A Different Blue

Chapter Five





“When the ancient Romans would conquer a new place or a new people, they would leave the language and the customs in tact – they would even let the conquered people rule themselves in most cases, appointing a governor to maintain a foothold in the region.” Wilson leaned against the whiteboard as he spoke, his posture relaxed, his hands clasped loosely.

“This was part of what made Rome so successful. They didn't try to make everyone Romans in the process of conquering them. When I went to Africa with the Peace Corp, a woman who worked with the Corp said something to me that I have often thought about since. She told me 'Africa is not going to adapt to you. You are going to have to adapt to Africa.' That is true of wherever you go, whether it's school or whether it's in the broader world.

“When I moved to the States at sixteen, I had my eyes opened to the differences in our language, and I had to adapt to America. I couldn't expect people to understand me or make allowances for the differences in our language and culture. Americans may speak English, but there are regional accents and phrases, different spellings, different terminology for almost everything. I remember the first time I asked someone on campus if they had a fag. It's a good thing I didn't get pounded. In Blighty, a fag is a cigarette, and I was going through a stage where I fancied smoking. I thought it made me look older and sophisticated, see.”

“What's Blighty?” someone asked amid the snickers that had erupted when Wilson said fag.

“Blighty is a nickname for Britain. We have nicknames and phrases that would make absolutely no sense at all to any of you. In fact you might need a translater for a while if you lived in London for any length of time, just like I did when I came here. Luckily, I had a couple mates that looked out for me at Uni. I've had years to become Americanized, but I find that old habits die hard, so I thought you might like to hear some British slang. That way if I slip and say something wonky, you'll have an idea of what I'm referring to.

“For instance, in Britain we call an attractive girl a fit bird. It works for blokes as well. You might say that's a dishy bloke or a dishy bird. We would also say scrummy – which I suppose comes from the word scrumptious. Food is scrummy, naps are scrummy, books are scrummy. You get the idea. And if we like something we say we fancy it. If you fancy a scrummy bird you see at a do or a party, you might try to chat her up or flirt with her. If I were to call you a twit or a tosser I would be calling you an idiot or a jerk. If I were to say you looked smart, I would be referring to your clothing, not your intelligence. If you're daft or nutters or barmy it means you're crazy. And if someone is brassed off or cheesed off in England, it means they're fed up or angry. Not pissed, mind you, that means drunk. We don't say trash or garbage, we say rubbish. And, of course, we swear differently, although we have adopted many of the curse words your mother would object to.”

“You say bloody and bugger and blast, right?” someone volunteered from the back of the room.

“Among other things.” Wilson tried to keep a straight face as he continued.

“We don't 'call' our chums on the phone, we give them a ring or a bell. We also don't have hoods and trunks on our cars, we have bonnets and boots. We don't have bars, we have pubs. We don't have vacumns, we have hoovers, and an umbrella is a brolly. Which, by the way, you must have in England. It's cold, and it's wet. After spending two years in Africa, the thought of going back to Manchester was not appealing. I discovered I loved the sun in large doses. So, although I will always consider myself an Englishman, I don't think I'll ever live in England again.”

“Tell us some more!” Chrissy giggled.

“Well, if something is ace or brill it means it is cool or awesome,” Wilson added. “If I were in London, I might greet you by saying 'All right?' And you would respond with 'All right?' It basically means 'What's up?' or 'Hello, how are you?' and it doesn't demand a response.”

Immediately, the whole class started asking each other 'All right?' with terrible British accents, and Mr. Wilson continued over the top of the chaos, raising his voice a little to rein the class back in.

“If something is wonky or dodgy, it means it's not right, or it feels suspicious. Your latest score on your test may strike me as a bit dodgy if you have failed all of your previous exams.

“In Yorkshire, if someone says you don't get owt for nowt, they would mean, you don't get anything for nothing . . . or you get what you pay for. If I tell you to chivvy along, it means I want you to hurry, and if I tell you to clear off, it means I want you to get lost. If someone is dim they're stupid, if something is dull it's boring. A knife isn't dull, mind you. It's blunt, so get it right.” Wilson smiled out at the rapt faces of thirty students, rapidly taking notes on British slang. It was as if the Beatles had invaded America once more. I knew I was going to be hearing “chivvy along”, and “she's a fit bird”, in the hallways for the rest of the year.

Wilson was just warming up. “If you diddle someone, it means you ripped them off. If something is a doddle it means it's a cinch, or it's really easy. If you drop a clanger, it means you've stuck your foot in your mouth. Like asking a woman if she's up the duff, which means pregnant, to find out she's just a bit fat.”

The class was in hysterics by now, and it was all I could do not to laugh with them. It was like a different language. As different as Wilson was from all the boys I'd ever known. And it wasn't just they way he talked. It was him. His light and his intensity. And I hated him for it. I rolled my eyes and groaned and snarled whenever he asked me to participate. And he just kept his cool, which made me even more “brassed off.”

My irritation only increased as Wilson proceeded to introduce a “special visitor,” a blonde girl named Pamela who presented a power point on Roman architecture from her recent trip. Her last name was Sheffield, as in the Sheffield Estates – a popular hotel in Vegas that was designed to look like an English estate. Her family had apparently built the hotel that still bore her last name. Apparently they had hotels all over Europe. Pamela told us she had majored in International Hotel Management and traveled to all the different hotels owned by her family, one of which was near the Colosseum in Rome. She sounded exactly like Princess Diana when she talked, and she was elegant and glamorous and said words like “beastly” and “brilliant.” Wilson introduced her as his “friend from childhood,” but she looked at him like she was his girlfriend. It made more sense that he was in Boulder City if his girlfriend worked for the Sheffield Estates.

Pamela droned on about this or that stunning example of Roman ingenuity, and I despised her cool loveliness, her knowledge of the world, her obvious comfort with herself and her place in the universe, and I taunted her a little during her presentation. It was easy to see why Wilson would like her. She spoke his language, after all. It was one of youth and beauty, of success and entitlement.

In another time, she and Wilson would have been the conquering Romans, and I would have been a leader of one of the savage tribes that attacked Rome. What had Wilson called them? There were several. The Visigoths, the Goths, the Franks, and the Vandals. Or maybe I would be a Hun. Attila's girlfriend. I could wear a bone in my hair and ride an elephant.

In the end, the tribes had overrun Rome, pillaging it and burning it to the ground. That pleased me on some level. The underdogs rising up and conquering the conquerers. But if I was completely honest with myself, I didn't want to conquer Wilson. I just wanted his attention. And I got it in the most obnoxious ways. He usually was a fairly good sport about it, but the day Pamela came he held me after class.

“Miss Echohawk – hold up a minute.”

I groaned, falling back away from the door where I was steps away from making my exit. I got a few smirks from some of the other kids as they vacated the room. They all knew I was in trouble.

“I thought we discussed the Miss Echohawk thing,” I growled at him when the room had emptied around us.

Wilson started gathering up the papers littering the desks, pushing and straightening as he went. He didn't say anything to me but there was a deep furrow between his brows. He looked kind of . . . . . . pissed – the American definition.

“Am I missing something?” His voice was subdued, and when he finally looked up at me his eyes were troubled.

I tossed my hair and shifted my weight, popping one hip out the way we girls do when we're aggravated. “What do you mean?”

“Why are you so angry?”

His question surprised me, and I laughed a little. “This isn't angry,” I smirked. “This is just me. Get used to it.”

“I would really rather not,” he replied mildly, but he didn't smile. And I felt a stab of something close to remorse. I tamped the feeling down immediately. I shifted my weight again and looked away, communicating that I was done with this conversation.

“Can I go now?” I asked sharply.

He ignored me. “You don't like me. And that's all right. I had teachers I didn't much care for in school. But you are constantly looking for a fight . . . and I'm not sure I understand why. You were rude to Miss Sheffield today, and I was embarrassed for you and for her.”

“People like Miss Sheffield need to be given a hard time every once in a while. It's good for her. It'll toughen her up, help her grow hair on her chest, develop a little muscle,” I smirked.

“What do you mean, people like Miss Sheffield?”

“Come on, Wilson!” I moaned. “You know exactly what I mean. Haven't you ever noticed all the little groups, all the little cliques in your own classroom? Over here we have the athletes.” I walked to a grouping of desks on the back row. “Here we have the pom poms and the Prom Queens.” I pointed as I strolled. “The nerds usually congregate here. The bitchy girl – that'd be me – sits here. And the kids that don't have a clue who or what they are fill in all the spots in between. Maybe you don't recognize these little divisions because people like you and Miss Sheffield have your own status. People like you don't have a group because you float above the groups. You're from England. You should know all about class structure, right?”

“What in the world are you going on about?” Wilson cried out in frustration, and his obvious upset just spurred me on.

“Jimmy, the man who raised me, told me a story once,” I explained. “It goes right along with the whole tribal thing we've been talking about. Romans vs. Goths, vs. the Visigoths vs. everyone else. It's the reason people fight. It's an Indian legend his grandfather told him. He said Tabuts, the wise wolf, decided to carve many different people out of sticks. Different shapes, sizes, colors. He carved them all. Then the wise wolf put all the people he'd created into a big sack. He planned to scatter them all over the earth evenly, so every person he created would have a good place to live, plenty of space, plenty of food, and plenty of peace.

“But Tabuts had a younger brother named Shinangwav. Shinangwav, the coyote, was very mischievous and liked to cause trouble. When Tabuts, the wise wolf, wasn't looking, Shinangwav made a hole in the sack. So when the wise wolf tried to scatter them, instead of everyone getting their own little space, the people fell out in bunches.”

Wilson stood very still, his grey eyes trained on my face, and I realized I had his attention now, whether I wanted it or not.

“Jimmy said this explains why people fight. They don't have sufficient space, or maybe someone else fell on a better plot of ground, and we all want the land or possessions someone else got – simply by the luck of the draw. So we fight. You and Pamela are the same kind of people. You're from the same bunch,” I finished, defiant.

“What's that supposed to mean, Blue?” Wilson wasn't defiant. He looked upset, hurt even.

I shrugged tiredly, my anger fizzling like a leaky balloon. Wilson was a smart man. It wasn't exactly hard to decipher my meaning.

“But if we're all carved by the same wise wolf,” Wilson persisted, using the story to make his point, “why does it matter where we were scattered?”

“Because so many people suffer while others seem to have it so easy. And it doesn't make much more sense to me than that Indian legend.”

“So you're angry because of where you were scattered. And you're angry with me – and Pamela as well – because we grew up across the pond in a life of leisure and privilege.”

The way he summed it up made me sound prejudiced. But I kind of was, so maybe that was fair. I shrugged and sighed, and Wilson clasped his hands in front of him, his eyes earnest.

“None of us can help where we were scattered, Blue. But none of us has to remain where we were scattered. Why don't you focus on where you're going and less on where you come from? Why don't you focus more on what makes you brilliant and less on what makes you angry? You are missing a key element to the story. Maybe the moral of the legend is that we are all carved, created, and formed by a master hand. Maybe we are all works of art.”

I groaned. “Next you're going to tell me to just be myself and everyone will love me, right?”

“Love might be too strong a word,” Wilson retorted, dead pan. I snickered.

“I'm serious!” I argued, smiling in spite of myself. “All that stuff people say about just being yourself is complete–”

“Rubbish?”

“Yeah. Being yourself only works if you don't suck. If you do suck, definitely don't be yourself.”

It was Wilson's turn to groan, but I could tell he had forgiven me, and my heart softened the smallest degree.

“What was that 'Nobody' poem you quoted the other day? I think that is probably more accurate.”

“Dickinson's poem?” Wilson looked absolutely tickled that I'd remembered. And then he recited it, his eyebrows raised as if he was certain I couldn't be referring to Dickinson.



“I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us

Don't tell—they'd banish us, you know.”



I nodded. “Yep. That's the one. I think old Dick and I would have been good friends, because I'm definitely a nobody too.”

“Old Dick is actually Emily Dickinson.” Wilson's lips twitched. I knew darn well who wrote the poem, but I found I liked making him laugh.

“The beauty of that poem is that everybody can relate, because we all feel like nobody. We all feel like we are on the outside, looking in. We all feel scattered. But I think it's that self-awareness that actually makes us somebody. And you are definitely somebody, Blue. You may not be a work of art, but you are definitely a piece of work.”