Who Put This Song On? Page 3

  In eighth-grade Creation Science, we spent an inordinate amount of time deeply studying seven species of birds common to our area. This is a mourning dove, a sad-looking species with a dull sandbox-brown color and a weirdly long neck. I’ve always been struck by the name.

  What is it trying to tell me?

  Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe Bible stories and chemical imbalance have finally rendered me unable to distinguish fiction from reality. But this pitiful, ruined thing is here for a reason. It reminds me of the white dove that God sent to Noah after the flood, to assure him that everything was okay, that hope and peace were on the horizon. Except, you know, the opposite.

  BLACK EMO: HOW TO BE A WALKING SAD-WHITE-WOMAN-FOR-DUMMIES BY MORGAN PARKER

  I don’t fit. That’s it, no big mystery, no trigger that flipped the depressive disorder switch. I’m one of a few token black kids at Vista Christian, another place I hate, because it’s like going to high school inside a church inside a PacSun. I’m basically a loner with the wrong taste in everything, the wrong dreams and fears and wardrobe staples. I couldn’t be more awkward and incorrect.

  Is there a history of mental illness in your family? I mean, probably. We don’t talk about it, at least not that way. There’s the delusional cousin who brags about braiding Snoop Dogg’s hair, the uncle with all the far-fetched government conspiracy theories. These people are referred to as “kinda different” or “crazy.” No one has any kind of diagnosis.

  Therapy definitely isn’t a black thing. It’s like emotional stability is the least of our worries. Part of why I’m so ashamed of my depression is that it feels bratty, uncalled-for, a privilege I haven’t earned. (“What do you have to cry about?” my parents scream when we fight, 100 percent perplexed.) Being emo is not black. At least I’m pretty sure it’s not. My parents call my music “white music.” In sixth grade, some boys in my class told me that I “act white,” and it stung more than I want to admit. (That was the last time I ate lunch with the black kids.)

  I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been told I’m not really black, how many times I’ve been the only black girl at the sleepover, the only black person in the mosh pit, the only black person in the theater for The Squid and the Whale, or the only person at all who listens to Sunny Day Real Estate. I get that I’m not like black people on TV, and I don’t only listen to rap or dress like any of my cousins, but being unique and depressed doesn’t change my skin color. (Why should Modest Mouse or Noah Baumbach films or John Steinbeck be white things, belonging only to white people? Is it wrong that I love them?)

  Not that I really know many black people outside of my family. There’s another black girl in my class, Stacy Johnson, but she calls herself “mixed.” She won’t even use the bulky “African American people” that our teachers gingerly pronounce. The same goes for most of the other splotches of color around school—like, if no one says “I’m black” outright, it won’t be a thing. A version of passing for kids who grew up in the nineties.

  Plus, one of the major tenets of Christian schools, right after gossip and abstinence, is “I don’t see color.” Everyone acts like there’s nothing different about my race, but they’re just going by the script. We say the words, but it doesn’t really matter who they’re for or if we believe them.

  Anyway, I was never a very good token, like Lisa Turtle in Saved by the Bell, or Gabrielle Union in 10 Things I Hate About You. I’m too weird. If I was white, I could come across as a knockoff ScarJo in Ghost World, or maybe the girl in Girl, Interrupted. I might even be cool or cool-adjacent, a manic pixie dream girl that guys go crazy for. But no one gives a shit about the black version of that.

  STILL LIFE WITH ANXIETY ATTACK

  At the suggestion of Susan and all the books (Living with Your Depressed Teen, or whatever), my parents have been aggressively trying to get me to be active, even though they learned long ago that I am not big into activities. (Here is a list of activities I endured as a child, my parents always offering a new idea, desperate for one to stick: soccer, softball, ballet, tap, gymnastics, swim team, diving, karate, voice lessons, acting classes, debate, cheerleading, modeling, volleyball. Shame after damn shame.)

  The compromise this summer has been an introductory art class at a community college in Grand Terrace. Populated almost entirely by White Moms with gray hair and cargo shorts (two out of eight are named Susan), the class consists of painting freaking watercolor sunsets while Adult Christian Contemporary music bores you to death.

  But there is a cute guy. David. He’s the only other person in the class who’s under forty and not white. And in the parking lot before our very last class, I finally talk to him. He comes up to me while I’m sneaking a cigarette and brooding next to my car.

  “Hey.”

  Dark messy curls shape his brown face, almost olive in the sunlight. His hair is an awkward length and frizzy, like he can’t decide how long he wants it to be. A worn-out Billabong T-shirt and navy church pants. Like he can’t decide on anything.

  “Hey.”

  “Whatcha listening to?”

  “Sunny Day Real Estate.”

  “Oh. Never heard of them.”

  “Most people haven’t.”

  “What kind of music is it?”

  “Um…kinda indie emo.”

  “Oh.”

  The rest of the strip mall is mostly a ghost town, but I dart my eyes around anyway, as if even the storefront of the frozen-yogurt place is more interesting than talking to him.

  He thrusts his hands into his pockets and scuffs his Vans on the pavement, carabiner jingling from his belt buckle.

  “Should we go in?”

  “K.” I smile weakly.

  As we walk the few strides to the studio, I try not to let him see me glance over at his jawline, his arm swinging so close to mine. Me interacting with boys is excruciating, just disgraceful. I’m always crossing and uncrossing my arms; trying to hide my boobs or tugging at my jeans; trying to simultaneously come off as the ideal girlfriend and one of the guys; forgetting and then remembering my face and the rolls of flesh that make up stumpy, unsexy me.

  In class today we’re doing still-life drawings with charcoal. The objects for everyone’s still life, positioned hurriedly on a card table before us, stare into me, garish and weird. I have arranged a tableau of stuff from my purse: a bubblegum-pink lighter, a bruised apple, the stub of a green crayon, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris.

  It’s a weird day because it’s raining, but it’s that humid, almost-steamy summer rain. The dampness awakens something in the stale paints and dried brushes in the classroom. There’s a musty fog over everything. A quiet smell. The stillness makes me nervous and self-conscious. The room is a cocoon around me, everything pointed at me. The nineties posters of the color wheel and Matisse cutouts are closing in.

  Then this dumb rom-com thing happens: as I reach for an eraser, my shoulder brushes against David’s. It’s a brief moment, but he turns to me and smiles, the teeniest bit of flirtation.

  I picture all the boys from my class in the locker rooms before PE, changing into their sweat-stained Vista Eagles T-shirts, naming all the girls they think are hot, then landing on me and: She’s weird. The nice ones I grew up trading burned CDs with might be gentler: I could only really see her as a friend or She’s not really my type. The message is the same: gross.

  And here’s the thing: I’m not even sure I think any of them are cute, with their white-boy freckles and spindly arms. That bland, all-American flatness. But I know I’m supposed to want them, and so I do. Am I immediately out of the running simply because I’m not just like everybody else? (Isn’t it weird what gets trapped in your head like a splinter? The little voice you hear so long it sounds like yours?)

  In the parking lot, a Camry zooms by blasting Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” an
d a Susan giggles on cue. I can’t even muster the fake smile she wants in return.

  I try to focus all my attention on my drawing but struggle with the apple’s contours. My wrist’s movements are totally out of my control. Annoyed, I look at the clock: still fifty minutes left in class.

  Slip in my earbuds, attempt to get into a zone. Kim Gordon sings You can buy some more and more and more and more, and I smudge and smudge my charcoal lines. Nothing is recognizable. I don’t hear David or the White Moms, but I can see them laughing, breathing easily. Go for the book, a straight line, fail. Lick my finger and try to smudge more. Get embarrassed. Clench my chest. What the fuck am I doing here. Am maybe going to scream. Can’t move. Inhale and gasp for air like I’m in a pool. Eyes pin prick at my body. Abruptly zoom to the door. So awkward. Am I going to die. Will I pass out. Crouch on sidewalk, wring hands together.

  * * *

  —

  After a few minutes my mind stops racing, and I come into focus. I’m still breathing like someone in a movie who’s going into labor. The rain has stopped, but the world is beginning-of-Wizard-of-Oz gray. My butt is wet.

  “Heyyy.” It’s David, singsongy but tender, plopping himself next to me. “You okay?”

  “I just need a minute,” I manage, probably snapping at him, probably being rude. I’m just so totally unfit for social contact right now.

  “You, my dear”—he rubs my back—“are having a panic attack.”

  “Huh?” I wriggle away, press my flat palm to my chest and neck and inhale deeply. “Yeah,” I breathe, glancing at him. “How do you know?”

  “My girlfriend gets them sometimes.”

  Dang. Typical.

  I picture her like basically everyone at my school, with a breezy personality and simple needs. Or even like Meg, smart and quirky. Either way, white. Some damn messy bun.

  I do the yoga breaths I practiced with Susan: slowly and thoughtfully in through the nose, then out through the mouth with my lips pursed like a whistle. (I can’t whistle.) (Or is it in through the mouth and out through the nose? Ugh, I can’t even relax right.)

  “Er, ex-girlfriend, I guess. I’m still figuring out how to say that, four freaking months later. Ex ex ex ex ex…”

  He talks to the air above us, head titled up toward the rolling duvet of gray clouds. “Sorry. Anyway, it will pass. We’ll just sit here quietly and wait it out.”

  “K. You can go back in if you want.”

  “No way, dude. Wanna talk about it?”

  I don’t know anything about this guy. How could I possibly know what to tell him, what words to even use? How would I tell anyone, for that matter?

  I stare at the small pool of rainwater that swirls around our shoes. And for a second, I just sit and exist. He lets it happen. He seems totally chill.

  “I think maybe God smited me.” I don’t know if I mean it as a joke or as a true confession. Maybe both.

  “Oh noooo, dude! A curse upon your house for all generations? Or just a low-key plague of locusts or what?”

  “Nice.” Of course, it comes off snarkier than I want. What I wish I could do is giggle and tuck my hair behind my ear. “I’m sorry, I just…” The empty space between us is so uncomfortable, but I can’t think of anything else to say.

  I close my eyes. I imagine being anywhere else. I imagine David not seeing me this way, not now or ever. I’m almost mad at him for being here, his hand limply cupping my shoulder.

  We sit like this on the curb for thirty minutes, not saying much, every now and then passing movie recommendations between us. He’s never seen my favorite, All About Eve, and I’ve never seen his favorite, Fight Club.

  “Man, you gotta let me know what you think of the ending,” he basically squeals.

  I know I should feel warmth with David in this moment, maybe even butterflies. I’m grateful for his kindness and I think he’s awesome, but it’s hard to feel excited about making a new friend, because I can’t feel anything. I’m watching it happen, but it isn’t happening to me. I’m disconnected from everything outside my head.

  The rain starts up again for a minute; we watch it splash down from the awning. I hate this kind of rain, the slanty kind that comes in short, hard bursts. Finally David jumps up and scrunches his face, appraising the wet butt of his pants.

  “We should get going before we have to answer to the Moms.”

  “Oh, you’re right.” I dart up, damp and light-headed.

  “Let me put my number in your phone.”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, okay.” I fish my phone out of the pocket of my Pretty Girls Make Graves hoodie (I always wear merch hoodies on rainy days) and hand it over.

  “And…,” he mumbles as he types briskly. “I’m texting myself….” He hands the phone back to me, grinning.

  “Hey, um, thanks, for today, for this.”

  “Psh, ain’t no thing, dude.”

  He marches off swinging his arms in wide, weightless half-moons.

  Settling into my car, I take a deep breath and collect myself. Glance over my CDs and decide on silence. My phone dings as I plop it into the cup holder. Text message from David Santos. David.

  <3

  Huh.

  I try not to smile, but I’m only human.

  MARISSA

  This is a story about Marissa. Marissa was a pretend friend before she was a real one, back when you were thirteen. It was convenient—her mom didn’t let her watch TV, but yours did; you could walk to each other’s houses; you sat together at your brothers’ Little League games and stayed after to watch the boys from your class. You lusted over her entitled relationship to fun. Marissa flirts with the boys and they flirt back. Even her crush flirts back, which you didn’t even know was possible. In your universe, it isn’t.

  If you’re mad at Marissa, she finds a reason to get mad at you. She has a way of turning the tables. She commits the crime, but somehow you end up apologizing, and maybe you even owe her. The scales of the world tip in Marissa’s direction.

  Marissa isn’t really emo. (She listens to Good Charlotte.) She’s a poser, but the boys don’t care. Wanting her makes them not care about anything else. Marissa tells you you’re jealous that boys like her and not you, and then goes back to painting her nails silver and watching Mandy Moore in the movie. She tucks a piece of thin long hair behind her ear with a sense of satisfaction and ease that you have never experienced and probably never will. Not in this universe. Everyone you can’t be is a Marissa, and you are surrounded by Marissas.

  This is a story about you. The night you spill the bottle of Disco Fever polish on the carpet in your bedroom, you feel pitiful. Everything about the moment—those dumb songs in A Walk to Remember and Mandy Moore’s horrible dumpy cardigans; Marissa’s puka shells; the sting you feel and keep feeling—reminds you how pitiful you are. Reminds you of your place.

  You’re the Laney Boggs in She’s All That. You spill the nail polish and ruin your carpet. You swallow the words down.

  But this is not a story about you. This is a story about me, and I am the hero.

  MORGAN PARKER NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED

  This morning I am a scientific curiosity on the examination table at Dr. Li’s office, a place I’ve been coming to since I was a kid. Except this time, I’m not getting shots for the new school year. I’m getting pills. Dr. Li already spoke to Susan about my symptoms and official diagnosis: DSM-IV 311 Depressive Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. (Go figure, even the Manual of Mental Disorders doesn’t have a name for me. What a life, defying classification.)

  He talked to my parents, too, and they probably explained that they are at the “end of their rope” and “don’t know what to do with me.” (“Are we bad parents?” they probably asked him, just like they keep asking me. “Is it something we did?” “How can we fix this?” This, in case it’s not clear, is me, the fuck
ed-up firstborn.)

  The nurse gives me a photocopied questionnaire and a golf pencil that’s almost too small to use. “Take your time!” she chirps, then slips out of the room, her blond ponytail shimmying.

  There are these truly awful illustrations of bunnies and flower gardens filling the white spaces between the text: Over the past month, have you experienced any of the following problems?, followed by a list of statements like I have little interest in my activities and I believe other people are generally better than I am. I know all the right answers because I’ve already been through this with Susan. I check the same pathetic boxes and wait, hunching and straightening my shoulders and swinging my Vans.

  Dr. Li comes in and greets me like always, planting himself on the swivel chair and taking out his ear-inspector thing. He talks fast and moves quickly but nonchalantly. I am always a good kid, an excellent student. I usually breeze through appointments like small chats with distant relatives on Thanksgiving.

  “Morgan! How are we doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “That’s good, that’s good. Open for me?”

  I do, and almost wonder if he’ll find something in my throat, a depression hair ball or some marking never before seen in the history of medicine. Some proof.

  “All right, everything’s great. Let’s have a look,” he says, gesturing for my A+ quiz.

  He looks at it on his clipboard sternly and silently for, like, a full minute. Then he flashes me a big, bright fake grin.

  “So, Morgan, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on with you?”