“Do you know what day today is, Ariel? Today’s your birthday,” her mother said gingerly, caressing each syllable she spoke. Simultaneously she stroked Ariel’s hair gently back into a ponytail, concentrating to not catch any knots. “When you get home from school, Mommy is going to bring you to your favorite park so you can play on the swing,” her voice rose as she clung to the final word. “Remember how you like the swings? Up and down, up and down.” Ariel’s mother’s words wavered, mimicking the motion she described.
She paused to smile as Ariel timidly turned her neck, scrolling her eyes up until they met her mother’s watery gaze. Establishing eye contact had taken years of behavior modification but this slight sign of recognition had finally become the norm. Her mother had anticipated on evoking verbal reactions by this point in her child’s life, but each attempt had only ended in frustration. She felt stuck on the middle rung of a basement ladder.
“And then we’ll come home to eat the cake that Mommy baked and then you know what we’ll do?” Ariel made no attempt to respond. “And then we’ll open your presents!”
The eternal routine of scrubbing teeth snowy; the incessant warfare of detangling downright wayward hair; the turning and twirling of shoelace bunny ears; countless spoonfuls of Cheerios choo-choo’d toward the tunnel above Ariel’s chin - diurnal tasks of banality always adjourning in the same manner: “Now you try ...”
“Now you try ...”
But Ariel the Supine could not. She would only stare off into the distance, neither here nor there. Her thick pale legs peeked out from beneath her favorite white dress, the folds of fabric flowing over the bulges in her plump frame.
“No progress,” Ariel’s teachers would report each term.
“Try harder,” her clinging mother would insist.
But Ariel says nothing. She’s content to simply be wearing her beloved white dress. She adores when her mommy scrunches it up and pops her head through the top-hole then pulls it down over her shoulders until it falls just below her knobby knees, knobby knees. It makes her look like the puffy clumps of goo that hover above when she visits the playground with Mommy. Each time she wears her dress, she is a solitary cloud drifting in the gusts, peering down on the green and blue ball below. That place down there: Theirs.
Her mother knew that the dress would be every color but white by the end of day. A squirt of ketchup that oozed off of her daughter’s hockey-puck hamburger at lunch; grass stains from the yard at recess; plops of paint; dirt; grime; but for now her mother could enjoy the hue of innocence the dress evoked from Ariel.
“My little angel, dressed all in white. All you need now is a pair of wings.” Ariel did not respond. “I hear the bus outside. We’d better hurry and collect your things.”
Ariel rode a bus to and from school each day. A dozen or so other children accompanied her on the short ride across town. After a citywide mandated breakfast, Ariel climbed four flights of stairs with the rest of her class right behind. This week Ariel had been selected to be the “line leader,” the most revered of jobs on the helping hands checklist. Last week she had been chosen to serve as the “trash collector,” the most despised.
In total, there were seven students in the classroom, plus a teacher and two assistants. A strictly regimented routine enabled the children to act as a class. The better part of the school day focused on skills rather than academics, but memorizing the alphabet and counting to ten were goals the teachers hoped to achieve by the time the last dismissal bell rang in June. A small percentage of the students would realize this aspiration. Ariel would not be one of them.
The teacher positioned herself in the front of the room and addressed the class, “Let’s all wish Ariel a happy birthday!” Several distorted voices grunted good tidings to their classmate.
Ariel did not respond.
“This afternoon we will have a small party in Ms. Ariel’s honor if, and only if, we can all behave ourselves for the rest of the day. No behavior like we had yesterday, right Valentim?”
Crooked cheers echoed down the hall.
The teacher started in on a lesson concerning the necessity of washing one’s hands after using the lavatory, but Ariel paid no mind to her teacher’s words. She was elsewhere. Her errant spirit had wandered. The teacher’s words quickly dulled to no more than a small vibration, like the buzz of a hummingbird’s wings.
A beam of sunlight shot through the window and across the room as Ariel’s airborne cumulus cousins parted, immediately demanding attention eyes. Eye contact, Mommy is always talking about eye contact being established. Dust fleeing from the etchings of chalk on the blackboard danced through the pillar of sun gracefully. Ariel’s eyes mirrored their movements. Soon she’s in the light and there she is beside the bits of dust, swaying her arms in unison, the teacher’s voice keeping the rhythm of her steps. Around and around, each hand gesture became a waving princess; a painter’s brush stroke. Her thick legs weigh as they would on the moon, bone is replaced by helium. Her favorite dress illuminates the room - the radiance banishes even the diminutive shadow Ariel’s pencil casts upon her desk.
This place between here and there inside a beam of light is a hideaway, hideaway. Here she feels the sense of herself separate from the mouth stones, the no-words. It’s here that she is beautiful. Ariel wishes her mother could see her like this, but she never will. Upon thinking of her mother, she remembers the promise made earlier that morning. Although Ariel always wants to stay forever, she knows missing Mommy hurts. She bids farewell to her dancing partners who understand her no-words. Soon, she’ll venture back again to visit and eventually, after Mommy leaves, she’ll stay.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Over the past few years Jason W. Gersch has had original works published in literary magazines, Heist and the Brooklyn Magazine, 11211. Additionally, he received the Raul Martin Award for Fiction for an original short story which was published in Rhapsoidia. Recently, Jason completed his MA in English at Brooklyn College where his thesis project was selected to stand as a model project for future graduate students. At present he is hard at work on the initial draft of his first novel and has started a column called “Memoirs of the Misanthrope” on HackNYC.com.
