Burden of the Soul

3.

Walking through the hall to my locker after class felt like floating. People bumped into me every few seconds, but I didn’t care. I just kept walking forward, my mind still back in the darkroom.

“What happened to you?”

And suddenly my feet were firmly planted back on the floor at the sound of Alli’s voice. She was standing in front of my locker with Scott. I tried to regain some element of composure, not wanting to spill every detail of my art class adventure in front of him. Every now and then I got the feeling he liked me, and though I didn’t want to encourage it I certainly didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Nothing. Just excited about tonight, is all,” I said, opening my locker and stuffing books into my bag even though it was unlikely I would get to any homework that evening.

Alli raised an eyebrow obviously not buying my excuse, but then she seemed to realize our additional audience and let it drop.

“Okay, so we’ll see you at 7, right? Do you want me to come over earlier?” Her eyes traveled to my locker at the exact moment I was pulling my math book out to add to my bag.

“You can come over whenever, I guess,” I said. “Well, I have to do some cleaning before or my mom won’t let anyone in, so maybe just come at 7.”

“No problem. See you later!”

Allison turned and started walking toward room 222 where Chapter 11 met. Scott stalled for a moment, his hand raising and lowering from his pocket to the back of his neck. He let out a slight laugh and shook his head. He seemed to be struggling with something, his mouth opening a couple times but never forming any words.

“What’s up, Scott?” I closed my locker and swung the weighted bag over my shoulder.

He took a deep breath in and then exhaled. Generally, Scott always looked panicked or droopy, but for the first time I saw the shade determination took in his eyes. His jaw clenched as he drew in a breath.

“Clara, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about…” His voice dropped off immediately as a guy passing knocked right into his shoulder and threw him back a foot. The guy apologized but the two girls he was walking with laughed. The shade drained out of Scott’s eyes and his shoulders went back to their normal, downward curve.

“What is it, Scott?”

“Nothing. I’ll see you later.”

He turned, his hands now in his pockets and his shoulders drooping forward pulling at the weight of his backpack, and headed down the hall after Alli.

It was a weird exchange, but that was Scott. I turned in the opposite direction swerving in and out of groups of students hanging out in the halls or stashing books back in their lockers. As I rounded the corner I heard laughing and watched out of the corner of my eye as Jason leapt up and pulled down a large paper banner covered in colorful, acrylic paints announcing the upcoming Homecoming dance.

He balled it up and then chucked it at a group of ninth grade girls coming out of the ladies bathroom just a few feet away from him.

I got out of the school, half carried by the swarm of students spilling out onto the sidewalk and saw both Mom and Aunt Grace across 94 Street waiting for me.

Aunt Grace’s eyes scanned the crowd looking for something, or someone.

“He’s not there,” I said, tucking under Mom’s outstretched arm.

“Another day then,” she said with a wink. Mom gently punched her in the shoulder to show her disapproval and we set off walking east toward the park.

We walked south on the winding paths under archways of trees, maneuvering our way through groups of tourists stopping to have their picture taken. Sunlight broke through the trees casting lattice-like shadows across the cement path and the three of us talked mostly of school. I answered their questions as best I could without revealing too much, but giving enough that they were both satisfied and interested.

“How about you, Aunt Grace? Where have you been these past few months?”

Mom’s chin jerked out at the question, but she didn’t turn to look at Aunt Grace.

“Bouncing around Europe mostly. Spent some time traveling around Ireland. Nothing fancy. Just pints of Guinness and rowdy crowds, mostly.”

“It sounds great though. I can’t wait to travel. I would love to see Ireland one day,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the two of them share a glance. Mom’s arm wrapped around me and pulled at my backpack.

“Here, I’ll carry that for a bit. This must kill your back,” she said.

We made our way to the Conservatory Pond and took a seat next to the famous Alice in Wonderland statue. Aunt Grace stood after less than a minute of sitting and turned to look around, seeming a bit antsy.

I was watching younger kids climb up and over the various bronze mushrooms, or attempt to sit on the Mad Hatter’s hat. A woman with frizzy red hair shooed people out of the way as she pulled a small digital camera out of her fanny pack. “Brittany, get up next to Alice and… excuse me, I’m trying to take a photo… could you back up for just a… Brittany, I said next to Alice.”

“Honey, do you remember what happened to Alice?” Mom’s voice was soft and slow. It’s how she used to speak to me as a child.

“You mean in the book, or what’s happening to her right now?” My response to her question brought on a laugh from both of us. We turned to watch Brittany make her way down from Alice’s head.

Aunt Grace was standing a few feet away from the bench shifting her weight between her feet on and off again as she rotated slowly, taking in our surroundings. She paused halfway through her orbit and stopped to stare at the woman directing Brittany. “I’ll be back, I have to pee,” she said, taking off in the direction of the public restrooms across the pond, but right through the path of the woman’s lens.

“Excuse me, Miss?” The woman seemed annoyed at this point having finally gotten the young girl where she wanted her in relation to Alice.

“Oh, shut up,” said Aunt Grace, still on the move. The woman’s jaw dropped and she turned back and forth to look for a response from anyone surrounding her, but there was no sympathy to be found. It was New York.

“I mean in the story,” said Mom. An image of the tattered red hardcover flipped through my mind.

“Sure. She had a bad day, ended up in Wonderland, and everything turned out aces in the end.”

Brittany’s Mom had gotten her photo and now another mom had taken her spot in front of the statue directing her children where to stand on Alice, and bystanders where to stand out of frame.

“And she felt really lost and confused at times, right?” Her arm was laying across the back of the bench and created a nook for me to fit next to her, though I left a few inches of negative space between us. I leaned away and toward the edge of the bench out of her line of questioning. I looked at her sideways across my shoulder and tried to read her expression.

“Riiiiiight?” We had read Alice in Wonderland a lot, but I had never been quizzed on it before.

“Alice changed sizes and felt strange. When the Caterpillar asked her who she was, she said she didn’t know anymore.” She was dragging the sentences out and looking at Alice’s frozen figure as yet another person, this time a teenage girl, took her turn telling her friends to climb the mushrooms, and one to give the Mad Hatter a kiss.

She finally turned to me with an apologetic shade in her eyes. “All I’m saying is that sometimes that can happen in life, not just in books, you know? Sometimes we feel like everything is suddenly unfamiliar and nothing seems to make sense and we get lost in that. But the best thing to do is just keep going and trust that our heart knows the way.”

Confusion sat between us on the bench. My brain was playing a game of Red Light/Green Light with her voice and right then it was Red Light.

“Like the Caterpillar,” she started again. “Every caterpillar will eventually go into its cocoon and later come out a butterfly, but it doesn’t really know what’s going on or why it’s different, but something deep inside the caterpillar knows it’s what has to happen and that it’s for the best.”

Then it hit me.

“Ah, Mom. You have got to be kidding me. Didn’t we already have this talk years ago? Besides, health class will fill in the blanks, I promise.”

The light came back to her eyes and she laughed, placing her hand on the back of my head and letting her fingers burrow through my hair.

“It’s because Aunt Grace was teasing me, right? I don’t even know him, Mom.”

She laughed again.

“It’s not that, it’s just…,” her voice trailed off and she peered at me with a faraway look in her eye, nearly nostalgic. She blinked a few times and then chuckled again. “Well, if health class misses any gaps, maybe we’ll just go ahead and let your Aunt Grace take care of those. I bet your Dad would love that.”

When Grace made it back, we got up and started making our way through the park following Mom through the Ramble, past Belvedere Castle and on until we made it to the main road.

Runners and bikers zipped by us. We passed the tennis courts and ball fields, and then finally Mom veered right down a narrow path.

“Come check this out, Clara,” she said. We headed down the path a few steps when I noticed Aunt Grace was sitting down on a bench.

“Aunt Grace, you coming?”

“Nah,” she said, leaning back on the bench with an arm extended along the back and a leg crossing the other. “I’ve already been down that path, and besides…I like the view from here.” Her head turned slowly as two guys wearing “Columbia University” t-shirts and really short shorts ran by.

The dirt path led us under bowing trees casting shadows of dancing leaves under our feet where the sunlight was able to bleed through. Runners and walkers crisscrossed in front of us along a wider dirt path bathed in light. The blue sky and East Side skyline of rising columns in earth tones of beach sand and red clay grew upward as our feet began to climb, lowering the horizon with each step. And there, in front of me, it rolled out like a reflection of the sky above it, rippling with shades of silver and blue across the water’s surface and glimmering with each small wave carried by the wind.

“This is the Reservoir, Clara.”

“I know, Mom. I walk by it every day.”

Alli and I walked around its northern curve every morning on our way to school, but in that moment I realized I had never actually stopped to look at it before. In all my visits to the park while growing up, it was only ever a background image along whatever path I was following. Now, as I looked at it straight on, it seemed intimidating and ominous. A quiet yet massive presence guarded by the green cover of the park’s wooded areas.

I moved to step toward the steel fence barricading the huge lake from the rest of the city, but Mom grabbed my shirt and yanked me back out of the way of oncoming foot traffic—a guy dripping sweat running with head phones hanging from his ears. I smelled salt as he ran by. With her hand on the crook of my neck, Mom led me across the path to the fence, weaving to avoid a woman pushing a stroller.

I had seen the Hudson River before and even the Atlantic Ocean nearby, but this water looked so different, and darker, stuck behind bars of ornamental cast-iron. The fence was pretty, but it was a steel cage. I grabbed two bars with my hands, looking at the water and the small dots of people running on its other side.

“You know, I’ve never understood why they have a fence around it.”

“It’s there to protect everyone, hon. To keep people out. And keep it… in.” Her voice lowered and drifted away into the breeze that blew across us. She turned her body sideways to face me and leaned her shoulder into a free space in the fence.

“Why not let people use it? People are always rowing boats and stuff in the pond down by the fountain.”

“Well this isn’t just a pond,” said Mom. She turned her head from me and was looking at the water as she spoke. “It used to be a lot more.”

“Like what?”

She blinked a few times struggling for words, or changing the direction of her thoughts. “Well, it used to be the water supply for everyone in the city, so it needed to be kept safe. And then…,” her voice and eyes wandered off again. It was getting irritating. I could tell there was something she wanted to say but wouldn’t.

“Mom, it’s water. Seriously.”

She turned to look at me. I half expected her to laugh as she usually did when I got impatient or a tad snotty. The tone in my voice hadn’t been the height of a respectful teen. But instead, she wore the same look of nostalgia and sadness that had tainted her expression back on the bench. She began again, looking like she was going to say something, but then seemed to chicken out.

“I guess it doesn’t matter.” She turned back to the Reservoir, her eyes wandering away. “Now it’s just locked up.”

She looked longingly at the water’s surface, though I couldn’t tell why. It seemed silly, for her to show this sort of emotion over something that couldn’t be all that important. After all, we had been coming to the park for years. We lived across the street from it. She had never shown this sort of emotion for it before.

I watched her as she watched the water, the sunlight reflecting with a single sparkle like glitter off her eyes, glazed over with thought. She broke the gaze and looked down at me with her warm palm against my cheek.

“One day,” she said with a smile. “One day.”