|
by
Sarah Schillaci Winning story of the 2006 Nick Adams Short Story Contest |
|
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. |
|
|
|
Exactly two years and seven weeks after the story I'm about to tell you ends I get my ass into college. I don't get to that part here because in order to go all the way to the day that Rutgers decides that I'm good enough to take and good enough to take for free I have to go through a whole lot of other crap like how I drank all the rum my dad got on his last trip back to visit his brothers in Haiti with my then-emphasis-on-the-then boyfriend Francis and how my dad came back when we were both trashed and said I could not see Francis again and I screamed and said, "No fucking way dad no fucking way," and it was the first and second time I dropped the F-bomb in front of my dad who is a guy who wears a suit and tie to work every day and reads French books in translation even though he could read them a lot easier in French. But actually I was happy because the reason I was drinking with Francis was to work up the guts to dump him anyway. So that was a big deal and also at the time I thought I was pregnant and that would make a good story too, but I've had to read some long-ass crap for my AP English class and I know that once I get to the part where and so Jan von Treksalot began his sojourn across the arid desert, at the crossroads of Longestparagraphever, my mind is already wandering. And I want you to pay attention. But I also want to tell you about the day I got into college, which was yesterday. Here's what happened: My dad comes home from the store he manages (I wasn't drunk and wasn't with Francis, whose ass I dumped a long time ago). He said, "Rolande, what did you learn at school today?" which is the first thing he says every day when he gets home, even when he has a shit day at work or is sick. I had this whole thing planned out about how I was going to mess around with him and draw it out but instead I shouted, "Daddy I got my ass into college and Rutgers is sending me there for free!" and even though I dropped the A-bomb he took off his jacket and poured us each a glass of red wine which we drank together before even eating dinner. Two years and seven weeks and one day ago it was a different story, I'll tell you that, and I wasn't in any AP English class, and although I could go on about why Francis is a serious loser and how scary it is to be seventeen and think you're going to have a baby, I think I'll stick to the day I quit my job at the Athlete's Foot in South Orange, New Jersey. I said I wasn't in AP English, and I also wasn't in school because the day I turned 16, which was a Monday, I walked into the Grade Administrator's office and handed in the form that announced my withdrawal from Orange High School. When I walked out of the office Marie Francoise who I always celebrated my birthday with when we were little because hers was two days before mine, this year on Saturday, was walking in with her own withdrawal form, and we left OHS for what we damn well figured was for good and got Slurpees at the 7-11 and then took the bus to South Orange where Marie Francoise's brother Jean worked at the Athlete's Foot and within one hour of not being a high school student I was a working American. Andrea the floor manager at the Athlete's Foot turned away Marie Francoise because it turns out she's not legal, and neither is Jean, so Andrea fired him that day too. Andrea asked if I had my green card and I said I was born here and she said okay but still made me watch the training video twice "Just so you understand everything because sometimes they talk really fast." So while I had a job and didn't have to go to a bullshit school where they just wasted my time anyway -- all of which I thought was a pretty sweet deal -- it sucked for Marie and Jean a lot, because once Jean lost his job they couldn't pay rent and had to move in with their cousins in Newark, which is an even worse place to live than Orange. I hadn't known that their parents were still in Port-au-Prince and I think they still are, although I did see Marie Francoise and her daughter at the White Castle the other day and they seemed alright. I had a job though, and one day of training was all I needed before I was fitting kids with spanking white Nike board shoes which are still cool now but were really cool then, but the funny part was they had been really cool back in Orange about a year before that. If my dad hadn't thrown me out of the house when he found out that I quit school, I am sure he would have made a comment about how the white teenage suburbanites surrounding Newark never paid any mind to the black kids from the inner-ring except to take their trends and make them passé. I know he would have said that because he had said it before and I was almost glad that I was living at my friend Beatrice's house so he wouldn't see me put on my Athlete's Foot polo shirt every morning and take the bus from Orange to South Orange and take boxes of Nike shoes off the shelves alongside the four other daytime workers -- two from Haiti, one Dominican and one guy who said he was the nephew of the king of Nigeria -- who were all too young to vote even if they were citizens, which they weren't. Sometimes I would see these bored-looking white and Asian kids who went to high school in South Orange and Livingston who were obviously cutting school and thinking they were really badass when really I had quit school making me the most badass of all of them and they would walk in and look around and never buy anything but sometimes make me take out forty fucking boxes of Pumas to try on which was one huge pain in the ass, no joke. Sometimes they would talk about the classes they were skipping and a lot of the time this guy Rene, who had quit OHS two years before me but was still working the floor would say, "Look at those dumbass cracker mama's boys," and I would say, "Yeah," and then lace up the forty pairs of shoes that wouldn't get bought. |
|
Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
|
|
|
Return to: ... Top of page ... Nick Adams Contest ... Winning stories and authors ... ACM home page |