Silvie Senauke

When, Should, How?

The college applications stared back menacingly at Alice after her mother left the room. She started to read the one on top but didn’t have the follow-through to get through the brags on the brochures that were most likely lies that told her her future started now. She skipped through to the applications themselves and looked at the questions. “Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, or risk you have taken, and how it contributed to the person you want to become.” Alice’s mind stuttered. “Indicate a person you admire and describe how you would like to follow their example.”  Alice’s mind blanked. “You are given a hammer and chisel, if what you make is the only tool you could use for the rest of your life, what would you carve?” Alice covered the application with the brochures and stood up from her desk. She did not want to think about this. She couldn’t answer the questions because she didn’t know. She just didn’t know and she didn’t want to think about this at all. She picked up the scattered drawings on her desk and piled them on top of the stack her mother had brought in. She was about to put on an angry CD when her alarm burst to life. Her heart skipped a beat, then started skitteringly again, pounding so hard that Alice could feel it in every inch of her body. She cursed herself for forgetting to turn it off the night before.

Alice decided she had to leave. Now. She lunged to turn off the alarm and slipped on a pair of shoes, then just as easily slipped out of the house. She walked towards school, away from the bustle of the small downtown, where everybody seemed to be on a track – rushing from one errand to another, searching for the next piece of the puzzle of their life. Meanderingly she headed towards the small creek that ran nearby the school, passing a discount office supplies store, an outlet furniture store, and a used clothing store on the way there. She picked up rocks on the walk, trying to keep her mind on something else – anything besides the questions that seemed to follow her and multiply even though she knew they were securely trapped underneath a stack of people wearing polos and smiling happily like they weren’t lost in a sea of possibilities. At the creek she threw the pebbles one by one into the ankle-deep water, not aiming, not caring where they landed. She tried to throw the anxious questions along with them, the force she used far exceeding what was necessary, but they remained fixed in her mind. Why do you want to go to our college?  What are your goals and how will you achieve them? What do you want to be when you grow up? Finally Alice stomped away from the bend in the river where she had stood, a place where the river seemed to gurgle around the corner out of know where and then twist down into nothingness.

She clenched her teeth against the sudden cold she felt attacking her and stopped in at the used clothing store with the intention of taking a pause to reheat. But, still hoping to keep her mind distracted, she began to flick through the unorganized hangers. It was this way that she found the big black puffy coat, and it was the cold that she bought it to guard against. She slid the money over the counter and carefully zipped up the coat, feeling herself enveloped in warmth. “Getting ready for winter a bit early, eh?” The sales-lady asked. Alice didn’t understand the question.

Outside she could feel the cold scratching at the seams of the jacket, and nestled herself farther inside it, pulling the hood up to hide her from the few passerby. But now that she was safe from the cold, the questions attacked her again. How do you buy a house? When do you put financial gain over what you love? How should you follow your dreams? She stopped in at the discount office supply store hoping to regain the peace she’d felt at the clothing store, but the questions still bombarded her. When is a relationship serious enough to commit to marriage? In desperation, Alice wandered deep into the aisles of the store. She picked up a notebook small enough to fit into her back pocket, and on her way out a blue ballpoint pen someone had dropped on the ground. She wrote down the questions to get them out of her head, to try to find some calm there again. She only got a few steps outside before she had to stop to write down another.

***

The notebook became a permanent attachment in her hand. Her fingers wore the sheen off the pages, until you could hold up the corners and peer through them. Her questions expanded beyond the pages of the notebook; Alice created a list she wrote down everywhere. Her hands wore blue gloves of questions and the edges of her jeans smelled like sharpie and her room was littered with loose papers full of questions. She took to wearing the puffy jacket whenever she went out. Then she started wearing it whenever she stayed in. Her mom raised her eyebrows, then stopped. Alice stopped raising her hand in class. Everyone stared at the ink bleeding across the pores of her skin and Alice was embarrassed. But embarrassed and able to stop are two different things.

How do you choose what city to live in? How late should you let your child stay out? Mac or PC? What kind of car should you buy? How do you hold on to your ideals? When do you stop going to the “hip” haircut place? Should you take a year off before graduate school? Should you go to graduate school? Should you do many different activities in college or focus on a few? How much time should you give yourself for resting? How do you fit in time for exercise? Is investing money in solar energy worth it? How much money should you put in the stock market? How do you do your taxes?

The questions were accompanied by a tight knot of fear. Alice started getting stomachaches. She tried to go to the school nurse but was daunted by the form she had to fill out. Even the questions on the paper attacked her, asking her grade, age, history. She walked out, let the papers float to the floor, went home, wrote new questions, washed her hands, and then covered them again. She hated looking at them, so she put them in the pockets of the puffy coat. She pulled them out every other minute to add new questions.

***

One Thursday afternoon Alice sat in her room and tried to ignore everything. She couldn’t focus at first because her clock ticked and she started thinking of the clock in Peter Pan and she almost wrote another question on her hand but she stopped herself. She got up and took out the batteries from the clock. She lay sideways on her bed and tried again, but when she closed her eyes the imprints of the boxes around her room filled her sight. They were labeled neatly, things like 1995-1996 or 2000-2001. They contained her life from the specified year, carefully organized by a version of herself she didn’t recognize any more. They spelled out how much she had accomplished and how quickly. They contained evidence of the childish dreams she had had. She got up and turned them so the numbers faced the wall. She picked up a pile of drawings she found on her desk, discovered the college applications lurking below, and almost threw up.

She sat down on her bed again. How do you pick a profession? Her hand slowly filled with questions again, the notebook in her pocket satiated already.

***

In school the next day she found a slip of paper in her backpack that cheerfully informed her she had a meeting with the college counselor on October 25 at 1 p.m. She wondered what the date was; she’d stopped writing it at the top of her papers like you were supposed to. She asked the girl next to her.

“My birthday!” the girl laughed. “The 25^th.” Alice smile-grimaced over her stomachache. She zipped the puffy jacket up higher and didn’t ask how old the girl was.

She tried to have a thumb war with herself for five minutes before getting up the nerve to look at the clock. What do you do feed a two-year-old? 1:09. she was late. She wondered if she’d forgotten how to read a clock. She tilted her head 90 degrees to the left and looked again. 1:09. She hated the clock. She hated the calendar. She hated the girl sitting next to her. She stood up in the middle of the lecture the teacher was giving on planetary movement—she didn’t understand why her teacher even bothered to speak at all, plus it was history class not astronomy—and walked out the door, her fingernails digging half-circles like closed eyes into her palm.

Alice was amazed she even knew the way to the college counselor’s office, amazed her feet didn’t lead her out of the school gate and into the park and her brain up into the sky and the clouds and the damp afternoon. Instead they led her into the small white cubicle where the small white woman with a sharp pair of glasses on one of those hideous strings sat beneath the Mickey Mouse clock that looked like Death. The cubicle reminded her of ice.

“Well hello…” the small white woman paused to lower her glasses so she could read the papers in front of her, “Alice. Hi!” How high should a fever get before you go to the emergency room? “You are…let’s see…eleven minutes late to start your future!” Alice wondered how the woman could be so cheery. And why everything in her office seemed to have been polished until it shone as clearly as a mirror. Out loud, she made a noncommittal noise. How do you shop for a breast-pump?

The woman pushed herself away from the desk and squeaked over towards Alice in her office rolling chair. “So Alice, what are your plans?” No response. “For next year?” the woman pursued. Alice thought her name was Wayne-O’Connor. Or Faye-Bronner.

“Living, hopefully,” Alice told the woman with a plastic smile. Living was definitely a plan. Ms. Wayne-O’Connor smiled a jailer’s smile and put her hand on a stack of papers on the desk. Alex began to read the top one – which said something about the state university application and deadlines and forms and financial aid and majors – but looked up before she could finish, only to face the devious eyes of Ms. Faye-Bronner. On the wall directly in front of Alice was one of those calendars that showed the moon’s phases in the corner of each day and had neat little handwritten x-marks through every day that had passed. Next to that was a bigger calendar with important dates marked on it. Alice couldn’t stand the ticking of the clock. How do you make a roast? She hated the boxes on the pages of the calendars.

“Yes, living would be nice my dear.” The smile returned. “But I want to take a moment to consider how and where you will be living.” Ms. Wayne-O’Connor put her classes back on and looked at the stack of papers. Alice looked at not the clock, not the calendars, not the papers. “I’ve, ah, taken the liberty of suggesting a couple places that might appeal to you. Colleges, I mean?” Her voice went up at the end of her sentences. “So let’s see. I’ve pulled out all of the information on the state universities… And it’s already almost November. Some of these deadlines will be coming up before you know it, won’t they?” Alice was distracted from her talking by the ticking clock and then from the ticking by her talking and again until she didn’t have to hear either really. She got the blue pen out of her pocket and wrote on her hand the questions that had been building in her mind, trying to expel them from her thoughts.
            “Alice?” Ms. Faye-Bronner looked at her inquisitively. How do you ask for a promotion? Alice wrote it down to banish it from her mind. She didn’t notice that the councilor was growing more and more concerned. The woman’s eyes took in the hardened vacant look in Alice’s own, the hair that had gone unwashed for several days, the hand covered in blue scribbles. Alice had it tucked away half under her thigh as she stared out the window.

“You know,” Ms. Wayne-O’Connor started again, “a lot of people love college. It’s a way to be able to take charge of your own future… Take some classes you are really interested in, classes that can help you get where you want to go in life.” She leaned forward and grinned conspiratorially at Alice.

“I don’t want to,” Alice said. Or maybe she thought it. When are you too old to wear  makeup? she thought. Or maybe she said it. She put her hand in the pocket of her puffy coat and scooted her chair back from the whale-like desk.

“I have to go,” she hoped she said. She stood up and walked out of the little white room that reflected everything before the calendar squares took over and she walked past the receptionists at the front desk with their forward-looking eyes. She wondered what they were looking forward to. How many kids should you have? She shook her head, a strange athlete trying to shake away the sweat drops filled with questions.

She found herself on the path that ran towards the creek. She took off her shoes, stepped into the water. Her eyes were closed but she didn’t know when she had closed them. She couldn’t close her ears, but she wanted to.

She unbuttoned her jeans and shimmied her way out of them, kicking them toward where she thought the shore was but now she was disoriented and she heard a splash and she thought frantically and inexplicably that everything she was had fallen out of the back pocket of her jeans and was now floating down the river, but she knew it was the notebook. She opened her eyes with a gasp to escape the image in her mind of filled pages fluttering along down the river. Her legs shivered against the spray of water and wind. She looked down river, but the notebook was already far away. She didn’t even know if that small bobbing blot was even the notebook any more. She wondered what she was doing, then she was glad the notebook was gone, then she wanted to cry and her mind started a bubbling geyser of more and more questions and she looked down at her hand and watched it sink down into the water, she couldn’t feel it anymore and she was glad because she wanted to cut it off.

For a few moments Alice’s mind was calm.

But then the questions piled up in her mind again and she didn’t have her pen and she didn’t have her notebook and her hand wasn’t hers anymore and she thought she might be drowning but that didn’t make sense because the water barely tickled the tops of her thighs but she was suffocating and suddenly the puffy coat was an unbearable weight pulling her down and constricting her lungs and she sat in the creek with the water rushing by on both sides and she was tired. Very tired. She felt quite strongly that she needed to do something to keep the questions from invading every part of her body and taking over. Slowly she turned around to face upstream and unzipped the puffy jacket, carefully folding it and reaching over to place it on the bank. Looking ahead at the bend in the creek, Alice wanted to close her eyes, but didn’t. A few moments later she stood up again. She stepped onto the shore and pulled her jeans up over her water-sticky legs. She reached down and picked up the jacket. She carefully zipped it up, snug as ever.