Friday night, and Jomon is alone at the party.
He is sitting at a crowded table in a crowded banquet room at a Chinese restaurant in Georgetown, just down the street from the national museum. The lights are bright, the voices are loud, and the first-place medal is heavy around his neck.
Jomon’s body is in the chair, but his mind is far, far away.
“Off in Jomonland,” his mother used to call it when he got lost in his head. She named the place when he was eight years old and she was tired of fighting for his attention.
“You’re just like your father,” she said — one of the few times she said it with a smile. “If you’re going to disappear like he does, let’s at least make sure you have a good place to go.”
Mum sat him down at the kitchen table and brought out the crayons. She sat beside him and said, “Draw someplace beautiful.”
He drew a clearing in the forest. Tree branches came together overhead like the roof of the cathedral. He drew green grass, cool and soft. He put a brook along one side, gurgling and bubbling. He didn’t draw birds — not that time — but he knew they were there, singing to each other, enjoying the day, expecting nothing from him.
“You need a place to sit,” Mum said.
With a brown crayon, Jomon drew a straight-backed chair, the only chair he knew how to draw.
Mum gently took the crayon from him. She extended the lines of the chair and turned it into a bench.
“You might sometimes want me in Jomonland with you,” she said.
But tonight, drought has come to Jomonland. Everything is gray. The bench is broken, his mum is dead, and he is stuck all alone at this stupid party.
He should have gone straight home after the final competition, but he thought the dinner might salvage the night.
It hasn’t.
Months of study, practices, regional competitions and frayed nerves all came to an end barely two hours ago with Jomon and the rest of Team Durban Park winning the Guyanese National High School Geography Competition. All four students received medals. If they were lucky enough to be accepted to the University of Guyana (which for Jomon, the team’s youngest, was still over three years away), they would get scholarships to cover some of their tuition.
Jomon knows he should feel thrilled.
All he feels is empty.
Again.
What now?
Jomon shoves the remains of a spring roll into his mouth to chase the question away, but the question refuses to go.
What is there now?
The banquet room is full of students, teachers and community members. Geography teams from all over Guyana are eating, laughing and talking over every minute of the weeks-long competition, from school-wide to city-wide, from regionals to nationals. Teachers and politicians give speeches, congratulating the students and congratulating themselves.
Bits of conversation swirl around Jomon.
“Remember when I said Tropic of Copernicus instead of Tropic of Capricorn?”
“After tonight, I never have to think about who controls the Nicobar Islands. Unless I want to go there — and I might!”
On and on it goes.
The bright lights bounce off the three other gold medals in the room. Jomon’s teammates. While the competition was going on, Jomon could pretend they were mates — a team, all for one and one for all. But the competition is over. Jomon sees it for the lie that it is. The three other Team Durban Park members are scattered around the room, probably happy to be rid of him, enjoying the company of their friends and family.
Jomon has no family at the party.
As far as he is concerned, he has no family at all.
Other kids’ parents pat him on the back and say “Congratulations!” on their way to talk to who they really want to talk to. “You’re a young man with a terrific future ahead of you!”
Terrific future? Who were they kidding? He knew he’d never get to Terrific.
He could pretend otherwise, for a time. The competition kept him busy with hours of studying at the library and at home, filling his head with the prime meridian, medieval cartographers, inland seas and Asian mountain ranges. Geography kept him going.
Now it’s done. The heaviness is back. The gray ghost that lives behind his eyes has room again to take over, blocking out colors, turning everything sour.
Jomon watches the other people in the room. They talk easy. They laugh easy. They pose for pictures.
I am a different species, he thinks. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.
The party is torture and he can’t stand it one more second. He gets to his feet.
“You’re not leaving?”
A man who is a candidate in the upcoming election and one of the sponsors of the competition, gently pushes Jomon back into his chair.
“The party is just getting started. Look, they’re bringing out more food!” the man says. “Let’s get that plate filled up! All that studying has made you too skinny. The ladies like some meat on the bones. Eat up. There’s room on my campaign for a bright young man. Of course, it doesn’t pay in money, but experience! That’s the real thing. Your teacher tells me you also ran a charity book drive. Now you can go back to all those people and ask them to vote for me.”
Jomon thinks about saying that the book drive is an assignment for social studies class, that all the students have to do a community project, that he did it with four other students and he didn’t even take the lead.
But he doesn’t bother. It doesn’t matter.
The candidate keeps talking as he loads up Jomon’s plate with food. Jomon eats. He can taste that the food is good, but it gives him no pleasure. When the candidate moves on to someone else, Jomon puts down his fork.
How are things in Jomonland? he can almost hear his mother ask.
Bad, Mum. Real bad.
How can he be at a celebration, surrounded by nice people who say good things about him, and all he wants to do is disappear?
“What’s wrong with me?” he whispers to his plate.
The celebration crawls along. The Chronicle shows up, and Jomon has to pose for pictures with his team, smile on his face, medal held up beside his cheek.
“This will be online in an hour,” the reporter says, “and you can see it in print in tomorrow’s edition.”
It’s easy after that to step away from the group. No one calls after him. He walks out of the banquet room, down the stairs, out of the restaurant and onto the street.
The darkness is a relief.
Jomon takes the medal from around his neck and shoves it in his trouser pocket. He walks slowly through the streets, past people in church clothes heading home from evening prayer meetings, past couples heading out to the bars, and tourists finding their way back to their hotels. He moves through it all as if he is invisible.
Exams are coming up. Okay. He’ll study hard for them. That should keep him going until the end of the school year. He’ll get a job during the break, delivering groceries, doing odd jobs, whatever he can find. He’ll be away from home all day. He’ll save his pay in a bank account where his father can’t get at it.
Good. This is a good plan. Hard work, long hours, earning money and keeping it safe. He’ll be too tired at the end of each day to feel any damn feelings or ask any damn questions.
Then school will start up again. He’ll try out for the geography team again. Maybe they’ll win first place again and eat more Chinese food at the celebration.
And afterwards, he’ll walk home slowly through the dark Georgetown night, looking for a reason to keep living.
He just feels so tired.
Jomon turns into his block. Maybe he should have told his father about the event tonight. Dad has been drinking less lately. Even made dinner one night, that spicy chicken dish of Mum’s. Jomon walked into the house, took one sniff of the familiar aroma and walked out again.
Maybe he shouldn’t have done that. Maybe he should give his father a chance. Maybe nine months of silence is enough to punish him.
Jomon’s hands curl into fists.
Nine months isn’t enough. Always and forever would not be enough.
The house is dark when he gets home. Of course it is. His father drank the electric bill money. Probably drank the rent money, too.
Jomon kicks at a beer can on his way to his small bedroom. His father is out at the bar. Just another Friday night.
Jomon shuts the door of his room, pushes off his shoes and falls onto the bed fully dressed in his school uniform. He feels so miserable that he sings to himself the song his father used to sing to him when he was little. Dad calls it the Soothing Song.
Chatter monkeys in the trees
Swaying branches in the breeze
Sleep the hours of dark away
Wake up to a brighter day.
He finally drops into sleep. He dreams of food platters multiplying around him, stacking up like prison walls, giving him no way out.