Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

Such is her feeling about Fish.

HE HAS STOPPED frequenting her locker, compelled by his mother to join the golf team in order to fatten up his résumé, particularly the blank space under athletics. Every day after school, Fish hefts a giant quiver of golf clubs down the hall, rattling in the opposite direction of most students as they hurry for the double doors. He smiles less these days. He speaks up in class. He bows under the weight of all those clubs, all those swings that he will never quite master. He winces at the name of his mother’s favorite golfer, the one black man she seems to love, the one that Fish will never want to be. Eventually the coach agrees to make him manager of the team, which is an equal investment of time but a lesser loss of pride.

More and more, when Anju asks him how he is doing, he simply replies, “Busy.” And he is busy, undeniably so, due to what he calls his mother’s “crackdown.” But this is the kind of answer that glazes over another.

They still sit together at lunch most of the time, at least when he is not meeting with the several clubs that he has recently joined, such as Physics Club or Glee Club or Multicultural Club. He invites her to join the latter, but she declines, sure that he is inviting her out of pity or obligation. She also fears that they will make her wear a bindi or a salwar to school. But he has made another friend in the Multicultural Club, a ponytailed girl named Yu Zhou who keeps all her pens, pencils, and erasers in separate Ziploc bags.

It is not so terrible, Anju tells herself, sitting alone at lunch with an open notebook at her elbow. She used to feign study by moving her eyes over the words and turning the page at intervals, but she soon learned that her peers possess an extremely limited peripheral vision. She could be doing jumping jacks on the table, and lunch would go on.

UNTIL THE FOLLOWING WEEK.

All the students gather in the gymnasium for the morning assembly, where Principal Mitchell is to announce the winner of the George de Brigard Award. Microphone in hand, he stands with feet planted upon the eyes of the painted unicorn, before the rising bleachers of wilted students. The unicorn is a permanent chip on the shoulder of the school. Ten years before, the Sitwell School had partaken in a lottery with seven other schools, all of whom had declared themselves members of the high school Ivy League, to decide on mascots. Tigers, Wildcats, and Wolverines went to the more fortunate schools, while Sitwell, coming in last place, was dealt the fantastical equine. The Sitwell artist made every effort to render the unicorn with beady-eyed fury, bared jowls, a thick lingum of a horn — as much machismo as could be mustered for a magical pony.

Standing next to Principal Mitchell is a man in a seersucker suit, introduced as George de Brigard. His face is cheery and wrinkled from tanning, his clay-colored hands clapping at the mention of his own name. Taking the microphone, George de Brigard addresses the unasked question of what it takes to be an artist. Mostly he seems to be talking about himself: “… passion, honesty, discipline, drive, a high tolerance for bouts of regret, and the carapace with which to withstand the criticism of others that keeps coming and coming and coming. But still, my advice to you all is this: Caution to the wind. Carpe diem. Seize”—he looks from one end of the audience to the other—“the day.”

Anju is sitting all the way at the end of the first bleacher, tranquilized by the sounds of George de Brigard, until he clears his throat.

“The winner,” he continues, “embodies this attitude in every way. His name is … Andrew Melvin!”

There is some shuffling and murmuring between Principal Mitchell and George de Brigard. “It’s a girl?” asks George de Brigard, accidentally, into the microphone. “Oh. Oh . Excuse me— An JEW Melvin!”

Anju shoots up from her seat. In this moment of victory, she feels at home, spotlit and praised, culled from the rest in a way that makes all her prior isolation somehow meaningful. She hardly thinks of why her name is being called, so sweet it is to walk across the gymnasium before the many eyes that usually ignore her. She records everything to memory: the squeak of her shoe soles, the trickling applause, the number of steps she must take to travel across the glossy hardwood floor (sixteen) to receive the principal’s warm handshake and a slim white envelope from George de Brigard.

Standing between the two men, she spots Fish in the audience. He watches her intently, leaning forward, holding the edge of the bleacher. Her victory deflates. She remembers what Fish said after her confession, when she asked him, “Would you have done the same as me?”

At this, he paused. “Not a lot of people would, I think. But you’re the one that’s standing here. You’re the one who made it.” His expression was not congratulatory but grave, and slightly bewildered.

Of this and events past, they have not spoken. It seems as though they never will.

OR THE COVER of Rachna’s Sweet Sixteen invitation, Linno draws a mermaid, which seems a proper interpretation of Rachna’s ratio of nationalities. Linno spends several hours drawing and erasing, erasing some more, but something about the seashell bosoms and the curvaceous flipper render the mermaid far too sexy for a sixteen-year-old. All night, she sits with her head bowed, thinking and sketching and sometimes neither, with the wall lizards as apathetic company, as still and flat as if they had been drawn there. She remembers her Sixteen, neither sweet nor bitter but bland, and the years preceding, the bandaged cocoon that came to nothing.

Bored and blocked, she riffles through Ammachi’s stack of Christmas cards, which grows thicker by the year as she has yet to discard a single one. The stockings and bells are uninspiring, nor does the angel Gabriel, sent by an insurance company, act as muse. One card, sent by a cousin in Dubai, is heavier than most. Upon opening it, two planes lift from the lower half, creating a three-dimensional image of the Nativity scene. The kneeling shepherds rise up on the frontmost panel, while the wise men occupy the middle panel, and in the center is the triad of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus watched over by the white North Star. Linno studies the card for a long time, closing it and opening it, watching how the various shapes spring up and take form.

With Ammachi’s sewing scissors, she cuts a page from her drawing pad, folds it in half, and makes two parallel cuts. Opening the page and pulling out the strip, she learns how to coax a small building from the crease. With more cuts, she creates several buildings of varying heights, each wall with windows. She complicates the design and constructs new ones, a process not unlike solving a jigsaw puzzle, wherein the question always remains: How can three dimensions smoothly return to two? With snips and folds and several failed attempts, she comes to replicate the Christmas card, which only fuels her curiosity as she continues to work at the kitchen table, pasting panels with grains of rice, pushing and pulling and scraping the edges, vaguely dazed as the night passes by her window and leaks into the dull blue of dawn.

LATER IN THE WEEK, Linno sets out to visit Alice’s shop. She takes the bus to Good Shepherd Road, her nerves eased by the breeze that cuts through the barred windows, freshly skimmed from the paddy field’s surface. Two egrets, one with prey in its beak, circle and dive around each other, meeting and parting and meeting again, painting the sky with invisible patterns.

By the time she reaches town, Good Shepherd Road is already bustling. A mini-lorry bumps along, carrying open crates of perfect white eggs, though the driver seems unperturbed by the precariousness of his burden. Bicycles whiz by with a squeaky tring around the fruit vendors, who build citrusy pyramids of limes and lemons on the ground, budging from their stools only at sundown.