickly answered, embarrassed as much by how loud she was as by what she said. The kids in the classroom started giggling, and I knew they were giggling at me. There must have been 25 or 30 of them seated in five rows of desks in the room. I decided not to look at any of them; looking past the lady in the blue dress seemed a safer place to stare. Just as the giggling began to end, a loud retching sound exploded from the back of the room, splintering the air like the menacing bark of an angry dog. It caused the giggling to start again, but this time in earnest. The laughter came in waves and crept inside me, mocking me. I stood alone in the crowded room not knowing what to do or where to go. The lady in the blue dress had turned from me and was looking down at the folder that had my name on it, not acknowledging the giggling and noise that was so obvious to me. She did not offer me a place to hide, so I tried to disappear like the invisible man. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them I’d be someplace else, some place where everything was safe and familiar. I wanted to be any place, any place but here. I waited and wished it to be so. But when I slowly opened my eyes again I was still there, in that strange classroom that smelled like old cheese, with that lady in the drab blue dress sitting in front of me, in a room crowded with strangeness, and I knew I was still there because I saw my feet through my squinted eyes and heard the giant tick tock of the school clock on the wall. I was standing by myself very much alone. I waited silently, praying to be invisible.

After what seemed like an eternity, the giggling ended. It was only then that she spoke again. “Seems you have very high test scores...math… reading…Not bad, not bad. But--” she hesitated, and glanced towards me but without seeing me. She had a look in her eyes that I couldn’t read. “I wonder how you’ll do here.” She had cigarette-stained teeth that were revealed by her counterfeit smile. The lady in the blue dress kept smiling. I wasn’t certain if it was a threat, a challenge, unbelief, or what. But with no other choice I stood up straight, something I had forgotten to do until that moment. Mom and Dad’s admonition to always stand straight ricocheted around my brain, their words demanding a strength I never knew I needed. I looked at the kids and the lady in the blue dress with the disgusted look on her face and cigarette-stained teeth and wondered, “How on earth can I fit in?” They all looked at me. I was in their territory. I was the outsider, the new kid, and everyone knew it.

"To be continued..."