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________________short stories
Impulsion
I am not sure whether it was need or impulse that carried that small tin oil burner home with me, sashaying up the gray and chipped stone stoop with a charming jingle— like a mysteriously large sum of change showing up in your back pocket. I knew deplorably well how my mom would loathe the very idea of such an Indy-esque sway, but I suppose it was the growing, hormonal defiance of authority that persuaded me otherwise. It was troublesome; Mother had always had her contemptuous views of public anomaly and otherwise innocent tidbits of culture shock.
It wasn’t as if I was anxious of her imposing on my newly developed butterfly wings. She always seemed too preoccupied to notice that I wasn’t ten years old anymore. The distance always made that difficult, too. Mother worked for a healthcare firm as a public relations executive, visiting rarely to our three-story Tudor home in Atlanta. There would be times that I bussed myself 20 miles into town and walked another 30 minutes to her building where I would wait for her until nightfall. Even then, sometimes, she wouldn’t leave, saying “one more hour—one more hour and we’ll leave”. I found myself falling asleep after some hours in the company lounge, finding myself there in the morning still. I guess I grew too accustomed to it over the years, so it never struck me as something to get angry over. I usually never get angry over anything. Mother tried her best to do what society expected of her as a single working parent, making it difficult to blame her, even if she seemed to embrace her love affair with work more than me. I was boarded hundreds of miles away in the piney providences of Canada, perhaps making that task of parenting even more unrealistic. A liberal arts institution, anchored in Nova Scotia, extended a pale, dignified finger towards me midway through my freshmen year. I suspected my enthusiast of a school psychologist of suggesting me, coming to me as a bit of a surprise as to who has their nails deeply gouged in high places. Due to this, it would have been rude to refuse her encouragement.
I use the term “my” loosely, seeing as she might as well have been mine. I was a frequent buyer of her company in those first five months, as many teachers took an immediate inquisitiveness to my hermit-like behavior, questioning me. “There’s a fine line between the strange and the gifted,” one particularly gossipy educator decided to inform me. I assumed out of my presumed goodness in people that she said this to cheer me up, though a treacherousness in the pit of my heart convinced me otherwise; that even my common sense could betray my good conscience. Said good conscience often felt as if it had been spread over too much an area with too little to share. These melancholies initiated my sessions with vibrant Miss Qeu as a troubled young thirteen year old without a friend in the world or a sane cell in her head.
That isn’t to mean that I thought myself insane. If I really were insane, I would have noticed but been too vain to admit it. I could admit insanity, so there went that assumption. I was troubled, however. I was troubled that I, for the first time, consciously outcast myself from my peers, unsure why or how my own contemptuousness could wound my heart so profoundly. I was concerned for myself, but I found a new target to which I vented my frustration. I grew to, amazingly, hate this woman—an emotion I had never had the displeasure of experiencing in the entire neutrality of my lifetime. I think that was her intent, and I grew to spurn this cunning hidden agenda. Can anyone help but feel naked and exposed while a woman with degrees on the walls judges your temperament? I never said anything ill-willed to her, but the connection was made after some weeks of visits that I wasn’t enjoying this nearly as much as she was.
I wrote for most of the sessions. She had eyes everywhere, it seemed, since it began to appear that she found out about my avid pastime in my little black spiral notebook; with the monotone curvature designs etched into its bindings and the aluminum spirals bent from frequent use. I was again misguided that the queer generosity was a truce gesture of kindness; that I could be constructive during our valuable hour-long powwows. It’s said that things aren’t always as they appear, though not to say that they can’t be predictable. Some weeks later, this said little black book disappeared and just as mysteriously reappeared. Shortly after, our sessions were terminated. I felt as if I had been conned out of something dear and necessary, but considering whatever it was, whether pride, possession or dignity, it wasn’t missed terribly.
I remember distinctly the waft of lavender that seemed to hang over her personal space like a thick, invisible fog. Or maybe it was chamomile. When I could no longer hide away in the west dormitory wing, I found idling among my classmates that many seemed to share her sense of perfume, manipulated into homesickness by any stray waft that seemed to resemble this woman. This, too, troubled me, and I learned to hold my breath in some areas of the dormitory for fear I’d burst into a fit of despair. Not even now am I sure how I could have acted that way and still retain a shred of dignity. It was embarrassing for me to show open emotion like that—I wasn’t used to it at all. Then more than ever before did I want to be back in Mrs. Que’s tiny, homely office, scribbling away and soaking in mild silence. The little tin oil burner now sat idly between my various volumes of Frost and Barks, the tiny trinket bottles of fragrance oils strewn over my chessboard, socializing among the pawns and the bishops in our windowsill which was split down the center by a state line. Their presences have since then given me some consolance. I’m ashamed that I’ve grown dependant on it.
I flew into Canso airport early that winter, and I suppose the institute representatives assumed I was coming with an escort because there was no entourage or means of pre-arranged transportation accessible to me. By some whim of God, I did manage to scrounge up enough pocket change to afford a taxi and upon my arrival, I was shown to available boarding quarters with little questioning. I wasn’t obligated to start that day or even the next, which I considered great hospitality, so during that period I was free to absorb new environments and all that garbage.
A small paper football-esque piece of folded stationary, distrustfully clipped to the tabooed “Do not remove” tag of my naked floral mattress greeted me before I could drop my things. Someone had informed my assumed roommate (residence made evident by a flauntingly decorative right side of the dorm room) I was arriving and left a tidbit of considerate, yet unsettling counsel.
“Bonjour, roomie. I’ll be in around three or four after I finish my prison sentence in sculpting hall. Three things:
-Do not open the furnace door.
-A girl with pink bangs and combat boots is coming. For the love of God, do not answer the door.
-Tweak is in my closet. Don’t unplug the outlet going under the door. He’s afraid of the dark.
Much loves, Augusta”
I made an interesting face just then, I remember. The note was quietly tucked away and not given any more thought then need be. Sometimes things were best not asked about. I began sifting through my things, planting my sentimental values around my side of my room, fairly larger and more luxurious My side of the bedroom fell deeply into a chasm of traditional contemporaries, and regrettably I felt a familiar sense of dread fall over me. My expressions of well-deserved freedom were beginning to resemble my old room. These things were quickly torn down and never to be reassembled. I decided my walls and dressers would be bare, for now. I deduced that I was going to have a difficult time starting from scratch here. I never had a problem with my—my mother’s taste in decoration, but I felt if I was intentionally trying to get away from an unhealthy atmosphere, I should leave the atmosphere at home.
This girl with the assumed alias arrived some time after my failure at interior designing. At this point I was taking an avid interest in the various meshing of murals strewn across her far wall. I was impressed, intimidated, then uncomfortably jealous. Apparently this fearful pink-haired girl never arrived and, oddly enough, this seemed to concern her as opposed to being thankful for my well-being. “You have to understand that some kids here were sent here because their parents didn’t know what to do with them. I guess you could say that there’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and they weren’t quite up to admitting their kid was a bit off. You’re better off just ignoring every eccentric altogether just for the sake of keeping your patience.”
“But who would be here if they weren’t just little a little eccentric?”
“Touche.”
I laughed inwardly.
This girl was a previous roommate who I suppose got a little too attached and couldn’t handle the rejection of being relocated on Augusta’s decree. It drew into question what kind of relationship Miss Combat Boots thought they had. I was a little rest-assured to hear that she’d be under a watchful eye—me as well. The maternal gesture in such a new, potentially perilous place made me feel less alienated. She didn’t look too different than my imaginative perspective of the pink-haired girl, though this was a little more pleasing to the nerves to say in all honesty.
She resembled a fabled French revolutionary or a Joan of Arc figure, probably mirroring the personality upon first meeting her, I finding this a little emblematic. Upon dropping her carrier bag of blunt, metal objects (or so I summed up from the steel clang as they hit the floor), I noticed she seemed like she had just crawled out of a clay quarry, which legitimatised her alibi. The deep blue pixy haircut and billowed peasant sleeves looked as if she’d stepped out of one of her own murals. She helped me coordinate my things as the setting sun set the painted walls aflame with gold. A week went by, classes ensuing that next day, given holiday or no.
The Canadian night sky was striking, and I couldn’t help but daze romantically through the large glass panes as Ponticello drummed dreamily from the small stereo system mounted on a carved marble column—another piece of Augusta’s own handiwork. She volunteered to resolve my frustrating situation by continuing her mural painting to the other side of the room and I could only be thankful she read me so well. “I’ve always been dying to,” she said “but the headmaster and dorm mistress has been against me since I got here. They can’t say no if I’ve gotten a request.” I found why she seemed so laid back, along with the rest of the pygmy-sized student body. Classes were fairly easy and enjoyable, particularly my writing and literature classes that complimented my more functional side of my brain. I gained quite a bit of renewed self-confidence as I was deduced to be a favorite. I would every so often find myself sighing in liberation, remembering back (at what now seems to be distant memories) of all the years I had wasted in stagnation. I thought to myself that this seemed overly cocky, but then again, how would I have known? I don’t know if arrogance comes naturally or if it’s learned, like prejudice, so I have no right to say what is wrong or right if I know nothing about it. All the same, I still try not to be. I retained my quiet inclusiveness. That came naturally, at least.
She was delighted to find out I was a writer and I shocked to find painting and sculpting weren’t her prerequisites.
“I wanted to write, but I s’pose it is more of an acquired skill. I’m more handy at working with things with my hands anyway, as you can probably already tell.” She wriggled her fingers at me, the cuticles and nail recesses still caked with clay and pottery enamel. I stayed up largely past curfew to listen to her narratives. Born on her father’s winery plantation in Champagne, she grew up in a very constructive atmosphere, admirability characterized by waking up before dawn to help the collage-bound laborers during harvest season. She was only a student of average intelligence as far as the school system was concerned.
“I didn’t see much point in learning quotients as opposed to how to fix a collector’s axle. I figured if I could get along well enough on common sense and natural intelligence, did I really need to learn anything I don’t need to?”
That was an interesting take on things, though I could never say I could relate to it. After all, I can’t say for certain that I’ve ever broke a soaking sweat in my life. I wasn’t sure when we stopped talking or when I laid down, but I awoke that late-week morning to the sound of a buzzer and a stirring roommate. It was snowing outside. I never got to change into my night clothes, still wearing the same wrinkled blouse and worn jeans. The uncomfortable fold under my butt brought to mind again a pressing question.
“Whatever happened to Tweak?” I was introduced that morning, as she opened her closet door to fetch a smock. Tweak, affectionately named for its wired movements resembling sidewalk slum addicts, was an Iguana she had raised since a few days after birth. She didn’t elaborate on where she had gotten it. Even so, I wasn’t aware that they allowed pets. They didn’t, I was informed. Tweak was free to roam the room that day and sunbathe in the window, since cleaning inspections were only once a week and so no one but the two of us would be coming in and out of this room until that weekend. Over a period of time, Tweak took a liking to hiding in my pillow covers, my bed a little more accessible from the window plateau.
As for the furnace door, it seemed that she converted that space and the hot machinery inside into a cooking space, striking me as a bit odd as to why she’d want to cook when there was a cafeteria and on-campus convenience stores. She was fairly lean, so it didn’t surprise me to find that she was vegetarian and the smuggling of carrots and squashes up to the room had become an art form, as have skillet grilling them off the floor’s furnace panel. She seemed pretty clean, so I didn’t question her about the sanitation of that.
Augusta began on the mural stretch that afternoon, she already there (and the floor littered with tarps, rainbow-stained bed sheets and pint-sized paint cans) as I walked in the door. I wasn’t sure if it was something to do with the Canadian school system, but I began to feel more and more like I was attending collage more so than a private high school. With four classes a day and a lunch hour divided into them, I was given more free time then really necessary—not that I minded or anything. She tried to carry on a conversation as soon as she heard the clack of the doorknob gear closed against the tarnished brass. Her vague Victorian southern belle slur twining around the slight French twinge now, after a few days, didn’t seem so sharp, so I hardly notice she spoke up at all to anyone more particular than herself. I dropped my things and half dragged myself towards my bed.
“You like?”
“Gorgeous,” I said. My face was halfway buried in my pillow before I could check for Tweak first. He wasn’t there anyway.
“You always say that. I want critic critique, not miss book grub from Georgia.”
“Bookworm.”
“Whatever.”
“I can’t critique," I retorted. “That would involve me having an opinion.”
“You have them. You should stop being so afraid to have a preference. No one can judge you for being opinionated.”
“People have been assassinated for their opinions.”
“Oh stop that.”
My pessimism that had me (more or less) banished from the deep south in the first place seemed like charming sarcasm to her. I don’t think it had anything to do with culture-clash really, she being just as “North American” as I for the most part. I’ve had a lot of time to think of those two words since I’ve been here—“North American”. Some Canadians and the French took great offense to being considered American—just by the slip of the tongue on my part or just their proximity to the Great Lakes. I found this out the hard way, though I was also soon to realize that they can be awfully forgiving. I haven’t developed any enemies I should be worrying about yet.
She changed the subject.
“Do you ever miss Georgia?”
“Not really. Does that make me shallow or something?”
“I don’t know about shallow. It is unique though. Most new students don’t last more than a few weeks before it’s really suggested that someone visit them, like, right then. Emotional stability and all that garbage.”
I knew I picked that up somewhere.
Interestingly enough, I didn't really feel any compulsion to go home despite my looking so out of place, feeling more at home in the wild refuge of tundra than soaking in the humid exhales of Georgia. Maybe it was just the means of finding your place. It used to be so much simpler, and I felt sorry for those who I imagined wandered the earth in vain fox hunt for something to keep them occupied until they withered away into anxious, hungry shadows. Henceforth I felt a bit less enmity towards the street-side drunkards that lined the main passes of Canto. In coming here, I backwardly grasped the concept of humility. Augusta told me that personal liberty tends to make for a better character. Character. I couldn’t ever recall having something as exclusive as character. I think she sort of discouraged it though, if you can understand the contradiction. The best she tried to elaborate on that, if she even wanted to at all, was to keep me unique from the liberal masses. I think she was getting at that again, but you could never really tell with her. I felt almost ashamed to be such an open book.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, eventually sliding off my comforter and shifting onto the floor, my back and head slouched over a mass of stained glass and light bulb screws which laid scattered over the indigo carpet. I scattered through them gently so not to cut myself. The edges were dulled, I realized. She pressed a ridged yellow into the thick salve paint which made up the cheekbone of a miser Scrooge.
“’cause, mockingbirds don’t have any sounds that belongs to just them. They’re not idealistic.”
“Mockingbirds, Augusta?” I couldn’t help but take a critical, skeptical tone at that.
“You heard me. You and I aren’t mockingbirds. We’re just a pair of pigeons, but that’s okay. We have what we need to have to make us pigeons that no one else has, and even mockingbirds imitate pigeons. They can’t tell either way, and that’s what sets us apart, m’dear.”
I’ve grown to prefer chamomile in the burner during the afternoons since. I guess her rationality broke me in finally. She was right, in a sense, though I’d be rude and pompous to admit that out in the open. I had no more reason to really begrudge Ms. Que, with her hippy clothes and wiry hair. I’d be returning home for the summer soon, mother not seeming to mind though I couldn’t say in all honesty that I didn’t. Perhaps even Ms. Qeu would still be counseling, donating her time in the summer months to paying patients, her soul rested in the fact that she had done some good. I couldn’t dislike her so much anymore for that, even if she was a little infatuated with her work. I’d be obligated to return late that August, though it was still in question of whether I should spend my summers where I have belonged for so long. Goodbyes will be said for another year to old friends and family, growing indifferent and forgetful of the tidbit of culture shock as soon as she was gone. I came to the conclusion that it isn’t what they think anymore, because the perceiving of pigeons is beyond that of mockingbirds— and with this kept in mind, I’m sure, nothing will be missed terribly.
"Animals strike curious poses."
~Mallory W.
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