Jessica Martinez - The Vow

At first I tried to correct false assumptions one at a time, but I learned pretty quickly that talking back only ended in getting shoved against my locker or leveled by a kick to the back of the knee. It didn’t matter how firmly I insisted my name wasn’t Saddam and that we weren’t even Iraqi, because my real name, Mohammed Ibrahim Hussein, was bad enough. And after a few attempts at trying to explain we were less-than-devout mainstream Muslims, barely likely to go to mosque, let alone to suicide-bomb the local Kroger, I gave up. My brown skin, my accent, my stinky lunches, my too-dressy khakis shorts and lame button-up polos—I was worthy of a shunning.

It hurt. But it made sense too. Ostracizing the weird one is what ten-year-olds do best. I’d seen it done back in Amman to the kid with the small head and the lisp. Maybe I’d even joined in. Maybe I deserved this.

After that first month of school in Kentucky, when I realized how bad it was going to be, I just wanted it to be summer so I could float around in our swimming pool in peace without having to field angry questions about why my soggy falafel looked like dog crap and why my God wanted me to hijack airplanes and kill people.

I just wanted to be left alone.

And then I went and did the unthinkable: I pissed myself.

You can’t piss yourself. Not in Amman, not in Elizabethtown, not anywhere. It’s the unpardonable sin, trumped only by crapping yourself, which I thankfully did not do.

We were on a field trip to the Louisville Science Center, and I’d been too nervous to ask an adult where the bathroom was. I figured I could hold it. All day. At ten I was clearly not aware of my physical limitations. By the time I realized that holding it all day was absolutely not going to happen, I had a wet spot blooming over the front of my khakis and hot piss running down my legs and into my socks.

It was the albino boa constrictor that saved me. All the kids were standing around a science center employee, mesmerized by the grotesque yellowish snake draped around his shoulders, and by some act of God, or maybe just an act of exclusion, I was behind them.

At first the physical relief was too sweet to feel anything else. But then pleasure was swallowed whole by panic. I couldn’t move. I should’ve been running to find the bathroom, or hiding somewhere, or at the very least, looking for one of the parent volunteers, but my urine-soaked legs were frozen.

Standing helplessly, waiting for people to notice what I’d done, I realized that my isolation was about to turn into something much, much uglier. I had been a pariah. Now I’d be prey. I’d have a better chance of survival with that snake than with my classmates after this.

That’s when I saw Annie. Birdlike. Pale. Silent. Her sunken eyeballs were like marbles, staring unblinking from the far side of the cluster of students. I didn’t notice then that she was just as separate from them as I was. I only saw that she was inches taller than the crowd and practically incandescent. Later, I learned how phobic she was of snakes, how she’d been close to throwing up, trying not to stare at its glistening body or hear the shlip, shlip of its flicking tongue. But in that moment, her paleness made her look like a ghost, or maybe an angel.

An angel who was staring at my crotch.

I shuddered, feeling the paralysis breaking and a rush of tears flooding my eyes. But before I could even start crying, she was in front of me, pushing me hard, driving me backward, whispering, Go-go-go-go-go!

I turned, stumbled along with no choice—she was skinny but surprisingly strong—and even if I did have a choice, I didn’t have any ideas of my own. Bewildered, I let her shove me all the way to the women’s bathroom and into a stall.

“Stay here!” she hissed, her pink lips quivering, sky-blue eyes wide and fierce. Then she was gone.

I slid the metal lock shut with a quivering index finger and waited. Forever. I stood shivering in the overly air-conditioned ladies’ room, afraid to sit on the toilet, afraid to move, afraid that Annie had left me there to die, afraid she was about to throw open the door and bring my classmates through one by one to laugh at the pants-pissing freak show.

Someone came in and I tensed every muscle, bracing for whatever was about to be done to me. Orthopedic shoes and enormous ankles appeared in the stall next to mine. Not her. I listened to the stranger pee and sigh, flush, use the sink, and leave.

Maybe Annie wasn’t coming back. Maybe she’d found her friends and forgotten about me. She had lots of them. Everyone liked Annie Bernier, or at least they were nice to her, which from what I could tell, was the same thing. She never smiled, but she wasn’t like the pouting popular girls. Not viciously pretty or loud-talking or hair-twirling—and yet everyone treated her like royalty.

I didn’t know then about Lena. I didn’t know that they weren’t her friends any more than they were my friends, that we were both being ostracized, just in different ways.

The door swung opened again, and Annie’s pale-pink Chucks appeared on the mottled tile just beyond my stall.

I held my breath.

“Put these on,” she whispered, even though we were alone.

A pair of black sweatpants appeared on the floor, and she slid them under with her foot. I snatched them greedily. I didn’t even ask or care where she’d found them. They were too big, but not so big they’d fall down unless someone gave them a yank.

I opened the door. Annie stood in front of me, spindly arms crossed, examining the fit.

No place to look. I stared at the wall, cheeks burning as the mortification returned, mixed with the overpowering relief of being rescued.

She held out her hand and waited. What did she want, a high five? Money?

“Your pants,” she whispered finally.

I stared at the piss-soaked khakis on the ground. I didn’t ask what she was going to do with them when I handed them over, and I didn’t argue when she stuffed them into the garbage can. I just followed her out of the restroom.

We rejoined the group together, as if nothing else needed to be said. And when she inexplicably saved the seat beside her on the bus back, I was too shocked to ask why.

She didn’t tell a soul. I didn’t know why then, and I only sort of know why now.

Lying in bed that night, I felt the change. Something had happened to me. I’d pivoted, and while one foot was still firmly planted in misery, the other was somewhere else. And the view from my new stance was not entirely desolate.

I’d been saved.

Only then did I realize I’d forgotten to say thank you.

Annie

They all forget to say thank you. Every single kid who walks through the door manages to remember we have an unlimited sample policy, though. Sometimes a mom will squeeze out some gratitude with a nudge or a What do you say? after I’ve handed over twenty or so mini spoonfuls of custard, but in general, the adults don’t do much better.

And in general, I just smile and keep scooping.

But right now the smile is slipping. The arches of my feet ache, and my arm is burning, and I’m still several hours away from the end of my shift.

Reed warned me when I clocked in this morning that it would be nuts. “Swim camp starts today,” he said.

I continued wrapping the apron straps around my waist, double-knotting them in the front. “Okay.”

“That means right after three it’ll get crazy.”

“How crazy?” I stood watching him peel the brown wrapper from the coins, waiting to see if he’d say more, and noticing his paint-speckled hands. For a moment I thought he was an artist and felt almost giddy. I even opened my mouth to say something stupid, but then I remembered he’d mentioned painting his grandma’s house.