Meeting David

            "Sarah?" Mr. Taben's smooth voice called me from the depths of my memory.  I blinked at his kind eyes.  "You've been doing a lot of day dreaming lately, haven't you?"

            I shrugged in response.  It seemed to me that when I wasn't getting lost in my head, I might as well be getting lost somewhere else.  Maybe a park, or, better yet, the woods behind the snug neighborhood I lived in with my grandparents.  If I could, I'd even lose myself in Mr. Taben's office complex, but it was too organized, too obvious, to wander around for long without becoming bored.

            "Sarah," Mr. Taben sang again.  My eyes directed themselves up at him; my lips puckered.  I believe I must have appeared to become a fish, eyes widened, my molars clamping onto the insides of my cheeks, or maybe I was sucking on a sour head.  Yes, Mr. Taben, I can't speak.  I'm a fish with a very horrible sour candy addiction.   Please forgive me; I need to find some water before I die.  Yes, it's urgent.  Well, no, this isn't new.  Have you not noticed before?  I don't know if I'm flattered or appalled by your ignorance, but I really must be going.

            I stood, lifting the strap of my shoulder bag up over my head.  Mr. Taben pushed himself away from his desk also.

            "Sarah?  Where are you going?"

            "I need some water before I die, Mr. Taben," I told him nonchalantly.  "You don't want me to die, do you?  Then you can't help me anyway."

            He gaped at me for a few seconds, during which I was sure he was playing around with my fish idea, before he sat slowly back down into his monstrous black spinney chair.  "There's a water bottle on the desk in front of you.  Remember?  You asked for it when you came in."

            My lower lip stuck out, and I pouted.  I didn't recall asking for any water.  Maybe, subconsciously, my fish self knew I would need water, and, to torture me to no end, killed my only known escape route.  This explained why I didn't remember asking, because fish can only remember things for three seconds; then, it's capooey.

            I slid back into Mr. Taben's squeaky leather chair, but I didn't reach for the water bottle.  I was pretty sure my fish self died before I stood up.  I smiled at Mr. Taben, pushing my cheeks back but not revealing my teeth.  I looked like Goofy from Mickey and Friends, which Jack, my little half-brother, watched every morning, lying on his stomach with his feet swishing back and forth like a pair of broken scissor blades.

            Mr. Taben let out a tired sigh.  "Do you like seeing me, Sarah?"

            I stopped smiling.  Are you allowed to lie to adults?  I'd done it before, but not to a doctor.  "Of course, Mr. Taben."

            "I'm not so sure.  Your grandparents are very worried about you.  They want to know what's wrong."

            I smiled again, big and bright, shiny white teeth and all.  This was familiar territory; this teachers asked about every day at school.  "It's just my mom, Mr. Taben," I told him cheerfully.  "But I think I'm coping fine.  My grandparents are just worried warts, that's all."

            "I have no doubt you are coping 'just fine' with your mother's illness.  They believe you're 'fine' too.  That's not what they're worried about."

            Again, my smile faded.  Mr. Taben, you were not supposed to say that.  You were supposed to say, 'well, I hope she does get better soon', then move on.  That's what everyone says.  You are not supposed to actually try to help me.  What are you?  Some sort of... doctor?

            "Well, what are they worried about?" I asked.  My fish revived itself and began flopping around inside my chest.  Stop it! I told him, He will hear you!  Then, you'll be forced to live in a bowl instead of snuggly inside my chest!

            "They are worried that something happened a long time ago, before your mother was ever sick."  I swallowed the fish down, and he quieted.  Mr. Taben's eyes were waiting intently for an answer, staring me down and burying me with compassion.  He wanted so desperately to be right; I had to give him the pleasure.

            "Maybe, something... might have happened," I whispered, looking away and wincing.  My hands slid beneath my thighs.  I peeked up at him from beneath the hair falling from behind my ear, waiting for his reaction.  He only nodded.

            That's no fun.

            "Sarah, everything you tell me is completely confidential.  I won't repeat what you say to anyone; you know this."  He relaxed in his office chair, rubbing his clad shoulders against the leather to make a crater for his body.

            I puckered my lips, swishing my hair from my face.  I imitated his settling back in his chair and smiled my Goofy smile again.

            A panda, yes.  Mr. Taben reminded me of a panda leaning comfortably against sturdy bamboo sticks, sipping from his thurmace and grinning happily.  I like pandas, maybe we can make this 'friend' thing work.

            Except, you're not grinning anymore, Mr. Taben.  You're waiting expectantly for my secret about what's bothering me.  I would love to tell you; I'd love to tell anyone and everyone, but I can't, because I promised.

            "I can't tell you."

            Mr. Taben coughed at my words.  "Sarah, you know you can."

            "No, I can't, because you will have to repeat what I say."  I let my lips drop to match Mr. Taben's perplexed glare.

            "Sarah," he said desperately, "I won't tell anyone.  It would violate you and my other patients."

            "But you will have to.  If I am suicidal, you will have to tell my grandparents.  If I am delusional, you will have to put me on medication.  If I am about to tell you my secret, you will have to call the police, because this man is evil."  I gave him a fleeting smile.  "But I am not suicidal; I am not delusional, and I am not about to tell you my secret.  So everything is fine."

            He pushed himself up abruptly, leaning forward with his forearm on the desk and gazing at me with the most kindness and concern he could muster in his eyes.  I pushed myself deep into my chair, furrowing my brow.  It was real.  Mr. Taben, you are much smarter than your average panda; you know how to feel emotion for people treating you like crustacean.  I would applaud you, but at the moment, I hate you and your genetically mutated panda guts.

            "Sarah," he said, "your poor grandmother is worrying herself sick, about you and your mother.  She wants to know that you're okay.  I would never tell her what you say to me, but she wants me to reassure her."

            My lower lip moved to start talking, but I bit firmly down on it, pretending to chew on flaking skin.  I settled into my chair, pulling my hands from beneath the warm denim covering my thighs.  Mr. Taben continued to stare at me, and the weight of his subconscious panda began to crush my chest.  My jaw moved to talk, and I jumped forward for the water bottle, twisting the cap off and gulping it three times.  My fish swam up to the back of my throat, screaming at me to say something.

            I smiled nervously, pushing him down and hiding the noise by clearing my throat.  "I, uh..." my tongue wrestled free from its chains and took charge of my jaw, signaling commands and getting words ready for battle.  I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed into the chair, knowing what Mr. Taben was about to hit full on.  Run!! I screamed, but my tongue kept the message from leaving my mouth.  "It started with Mr. Thomas," it blurted instead.  My mouth went dry, and the fish flopped around in my chest, begging for water, but my tongue ignored it and kept sending troops out.  "It was his son, David.  My mom dated him, Mr. Thomas, I mean.  David was sixteen.  I hated them both.  I thought David was stupid, but it was his dad.  His dad's evil, Mr. Thomas- I mean- Taben.  His dad deserves to die.  He should be chopped into a billion pieces and eaten by his non-existent grand kids.  I hate him.  I do.  He's the most dis-"

            "Sarah!" Mr. Taben pushed himself from his chair briskly.

            I froze, startled to find myself also standing with my hands raised to my shoulders in excitement.  Mr. Taben and I gaped at each other for a few moments before he slowly settled back into his chair.  Quickly, I plopped down also, hiding my palms beneath my thighs.  We continued to stare blankly at each other until Mr. Taben sighed in bewilderment.

            "That's certainly more than you've told me in a while, Sarah."  He inhaled deeply and his chest rose.  "But I don't think I understood half of what you just said."

            I nibbled on my lower lip.  Thank you, Mr. Tommy Traitor, there is definitely no such thing as retreat, now.  My tongue cackled.  He knew he was too powerful for me to behead.

            Mr. Taben sighed again, patting his knees and blinking furiously.  Yes! I thought.  You think you're dreaming!  Well, I am your dream wizard, and you'll listen to me.  You don't want to talk to Sarah right now, you want to think about bamboo and let your inner panda take control.  I'll look away; you just do your thing in privacy.

            I stood abruptly and grabbed my bag, ready to rush for the door.

            "Please sit down."

            I swallowed, and Mr. Taben nodded toward the chair.  I sat, but didn't let my bag drop.  I was in enemy territory.

            "Sarah, it's okay," Mr. Taben said soothingly.  "I understand that was a lot for you to give up."  He paused, and slowly, I nodded in agreement, clamping tightly to my lower lip.  "Do you wish to continue?"

            I thought silently to myself.  Was he offering me a retreat route?  Or was it a trap?  My shoulders sagged, and I whined inside my throat, brow furrowed.  My fish crowded against my chest to hear better, and the pressure sprung tears to my eyes.  Desperately, I nodded.

            He relaxed even deeper into his chair.  "Do you want to start with David?  Or go over how your mother and Mr. Thomas met?"

            I blinked, then dumbly shook my head.

            "You want to start with David, then?" his voice oozed with compassion and patience.

            I nodded and opened my mouth, but instead of following orders, my tongue rebelled again, catching in my throat.  A squeak escaped, but nothing else that made since.

            "How about you tell me how you met David?" suggested Mr. Taben softly.

            "Mr. Thomas brought him over to meet me."

            "And what happened?"

            I tried to think, but I couldn't.  I hadn't let myself remember those moments with Mr. Thomas and David since they ended two months before my mom got sick.  They were ants biting at my skin, and they didn't stop stinging.

            "Are you trying to remember?"  Mr. Taben pushed himself up before settling into his chair again.

            I nodded slowly.  An image of David standing in the kitchen of the house my mom and I rented before she was sick forced its way to my mind.  He hid in the corner near the entrance from the family room, starring at his feet as his father pulled my mom close to him with one arm. 

            "My mom called me into the kitchen," I told Mr. Taben.  He bobbed his head calmly.  "I remember because we'd just gotten home from getting my braces tightened, and I really didn't want to do anything..."

Library Walls

This is the piece I wrote before my audition for the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain (see earlier post for more details)

Library Walls

            I plop myself down into the “adult seat” in the pre-K children’s wing of the library.  Already, boys in khaki cargo pants and girls in sweet polka dot and heart-splattered dresses and tights bounce and waddle back and forth across the playtime rug in the middle of the floor. Glancing at the alphabet blocks that are stitched into the fabric of the rug, I remember a poem about forgetting the alphabet in a kindergarteners’ classroom, and I quickly eye each little toddler for any sign of trouble.  No one is choking.  No one is fighting.  What else can I expect?  “Little angels,” my coworker calls them.  She’s the kind of lady where everything reflects her religion in some way.  Whenever she says something like that, I always want to point to the bottom of my mud-clad, grass-smeared rain boot and ask her how that points to her beliefs, but I never do.
            I grip a thick classic in between my two hands.  I carry it around to look smart.  Strangers and other high-schoolers that see me with it glance down at the book in my hand, and immediately their eyes widen and the most splendid mix of respect, honor, and bewilderment befall them.  Names like Tolstoy and Orwell, Wells and Austen are never too far away from me, but still, they mean nothing.  I hide a cheap paperback novel in my backpack for my actual enjoyment.
            My mind wanders away as I watch the children placed under my “responsible adult” care.  Around the coloring table, chubby hands grip at blunt crayons and clumsily, almost pathetically, fold stark white paper into crinkled, flightless airplanes.  A tubby boy with thick curly blonde hair that builds two inches onto the top of his head grips his plane and slings his arm over his shoulder and out in front of him.  The airplane dives into the carpet as if falling from the sky into a vast maroon ocean.  I leave my classic on the windowsill and stand to retrieve the airplane.  I pick it up.  “We can’t fly airplanes,” I say.  My voice is obnoxiously high as I speak to him, and in reality, I’d rather show him how to throw the airplane rather than take it away, but airplanes will “poke eyes out”, and so they are rigorously outlawed.
            The boy flashes blue eyes and a quivering lower lip, a tactic he keeps hidden for airplane confiscation.   I ignore it and fold the airplane up and place it inside my classic.  I sit back down, and he busies himself with toy cars.
            A few minutes later, a girl trots up to me, her uneven pigtails alive with static from rolling somersaults (excuse me, practicing gymnastics) on the alphabet rug.  Clutched between two flattened palms are ten books.  I glance around for my coworker, begging with eyes for escape from an hour of “Mr. Toby ate jam.  Mr. Toby likes jam”, but I find her with her legs crossed and nose in her son’s homeschool textbook.
            My shoulders sag; I repeat an anthem of “I love children” to myself inside my mind, and scooch from my adult chair onto the floor in front of the reading pillows.  The little girl falls into my lap without warning, and my thighs scream against the sudden weight.
            “Okay!” I say with a large smile.  I reach for the first book and open it up.  “ ‘Why I am special’, ” I read.  I struggle against the sarcasm oozing from my voice, and I swallow it down with a noisy gulp.  “ ‘I am special because I wear what I want to.  I am special because I can sing any song….’ ”  I keep going, fluctuating my voice and stretching it for character voices and silly exclamations, but eventually, my throat burns with the repeated rhyme scheme and cliché monkey-bouncing, balloon-popping, kite-flying simplicity of children’s books.   After the ten books originally thrust into my hands, and five more brought by the other preschoolers, the little girl jumps from my lap and runs for the toy figurines in the corner.  She drags the box across the floor with her, and I remember a time when I used to toddle in the old after-school day care room at the past school campus.  The dinosaur figurines—machine painted with claws, talons, teeth, and ravenous facial expressions—once stood at the very top of my list of favorite toys.
            The little girl dumps the entire plastic box onto the maroon carpet, and the carpet is no longer just a carpet but a transformed jungle with purple leaves big enough to sleep on, green vines that hang from trees like pipe cleaners, and a giant block castle where the king of the dinosaurs makes his humble home.  I pick up the plastic T-rex and I smile.  I line up the raptors and pretend they are guards, but I lose my smile.  They are only plastic.  They don’t move.  Their faces don’t change.  The rug is a rug.
            I glance up at the little girl.  A T-rex and a stegosaur in each hand, she bounces them on their stubby fake legs.  Her expressions are vivid, glaring, and her lips mouth little words.  I glance at the scattered books and the pictures in them, at the stack of blocks the little girl had hastily set up.  Suddenly, she knocks the two dinosaurs together, and the stegosaur flies through the air and smacks against one of the blocks.  It tumbles over, and the girl leaves the stegosaur on its side.  She grapples for another figurine, and it too squares off with the T-rex.  One by one, two by two, the dinosaurs challenge the T-rex until, finally, the girl reaches for the first fallen stegosaur.   It scoots slowly over the maroon carpet.  It stares into the T-rex’s eyes, and then they clash.  They fall back.  They clash again.  Over and over, the little girl slams the figurines together, and over and over they always fall back from each other.  I gaze at the figurines, transfixed, amazed, because in her mind, they aren’t plastic.
            One last time, the two clash again, and the T-rex bounces up and down from its side to its back to its other side, rolling fearsomely away from the battered stegosaur.  The T-rex stays on its side, and the stegosaur dances up and down.
            “What just happened?” I ask sweetly.
            Surprise overtaking her, the toddler’s head shoots up to look at me from the dinosaur clutched in her sweaty hand.  “The, the, uh, T-rex was means.  He, he, uh, was, uh, he was, uh, mean, and so the other dinosaurs, uh, they didn’t like him!”
            I nod, smiling broadly and unsurely at her incoherent speech.  “Oh really?  That’s cool!”  Again my voice squeaks and rings obnoxiously.
            She nods vigorously.  “Yeah!  And so, uh, so, uh, all the other, all the other dinosaurs didn’t like him, uh, and so, uh, they fought him!  But he was, uh, mean!  And only, uh, this one—!” she shoves the stegosaur into my fist, “—uh, could beat him!”
            I take the stegosaur from her and stare down at its fake tail, fake face, fake head, and fake fierce look.  I copy the scowl on the stegosaur’s face and squint at it menacingly.  Then I set it down.
            “No!” the little girl shouts, and she snatches it off the alphabet rug.  “He can’t goes over there!  He, he, he’ll get hurt!”
            “Oh, sorry,” I say hastily, glancing slyly at the alphabet rug.  Was it lava?  A lake?  My eyes wander around its border, and the little girl distracts herself from me by gazing unceasingly and intently at the little figurines.  I rock back on my knees and roll my weight onto my feet as I stand up.  I plop myself down into my adult seat, glancing at the khaki cargo pants and the little dresses.  The preschoolers waddle and wander back and forth across the playtime rug—the one with brightly colored alphabet blocks stitched into.  My eyes jump from child to child.  Still no fighting.  Still no choking.  I twist around for the classic on the windowsill, and remember a poem about giving up the alphabet on a classroom wall for the stark white walls of an office.
            Or, in my case, a library.

Quartz Mountain

The Courtyard at the Oklahoma Arts Institute

So...today I'm talking about Quartz Mountain, obviously, and so it may get a little emotional.  We'll see.

First off, let me explain what Quartz Mountain is.  Basically, it's a mountain (duh), but it's also more.  The Oklahoma Arts Institute hosts both a summer and fall arts program at the Quartz Mountain Lodge and Conference Center.  The fall program is designed more for teachers or anyone who wants to go (and I think it's only a weekend or so long), but the summer program is more competitive and designed only for Oklahoma high school students.  To get into the summer program (and spend two weeks at the resort studying your art discipline, which would be either photography, film and video, creative writing, orchestra, acting, choir, modern dance, or ballet) a student has to audition.  I auditioned for creative writing (what else?) last year and had the amazing opportunity of getting to go for a fraction of the cost it would be to stay at the resort (a fraction being $200 instead of $2,500, and this year $3,000).  Needless to say, it was an honor, especially to get in for creative writing, which is one of (if not the most) competitive spots to fill at the program.

So, anyway.  I got in, and I spent two weeks in June 2012 learning from Peter Richards, a poet who has traveled all over the world for writing.  I met great people that also love the arts, and an acting student performed MY monologue in the mid-camp talent show.  It was great, and I felt like it was possible for ME, little Candace O from no-town Oklahoma, to become famous for my writing.  Unfortunately, after the two weeks were over, I had to go home, and a week after my return, my dad passed away.  I suddenly couldn't write anything anymore.  I tried.  I started a blog!  How desperate is that?  But nothing came.  Then, in November when I wrote a novel in a month, I crossed a line where fiction would momentarily become non-fiction, and that scared me.  I always kept the two seperate.  Fiction was ALWAYS my escape.  And so I stayed stuck in writer's block.

Then December came around, and I had a choice.  I could schedule a Quartz audition for creative writing, knowing very well that the idea of writing itself terrified me, let alone writing something that would be scrutinized by three-to-four expert judges.  But I felt like I had to go back, to hold onto to something that wasn't connected to my dad's death, and so I scheduled the audition and took on the burden of not only writing a piece at the audition, but also having to write something completely new BEFORE the audition.

My audition was February 10th.  About a week before, I had a breakthrough.  I wrote a short story that was infused with a voice I'd never heard before, a voice that was more mature and solemn and nostalgic.  It was a voice that was completely my own.  I used to think that I'd developed my voice last year before the camp, but now I've realized that I've just now found it.  So I took the piece in to the audition and I wrote an equally mature piece at the audition.  I think it went well, but I don't know what the judges will choose.  I don't know if my voice is the type they're looking for.  And I won't find out until April.  So until then, I'm going to keep on writing because I can, because it's a part of me, and because I KNOW that I can be great someday.


--
Candace