Chapter 2. The school bus. I'm 15 and friendless. Need I say more?
The ride home this afternoon was average. Kids throwing backpacks on empty seats yelling, taken, signaling me to keep moving. Juice accidentally spills on me as I pass, and yet I get an hola from someone who feels sorry for the foreign exchange girl.
Gracias. Looking out the bus window, I think about school. I live 45 minutes from my school.
Not a big thing, you may think, but again, it sets me up for bouncing in the middle between two more things, home and school. Back when I was in grade school, the kids on my block would talk about the big neighborhood wiffle ball game the night before, but I could never play with those kids who lived next to me because there wasn't time with all of the driving back and forth we did between school and home. I never was able to play with my classmates from school either because we lived 40 miles away in a gated community.
For some reason, my dad didn't want me to attend the private prep school in our small town. He said it was too elitist and snobby. So, he thought busing me off to the public school the next town over would be better. Yeah, thanks, Dad.
Riding a bus for 45 minutes with hot, sweaty kids is my dream. I didn't go to the prep school, so the neighborhood kids thought I was being a dork and wouldn't give me the time of day. And the kids at school assumed I was a rich snob because of where I lived. so they didn't invite me over. Me in the middle of two worlds, again.
Here's another shocker. I don't look anything like the other girls at school. They are blonde, blue-eyed, and have perfect cream-colored complexions.
There's not much diversity at my school, but there's a small Hispanic population in town, so a few students of color attend school with me. And then there's me. Too dark to fit in with the white girls and too English speaking to fit in with the Latina girls. See?
Even my outside is in the middle. Let me explain a little bit about being in the middle. Now, I'm not talking about being the middle child.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. The middle child is usually the peacemaker who is the middleman between the eldest overachieving child and the youngest brat. The middle child shields the youngest child from wedgie and noogie attacks.
No, I'm not that type of middle. Let me explain why I'm apple in the middle. I've always felt like I'm living and balancing between two worlds, the white and the Native American, with nowhere to comfortably land. Being different, I ricochet back and forth everywhere else, too, from family life, friendships, school, and my appearance.
I remember the first time I realized I was different. Really different. It was springtime, and I was nine years old playing during recess. At that time in my life, I loved being outside. I used to spend so much time outside that my naturally tanned skin would turn black as night in the warmer months.
Outdoors was the one place I might possibly find someone to play with. When you're that age, you don't even care if you know someone's name. You just all play together, or so I thought. I was at the top of the slide on our school playground, waiting for the kid ahead of me to go down, when I could hear someone yelling.
At first, I couldn't make out what the kid was saying. It took me a few seconds to figure out he was yelling at me, but then I caught it. A boy, and I have to say he was really ugly with an upturned nose and a unibrow, turned to his friends behind him and thrust his chin up to me, as if drawing their attention upward.
Hey, prairie nigger, ugly boy yelled. Get off the slide. Did he just call me that?
I was so stunned. that I did the only thing I knew how to do. I hawked a loogie on him.
A big one. That phrase. I've heard grown-ups use the n-word, but what he called me, Prairie Nigger, is only spewed at Native Americans.
That day, the boy took away something from me. He took away my love of the outdoors. He took away the one place I felt I belonged. He took away the hidden half that my mother gave me, the Indian side, and replaced it with shame. Which is why, of course, I spit a juicy loogie on him.
I ran home that afternoon, my nine-year-old face wet with tears of shame. I knew my dad, the doctor, was home because he had Mondays off. As early as I could remember, my dad kept to himself a lot.
In the house, with his buddy Jim. Jim Beam. I could smell that liquor on my dad from a mile away. So, if I had a problem, I needed to fix it.
He was surprised to see me and looked up from his newspaper and his drink. Apple, what are you doing home so soon? and I slowly spilled my playground tale. At hearing the phrase, Prairie Nigger, my dad's eye contact broke, and he looked past my shoulders, gazing at some unseen vista. And he stayed there, like he always did when the subject of my mother came up, or anything Indian.
He eventually focused back on me and tried to comfort me the only way he knew how. See. what that boy really needs to understand is that humans truly share 99.998% of the same genotypes and chromosomes. It's that last 0.002% which makes us only seem different and results in varying skin tones, eye color, and the shape and texture of hair.
I just looked at him while he tried to explain away my hurt. Except what he didn't understand and never did is that there isn't a rational way to explain away an injured ego. or a sad soul.
And ever since that day, I've always worn a hat outside and have been religious about applying sunscreen so my skin wouldn't get any darker. Being different is something I just hated. I've never told anyone else what happened to me that day. You're the first. I guess I felt that if I didn't say this aloud, then it never really happened.
After Ugly Unibrow Boy lobbed the words that pierced my heart, Thus began the starting point of my fascination with inventing ways to keep out of the direct sunlight. I figured if I didn't fit in, then at least my skin would look like every other pasty, pale-skinned Minnesotan. I wanted my legs to look lefso-white. Every other mother in America is chasing their kids around with SPF 900, trying to rub layers of sunscreen on the arms, face, and legs of their precious ones.
I decided that I wouldn't let the sun touch my skin. No sun, no tan, no more names, no more standing out. Everyone within miles of me had white, I'm talking lily white skin, so pale you can see their soul white.
So in my mind, if I could just look like them, I could be like them. If I could be like them, then they'd have to invite me to join in all their reindeer games. I grew up having to figure out how to take care of myself because until his new wife, Judy, came along.
My dad was still trying to figure out how to forgive me for my mom's death. She had to leave this life because I had to come. You think that's a huge emotional obstacle to overcome? I'll let you in on one juicier tidbit about me. I killed my mother, but more on that later.
And it's probably why that day I buried the fact that I'm half Indian from my mom and repressed it, whether consciously or not. And that was also the same day that my odd question habit emerged. My school district tries to be multicultural, which, considering everyone except me and a few others are white, is always interesting.
I am the Oreo crumb floating in a glass of milk. Back in first grade, we put on a play about the first Thanksgiving. Now, this was before what I refer to as the third grade playground issue. And so any chance I had to learn about Native Americans, I jumped at it. It's sad to think that in order to learn about who I was, I had to get it from any place outside of my home.
My dad, whenever I asked about my Indian side, always gazed past me and got lost somewhere in his thoughts, in his sadness. So all of us first graders got to choose which character we wanted to play. Do teachers still actually do the stereotypical November Indian unit?
Probably. Do they know we natives are alive all year long? Not just November? Most boys wanted to be Miles Standish, and the girls wanted to be some noble pilgrim wife.
Like I'd want to reenact washing my husband's drawers without a Maytag? Not. Me?
I wanted to play Squanto, friendly Indian guide. Of course, now I know that Squanto was really born to Squantom from the Patuxet tribe. and he was actually kidnapped, sold into slavery in Europe, and when returned, all of his family and entire tribe was wiped out by disease. Really.
But still, I was only in first grade, and I knew he was the only part for me. Seriously, teachers, read some history. At first, my teacher told me that girls cannot play boy parts.
Of course, I reminded her that Shakespeare allowed boys to play girl parts. My dad may have his issues, but ever the scholar, he taught me a few things that came in handy. And so who is she to go against that? Yeah, that teacher really loved a six-year-old putting her in her place.
And that's how I got to play the Indian hero Squanto in our play. Of course, everyone else picked playing a pilgrim. Plymouth Plantation score, 52 pilgrims and one Indian. No wonder the native people had no chance for survival.
The day of the big production came and I was ready. I made a vest out of a paper bag, something my art teacher helped me make, braided my hair, and donned a crow feather that I found on the way to school in my hair. To me, I looked Indian, but the expression on my dad's face when I peered out from the stage told me otherwise.
It was as if he was embarrassed of my appearance. And afterwards, walking out to the car, he took my paper vest and feather and threw them in the trash. He did it so gently, but never explained why. Whenever I would attempt to try to be Indian, it brought up a sadness in him. But I, being a child, interpreted it as shame.
After my first grade year, I quit trying to be Indian, whatever that was. I'd already lost my mom, and I didn't want to drive away my dad. He's all I had left. So I pushed away searching for exterior ways to be Native American. And it seemed to work, until that day on the playground in third grade when the boy called me Prairie Nigger.
School. A little bit of my own personal hell, in more ways than one.