People like telling me the Combine isn’t real. Tell me I’m stupid. Deaf and dumb, deaf and dumb. But that’s just a disguise, isn’t it? I know it is, McMurphy seems to know it is, so it must be. I say it’s the truth, and like I said, it’s true even if it didn’t happen. This place is proof, though. Kids got their head down bent towards their computers, typing away with their fingers frantic insects. Click, click, click. (Sounds just like the crickets Papa and I used to listen to when we went on overnight duck-hunting trips deep in the woods.) Teacher sitting at the back of the class like a hawk, perched like a bird of prey, waiting for a mouse to step out of line to have an excuse to swoop down and snatch them for lunch, smack her lips like she just got a real treat. Teacher’s just Big Nurse with makeup and a dress. Combine’s training all these kids to be identical, got all of them too tired to think for themselves, eyes drooping like they haven’t got sleep in weeks, shoulders slumped at the same angle into themselves, breaths coming out all the same, collecting in the air around them, raining tired down, putting them to sleep, get them yelled at by the vulture, jerked back awake only to wilt again. Big and deaf and dumb Indian like me is still invisible, just like in the asylum (just got out a few months ago); I look a little around at the faces, looking for one that decides to turn its own light on instead of reflect everyone else’s. One does. She doesn’t have a laptop out; a pencil is sprinting across the page of a composition notebook instead. It looks too free to be assigned. I watch her for a while, waiting for her to look up and hoping she won’t. Then she does and she looks right at me and I swear she sees me and I realize I didn’t know it was possible for someone to see me anymore and she throws a little smile my way and then looks back at her paper and I watch her smile run through the air and crash against my forehead and then I take it in my hand and put it onto my paper and trace its edges and it’s beautiful. I look back up at her; she doesn’t look up again. As I watch, I see the Combine losing its hold on her. She shrugs it off, a jacket she doesn’t need anymore. I envy her. Then I remember. She’s like me before I went off to the asylum. She didn’t need the bad neighborhood to turn her into the Combine’s nightmare; she was just born that way. I guess I’ll see her in the ward someday. Then again, they generally separate the girl and the boys, so I suppose I won’t. I look down that the smile I trapped on my paper. “I’ll keep you safe,” I whisper.
Then the siren sounds, and the world waves goodbye.
1. I think you got the parts referring to the ward right as well as the Chief's tone. The comparisons and metaphors you used seem very fitting for the character of the Chief, in addition to the mentions of the Combine.
ReplyDelete2. You reveal how the amount of school work can affect the wellbeing of the students and how most of them are exhausted. I think there is some truth to this description because many of us at KO have had similar experiences.
3. I completely agree with your depiction of the Chief and KO. Although, I feel like the study hall proctor was shown as possibly a bit too strict but overall I think your description of KO is very accurate.