A Different Blue (18 page)

“Sadly, in school, and often in life, we are defined by our worst moments. Think about Manny.” The room was silent with contemplation, and Wilson paused, as if the memory was difficult for him as well.

“But for most of us, who we are is made up of the little choices, the little acts, the little moments that comprise of our lives, day after day. And if you look at it that way, labels are pretty inaccurate. We would all have to wear a thousand labels with a thousand different descriptions to honestly depict ourselves.” Wilson strode to his desk. “Here. Take one and pass them back. Go on.” Wilson handed a stack of heavy white pages to the first person in each row. Each page had about twenty labels on it. I took a page and handed the rest to the kid behind me.

“If I told you to peel each label off and stick it to yourself and then walk around the room and let different people write something about you – just one word, like witch, for instance – on the label, what do you think they would write? Should we try that?”

I felt dread pool in my belly like hot wax. There was a general unease in the classroom, and people started to grumble and murmur under their breaths.

“Don't like that idea, eh? Lucky for you, I don't like it either. For starters, people would either be too nice or too brutal – and we'd get very little honesty. Secondly, although it DOES matter what others think of you . . . yes, I said it, it does matter.” Wilson paused to make sure we were listening. “We all like to throw out those cuddly cliches that it doesn't, but in a business sense, in a relationship sense, in a real-world sense, it DOES matter.” He emphasized “does” and eyed us all again.

“So although it matters, it doesn't matter as much as what we think of ourselves because, as we discussed earlier on in the year, our beliefs affect our lives in very real ways. They affect our story. So. I want YOU to label yourself. Twenty labels. Be as honest as you can. Each label should be one word – two max. Make it short. Labels are just that . . . short and unforgiving, aren't they?”

Wilson opened a huge box of black Sharpies and proceeded to hand one to every student in the class. Permanent marker. Nice. I watched as everyone got busy around me. Chrissy had eschewed the Sharpie for her gel pens and was busy writing words like “awesome” and “cute” on her labels. I felt like writing KICK ME on one of my labels and sticking it to her ass. Then I would write SCREW YOU on the rest of them and smack them one by one on Wilson's forehead. He was so aggravating! How could someone I liked so much make me so angry?

The image of Wilson with labels on his forehead made me smile for a second. But only for a second. This assignment was seriously messed up and seriously degrading. I looked down at the little white boxes in front of me, just waiting for me to tell it like it is. What would I put? Pregnant? Knocked-up? That would qualify. Two words, right? Or how about Skank? Maybe . . . LOSER? How about Screwed? Done? Finished? Game over? The word that popped into my head next had me shuddering. Mother. Oh, hell no.

“I can't do this!” I said loudly, emphatically.

Everyone looked at me, Sharpies paused, mouths open. And I hadn't really been talking about the assignment at all. But I found I couldn't do it either. I wouldn't do it.

“Blue?” Wilson questioned softly.

“I won't do this.”

“Why not?” His voice was still just as soft, just as gentle. I wished he would yell back.

“Because it's wrong . . . and it's . . . stupid!”

“Why?”

“Because it's incredibly personal! That's why!” I threw my hands in the air and shoved the labels onto the floor. “I could lie and write down a bunch of words that mean nothing, words I don't believe, but then what would be the point? So I'm not going to do it.”

Wilson leaned back against the chalk board and stared at me, his hands clasped loosely.

“So what you're telling me is you refuse to label yourself. Right?”

I stared back at him stonily.

“You refuse to label yourself?” he asked again. “Because it that's the case, then you've just passed this little test with flying colors.” A protest started up around me, kids feeling like they had been given the short end of the stick because they had done what they had been asked to do. Wilson just ignored them and continued on. “I want you to throw the labels away. Peel them off, rip them up, scribble them out, throw them in the rubbish bin.”

I felt the heat of confrontation leave my face and my heart resume a more normal pace. Wilson looked away from me, but I knew he was still talking to me, especially to me.

“We've written our histories throughout the year. But now I want you to think about your future. If you predict your future based on your past, what does your future look like? And if you don't like the direction you're headed, which label do you need to shed? Which one of those words that you've written to describe yourself should be abandoned? All of them? What label do you want for yourself? How would you label yourself if the labels weren't based on what you
thought
of yourself but what you
wanted
for yourself?” Wilson picked up a stack of folders. One by one, he began passing them out.

“I've combined every page of your history into this folder. Everything you've written from the very first day. This is the last page of your personal history. Now. Write your future. Write what you want. Shed the labels.”

Once upon a time there was a little blackbird who was pushed from the nest, unwanted. Discarded. Then a Hawk found her and swooped her up and carried her away, giving her a home in his nest, teaching her to fly. But one day the Hawk didn't come home, and the bird was alone again, unwanted. She wanted to fly away. But as she rose to the edge of the nest and looked out across the sky, she noticed how small her wings were, how weak. The sky was so big. Somewhere else was so far away. She felt trapped. She could fly away, but where would she go?

She was afraid . . . because she knew she wasn't a hawk. And she wasn't a swan, a beautiful bird. She wasn't an eagle, worthy of awe. She was just a little blackbird.

She cowered in the nest hiding her head beneath her wings, wishing for rescue. But none came. The little blackbird knew she might be weak, and she might be small, but she had no choice. She had to try. She would fly away and never look back. With a deep breath, she spread her wings and pushed herself off into the wide blue sky. For a minute she flew, steady and soaring, but then she looked down. The ground below rose rapidly to meet her as she panicked and cartwheeled toward the earth.

I pictured the bird teetering at the edge of the nest, trying to fly, and then falling and hitting the concrete below. Once I had seen an egg that had fallen from a nest in a huge pine tree near our apartment complex. A baby bird, partially formed, had lain in the cracked shell.

I threw my pencil down and stood up from my desk, breathing hard, feeling like I was going to crack too and severed pieces of Blue were going to rain down upon the room in a gruesome display. I grabbed my bag and ran for the door, needing to get out. I heard Wilson calling after me, telling me to wait. But I ran for the exits and didn't look back. I couldn't fly away. That was the kicker. The little bird in the story was no longer me. My story was now about someone else entirely.

I had been to Planned Parenthood before. I had gotten birth control there, though the latest round had obviously failed me. I googled all the possible reasons birth control could fail. Maybe it was the antibiotics I had been on after Christmas, or the fact that I had inexplicably had an extra pill and no extra days, meaning I'd missed one somewhere. Whatever the reason, the test was still positive, and I still hadn't had a period.

I'd called days before and made an appointment for after school – though running out of class had given me ample time to get there with time left over. The lady at the reception desk was matter-of-fact if not friendly. I filled out a medical form, answered a few questions, and then sat on a metal chair with a black cushion and turned the pages in a magazine filled with “the world's most beautiful women.” I wondered if any of them had ever gone to a Planned Parenthood. Their faces stared up at me from the glossy pages, resplendant in their colorful plummage. I felt small, cold, and ugly, like a bird with wet feathers. Enough with the birds! I pushed the thought away and turned the page.

I wondered if my mother had come to a place like this when she was pregnant with me. The thought brought me up short. I was born in the early nineties. Very little had changed in the last twenty years, right? It would have been almost as easy for her to get an abortion as it would be for me. So why hadn't she? From the very little I knew about her, my birth was not convenient for her. I was definitely not wanted. Maybe she just didn't know about me until it was too late. Or maybe she had hoped to use me to get her boyfriend to take her back, to love her, to take care of her. Who knew? I sure as hell didn't.

“Blue?” My name was called, a big question on the end, as was always the case when anyone read my name. People were always sure they were being messed with. I grabbed my purse and walked to the door where the nurse stood, waiting for me to join her. Without even waiting for the door to swing shut behind us, she informed me that they would need a urine sample and handed me a cup.

“When you're done, write your name on the label, attach it to your sample, and give it to me directly. We will test for pregnancy and STDs. You will have your pregnancy result today, but the STD results will take longer.” She walked me to the restroom and waited until I walked inside and closed the door. I looked down at the label I was supposed to attach to the cup. There was a place for my name and a section for the time, temp, and date of the sample, which I assumed would be completed after I turned it over for inspection. Wilson's lecture on labels filled my head.

“ . . . And if you don't like the direction you're headed, what label do you need to shed? Which one of those words that you've written to describe yourself should be abandoned?”

I was going to place my name on a cup of urine. They were going to tell me I was pregnant. Then they were going to counsel me on aborting the pregnancy because that was why I was here. Soon, I would be able to metaphorically peel off the “pregnant” label, scribble it out, throw it away and be done. It would no longer be true. And I would be able to change the direction I was heading. Label abandoned. Just like my mother had abandoned me.

I rolled my eyes at the comparison my overly emotional brain had immediately jumped to make. It wasn't the same thing at all. Abandoning a child, abandoning a pregnancy. I told myself the two weren't even comparable. I hurried and got the sample, scribbled my name on the label, and slapped it on the warm cup that made me very aware that I probably needed to drink more water, and very embarassed that the nurse would be thinking the same thing.

“Congratulations.”

The test hadn't taken very long. I wondered if they used the same strip test I had used ten times at home.

“Congratulations?”

“Yes. You're pregnant. Congratulations,” the nurse said, deadpan.

I didn't know what to say. Congratulations seemed completely the wrong word, considering I had been counseled about abortion services over the phone when I had made my appointment. But I didn't sense mockery. This was obviously just the response that was standard, or safe . . . I supposed.

“I see you have talked to..” She looked down at her clipboard, “Uh, Sheila . . . about your options?”

Sheila was the girl on the phone when I had called for an appointment. She was nice. I had been grateful to have someone to talk to. I wished Sheila were the one with me now. This nurse was so . . . dry with her canned congratulations. I needed to think.

“Is Sheila here?”

“Uhhhh . . . no,” the nurse said, clearly befuddled by my question. Then she sighed. “You will need to schedule another appointment for your procedure if that is what you decide to do.”

“Can I just have my pee please?” I interrupted, suddenly desperate, wanting to leave.