Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

Ferry to Hunter’s Point.

“Ani! You must do your work!”

“Whatever.”

Podtram home. I am really tired.

But I must do chores for oldies. Fix dinner. Stay on Ani’s case, will she do her goddamn work. “I’m busting my tail to keep you in this school. And do not say it, Ani.”

So she doesn’t. She doesn’t say she hates that school.

Thirteen years, seven months old.

Alma Cho says old Norma Pellicano died. She didn’t get anything, she was just old.

And I would like to go to the ceremony, but I am too busy picking frozen potatoes in the dark for Mort’s friend Pandit, then cut them up, then rush home to make dinner and breathe down Ani’s neck, did she do the work.

When the next message comes from Ms. Chaffee, after winter break, at February, I think it is because I was a little short on the Partial balance I must pay. I get a coupon advance from Mrs. Postow and Loretta Hutz and head off in a rush. You cannot get on the Bell Boulevard podtram Stop. The pod is taped all the way back to Flushing Meadows! I grabbed a shaw to make our way around the tape. Northern Boulevard is totally blocked. We took smoky side streets till we saw body bags on Cherry Avenue. Body bags! It’s been a while since I saw that. The driver just dumped me out and went the other way. I just run the rest of the way to Flushing Cemetery, where the pod still worked. By the time I got to East Side Girls, I’m two hours late, but it’s ok! I do not need the coupons! It is not the problem because guess what?

Ani punched a girl.

I’m standing in the office panting and soaked in Hygiene spray they sprayed at the door, and I’m like well it will not happen again, and Ms. Chaffee is like you are really right. Ani is expelled.

Ani is just squinting at the floor.

I am just in shock. I am what are the chancesisisn g just breathing deep. “Please,” I go. “Please.” I even went on my knees. “Please give her one more chance.”

Ms. Chaffee waits like maybe she would, but she is just breathing deep herself. Then she lets it out. I GAVE HER EVERY CHANCE I COULD! She got the Aid, the Aide, the Partial, the uniform. That is the problem with Diversity kids, they think they are the only ones in the entire world. They think they are the only ones who count. I have done what I could for your daughter but she is a Bad Influence on the other girls. I am responsible to them too. “I will tell you this — as Oppositional as Ani is,” Ms. Chaffee goes, “no wonder they won’t sit with her.”

Well, Ani looks up now. And I am hoping she will say, please. Please give me a chance. Guess what? She looks Ms. Chaffee in the eye and goes, “Well that’s their goddamn problem. I hate this school.”

Ok, there goes the different life.

Don took the Passes off our swipes so we cannot get in again or even through the Dome Lock.

They will let her keep the uniform. That’s it.

“Ma!” Ani is at my bedroom door. “I could plant potatoes.”

I’m just lying in the dark. I didn’t fix dinner, nothing.

“I could sell them at Iron Triangle. Ma.”

What do I tell Rauden? What do I tell Janet?

At least I don’t have to tell Rini Jaffur.

I got up at last. I went into the kitchen. She is already in her pjs. She tore her uniform and threw it away. So I could not even barter it. She hated that school.

“Ma,” she goes. “I could do Projects at the Farm.”

I turned on the tap. The plumbing worked. I put my head under then shook it like Rauden used to. Then I come right up to her so close I don’t even have to raise my voice. “Well, I can guarantee you, that is not going to happen.”

Next morning, while she is sleeping late, I go through the City Line hole to my jobs and reschedule everything.

I’m going to show my daughter who is boss.

vii

“Get up, Ani! Get up, get up.” She is trying to hide under the covers but I just pull them off. “We’re going to Ward Island. Get up, get up, get up!”

She is tugging the covers back. “Ma. No! Oh, Ma. I don’t want to go.”

“And I should care because?” I drag her to the table. “Eat your Process!”

“Ma! Look!” She is pointing out the window.

It’s always something! It’s snowing. First time in years it snowed out here. To get to Ward Island is a hard trip even on a good day, with a lot of waiting for the hybro in bad places. This is not a good day.

But it’s the only one I could get off from work.

By the time we get to Northern Boulevard, the snow turned to rain, we’re soaked, let alone, with the caution tape, there is no public Transport unless we take the cuchifrito that runs almost to Powell’s Cove and we are goddamn not doing that. We did not come this far to end up there. So we have to go another way, wait for a hybro in the rain, and Ani is whining and whining.

“Ma, I don’t want to go to Ward Island what are the chances">ri personal BoardofP. It is a tough school.”

“Like you are the world expert,” I go, “what is tough.”

When we finally get to the stupid bridge to Ward Island it’s snowing again and no one is even around to tell us how to find the school, which is totally boarded-up when we do find it, closed for more than a year, and Ani is so mad because I didn’t know. We’re standing by the boarded-up school in the snow and I’m like, if you did the work I wouldn’t need to know. If you didn’t punch a girl I wouldn’t need to know.

“She called me Shitty Line Ani,” and I will tell you, I would like to punch that girl myself. I would like to punch Ms. Chaffee when I had the chance. “Ma! Why do I even have to go to school?”

We’re heading for the bridge back to Queens, across empty Ward Island, in slush. “For Education.”

“You don’t even know what that means.”

Well I just stopped and leaned on some sort of wall by some stupid shut-up stadium near some pile of mud and slush. “Well I will tell you what I do know. The Opportunity you have just threw away, I’m pretty sure you will not get again. The Education you could get even now, not everyone does. Ani! I never even finished third grade!”

That was the total wrong thing to say because right away she goes, “Oh! You never finished third grade. And I should listen to you tell me what to do because?”

“BECAUSE I WILL KNOCK YOU FROM HERE TO KINGDOM COME!”

It shuts her up.

The snow has stopped.

The bridge is shut. There are no Boards. It’s going to take an hour for us to get off Ward Island. I flag a gypsy ferry to take us through the Riker’s Channel even though it’s going to clean my coupons out but what else could we do? Guess what, the Alert spread to the old airport, the boats has to all turn around, and I am so sick of how long everything took, I say drop us at the Power Plant in Astoria, and the skipper is like, it is unsafe, they have fleas and pathogens, you will get something bad, I’m like, LEAVE US OFF.

“Ma! It’s dangerous.”

“We’re not getting anything.” I make the skipper let us off and pull her through the Plant, which is, you know, burnt, like those big things that stick up are black, and there is funny powder around and a green mud in snow, and I guess there is fleas, and one bit her on the hand, and Ani is so scared she slips in the green mud and falls and gets green mud all over her, and she is crying she is going to get something. “You’re not getting anything!” I really had it by now. I even say, “Because I’m not getting anything!” I almost spilled the beans right then and there. But then I shut up.

She stops crying and looks at me. Then she looks at her hand with the bite on it.

All the way home she is doing it. Hand/me. Hand/me.

I’m going to find her a school.