Dee’s Hiding Place

Three musty boys are tormenting me. They wrap me in their ring in the playground, a humid pasture with brown bald patches. Their hot odor grabs me around the neck till I can hardly breathe.

If I use my powers well enough, if I close my eyes and squeeze my brain hard, hard so that the tingly sound in my ears comes back, it will start to rain and the musty boys will be shouting my praises, not insults. But my powers don’t work well on Tuesdays at lunch. So my legs are the object of their attention. They scamper around me, their scuffed shoes flapping against little stones and dry dirt. I’d feel better if they just dragged up handfuls of the playground and hurled them at me instead of their taunts. Currant slices, poxy foot, currant slices, poxy foot, currant slices, poxy foot, leopard skin, poxy foot, leopard skin. Their hands shove me to and fro. The dirt dances in the air, soiling my faded uniform. I go into hiding like Anne Frank, but inside myself. She couldn’t leave her hiding place and sometimes neither can I, even though I want to.

I remember a game now. We used to sing, “Concentration, concentration now begins. Keep in rhythm. Subject! Nicknames. Michelin, Spam Head, Poxy Foot, Scrap Meat. Round and around and around they go, where it ends nobody knows.” The bell is my Jesus. When it rings the circle dissolves into a squiggly line and the boys scramble off to class. I am free, for now. I establish a safe distance and follow them into the heat of our classroom.

“How many times I have to tell you? Get to my class on time,” Teacher is shouting at the boys as they settle down on the benches. “Come, Dee, we were waiting for you. What you have for us today?” I take some deep breaths.

“Insouciant. In-su-see-ant! As in ‘She had an insouciant smile when she handed in the math test,’” I say.

“What that means, Dee?” a fan asks, on cue.

“She’s the bomb then,” I hear in the corners of the room.

“It’s just a cool way of saying carefree. Think you all will remember it?”

I ride the wave of their hand claps. They get so excited every time I give them a new word. They are eager pups and I love it. The three boys just stare at me through slit eyes while mine blaze like the sun. I have my power back and my words are sharper and quicker than a cane cutter’s machete. “Well done, Dee. Again!” Teacher says, fawning. English is my favorite subject. I’m going to be a journalist or writer when I grow up, like Anne Frank if she’d survived. In class I am liked, like Hypotenuse was when she got the shiny new bicycle for her birthday. I’ve never gotten a bike. Daddy always says next year, when things get better.

On my last birthday (I was eleven) Mummy and I were home watching pink candle wax melt into the butter icing on the cake she baked. I was waiting for Daddy to come home and help me make my wish. He never did. Yes, he had been away working but it was my birthday. Afterwards Mummy scraped the slimy icing off the cake, cut me a slab, and stirred fresh lemonade but I refused to touch them.

Mummy sank into a chair opposite me and stared at a spot just above my plaits, as if mosquitos were roaring above my head. Then her eyes started darting from one side to the next. I turned. She was staring at one of the many plaques squashed up on the wall. The one above my head whispered the Serenity Prayer. A few moments later, she belched that Daddy was at Glendairy (a town in north England, I think). And that he would be there for thirty-six months because he had collected nuff money from some people in Speightstown for chickens which they never received. That didn’t...