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The Language of Terrible Things by
Iris G. Garcia Honorable Mention story in the 2006 Nick Adams Short Story Contest |
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Return to: ... Nick Adams Contest ... Winning stories and authors ... ACM home page Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. This story contains language which may be considered inappropriate for young or more sensitive readers. |
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My hair came down to my waist in waves of blackish brown silk, which I brushed every night and every morning with pride, and which my mother would sometimes weave into elaborate braids. I liked my hair. It was my favorite thing about myself. I was small, dark, and not particularly attractive. I had large brown eyes and a pointed chin that gave me an impish look. I wasn't always friendly. I wasn't always happy. I didn't really know why people liked me, but I planned to keep it that way. With my hand balled up around the jagged edges of the rock, I waited. The girls at my sides followed suit. An advantage of being liked was being imitated. Reina stood confidently next to me. Reina, who was beautiful, was always confident. She had light brown hair to her shoulders, and almond shaped eyes that changed colors each day, sometime grey, sometimes violet, sometimes a somber green that I had seen once at the pond where Mom would take me to feed bread crumbs to the ducks. Delilah was not pretty, or impish. The best way to describe Delilah is as big. Not fat. Big. She looked like she played soccer, and the muscles of her arms were developed beyond any exercise she could have given them at the age of seven. Delilah was nervous as she chose her rock -- perceptibly smaller than ours. "Scardy cat," I taunted. She kept her eyes down, but did not exchange the rock. ******* |
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We had been practicing our fs in school. Our vocabulary words all had f sounds, like frog. Sitting in the tiny green chair at the space on the table that had my name taped to it, I made the sweeping motion for the body of the f, then I crossed it slowly, deliberately. After I had perfected the sixth letter of the alphabet, I decided that I was bored with it. I added curls to the ends. I added great flourishes that stretched far beyond the lines we were instructed to stay within. I included mermaids in the sea of loops at the bottom, and I tangled a Chinese dragon in the top ringlets, with a mustache that fell past the tip of a mermaid's tail. I had created the most beautiful f in the history of the written language. It was beyond the skill of ancient solitary monks, sitting in their cold towers transcribing volumes upon volumes with feather pens. As I traced the curves with my fingers, Mariah was walking toward the sink at the back of the classroom precariously balancing two cups of dirty water, three paint brushes, five paintings that she had been working on, and a yellow box of cheap water colors, the kind with little pigment cakes that fall out when dry. She fumbled over her own calves, not knowing where it would be safe to step. She was as big as Delilah, but Mariah was fat. She had bulges at her shoulders, her breasts, her waist. She wore sweat suits that didn't match -- probably didn't even go together. I looked her straight in the eyes and gave a menacing grimace. She stared at me in fear and stumbled on the rug as she muttered something, quickly looking away. Just as she had regained herself, she stepped on her own untied shoelace and toppled her acrobatic act. Green and brown water flew up in an instant in which, if everything were possible, the cups would have taken flight. But they came crashing down. The brown gunk fell on my beautiful f, blurring the details and soaking up the pencil lead-destroying my masterpiece. The green water fell on Mariah's paintings and shoes. I grabbed on to the table in order to steady myself. I could feel my face turning red, and I could hear my jaw locking. "Big. Black. Mariah. You bitch." A collective gasp rushed through the classroom. Even Ms. Downy was taken aback. I had always been so sweet in her class, and one of the highest achievers. I participated, did my homework, understood my responsibilities in the classroom. I knew what was going on in my small second grade world. She had considered suggesting that I be put into the gifted program. Right then, I didn't care how smart anyone thought I was. There was a freedom in the words I had just uttered that lingered in my mouth, filling my tongue with the sensation of a million tiny ants scurrying around. "Well, Miss Karina, to the principal's office please." Ms. Downy's slender figure looked at me with disappointment. I pushed my chair back with the dignity of a seven-year-old who has done nothing wrong. I was satisfied to see, on my way out, that all of Mariah's paintings were soaked. She suppressed her whimpers as she picked the brushes off the floor. I mouthed the word bitch all the way to Ms. Ezquibel's office. I liked the hard b and the feeling of my tongue touching the roof of my mouth. Bitch. "Bitch." I said it matter-of-factly. Like a queen. Like an actress. With a Spanish accent, making the harsh tch sound like an sh. "Bish." It was more exciting than frog. "Karina, your teacher just called me." I looked up startled to find that my feet had brought me into the office already. "Please tell me exactly what you said." It was much harder to say it out loud now that Ms. Ezquibel was watching expectantly, her over-dyed hair frizzed around her head in a frenzy of copper. The words were stuck in my throat and I suddenly felt ashamed. I shouldn't have said anything. "I said bitch." "What else did you say?" I was puzzled. I hadn't done anything devastating. My mom said bitch too. My older brother would fling it about aimlessly, sometimes at Mom, sometimes at his girlfriend, or at me. I remember hearing him call me a bitch for the first time. It was my first day of the first grade. He didn't say it to me. "Do I have to take that little snot-nosed bitch to school?" Mom slapped him hard across the face. "Freddie don't talk about your sister like that, you bastard!" I didn't feel offended, not knowing what it was. It felt important to be the cause of so much commotion. "What else did you say?" I snapped back from the memory, "BigblackMariahyoubitch." "Big ... b-black Mariah, you ... ?" "Yes." "Do you realize how offensive this is?" "My mom says bitch all the time." "It's not just about the b-word, Karina; you hurt Mariah. You called her a terrible name, and you used her weight and her race as ways to demean her -- to make her feel bad. Do you know what racism means?" I looked at pudgy little Ms. Ezquibel and wondered how many times she had been called fat. "My mom says that I shouldn't trust black people, because they are backstabbers, and they are dirty, and they are mean. She says I should stay away from black people." "Karina, today, you were mean." Ms. Ezquibel paused to look at me. She wanted this to be making an impact on me, but I didn't feel mean; I felt justified. ******* |
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Mariah was walking up Georgia Street. We were waiting behind a blue van in the parking lot outside of the school cafeteria. The sun was hot enough in late September to make the asphalt unbearable for our knees. We could see the heat squiggle off the ground in waves. I was distracted, watching a little Hawaiian monkey swing her hips on the dashboard of the van. Reina jabbed her elbow into my ribs. Delilah took a step back. We had picked out the best rocks we could find. Our pockets were full of large pebbles: brown ones, white ones, dirt ones, pink ones, and a black one in the shape of a heart that we weren't going to use. I caressed the stones in my pockets, running my fingers through their cold surfaces, until I found the heart-shaped one. I took it out, the sharp rock still in my other hand. I stared at the black heart as Mariah came up to the blue van. ******* |
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"Your mom is from Mexico. There are many words, and many things that she would not be happy to hear in reference to herself. If someone called your mom names, she wouldn't feel so good about it." I considered this, and decided that Ms. Ezquibel had to be lying to me. My mom seemed to want to be called names. She looked like she got pleasure from it. Every time someone called her a name, she smiled like she was such a better person. She knew all the dirty names. She knew them in English and in Spanish. I'd seen people call my mom names. She was very small for a mom, and as dark as me. Her hair was short, cut close to her ears. Her razor tongue snapped back quickly with something that always left the name-caller looking defeated and surprised. Perra. Puta. Pinche. P-words. Wino. Culero. Motherfucker. Bitch. I wanted to tell Ms. Ezquibel about this world of words, because she seemed to not live in it. She was never as calm or collected as my mom. She probably never beat other women to the last ripe mango in the grocery store. She probably never cut in line. She probably didn't play loteria outside of her house on Fridays with the neighbors, betting with dollar bills and quarters and screaming when she lost. I wanted her to feel the freedom of "bitch" on the tongue, but instead I just nodded solemnly. "Well, Karina, I may have to call your mom," (She wouldn't be there.) "and you are not going to have recess for the rest of the week. You are going to talk to Mr. Coffey instead." I stared. Retarded kids talked to Mr. Coffey. Poor kids talked to him. Kids like Abel, who liked to fight, and was poor, and probably a bit retarded all at the same time. I did not need to talk to Mr. Coffey. I was fine. "Yes, ma'am." I was seething. ******* |
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Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
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