Back to School I go...

Today was the first day back to school. I had this major realization that in less than a year I will have a book written, have taught my own class, and have a masters degree to my name. It was a scary thought. A moment when I worry and think I don't know what to do next.

I had my fiction workshop this afternoon. The professor is the newly hired Yiyun Li from Mills College. I had no idea what to expect and was nervous because last spring I requested her to be on my thesis committee without even taking a class with her. It was a risky move, but I love her stories and figured I would go for it.

Today I am so happy I made that decision. I can tell Yiyun will be an excellent mentor and instructor- she is anxious, funny, and knowledgable. In just three hours with her I was inspired to come home and write something new- no deadline, no assignment, just blank page. That has never happened before. I have not written all summer. But here is a start...to something new...not sure where or what it will turn into...but it is a start.....

The night I left, I snuck into my mother’s room while she was sleeping in bed with her boyfriend. He had one hairy leg that hung off the bed and out of the covers that melted into his upper thigh. His leg hair was curly and darker higher up on his leg. My cheeks turned red with anger and embarrassment under my sweatshirt hood. I knew he was naked, but didn’t look away. My mother’s room smelled stale like a pond unwilling to dry up at the end of a hot summer. I ran my thumb across the letter I wrote earlier and meant to leave on her night table next to the Tiffany necklace she always wore. She was capable of lying. She told me her boyfriend wasn’t serious and the necklace wasn’t from him. I picked up the heavy necklace and stuffed it into the sweatshirt pocket with my letter. I never kissed my mother on the cheek or looked at her one last time before I disappeared.
I’m sure there’s been a lot of speculation about what happened to me, but that’s the least of my worries. I sold the necklace, bought a pistol, and made it across the border. Sometimes I worry that only a fence divides me from my mother, that the land is really the same thing. When I crossed the border the sand didn’t change color, the dried yellow bushes were the same, and the freeway was even the same. Adelita tells me the further south I go the greener it will be. Adelita works at the food stands down the road from her house. Everyday after lunch I sit on her patio and watch as she heads down the highway on foot with her baskets filled with eggs and flour. I usually just sit on the porch, listen to the radio, and polish my gun with a dirt covered rag dipped in lard.
Five years ago, when I was ten, I remember my dad coming home from gassing up the jeep. I was ready and waiting. I had his M70 out and was rolling the bullets out of their new box, counting out twenty rounds. The bullets reminded me of the rolly-pollies I used to capture under the wet broken tree branches in our yard.
“Ready kiddo?” he said to me, walking up to our front porch of the house in San Diego. “I gotta pee; put the stuff in the car. Did your mom make us some sandwiches to take?” He didn’t even wait for an answer as he walked passed me and into the house.
I stuffed the gun, bullets, and a jacket into the back of his jeep. Even though I wanted to sit in the driver’s seat and test the steering wheel out like old times, I waited in the passenger seat. Dad came back outside wearing his hunting vest and holding a brown sandwich bag in his hand. Mother stood on the porch, watching us. She was a pale woman, blond hair cut short to frame her face, with a jade colored brooch hooked unto her pink sweater. The expression on her face was a mixture of hurt and confusion. Before she could say a word, dad turned on the engine and roared out of the driveway. I wonder if mom met her boyfriend back then, or what she ever really did when we were hunting.
When Adelita came home from the food stands she smelled like flour and burnt bread. She always had her black hair pulled back into a bun and complained how tourists in bikinis would buy a tortilla from her only to take a bite and throw it to the street dogs. We would sit on her tile floor and look at old catalogues. She was very fussy about getting my hair cut and insisted that if I was going to runaway I needed a new look. I didn’t get how a boy could change his look when his hair was already pretty short. Adelita told me she once knew a boy who ran away from Nicaragua. He had to dye his hair red and cut bangs. Adelita liked to talk about a lot of things, like drug trafficking, new hotels opening up, and who must have made it north across the border. She never asked me why I ran away or who I was running from. Adelita wasn’t worried that I had a gun and no passport. “It’s your decision, but south? Why south?” She would ask me in Spanish.
“I just want to have some fun,” I would respond, silently thanking my mother for sending me to Spanish immersion even when I resisted. I pulled at my sun burnt ear and stared at Adelita’s catalogues with the turned in pages.