CanIHelpYou?: Never Get a Manicure in Wichita
So maybe I’m in love with my best friend. So what?
This is what I think during homeroom. During math. English. Lunch. So maybe I’m in love with my best friend. So what?
Then I’m in my tunnel. There’s graffiti everywhere. It says, HE HATES YOU/YOU’RE A RACIST. There’s a clever one in red paint: IAN + ANYONE WHO’S NOT YOU.
I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do.
In my house lives a bell. It’s a disgusting bell. It’s a bad bell. It’s never been used for anything good since it’s been in my house. All it does is announce the speaking parts of my mother, the racist who owns the bell. Cherishes the bell. Thinks the bell is “tradition.”
Tradition gets away with lots of shit around here.
Like, we had a racist incident at our high school a few years ago. By incident, I mean a large group of people celebrated the “tradition” of being assholes to the kids who aren’t white. Yelled stuff at them. Waited outside school every day—morning and afternoon—and threw things at them from their trucks adorned with Confederate flags. They didn’t throw rocks, no. Balled-up pieces of paper. Snot loogies. Paper clips. Things that don’t count as dangerous. Safe things. Safe hate.
Tradition. You can say what you want so long as you’re not throwing anvils, I guess. They call it freedom of speech or traditional family values. The louder ones call it heritage—as if it were in our blood to be assholes to other people, as if we’d inherited it. The best the administration ever did is ban Confederate flags on cars in the parking lot. Sure, you can go to my school if you have a Confederate flag on your car—you just can’t park in the parking lot. That was the solution to the incident a few years ago. Nothing about the subtler white supremacist bumper stickers—an Iron Cross decal or that weird Rhodesian flag sticker that a kid from down our street has on his BMW. Not an assembly, not a single suspension for any of the kids who took part in the incident. Just a parking lot rule. Freedom of speech. Freedom of family values. Even if your family values suck.
So maybe I’m in love with my best friend. So what?
I can’t stop thinking of kissing Ian even though we haven’t kissed since that night. I feel like an idiot. I’m usually far cooler than this. The tunnel is eating me.
Then magically, mid-history class, I am summoned to the guidance office to meet with Nancy. Mrs. Waters to you. Nancy to me. She wants to make a plan so I don’t fail junior year. My mother called her.
Nancy says, “From what your mom told me, you don’t have any friends.”
I look at Nancy. I sigh. “My mom lies.”
I tell her about Ian. I tell her about roller-skating. I tell her that my mother doesn’t approve of anything I do since Ian is my best friend and because she and my dad are traditionally conservative. I put air quotes around it and mouth the word racist. Nancy sits with this for a while.
“Let’s unpack this,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. This’ll be a challenge.
“Does she use words that make you uncomfortable?”
“All the time.” I shake my head like I should be ashamed to admit this even though I’m not the one who uses the words. “And she has this bell,” I say.
“A bell?”
“It’s like, an heirloom or something. I think it was a souvenir someone got down south. It’s a slave bell.” Nancy looks at me like she doesn’t understand, and I realize that most people wouldn’t. “I have a picture,” I say, and scroll through the pictures on my phone.
When I show it to her, Nancy makes a face like she’d do anything to unsee the bell—even if her only other choice was getting a manicure in Wichita.