summer 1984

That summer I had a job at an elementary school helping out with organizing books and cleaning classrooms for the coming year. I put things by subject and then alphabetically by author like any good librarian's daughter. I hated that you knew I worked there, that you might show up with your stupid car, with the engine throbbing and some idea of where we might go. And I would go; I went because it was easier than making up reasons why not to.

And I hated you enough to be honest. I told you I didn't like you and that I wouldn't like you and still you came around, puppy eyes and hopeful. What were you doing, panting after a teenage girl who already preferred to be alone. I hadn't had my heart broken yet but I knew what it would feel like and I wanted none of it. I went to Simon and Garfunkel to express myself and wrote the lyrics for I Am A Rock on the back of a receipt I found in your glove compartment and still you wouldn't go away. At work, I put tape around broken bindings, swept out the cobwebs, and thought everything was a metaphor.

You were polite to my parents and they liked you which didn't work the way I planned and I tore away in my anger to get into that car of yours and drive and drive, listen to the radio. You weren't even interesting enough to like music. One day I went to your house (who lives with his parents when he's over twenty?) to meet your parents. I thought I was going to meet them, I even prepared my face. And the dog stood outside the door and barked and howled. You thought I knew what I was doing. People thought I was running from something but in fact I'd been backing away ever since I learned to walk. You told me it wasn't like it was something I hadn't done before. In fact it was like nothing I'd done before. Afterwards you let me go, past the dog and its dripping saliva, and back to your damn car and back to my house where I couldn't tell them anything. Don't call me again, I said. Don't come here again ever. I said "go away" and I finally meant it.

I think it's shortly after that that I cut off all my hair, but this may be poetic license. I know there was the scene where you pulled up in front of the school and I told you to go away and the principal came out and I made like I didn't know you. You peeled out of the parking lot and the principal looked at me and I shrugged. How could I explain the things that seemed so out of my control that I couldn't even name them.

So I was back to taking the bus and walking. And then school started again, and my new job was grading papers, and some teacher told me "Go away" was a fragment, and I told her it was a complete sentence. Complete because YOU was implied. I got fired. I was right, though.

Comments

[carrie]

This is it exactly.

Thanks.