Windward Review Vol. 20 (2022): Beginnings and Endings

she moves her hand toward my neck—the
hand with two thumbs—to unfasten my
necklace. “I give to your teacher,” she says.
“Psychiatric Help: 5 Cents” is what
the sign says that Miss Eloise has on her
desk. We are lined up here at the end of the
day to hand in our writer’s notebooks and
get back our graded spelling tests. When I
put my notebook on top of the stack, Miss
Eloise looks at my costume and I look at
hers. She has on a blue dress with a white
collar. It reminds me of Wizard of Oz. “Are
you Dorothy?” I ask.
“Nope.” She shakes her head, smiling.
“Lucy from Charlie Brown.” She kicks both
feet out from under the desk so I can she’s
wearing black and white Oreo shoes, not
ruby slippers. “And how about you?” she
says. “A pirate?”
“Nope.” I shake my head so the
dreadlocks of my wig dance around. “I’m a
Counting Crow.”
She slides herself back in her spinning
chair, slaps her desk and laughs: “Of course,
of course.” But when I ask, “Can I have back
my test?” her smile goes away.
“Esther,” she says softly. “About your
test.” She leans over her desk and opens
her mouth to explain, but then she closes
it again. Then she taps my hand twice,
mouths the words, Hold on, and calls Mrs.
Rodrigo-Díaz over.
Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz turns from the
whiteboard and walks toward us. My heart
races. I’ve never done badly on a test before.
I’ve never done badly on anything besides
attendance. I can hear her boot heels
clicking in my stomach. If I did badly, that
means Anthony Abinanti did badly, too.
She bends down to make her face level
with mine. I can see her tongue stained dark
blue, can smell blue raspberry bubblegum
on her breath. Up close, her eyes look more
brown than black, more sad than angry.
“Almuerzo mañana,” she whispers.
“Tomorrow we’ll talk.”
When Mrs. Rodrigo-Díaz’ lawyer
friends visit me again in my head, I tell them
more and more good things about my dad:
How when my dad is not in Hungary and
not having depression disease he helps
Theo and I both with our habits by letting
Beginnings X Endings
us chop wood with him in the backyard. He
bought a small axe for us to share, whose
name is Barbie Axe. He shows us the right
way to lift Barbie Axe using lower body
strength, to hold Barbie Axe’s handle while
her blade drops through the air, and let our
own weight combined with Barbie Axe’s
weight split the log in half—instead of
pushing the log to split with our backs and
our arms. That’s how you get hurt, he explains.
But we’ve never gotten hurt chopping wood
with him, or helping him pack the wood into
the wheelbarrow, or rolling the wheelbarrow
through the mud, or piling the wood in the
trestle, or building the fire. We never get hurt
doing any of those things with my dad. We
only get tired and hungry and sometimes the
next day we feel kind of sore, but the good
kind of sore. The good kind, I explain. Case
dismissed. Please depart from my head.
Since I can’t chop wood during school,
my mom started packing pipe cleaners—
the sparkly ones—in my backpack every
morning. That way, when I have the urge to
pull, I can pick at the tiny little pipe cleaner
fibers instead of my hair. We tried silly
putty, stress balls, origami, herbal tea, even
medication from the doctor that my dad
doesn’t know I see. Finally we tried pipe
cleaners—two different kinds. We found
that the colorful, fluffy fibers on regular pipe
cleaners are too soft and slippery to really
pull out and therefore they don’t work. On
the other hand, sparkly pipe cleaners have
fibers that feel stiff and detach from the wire
the same way my eyelashes detach from my
lids: Easily with a “pop.” Easily with a “pop.”
Easily with a “pop.” This is why my mom buys
them, because they feel almost the same.
After school, I right click the picture of
Frank Zimmer—my mom’s boss from before
she got laid off—and hit copy. Then I exit
LinkedIn, open up Microsoft Word, right
click and hit paste. I drag the top right corner
of the picture as far as it goes, until Frank
Zimmer’s face is wide as the entire screen.
Then I drag the top of picture down and the
bottom of the picture up in order to squish
Frank Zimmer. Once Frank Zimmer is nice
and squished, I right click the picture again,
but this time I click “set as”, and then on the
menu that pops up, I hit “wallpaper”. Then I
leave the room until my mom comes back to
her desk with her coffee. I wait outside the
door for the sound of her laugh.
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