Open Mind: Chapter Five

I hated Saint Louis. I know that I expressed that to you in more ways than I can count, but I hated it. We lived on the outskirts of town, but not far enough away to be free from the constant noise of it -- the choking diesel engines of 18-wheelers barreling down the highway and sedans honking and wheezing beside them, the endless barrage of highway destruction and reconstruction -- it was enough to drive anyone crazy. But having been surrounded by nature, the most noisy things I usually experienced were the rustling of leaves in the trees, the chirping of tree frogs and songbirds, and the gentle pitter-patter of rain against tin rooftops for most of my life.

Mom was able to sell our old house at the last possible moment. She used the last of the money that Dad had left to her in order to pay off the debt on the house, pay some movers to load our U-Haul, and make the security deposit on our new apartment. Once Mom had sold most of our belongings in the yard sale, we were left with a full van of furniture and clothes. I carried Dad’s guitar and banjo around my torso --one on the front and one on the back -- throughout the entire move, and although I know it frustrated Mom, she didn’t argue the point with me. She must have known that I didn’t trust her to not do something to them while I wasn’t looking, and there was far too much going on that day for her to be worried about another outburst from me that day.

Once the van was filled and the movers were paid, we said our final goodbyes to the house my father spent so much time and effort renovating for us. I couldn’t help but let out a sigh and a few stray tears at the thought of leaving the place behind. It didn’t feel real.

Mom didn’t say a word. She turned on the radio to some country station and her gaze fixed on some far point on the horizon. Even though I’m sure that she was glad to finally move past the chapter of her life dominated by the memory of my father, I could see the sadness in her eyes that we shared. I couldn’t find the words to say to bridge the canyon that we had dug out between us, and it seemed best to leave the whole mess alone. I pressed my head against the cool glass of the window and drifted off to sleep.

After what felt like only seconds, Mom shook me awake and asked me to grab a box or two from the backseat. I looked out through the windshield of the truck and my heart sank. The apartment building in front of our parked truck was so much worse than I had imagined. The front of the building was lined with dingy white vinyl, splintering wooden columns and wild lavender bushes bordering the porch, and cracked concrete leading to the front door.

“Whose place is this,” I asked, fearful of the answer.

“Ours,” Mom responded flatly. “The pictures in the advertisement of the inside looked promising.”

“Unless they were scratch-and-sniff, I’m gonna expect the worst.”

“Whatever you say, Sky.”

There were three doors on the bottom floor of the apartment and three doors on the top floor. A set of questionable wooden stairs led to the second floor, and I desperately hoped that our apartment would not be on that second floor. Mom knocked and entered the middle door on the ground level, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The sigh of relief was premature, I quickly realized. Mom gestured for me to follow her with a hushed “aqui, Skylar.” We entered the apartment complex’s office -- a glorified broom closet with moldy, puke-green carpeting. A pudgy bald man with a patchy red beard sat behind a comically small desk that was covered in scattered papers.

“You must be the Millers.”

“Yes, sir. Deborah Miller, and my daughter Skylar.”

“And where is your husband?”

“He couldn’t make it,” I snapped. Mom slapped my shoulder with the back of her hand.

“I’m a widow, Mr. Harding. I believe I mentioned that on the phone with you last week.”

“Ah, I’m sure you did. My condolences, Ms. Miller,” the landlord said before taking a loud slurping drink from the straw of his gas station soda.

“It was a while ago,” Mom said, pushing her curly brown hair from her eyes. “I was hoping to get the keys from you so that we can start moving our things in.”

“Ah, of course. Down to business. I like it.” The landlord rose from his office chair and waddled to the filing cabinet beside his desk. He pulled open the top drawer with a god-awful metallic squeal and retrieved a key ring from inside. “Let me give you the grand tour, ladies.”

The grand tour was not grand, let me assure you. He confirmed my fear, which was that our apartment was the last one on the second floor of the building. We climbed the groaning staircase, and my mother huffed in disapproval. The landlord assured her that the stairs were safe and that it was on his “to-do list.” The actual apartment was nothing special -- two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an open kitchen and living room. The bedrooms were roughly the same size, but Mom let me pick which one I preferred. I assumed this was an olive branch of sorts, but it felt like being given a choice between a shit sandwich or a puke pizza. I chose the back bedroom because it had two windows.

My favorite part of the apartment, which was not a very contentious honor, was the back balcony. While the bottom floor apartments had concrete slabs to walk out onto from the backdoor, the second floor apartments had small wooden balconies. There were two dingy outdoor chairs on the porch that were left over from the previous tenants.

“Do we get to keep the chairs?” I asked the landlord.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the landlord joked.

“Chairs or no deal, Harding.”

The landlord looked around the apartment nervously, eager to get away from me. We heard my mother cursing under her breath in Spanish and headed down the tiny hallway towards the bathroom. She threw open the bathroom door and held up her index finger in front of Mr. Harding’s face as if to ask him to inspect it.

“This bathtub is disgusting. The bottom of the tub is yellow, for God’s sake.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Ms. Miller. Bleach it.”

“You bleach it, Mister Landlord,” she snapped back. The landlord raised his eyebrows and scoffed, but he didn’t argue any further. He returned to the front door of the apartment and took a deep, satisfied breath.

“A pleasure doing business with you, Ms. Miller. If you need anything else, you know where to find my office.”

“Can you help us move in?” Mom was taking a shot in the dark, masking her desperation with her usual stony exterior. “My family doesn’t know I’m here, and we don’t have anyone to reach out to for help.”

The landlord, to her great surprise, did agree to help. He called in one of his employees, a grizzly maintenance man named Dave, to help us move the heavy furniture. By the time the last trash bag of clothes was tossed in our new living room, the sun had set and the cicadas started to sing. It was an oddly comforting sound that reminded me of home in the exact moment that I needed. I thought to myself that there may still be some pieces of home that would be able to stay with me forever -- no matter where we ended up.

Over the next few days, Mom and I took our time unpacking our belongings and settling in to the new place. Mom made a checklist of requests for Dave, including a leaking ceiling tile in her bedroom, a corner of the cheap living room carpet where a square was peeling up from the wood below, and of course, the bathroom tub. Dave stopped by each day, addressing each concern on the checklist until Mom finally exhausted every complaint she could conjure up.

Mom insisted that I start school back the next Monday after we had moved in. I would have put it off for as long as I could, but I didn’t fight it. There was something that was both terrifying and exciting about starting a new school -- I was free from the burdens and the expectations of friends and teachers in a tiny rural school where everyone knew everyone. Every little argument, betrayal, and embarrassing moment never seemed to disappear in my old school. Nothing really interesting ever happened, so every piece of entertainment we could milk out of each other was invaluable. A kid named Jenny fell asleep during lunch in a PB&J sandwich in second grade and woke up with a face full of peanut butter. We called her PB&Jenny till the day I left, and I imagine it’ll be carved into her gravestone. I hope they bury her with a sandwich.

I was the type of student at my old school who never got into trouble. I always followed every rule and finished every assignment. I was so afraid of disappointing the teachers -- even the ones who weren’t worth the effort, in hindsight. Jacky was my only real friend -- all of the other kids came and went. I was fine with disappearing into the background.

I did not have the same experience at my new school. From the very first day, I’d been assigned my role in the school. Mom dropped me off on my first day on her way to the hospital and wished me luck, but it ultimately turned out to be more of a curse. The school building was enormous -- cutting the middle man in the school-to-prison pipeline by modeling the school as a prison. The walls were made of standard gray concrete and the windows were tall vertical slats of barricaded glass.

When I arrived at the front door, it was locked. Classes had already begun and the secretary had to buzz me into the office. She peered at me over her red, brick eyeglasses with mild annoyance. “You must be the new student. Skylar Miller?”

“That’s me,” I responded awkwardly. “I think Mom confused the start time and the tardy bell time.”

“Your mom can read English, right? She signed off on some paperwork for us the other day, but it didn’t occur to me that she --”

“My mom can read just fine, thanks.”

The secretary pursed her lips, picked up the office phone, and paged for Dana Myers to come to the office. She asked me to take a seat and I did as I was told. After a few minutes, a girl a few years older than me arrived to the office. Her hair was pulled up in a messy, multicolored top knot -- held in place by a scrunchy, a headband, and a prayer. Her combination of baggy sweatshirt and fingertip-length shorts baffled me, but she certainly looked comfortable. She rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and looked impatiently at the secretary, who was on the phone. The secretary waved her hand dismissively.

“Thanks a bunch, Mrs. Flat. A real pleasure, as always.” The girl rolled her eyes and turned to me. “You ready to go, new girl?”

I nodded and scrambled to my feet. I threw my backpack over one of my shoulders and followed behind the girl obediently. The girl checked her flip phone and shoved it back into her sweatshirt pocket.

“I’m Dana, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Skylar.”

“You serious?”

“Yeah. Is it weird?”

“A little,” the girl said, stretching her arms above her head and twisting her torso. “Makes me think of Supergirl or some shit.”

“I guess so,” I responded sheepishly. “Are you in the eighth grade, too?”

The girl stopped and laughed at me. “Do I look like an eighth grader to you?”

She was a bit short, so I felt pretty reassured in my guess. I chose to simply shrug instead.

“I’m a senior. I didn’t put makeup on today so maybe that’s why I look like a freaking toddler to you.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I like your accent, Skylar. Where are you from, Alabama or something?”

“Well, no. Do you know the Bootheel?”

“The what?”

“Never mind. I’m from farther south.”

“Oh,” Dana said. She pondered this for a moment. “Weird.”

Dana rattled off a few locations in the school, including the music room, the gym, the library, and the bathrooms. We stopped at the bathrooms for Dana, and I stood outside while she took care of business. She came out a few minutes later, shaking water from her hands.

“The help around here sucks, so don’t expect them to keep any paper towels or toilet paper holders full. I had to wipe my ass with my Chemistry notes one time -- don’t judge.”

“Who hasn’t? I prefer college-ruled myself.”

Dana scoffed to herself. “I like you already, Skylar. You’re a dork, but I’m into it. But I have to ask -- what’s with the flannel?”

“My shirt?” I was genuinely confused. I hadn’t really thought about the clothes I wore before. I had a lot of flannel shirts and jackets of different colors that Dad had bought for me. In hindsight, I probably should have been more concerned that Dad bought both of our clothes from Bass Pro Shop, but it really hadn’t ever occurred to me, and no one ever brought it up until that moment.

“Yeah, like, what’s the story? Does everyone down south wear flannel?”

“I mean, I guess some people do.”

“So are you a lumberjack or a lesbian?”

“A what?”

“A lumberjack. You know, those guys who chop down trees. You ever seen the guy on the Brawny paper--”

“I know what a lumberjack is. What was the other one?”

“A lesbian?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what that means. Isn’t that a country? I am from Missouri, you know.”

“No, a lesbian is a girl who likes girls.”

“I do like girls, sure. Girls are fine.”

Dana stopped and turned to face me. She placed a hand on each shoulder. My eyes grew wide and my heart skipped a beat. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

“Have you ever kissed a girl?”

I gasped. The pieces suddenly clicked into place and I shook my head violently. “No, no, no! That’s not what I meant. I’ve never done anything like that before. My mom would kill me.”

Dana took her hands off my shoulders and laughed. “Okay, okay. No need to freak out. Just asking the question, that’s all.”

We finished our tour and Dana dropped me off at my classroom. We never spoke again after that day, but she certainly had spoken about me to everyone else. By the end of the day, I started to notice whispers. No one would talk to me directly, but I could feel their eyes on me. By the end of the week, I’d been unofficially ostracized. The seats on either side of me never filled on the bus, the lunch room, or the classroom.

On the nights when Mom and I had schedules that aligned and she was able to be home, she’d ask me how school was going with the same tone someone would ask about the weather or the stock market. I always responded with the same level of enthusiasm. Mom had enough on her plate, and I already knew what she would tell me: just talk to someone. You have to try and make new friends.

I’ve never been good at making new friends, but you already know that. I can never find the right words to say, and it never feels like the right time to say them. Most people in school were nice enough to my face at first --they’d laugh a bit at my jokes, and they quickly realized how useful I could be in a group project. But I’ve never understood how to make a person stop and think, yeah, I’m interested in spending my free time with this person. Jacky was a friendship born out of circumstance and desperation for both of us -- a real “beggars can’t be choosers” scenario.

Imagine my shock when I arrived to school several weeks after I started at that school with a handwritten note sticking out from the slots in my hallway locker. On the note was an invitation to a birthday party for Heather Sampson. I didn’t know who she was, so I assumed that she must have put the invitation into my locker by mistake. I shoved the note into my jacket pocket and was content to leave that opportunity behind me.

That night, Mom came across the note in the pocket when she was doing our laundry. The landlord allowed her to use the machines after hours -- a privilege he did not extend to the other tenants. When she came back to the apartment, she went to the balcony where I was sitting. I was strumming absentmindedly on Dad’s guitar and listening to the rain as it splattered against the roof.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were invited to a birthday party, Sky?”

I laid my head back to look at her over my shoulder. I squinted my eyes to see the note between her two fingers. I shrugged at her -- a gesture that I knew she hated.

“What do you mean? You should go. She seems like a nice girl.”

“You don’t even know her, Mom. Hell, I don’t even know her.”

“She must be nice to invite you to her party and not even know you. She left her phone number on the bottom. Call her and tell her you are coming.”

“That would be a lie, Mom, and you told me not to lie.”

“You had better call her, or else I will.”

“I’m not calling her.”

Mom huffed and stormed back into the apartment. I expected to hear the door slam, as it did after most of our arguments, but she had forgotten to close it. I was so comfortable in my chair and I didn’t want to get up, but I knew that my bedroom would be freezing cold if the door stayed open. The heat for the building didn’t get turned on until the landlord decided to turn it on, and he seemed to have a strict “no heat till it snows” policy. I gave it another few moments to see if Mom would realize her mistake, but when she didn’t, I rose to my feet with a groan. I set the guitar in the chair and walked over to the door.

“Oh no, this is Mrs. Miller. Skylar Miller’s mom.”

Oh no, I thought. The mad woman actually did it.

“I don’t care who it was for. My daughter will be there.”