My Escapee: Stories

Examination

40 Examination / Annapassesherparents’bedroomandseesthroughthecracked door her mother standing in her underwear in front of a fulllength mirror. Her mother raises her arms over her head and releasesabluebundlethattumblesdownherbodyandbecomes a dress. She adjusts its fit across her hips, zips its back zipper with a quick contortion and bunching up of material at the neck. She purses her lips to apply lipstick. It seems her mother ’s not really looking at herself, but at the pieces of herself she’s assembling.The light in the room is slow, museum-like. “Morning,Anna,” her mother says.Anna jumps. In the kitchen, she puts two frozen waffles in the toaster oven. Her father is leaning against the counter, struggling to knot his tie. He gestures helplessly at himself.“Can you?” The tie is the same deep blue as her mother’s dress. She takes the slippery ends in her hands and pictures a proper knot, then undoes the image in her head, this loop, that tuck, and works her way forward to meet the undoing. She tugs at the crisp little knot. “Thanks,” her father says, and Anna’s about to ask why he and her mother are getting all dressed up but stops herself.The Examination / 41 toaster dings.She pours syrup over her waffles,feeling a stealth pleasure in having to supply the answer herself.Perhaps they’re on their way to meet a child they gave up for adoption long ago. Perhaps that child’s name is Emerald and she’s written a book about her abandonment.And in the book,there are pictures of Anna’s mother holding the little baby like a bag of apples.Anna knows that to come right out and ask might cause a) quarreling, or b) the proffered answer to be far less interesting than she’d hoped, less interesting than the alternative she’s created. Her mother pops her head into the kitchen and asks if Anna can buy her lunch today,and withdraws beforeAnna can answer. Her father lines up two coffee cups on the counter, fills them, and drinks them both.When her mother returns she smells like crushed roses. “We’re off,” her mother says.“Don’t forget to brush your teeth.” Her father calls over his shoulder, “Have a good day at school, my sweet.” Anna is waiting to hear something beautiful over the loudspeaker , something that makes beautiful sense. There are announcements, the clearing of a secretary’s throat. Today, her class is studying Other Cultures.Their teacher stands up front, modeling a kimono. “Mrs. Sharkey, what countries border Japan?” a boy named Gregory asks. “What are its influences?” Mrs.Sharkey completes a revolution.“That’s an excellent question,” she says. “And the answer is China.And, I believe, Bangkok.” Examination 42 / Anna can’t help herself.“Japan is an island!” she calls. She arrived at her sixth-grade classroom wearing plasticframed , purely cosmetic spectacles. No lenses.When her class was taken to the infirmary for their back-to-school check ups, Anna was pronounced legally blind in one eye and given a prescription for real glasses.The nurse said legally blind in an exultant voice, as if she had been transported onto the set of a television show.She thumped her pointer against the eye chart, and her white cap, a corpulent dove, slipped to the side of her head.In seventh grade,Anna attempted to block a school-wide balloon-release project on ecological grounds, but the principal ,who hoped that one of the balloons—with its cheery,rudimentary note—would reach the rich side ofAlexandria, made her sit in a room with the spent helium tank and write extra notes for the kids who were absent. I am a seventh-grader who loves Google Earth. It helps me with geography. I go to Hoover Intermediate .Our classrooms need new computers. (To which the principal added Preferably Macs.)And now,in eighth grade,Anna is still waiting for her school,a crumbling brick building with a series of slender and mysterious chimneys, to be transformed into a temple of learning. A guidance counselor knocks on Anna’s classroom’s halfopen door and lets herself in. Although she knows perfectly well whoAnna is,the guidance counselor,M.Clump,pretends to look up and down the rows for her.M.Clump wears a nylon pants suit and an engagement ring that has not been made good on. It...