The student
by Lillian Wahl
I made myself into a student because it was the first thing I was ever good at. It was an act of will. A Catholic preschooler throws a fit about not being Jesus in the Easter play. Itchy cloud costume. Curses. The day my parents realized I knew how to read, they were a little afraid. My first apartment. Underside of pinky and ring finger stained with ink. Candle. Ponytail. Insisting my latin isn’t very good, but being arrogant enough to insist anything about ‘my latin’. And we shall play a game of chess. After school, a tiny room, a woman with an English accent. She reads questions off a sheet of paper. I know how to read, I tell her. I eat my carrot sticks and answer her questions to pass the time until my dad can come get me and I can read in peace. I make this cup of tea because it is the only thing I’ve ever known. Water run softly, heated. Leaves from a place across the world I’ve never been to, someone else’s hours of sweat, scented with jasmine, expanded, removed from mug, thrown away. Silicone pencil grip with three domed cubicles for my thumb, pointer, and middle finger. To teach how to write ‘correctly’. I know how to write, I told him. That’s why I’m here. You can send me back to second grade if I can’t write. Plastic tabs in books and underline vigorously. Is this for the other students to see? To prove how thorough, how special you are? Do you miss the way your mom would look at you, shocked? Does this change the understanding of the text? How do you feel about it? Would you understand it just as well if it were empty text on a blank page? If it were ones and zeros? Numbers? And how did that make you feel? Do you think your scribbles hold up against God? I write this paper because it is the one thing that has ever loved me back. All this to churn out more words on paper that will be words on a computer about Dido, Queen of Carthage. Or Carmen Laforet. Or that wasteland. Matches. Hair tie. Tower. Blissfully unaware, the student scribbles away.