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#Post#: 34--------------------------------------------------
Scared Kid
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: December 7, 2019, 11:05 pm
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Tikvah held her mother's hand tightly. Mommy's nails were long,
and painted a bright shade of pink with white tips like claws.
In Tikvah's hand they felt like the fiberglass hulls of boats
bobbing in the river or ocean. Tikvah and her mother waited in a
long line in Rapinoe-Connolly-Brinker, the athletics building's
cavernous gym. It was the biggest gym that Tikva had ever seen,
and the line of parents with kids, moved slowly.
Tikvah kept telling herself "I will not act scared, even if I
feel scared. I will not act scared, no matter how scared I feel
inside." Neither Tikvah, nor her mother, Rachel spoke. Rachel
wore white clam diggers, brown wedgies, and a midriff blouse in
coral pink, that she tied just below her rib cage, showing taut
forty year old belly. Rachel's hair was just a bit longer than a
boy's and the beautician had given it golden tips.
Tikvah wore a long, navy blue skirt. It was supposed to be a
school uniform skirt and come just below the knees, but Tikvah
was short, and refused to let her mother shorten it. Tucked into
the shirt was a red polo shirt. Tikvah liked the color, and
nonfiction books said red dye, like all fabric dyes, was cheap
and plentiful, so red shirts were not really immodest, not if
they fit loosely. On Tikvah's feet were red knee socks and brown
sandals with thick soles. No matter how much her mother
complained, Tikvah refused to give up her knee socks.
Slowly the line inched up to a table where Tikvah's mother gave
her name and explained that Tikvah had chosen to keep her
father's name. Even the therapist had let her keep it, and the
judge would not change it if she told him she wanted to keep it
either. The woman staffing the table, did not even blink. She
handed Tikvah and her mother the gold, manilla envelope, and
told her to sign for it. Inside the envelope was Tikvah's
D-Card, made with a picture her grandfather had snapped against
the refrigerator. He had tried to get Tikvah to smile, and then
complained she smirked."Oh well," he complained. "ID cards never
look good."
"Let's see if this card works on your dorm before you unpack,"
Rachel told her daughter.
Tikvah continued to hold her mother's hand. Because her skirt
had no pockets, she clutched the envelope in her other hand,
while the two of them followed paths to the residential complex.
Each dormitory had its names prominently displayed.
Cerni-Al-Sigh was apartments for fifth graders. That was what it
looked like to Tikvah.
Tikvah removed her D-Card from the packet and tapped the door
lock. Then she pushed open the door.The air inside was warm and
stale. Three doors led to first floor suites on the Al-Sigh
(female) side. There was also an elevator. Since Tikvah's suite
was 11B, high up like a bird's nest, she called for the
elevator.
The door opened to reveal a round shouldered man pushing an
empty, metal dolly cart, and a man with graying sideburns
pushing a cart on which a smallish boy in a hoodie rode, making
the cart heavier for his father. Tikvah's mother grabbed the
elevator door with a pink clawed hand and let the men with dolly
carts out. Then Tikvah and her mother rode up in silence. The
elevator stopped at the fifth floor, but the couple with an
empty dolly cart, needed an elevator down. The elevator also
opened at the sixth and eighth floor to more disappointment.
"We're here," Rachel finally announced, when they reached the
eleventh floor.
Each suite had a welcoming sign on its door. One sign was made
of blue construction paper and had the word Welcome traced with
Elmer's glue and silver and gold sprinkles. Another suite was
adorned with bouquets of blue and yellow balloons. Tikvah's
suite, 11B, had only a sign printed on two sheets of computer
paper. It said Welcome in various languages, alternative black
and cyan text. Tikvah scanned the sign.
That was how she found the Yiddish word for Welcome third from
the bottom. She hadn't thought anyone would even think of
Yiddish. "This must mean something," Tikvah told herself and a
hard lump grew in her throat and a pain started behind her eyes.
"No!" Tikvah told herself as she blinked back tears.
"Open the door already..." mommy said from far away.
"Tikvah,what's come over you. Pull yourself together."
Tikvah dug out her D-Card and pressed it to the lock. There was
a faint click, but too soon, the door said DENIED. Again. "Try
it again... Come on Tia."
"My name is Tikvah," Tikvah snarled. Tikvah's mother said
nothing, and Tikvah got the suite door open on the second
attempt.
The door gave onto a small hallway beyond which was a large
sitting room with a kitchen. An African American girl in white
anklet's Mary Janes, and a mustard colored dress sat next to
handsome parents, including a father with sideburns that twisted
like question marks.
"Let's test your room and go get Grandpa," mommy said glancing
nervously around.
Just then a round shouldered, small woman in a pink thick,
textured shirt and light blue pants approached. Her D-Card hung
around her neck on a pink lace adorned with pastel paper or
plastic flowers like a Hawaiian lei. The woman's hair was dark
brown and parted in the middle, and her soft flesh and short
stature made her look like she'd fit in in Rockland County with
a skirt and proper sheitel if she were married.
"Hello I'm Albina your Suite Advisor," the Suite Advisor
introduced herself.
"I'm Rachel Samuels, Tikvah Goldberg's mother," mommy made
grownup talk back.
"It's good to see you here. Did you have a pleasant trip."
"Yes," Rachel replied and then she took her daughter down the
hall. Tikvah was assigned to room Al-Sigh 11B1. She got it open
on the first try. Even though Kotiah-Yovanovitch International
School was less than ten years old, the paint on the bedroom
walls looked tired. The beds had long, bare, mattresses and no
headboards or footboards. Each girl got a desk, five drawer
dresser, and small closet. There were mirrors over the dresser
that were too high for Tikvah to see herself in.
"I know it looks pretty Spartan," Rachel tried to explain "but
it's how dormitory rooms come..."
Tikvah who was not expecting anything could have cared less. "My
roommate is not here," she told mommy. The two empty beds
surprised her more than anything else.
"Let's go find grandpa and get your things," Mommy decided."But
wash your face first."
"It won't do any good," Tikvah replied.
"Always an argument."
But in the end, Tikvah won. Sometimes you won. Sometimes you
lost. If you didn't speak up, you wouldn't get anything. That
was the truth of it, not that there was anything more for Tikvah
to get.
A few minutes later, Tikvah and her mother stood outside by an
empty space where Grandpa had parked the rented SUV full of his
grand daughter's things. Mommy extracted her phone from her
purse. It was a flip phone because mommy believed smart phones
were evil. Tikvah's unfiltered phone with the Kotiah-Yovanovitch
app on it, sat happily in her purse. Phones were one of the good
things about secular life.
"Yes, Dad," mommy said."We got the ID card and now she's going
to lose it because she didn't wear pants... She's holding it in
the envelope they gave it to her in....We got in fine... Yes,
we're really going to unpack. You didn't rent the SUV for
nothing....No, we're really going to do it."
It took ten long minutes for Grandpa to drive into the hot
parking lot. He asked Tikvah if she were hot in her long socks.
Grandma had asked her the same question this morning. Tikvah
had said no, but now she had a better reply. "You're wearing
socks and long pants." Grandpa shook his head.
"How do we get her stuff inside?" Grandpa asked. "Didn't they
put heron the tenth floor?"
"She's on the eleventh floor. There are dolly carts in the gym
lobby. Let's hope there are some left."
Grandpa and mommy kept taking turns pushing the shiny, metal
dolly cart across the parking lot. Then all three of them loaded
Tikvah's two, small, new trunks, one in red and the other blue,
her two duffels, an Amazon box of decorations and hangers, and a
small duffel of toiletries, books, and more decorations on the
cart.
Mommy and Grandpa took turns pushing the cart, and eventually
Grandpa let her push too. The first few steps were hard, but
then it got easier, until the cart hit a bump and mommy and
Grandpa scrambled to keep Tikvah's things from falling off.
At least they knew only to get on an up car. This time they rode
with a family bound for the eighth floor. For the last three
floors they rode in silence. "You sure you want to do this?"
Grandpa asked when Tikvah opened up her shared bedroom a second
time.
"Yes," answered Mommy. "I'm going to go get a bite to eat if
you don't mind," Grandpa said. "Call me when you get done." A
man, woman, and a girl Tikvah's own age, were busy unpacking, or
rather the girl was struggling to make her bed. The woman was
golden blonde and looked tired. The man was not just tall but
thick, and a fair amount of it was muscle. He had gone some
shade between blonde and gray, and had a mustache and beard cut
square. He wore gold rimmed glasses and blinked.
The three of them paid no attention to Tikvah and her mother.
Tikvah popped the lock on her red trunk. The roommate in the
yellow, terry cloth shirt had a beat up, very large, black trunk
with the word Corianne written on it in textured script.
Corianne was one of thousands of English language, American
names.
Tikvah extracted her set of pale, pink sheets from the
trunk."You want to make your bed first?" her mother half-asked.
Making a bed first made sense. Tikvah at least had a fitted
sheet. The rest fell together after that. She had seen her
mother and other women strip and make beds back in her other
life.
"Wow, that is some smooth bed!" the yellow shirted roommate's
father called out."I bet you can bounce a dime om that."
Yellow shirted, Corianne took an ornately carved leather purse
from the back of her desk chair, dug out a light blue denim
wallet, and removed a dime. It did not bounce. She tried again
with a quarter. It vibrated a little bit. Then she tried a penny
giving it a spinning throw. It was all in the spin.
Tikvah smiled which started her throat and face hurting. "You're
not going to cry again," her mother asked.
"What was the name for that kind of question?" Tikvah wondered
The therapist had told her, but now the name escaped her.
This time Tikvah did not have answer, but she had her symmetry
drawing she made in art class. It was red and gold pastel. She
had placed it in a Duane Reade bag right under her bedding when
Mommy wasn't looking. In the decoration box were poster
stickies. "We're doing decorations now."
"Mommy," Tikvah's voice came out as a croak."I want this room to
feel like home."
"You got a point," sighed Mommy. "Some arguments you can win,"
Tikvah told herself. Still she blinked back tears and Rachel
scrambled to find a tissue.
"I can't leave you if you're crying," mommy told Tikvah.
"Yes you can. You have to."
"I guess I do," Rachel sighed and plunked down on the freshly
made bed. Tikvah began hanging hangers in the closet and rolling
t-shirts and polo-shirts. She even brought out Mr. Froggy. He
was a blanket snuggly thatwas supposed to be for little kids,
but he was also a good pajama or night gown keeper.
"You didn't bring him to school..." Rachel reanimated.
"Yes I did. Do you want my roommate looking at my dirty
pajamas."
"You can hang your pajamas up."
"No I can't. This is easier." Tikvah turned Mr. Froggy around to
show the hole in his bottom where night clothes went.
"What will the other kids think?"
"I've got stuffed animals too," answered Corianne, the roommate.
Mommy sighed and pitched in to help Tikvah with her clothes.
They finished unpacking with ten minutes to spare before Family
Orientation in Papke-Sienko, the high school building that had a
big auditorium.
Once again mommy pulled out her flip phone. "We sort of had a
meltdown while unpacking....No everything's under control...of
course we're going through with it.Look, I'd like you at Family
Orientation. Other kids are showing up with two
parents....Please. Look I'm her mother, and I'm handling it."
"Grandpa is scared isn't he?" Tikvah asked.
"Sort of... You're the first person in our family to go to
boarding school. He is having trouble with that."
"Come on, let's go meet Grandpa in the parking lot."
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