October 29th 1993
Early in the morning just before I leave
to go to school my mother keeps talking to someone about barrels of food and
clothing and how much it costs and how lucky it is that the flights are in
off-peak season, because they’re so cheap. I have no clue in what a barrel is
and why the hell it would be filled with food to go on a plane. I’m preparing
myself for Halloween I’ve got all my stuff ready, mask, check, gloves, check, cape,
check. Just a pity I can’t take my stuff to school. So I know I’m going to this
special so called Mc Donald’s now, where I need to get a plane to get to it on
an island called Dominica. I’m not stupid I’m going for a totally different
reason, it’s Tanny that has been yet fooled by the adult’s lies yet they keep
the true reason for putting me on a plane a sheer secret.
At school I’m feeling things I’ve never
felt before, I’m so not with it in the math’s class and I’m get all the answers
wrong in the snake math’s game, that our new math’s teacher with the square
head like to play. Ricard and Kemo are in the middle of the snake while I’m
nearing the end and yet again Nookduko, the Vietnamese super brain is at the
front of the snake. The game is tedious, having children answer random
equations which some have clearly not worked on before. I’m not saying I
haven’t work on any, because I have I’m just not myself. All I can think about
is, what is going to happen once I’ve left school today. Will I be gone for a
few days or even maybe a week, I’m so unsure of what is going on with my life
right now, I can’t even fabricate imaginary tiny sized, Pegasus horses flying
around in the class room to distracted me.
Break time, everyone rushes out of the
class and brush and push pass me, something they would have been all too scared
to do before today, I suppose my zombie like state has given them the brave
hearts all children need to feel right now. Wow I can’t believe I’m finally a
Herculean warrior, yet I am doing nothing to defend my temple. Swirls of minute
children spiral and weave in between the bodies of the Herculean ones, me
sitting on a bench close by the semi-junior classes, I’m actually avoiding
them, avoiding all form of contact. Great Greyson has noticed me and walks over
to me looking like a Bruce Lee reject. He’s talking yet I hear no words; all I
hear is jibber-jabbering words. “Don’t tell me you forgot already?” He says to
me, so he obviously wasn’t speaking English then.
“What?” I respond still observing the
chaos of the other children play out their fantasies of becoming witches and
wizards for Halloween.
“I said, what are you doing, coming to
play, in Vietnamese. I’ve been teaching you.” He says to me with a look on his
g=face as if I had disrespected him in some way. The only reason I wanted to
learn Vietnamese is because I was tired of teaching this boy how to read, spell
and write. It was ‘Getting on my tits’ so my mother’s friends would say, not
that I know what it mean but I know one thing, it annoyed me.
“Oh sorry, I’m, I’m just thinking about
what Halloween is going to be like in…” I stop, catching myself, realizing it’s
all to true and is coming soon, sooner than I thought. It is going to happen
and I won’t be coming back any time soon. The adult’s secret is out of the
pencil case and right here in my hand. She’s sending me away to be adopted.
“Fucking bitch.” I scream out, push him to one side and charge to where I was
made king, the throne benches round the other side where I first noticed Greyson
in his hideous purple puffer coat. George is there with Lee, Tashi, and
Stefarna and the others, all of them chatting with laughter while the children
around them make this force field around them as to protect them from invaders
of other Herculean groups that may brave the intrusion of our castle, but no
the only seem to make this field out of fear. An unspoken way of ‘They are the
alarms in which we hear before any of us get in trouble’, they part simultaneously
and I enter the circle, the group look at me and although I see all their coco
buttered-up faces, dry knuckles and uncombed hair I have grown to love, George
is in my sites and I want to give him the biggest kiss ever on the lips. Heart
pounding, my skin is stinging with the heat of the blood racing through my
veins and the loudest clap assumes a home on George’s right cheek accompanied
by the thud of a closed unsuspecting closed fist. It’s as if I’m watching
myself on top of his now fallen body, pressing my elbow in his mouth as if to
crack his brilliantly formed lower jaw (where those kissable lips lay) away
from his skull beautiful skull whilst straddling him like I was on one of my
Grand dad’s horses, I suddenly pulled off my some tall, odd looking white boy I
haven’t spoken to since joining this place. Martin, stinky, mildew Martin pulls
me off his beloved George. Without any thought I pounce on him, almost
sharpening my claws in the wind, I lunge into his body, and him falling back
and place my hands around is head. The crack of my knuckles now crushed by his
head on the ground don’t deter me, my thumbs strategically placed in his eye
ball sockets I push down and hard. Moving my knees over his gold fish like
flapping arms I use one hand to pry open is right eye and then use my other to
carefully make short stroked scratches open the open organ. Around the whites I
go, slowly getting closer to the deep shade of brown. Tears roll down the sides
of his face, every one is just watching me. Right now I must look like Beast,
from Beauty and the Beast as I catch a glimpse of my snarling through a passing
girls mirrored bag. I lick his eyeball. “Is he going to eat it?” someone
questions, looking up to find him or her and make a precise attack on him or
her for the stupidity I notice a teacher heading my way. The crowd of children
closes the gap, making it hard for them to get in. It hits me why I’m being
sent away, I’m not a Cowboy, and I’m an Indian, too savage to live in the
society. With a jumping-jack pop up on to my feet, the children seem to
recognize what is to come next parting a way path for me that doesn’t lead me
to the teacher, I run. Dashing through the gap, the gap behind me closes and I
am now feeling free for the first time, knowing I will soon be caged. Jumping
over the fence I dash down the road heading in the direction of home. Montague
road, on my left, taking it I hear teachers it seems running after me, “Looks
like he’s going home” one voice says and the voice that replies “Well he’s in
for a shock” belongs to the man with the brown tinted glasses strapped to his head, polo neck t-shirts
that are too tight for his pregnant belly and arse hugging shorts. Looking to
my right where the hedges grow thick and the opening is barely clear I take the
secret passage, what Greyson and I call it and jump into some one’s garden. One
heavy body passes me, staring through the cracks in the fence he shoots passed,
holding my breath I exhale and notice a daddy long legs climbing up my almost
daddy long right leg. He spotted the secret passage, he shouts out to his
colleague and mutters under his breath “His mother chose the right now for the
little shit”. Taking a deep breath in, trying my hardest for it not to be
heard, I see a white hairy hand coming through the fence as if it knows where
it’s going. It latches onto my shoulder, “Graham I’ve got him,” the voice yells
out, yeap, that caged feeling came quicker than I expected.
wow, your journey to us. So happy you came.
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