Amazing Alexia and Those Bratty Girls

I am looking at her. She is talking to me and I am looking at her and I don’t know what is going on. Why is she talking to me? She does not like me. Wendy does not like me and none of her friends like me. They are a group and they don’t like me.

I don’t know why they don’t like me. I know I have done nothing. I am quiet and shy and don’t really play with them so there is no way I have done anything that would make them mad. But they don’t like me.

Wendy is one of them but she is standing here talking to me like we are friends, which we are not. And I am confused and don’t know what to say or how to act. She is talking about those girls. She is saying very bad things about those girls. Calling them names and telling me she is in a fight with them and she doesn’t like them anymore.

I am wondering if I might have a friend now. Because I am alone. We are on a weekend field trip for the entire school and I am standing here alone because I have no friends. I have been pretending to be fascinated by all the historical sites all day. We are visiting a “cottage” that was built by a man who found a lot of gold during the gold rush. It is enormous; bigger than any house I have ever seen and I think it is funny that it was his “cottage.” I have been wandering around paying close attention to everything so it looks like I am happy having time alone to learn about these historical facts that are so interesting.

We are standing in a huge empty swimming pool in what was this man’s back yard and Wendy is asking me what I think of those girls. And I am scared because I don’t know what I think of them but I know that I don’t know why they are mad at me and I think it is mean to be mad at someone for no reason and to ignore someone and not let someone play with you for no reason.

So I say that I don’t know why they are mad at me and that makes me mad and it makes me not like them. She asks me if I think this or that about them and I say yes, I guess so.

Then she says she will be right back because she has to go tell them how mad she is at them. And I watch her walk over to those girls and start yelling at them and waving her hands around like she is angry at them. And it occurs to me that she looks fake doing it. That she is pretend fighting with them. Because she is. They are playing a game. 

She is coming over to me and telling me she is fighting with those girls and she is not. She is just trying to get me to say bad stuff about them so that she can go back and tell them what I have said.

Right now she is pretending to yell at them but what she is probably saying to them is all the things I have just said to her about those girls.

I don’t understand this. There is a level of not liking someone where you decide, I don’t like her. And this can be for any reason or none. It is just how things are. Maybe she is annoying or you don’t like to play the same things.

Then there is another level above that where a group of girls gets together and decides they don’t like one girl. This level should require that some thing happened. Maybe she stole one of the girls’ best friends. Or maybe she said bad things about one of the girls behind her back. Or got one of the girls in trouble. But I think there should be something bad that happened for a whole group of girls to decide that they will not play with another girl and they won’t be nice to her.

And then there is a level where the girls get together and make a plan that involves lying and acting and planning and all sorts of weird stuff so that they can catch the girl doing something bad. To do something like this, it seems like you would really have to hate the girl. Like she killed your cat or stole something from you or beat you up.

She walks back and starts talking about those girls again and how horrible they are. I nod and don’t say much because I know what she is doing and I am just standing back and waiting to see what happens.

I pretend to be amused and satisfied with myself for having caught on to this game so quickly. I feel better about myself because I am smart and they have not tricked me.

We are together most of the day and she keeps making up weirder and weirder reasons to go talk to those girls and at a certain point I am starting to become annoyed that they think I am so stupid that I don’t know what they are doing. I wish it would all be over so I didn’t have to pretend anymore and be around this person who is trying to get me to say bad things.

She goes away again and now I am being called by my teacher. He is standing with her under a grove of giant trees and they are looking concerned. He tells me that Wendy has told him about all of the mean things I have said about those girls.

I am looking at him and I feel a darkness spreading through my body. It is anger but it is defeat. I tell him that I knew what Wendy was doing all day. I tell him that it was obvious to me and I tell him how she acted all day and that she and those girls had planned this whole thing to get me in trouble. That I had done nothing to them and that I said very little about those girls and had just agreed with Wendy because I was playing along with their game. And shouldn’t they all get in trouble for doing something so mean to me even though I have never done anything to them.

He looks confused and concerned and he says nothing. He asks us to think about what has happened.

I overheard my mom say that she thought those girls were brats. And so I am telling myself that they are mean and I have done nothing wrong. But what is it about me that makes them hate me so much? I wonder if there is something about the way I am that is just really annoying or bad. Or else why would they put so much effort into being mean to me.

Amazing Alexia and the Red Chair Fiasco

I just want to say that I believe that if you tell someone that they are going to get something they really really want, then you should really really make sure that you follow through with that—especially, if that “something” is really really important to the person.

I love candy. I know that a lot of people love candy and that is an obvious thing to say but I really love candy. I think about candy a lot. I will sit and imagine living in a world made of candy and I get sad when I realize that the world is not made of candy and will never be made of candy.

My parents don’t allow sugar in the house. No cookies, no ice cream, no cereal that has sugar in the first 5 ingredients. Do you know how many cereals don’t have sugar in the first 5 ingredients!? Almost none. Grapenuts and those puffs that taste like styrofoam. That’s it.

I like the styrofoam puffs ok and I don’t even mind Grapenuts that much but it’s like eating little rocks. By the time the milk softens it up, it becomes a gigantic bowl of soggy mush. My dad gets mad at me every Saturday morning because I don’t finish my bowl. When I tell him it’s a soggy mush, he says “Why don’t you pour yourself a smaller bowl and then have a second bowl if you want more!?” I don’t know why I don’t do that. I am always sure that I am so hungry I will eat it all.

We don’t have dessert at my house. When I tell my dad I want something sweet, he tells me to eat some fruit. Fruit is not candy. It is fruit. There is nothing on earth that tastes like candy other than candy. Not dates, not apples, not red bell peppers, not prunes. Candy is the only thing that tastes like candy, period.

I remember one time we were all having cake as a special treat and my mom and her friends start talking about how they can’t eat any more because it is “too rich.” “Oh, this cake is so rich! I can’t eat another bite!” I almost cried I was so mad. What does that even mean? How can cake be “too anything” not to eat. I could understand if someone accidentally used salt instead of sugar. Or, I don’t like coconut, so if it were covered in coconut, I could see not being able to eat it or having to pick around the coconut. But this was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. And I can promise you, it was the most amazing thing I have ever tasted.

So the other day, because Jesse and my mother were out of town, my dad tells me that if I get my chores done and read a certain amount before dinner, we can walk up the street to the store after dinner and pick out a piece of candy for dessert. Imagine if there was one thing that you loved more than any other thing in the whole world and you were never allowed to have it and someone told you that tonight after dinner you could have it. That is how I felt when my dad told me this.

All day I planned and dreamt and thought about what piece of candy I was going to choose at the store. The It’s It ice cream bar is the biggest thing I could get, but dad might not go for it and it is really hard to eat. It’s too big for my mouth and you have to bite into it rather than lick it, like most ice cream, which means I freeze my front teeth. Sometimes I get the Bit’o’Honey bar or a Charleston Chew because they take the longest to eat. I like both of those candy bars, but they’re not my favorite. I really love anything chocolate but all the chocolate stuff seems small. I think it might be a rip off.

Then. All of a sudden. Out of nowhere. At dinner time, for no reason at all, my dad says we are not going to get candy for dessert. He says I haven’t done my chores or my reading and the deal is off. I scream at him and tell him that I can finish it all after dinner and that I am working on it and I PROMISE I will finish it after dinner. It is not like I won’t do it. I will do it. I will do it after dinner. There is plenty of time. But he REFUSES! 

He is yelling at me, I am yelling at him. And then he storms off and I am left sitting in the kitchen all alone. This is the meanest and most unfair thing that anyone has ever done to me ever. I cannot see any reason on earth why I can’t just finish what I need to do after dinner. I don’t understand why it has to happen before dinner. There is plenty of time after dinner.

So I turn in my seat and bite down hard on the red vinyl chair that is one of a matching set that goes to the red Formica 1950s table that my mom loves. I don’t know why she likes this table and chairs so much. It seems like a cheap plastic table set to me. She says that it's the perfect house-wife kitchen set that all good house wives had in the 1950s and she thinks it's funny that we have it because she is a liberated working mom.

I didn’t rip the chair. I just bit it. Out of fury. And when I was done there was a bite mark left on the chair.

A few days later my mom screams at me and grounds me because I bit the chair. No, “Did you bite this chair?” or “Who bit this chair?” She didn’t ask my dad if he bit the chair or Jesse if he bit the chair. She just assumed that I bit the chair and got mad at me and grounded me.

What I don’t understand is why do they always assume that because something is wrong, I did it? It’s just not fair. If she had asked me, I would have admitted it. But she didn’t ask. She just saw the bite mark and got mad at me. What if I didn’t bite the chair!? What if Jesse bit the chair?

Something She Never Said Out Loud

Really? Do you really think she was amazing? Tell me about that. Tell me what it is about her exactly, that makes her amazing — at least, from your perspective. I really want to know. Was it because she spent every weekend at the hospital in the cancer ward reading books to sick people? Was it her tireless work rescuing and caring for sick and injured animals? Or maybe it was all those summers she spent in third world countries building schools and shelters for orphaned children. Or how she gave every gift she ever received to the needy. Probably it was because she graduated valedictorian of her class and got academic and sports scholarships to every top school in the country and was overwhelmingly adored by all of her classmates. Or because she graduated at the top of her class from Harvard Medical School and then devoted her life to caring for AIDS patients in Africa with her funny, charming, gorgeous doctor husband. No? Not any of those things? Oh that’s right! She didn’t do any of those things. She was just a kid. And let’s be honest, kids are not exactly what I would call ‘amazing.’ What is it, then, that made her so amazing? Hey… maybe the reason your bratty daughter and her bratty friends picked on my daughter is because they knew how amazing she was and couldn’t bear to live in her shadow. Could that be it? Is that how you know that she was amazing? Your daughter told you? Speaking of, I see your daughter didn’t have the guts to show her face here. My daughter was not fucking amazing. She didn’t have time to be amazing. She was 6. Don’t tell me she was amazing. You know nothing about her. You have no idea how amazing she was.

We Did Hold Our Breath

Finally I just couldn’t take it any more, you know what I mean? I mean, there was so much sadness and loss and loneliness. Desperate loneliness. Oh my gosh. I thought I was going to be swallowed up by it. Everyone for miles, all of use, we just sat. Holding our breath. I mean, not literally. Because if you held your breath for that long – like from when she found out, which was 4 or 5 that afternoon … something like that … until the next morning at say, 530 am, you would die. Or probably pass out and then start breathing once you passed out. But what I am saying is that, metaphorically speaking, we all held our breath. For miles, all of us. For this little soul we share this space with. We held our breath for her. The minute she found out I could feel it in the very center of my body. If you measured it, it would be the spot that was equidistance in every direction from the middle of me to my skin. It wasn’t pain. How to describe it? It was a longing type feeling. A powerful, sad, longing feeling. It kind of felt like if I had tried to open my bill to sing, it would have sounded like a howl. And so I held my breath. And then the guys next to me stopped and the guys next to them held their breath. And everyone landed and held still on their perch. Their feathers ruffled like we do when we get wet. And we sank our little heads down into our chest, like we do when we nap. And our little black eyes got small, like slits, like we were going to sleep. And we sat. Holding our breath. She howled and rocked and cried. And I could feel it in that place I mentioned before. Every note. Every song. It swirled up into the sky and more came down to perch and hold their breath. You know what it was like? It was like when it rains. When it really pours. We all just nestle in to wait it out. Blinking and ruffling and shaking. We did that. Because when you feel that kind of power, you just have to sit still and let it do what it needs to do. None of us slept. All bleary eyed. When the sun started to crack over the horizon, we just sat there, silent. Never has it been so quiet. Never has it felt so sad. She came out and sat in that very chair right down there. I am pretty sure that was the exact one. She sat and sipped on a hot cup of coffee. And we watched. Just sat there and watched her, no one breathing. Our little toes wrapped tightly around our perches. Little eyes blinking. Waiting. And finally, I knew it was time. I knew someone had to say something. So I opened my throat, ruffled my feathers up like I do when I am really trying to impress everyone and I sang. One of the loveliest calls I have ever sung. I usually call for a mate or call to let everyone know this is where I hang. But that morning I called for her. Like it was the only call that had ever mattered. It was like something came through me to help the sun come up that morning. I had never felt anything like it. It was awesome! And as I called and called, my feathers ruffled so big that I was as big as an eagle. And then I saw her change. She heard me. She totally heard what I was saying.