Blue Boy (2 page)

“Kiran, vhat is going on?” my mother says, gesticulating with one hand and sending a poof of flour into the air. With every second that I don’t speak, the worry on her face grows. Oddly, she seems younger, not older, as if reduced to a child. After all, confusion is a childish feeling; I know in this moment that, more than anything else, I am confused. Confused enough to say:

“Surprise!”

“…Vhat?” my mother says.

“Surprise, Mom! Guess who I am!”

It is the perfect thing to say at the moment. Who knows
who
the hell I am?

My mother shakes her head, not sure what to say.

“Mom, I’m Krishna!” I say. “I’m Krishnaji!” I style my hands next to my mouth, miming a flute and trying very hard to smile gracefully.

Relief would be an understatement. My mother drops her rolling pin and ladle on the pink carpet and hugs me tightly, paying no attention to the makeup she is getting all over herself in the process. A string of Hindi prayers issues from her mouth, along with a sigh of pure thankfulness that can only be described as the sound a fire hose makes while swishing out an inferno.

Over my mom’s shoulder, Krishna watches, and I swear I see him wink one full lash at me. And then, as my mother begins coughing from my Estée, the blue lightbulb in my head pulses, pulses, a thought exploding it into shards:

“What if I
am
Krishna?”

Let me tell you something about elementary school: it’s full of sly madness. I know most people picture little kids running around and wreaking havoc, splashing primary-colored paints all over the walls, liberating slimy class pets like frogs and lizards and more or less making the river Styx look like Lake Placid. But it’s actually a madhouse in a very different way. It’s not just a madhouse but an
asylum
. In asylums, the harshest, most deranged madnesses are those that are less verbal and more emotional, those that happen internally instead of screamed at the top of lungs or unleashed by overturning desks. Pushing and shoving are nothing compared to sly note passing and stares through slitted eyes. And I’m in the midst of both right now.

A week ago, two Big Events happened. One of the Events was the announcement of the 1992 Martin Van Buren Elementary School Fall Talent Show.

“So, class,” said Mrs. Nevins, a pencil of a woman—long, thin body with a perm-topped, eraser-pink face at the tip. “It’s not too early to start thinking about the fall talent show.”

Cue the Hallelujah Chorus.

“I know many of you participated last year, and I encourage all of you to participate again this year. You have a couple of months to decide on your acts and rehearse them. Then you will have to fill out this form”—she was handing slips of light blue paper to each of us—“and describe what your act will be. It can be anything you want—you can dance or sing or play the piano or do a funny skit. Or you could even lip-synch to a song.”

She must have been joking because almost everyone lip-synchs to a song. It takes no talent to do this. I’ll never forget the disgusting sight that was Kevin Bartlett dressed in a leather jacket and a Beethoven-like wig while he “strummed” a cardboard guitar and “sang” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Kevin didn’t move from his spot. He didn’t even really know any of the words besides the chorus, so, minus the music, he was just standing and staring. Everyone was basically listening to the radio for five minutes. But their cheers after he “finished” meant that they loved it. Then there was the “brilliance” that was Cindy Michaels hand-jiving to Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach.” Obviously, Cindy’s mother, Ms. Lansing, didn’t ever stop to listen to the “I got knocked up but I’m going to keep the baby” lyrics, nor the fact that chances were Cindy, who smooched every boy in class, might someday live up to the words. There are countless examples of other lip-synching fiascos that I could mention, but suffice it to say that 99.9 percent of the school is virtually talentless, and there is only that one rare diamond in the rough that shines through the mold.

And I’m a 400-carat stone, baby.

Unfortunately, the announcement of this miraculous annual event coincided with the Other Big Event: Kiran Being Wronged by Two Cold-Hearted Snakes.

Sarah Turner and Melissa Jenkins—elementary school wenches of the worst degree. In the Polaroid of my mind, the three of us sit arranged on the playground swings: Sarah on the left swing, her golden-retriever hair crossed by a purple headband and buoyed at the temples by two elfin ears. Me on the center swing, large brown eyes and mop-top black hair, red sweatsuit sheathing my body, legs crossed as if I’m a hostess. Melissa on the right, a near-clone of Punky Brewster—her hair in brown, almost black, tresses styled on her head (and which used to be in pigtails and fastened with a smiling yellow-sun barrette before she hit sixth grade and thought it too juvenile); freckles sprinkled over her nose; ragtag outfit made of a purple jean jacket and a rainbow of odd accessories—red and green tie-dyed T-shirt, blue Capri pants, orange socks. Amidst the scenery of gray gravel beneath our feet, the swings beneath our bottoms, and the twisted metal shapes of the monkey bars, slides and merry-go-round behind us, we are a brilliant splash of color, and I seem to be the nexus, my dark face and hair forming the stem of my cherry tomato clothing.

But the reality is different.

A week ago, the first day of sixth grade, Sarah and Melissa come up to me just before recess.

“Key-ran,” Sarah says, shaking her mane to get it out of her face. “Wanna go swinging today?”

I can’t believe my luck; last school year, I used to wander out to the swings all by my lonesome, bucking the Mariah Carey craze and humming Whitney Houston’s classic “How Will I Know?” in my puberty-endangered soprano.

“Me?” I say, raising a hand to my chest and widening my eyes as if the girls have just pronounced me Miss America.

“Of course, silly,” Melissa says. She tugs at the lapels of her jean jacket and shakes her head from side to side to flaunt her brown ’do.

The two of them lead me out to the swings. As we pass by, our classmates’ mouths round into shocked O’s. We walk through the gravel, kicking up stones and lifting dust into the air. It is the end of August, still summer, and you can tell that all of the kids feel oddly out of place, stunned to know that the weather can persist even if the vacation cannot. All of us have spent a morning with our summery thirst for diversion pent up, and even though we are in sixth grade now—the highest grade in this school—we cling to recess as much as we ever have, so when Sarah, Melissa, and I reach the swings, we slide into the floppy black seats with a goal to swing until our legs are blue at the knee.

“Let’s see who can swing highest,” Melissa says, pushing off and demonstrating exemplary technique—a smooth extension of her two gams, pressed together, as she swings forward, then a swift separation as she falls back, bending her knees so that each leg forms a V parallel to the ground. Her lips are pursed in heavy concentration at first, but as she falls into her rhythm, her face becomes supremely serene. I begin to copy, a bouquet of butterflies rising in me—a feeling I mistake at first for fear but later identify, all too sadly, as pride.

I give it everything I have. A breeze forms around me as I swing, the summer day now feeling brisk and cool. I can feel the air blowing through the fabric of my sweatpants, can hear the squeak of the swings’ hinges and the breaths of exertion as Sarah and Melissa move higher, can smell faint wisps of their Petit Naté perfume. I push harder, almost coming out of my seat, and I notice that as I swing forward, the girls swing back. This gives me an overwhelming sense of victory, a bragging right of sorts. But I don’t dare brag. I want to be humble to my two friends, effervescently graceful, like Whitney.

I swing higher, so out of breath it is like I am in the stratosphere. And then a sound stops my reverie. I look down to see the swings on either side of me dangling, their chains clinking. Just below and in front of me are Sarah and Melissa, their arms folded, mother-like. As I slide past the ground, I jam my feet into the gravel and look up at my new friends.

“We’re finished swinging,” says Sarah. One shake of her doggy hair. “Let’s go on the monkey bars.”

I gulp. Monkey barring has never been my best sport. And yes, since I am a bumbling fool when it comes to tennis (which Indians play) and football or basketball (which Americans play), monkey barring is the closest thing to a sport for me.

Sarah and Melissa walk arm in arm to the bars and hoist themselves up. They look down at me, two mermaids sunbathing on a rock.

“Come on, Key-ran,” Melissa says. “Are ya scared?”

I am scared, but I grab a bar in each hand and pull.

My body doesn’t go any higher. In fact, it goes lower, as my legs swing under me and my sweatpant-covered knees dig into the gravel. I swing forward toughly, yank back, and fall onto my ass, each little jagged pebble like a mini-dagger against my cheeks.

I am lucky Sarah and Melissa don’t abandon me on the spot. Others would have: A cluster of buzz-cut third grade boys wearing Transformers T-shirts and playing with the half-car, half-robot toys looks up and grunts. Four girls with big bangs and slap bracelets on their wrists stop their game of four-square, their inflated red rubber ball bouncing away in flimsy flops, then rolling to a stop on the blacktop. At least three games of tag, two between girls, one between a boy and a girl, halt. This is nothing that would be considered huge to a regular person, but when you’re the cherry tomato foreign boy ass-down in the gravel, the toy-playing boys transform into the robot men in their hands, smashing and snarling metallically. The stares from the four-square players are so piercing that the girls might as well have chucked the rubber ball at your head, a soft but meaningful thud resounding. And the halted cat-and-mouse games of tag represent this truth: all quarrels, all grievances have stopped, because the attention has turned to you and your worthlessness.

But somehow, through some great stroke of luck, Sarah and Melissa don’t look at you that way. They look at each other, trying not to show their laughter so as to avoid hurting your feelings, strengthening you with their compassion. Instead, they dismount, take a hand of yours, and hoist you up. They link their arms in yours and skip you off to The Clearing.

The Clearing is quite a sizeable chunk of land for a school playground. It’s several acres big, with patches of seed-shedding dandelions and two rusty goalposts marking a makeshift soccer field in the middle. Along the perimeter of The Clearing runs a series of fitness exercises that the school installed a few years ago as proof that the administrators were capable of making the students healthier. However, once this promise earned more tax money, the fitness course did not receive a proper upkeep, so the wooden structures are pathetic now. There is a warped balance beam that looks like one of those soggy brown runt French fries in a McDonald’s Happy Meal. There is a pair of pull-up bars, one short, one tall, that long ago fell over into the uncut grass around them. And there is a set of increasingly tall logs that one is supposed to ascend, the final rough-hewn cylinder the tallest but, of course, the last, so that the only options are to descend the way one came or to jump to one’s fate—which many kids have done and, in so doing, have broken their stupid limbs.

It is to the French fry balancing beam that the girls lead me. As we head in that direction, they are more talkative than ever.

“So, Key-ran,” Melissa says. “Who’s better—Malibu Barbie or Evening Gown Barbie?”

“Evening Gown Barbie,” I say. It just comes right out of me, but once I say it, I can’t stop. “She is posh and elegant. But my preferred doll is actually Strawberry Shortcake.”

Sarah giggles, but Melissa is silent, confused.

“You talk funny,” Melissa says.

“It’s because he studies extra language arts with Mrs. Goldberg after school,” Sarah says. “He’s a smarty-pants. You didn’t know that, Melissa?”

“Oh, I just forgot. You don’t usually talk that much, Key-ran. Otherwise I would know how
smart
you are.” She smiles sweetly and winks at Sarah.

I “blush.” That’s in quotes because the only blush I can get is from the sun’s reflection off my red sweatsuit.

“What else do you like about Evening Gown Barbie?” Sarah asks as we near the balance beam.

As unabashedly as before, I tick off my list of Evening Gown Barbie pros:

“Her dress shimmers; her eyeshadow has silver glitter in it, so it gleams extra-specially; her hair is straight, so you can style her golden locks in many different ways; and she comes with a hot pink comb, which you can use to do your own hair when you dress up in the mirror.”

This last tidbit is the only thing that seems to impress Sarah and Melissa, who have let go of my arms and flank me—presenting me as a bride to the balance beam.

“Well, don’t you like Ken?” Sarah asks, putting one hand on my shoulder, and now something feels a little stranger than usual, especially when I see a small bump form in my sweatpants, like a creature rousing itself to wake.

“Uh, I do like Ken…” I say.

“I like Ken, too,” Melissa says. There is a devilish glow in her eyes that would never have crossed Punky’s.

“But,” Sarah says, her face now so close to mine that I can smell her breath—a mixture of candy and warm, almost stinky saliva—“you know Ken is missing something.”

Gulp. “Yeah…”

“You’re gonna show it to us, Key-ran,” Melissa says, and I know for certain that Punky never acted like this because Henry Warnemont, her foster parent, would have disowned and re-orphaned her for this kind of slutty behavior. “John Griffin showed us his and we didn’t even have to ask. But he bet us five dollars yours is different. He said yours looks like an elephant.”

“It does not!” I say, knowing what they mean. I had my traumatic “naked father” moment years ago, at which point I realized there was a certain flesh-related discrepancy between my father’s privates and mine. Apparently, the only thing I got as a first-generation Indian was fore
thought
.

I don’t think Sarah and Melissa will accept the truth right now, though. Like tourists on a safari, when they want to see an elephant, they want to see an elephant.

As the girls press in, the bulge in my pants gets bigger, and it seems, in that moment, that what makes me plop myself down on the balance beam is that hipward rush of blood instead of trying to dodge Sarah and Melissa’s sexual advances. Down I go on the beam, the girls clanking heads as if in a really bad Laurel and Hardy spoof. But soon a more dire collision has occurred.

In the few years since Mr. Hughes, the amply-stomached groundskeeper, stopped looking after the fitness course, it seems the balance beam has formed a porcupine-like covering of thick, sharp splinters. One such splinter punctures through my sweatpants and an inch into my right cheek.