“It’s like Lord of the Rings. My brother would like it.” I stopped at a picture of a woman wrapping a blindfold on herself.
“That’s Gandhari, who wanted to share her husband’s blindness. Out of empathy,” said Mr. Ram. “You see, she did something odd but for the right reason. She knew why she was doing it.”
“She chose not to see?”
“For the rest of her life. Except once, when she removed the blindfold for her son.”
“I can’t believe it. I can’t imagine doing that.”
“It is like that wisdom about walking a mile in someone’s shoes. Her purpose was to understand another’s condition.”
“So that makes it good?”
“Well, it makes her intention good,” Mr. Ram said, getting up from his walker upon seeing Mom’s car pull up. “Why we do an action is what determines its quality. A quality action or not.”
“Well, I know why Muslims do things. Like why we pray five times a day.” I closed the book and helped Mr. Ram turn his walker to face the right way to go through the doors. “It’s to remember God more.”
Mr. Ram nodded. “Yes, Miss Janna. Because when we just do things without a why, we become husks. Easily crumpled, no fruit inside.”
? ? ?
There’s a soothing rhythm to pushing the wheelchair, and now, in the lull it offers me, the monster’s face reenters my mind. Unannounced. When I block it, his fingers appear. When I fight that, his feet advance from the basement stairs. Each time I slay him, he reappears in parts.
I need an eraser that fills the entire screen of my brain.
? ? ?
Mr. Ram puts up his hand. That means stop.
Standing at the corner where our group of buildings meets the street is Sandra Kolbinsky’s grandmother, Ms. Kolbinsky. Newly arrived from Poland six months ago.
She used to wear housecoats, but about a month ago she began wearing ankara-and kente-print dresses in dramatic color combinations. Today it’s yellow and blue. I think she thinks Mr. Ram is African.
I stop and adjust my backpack, shifting the weight of an old clunker of a laptop.
“Ms. Kolbinsky, I’m still waiting for you to come along with us to games club,” Mr. Ram says. “I can’t think of a better honor than walking with you.”
She laughs. “My daughter, she still didn’t fill out the papers. She’s taking a very long time.”
“Do you want Miss Janna to get you another form? We can do that, right, Janna?” Mr. Ram twirls his hand in a questioning gesture.
“Yeah, sure, Ms. Kolbinsky,” I say. It’s going to be the fifth form I get for her.
“Oh, thank you,” Ms. Kolbinsky says. “Mr. Ram, you promise me you will teach me Parcheesi when I get there?”
“Oh yes.” Mr. Ram leans forward. “I’ll teach you until you can beat me with your eyes closed.”
Ms. Kolbinsky giggles as I wheel ahead.
“Miss Janna, you have two more weeks until summer vacation,” Mr. Ram says. “Are you prepared for your exams?”
“Will be in a couple of days,” I say. “I rewrote all the important notes for every class and color coded them by relevance. Just have to study them now.”
Mr. Ram is the only one I reveal my ultra-intense studying tendencies to. He approves.
He also knows about my Flannery O’Connor obsession. He’d been a book editor in India before he retired so he has a lot to say about her. It’s just not the right things. He thinks she’s depressing and joyless, killing characters suddenly just when you’re getting to know them. I say she’s a kick-ass monster killer, wreaking justice on her pages.
And who gets handed the worst of it in a Flannery world? Monsters hiding behind saint masks.
Um, yes.
Mr. Ram interrupts my mind’s dip into that rabbit hole exclusively reserved for Flannery. “Did you decide about Caliban yet? Still believe that he is completely evil?”
“Mr. Ram, he attacked Miranda. That bothers me more than Shakespeare maybe meaning Caliban to be a dark man.”
“So you don’t want to dig deeper, then.” Mr. Ram makes a teepee with his hands. “I did a paper on foreign men in Shakespeare. That was a such a long time ago, so it must be old-fashioned.”
We reach the edge of the sidewalk.
“Your friend is over there with a young man,” Mr. Ram says when we’re in the middle of the road.
Once we’re across, I stop the wheelchair and look up.
Tats and Jeremy.
They’re walking in the middle-school yard, their backs to us, Tats’s ponytailed long hair bouncing with her steps.
MISFITS
I first noticed him in the spring when I took pictures of the track meet for the yearbook. My telephoto lens got the requisite shots of warm-ups and victory fists before it noticed someone packing away audio equipment at the announcer’s table. Windbreaker jacket, a short, no-nonsense haircut, relaxed movements. I took some pictures, ignoring the little voice inside that said Paparazzi! Stalker! over and over as I zoomed in on a remarkable forehead.
(This is going to sound strange, but I found out, through careful study, that good-looking guys always have the right foreheads. High foreheads. Maybe it’s because they balance the jawlines just so. Anyway, foreheads count a lot in my mind.)
Later I find out his name is Jeremy. He’s the guy who runs the lights for our assemblies, the go-to guy for anything technical.
At the spring concert, he came over, asked if I needed assistance setting up my camera. Kneeling to crank my tripod, I looked up, fell hard, and never recovered.
After a month, I developed this uncanny ability to sense his presence before I even saw him. That’s how I became aware that he strolls through the sophomore hallways to get to some of his classes. That’s also how I noticed he’s a good friend of the monster.
This should have stopped me in my tracks. This, and the ways we don’t fit. He’s a senior; I’m a sophomore. He’s white, of Irish background, and I’m brown, a mix of my Egyptian mother and Indian father.
He’s Christian. I’m Muslim. The non-casual-dating kind.
But it didn’t stop in me, the Jeremy fixation.
I told Tats, one of only two people who knows about him, that my brain, muscles, and eyes are starting to hurt from numbingly pretending I don’t notice that he’s less than four feet away from me like twice a day.
Tats told me he’s in her drama club, tech crew. They meet Thursdays after school. (Onstage, not in the middle-school yard.)
MISFIT
At the community center, Mr. Ram and I check in at the front desk with the guy who runs program registration. He nods at me, comes around the counter to kneel by the wheelchair, and reaches his right hand out to do a special handshake that he’s been trying to teach Mr. Ram.
I take another application form for Ms. Kolbinsky and turn to watch them. The guy is guiding Mr. Ram through the motions again, their hands vastly different in size, but close in color. “So, like this, shake, a hand tap, and then you clutch my hand, let go, and high-five, then finger tap with style, and point. You’ll get it, sir, you’ll get it!”