Chapter 1
“It’s shaped like a bird!” I proudly bragged to the girl who came up to me during recess. I did not know her name. However, I did know that her favorite color was red. She told me that before. Perhaps this was when she told me her name, which I had overlooked. I did, however, pay attention to her favorite color, red, and it filled me to the brim with excitement. All 40lbs of my young body felt fired up as 60 equally excited kindergarteners screeched around me as they ran aimlessly around the blacktop. I was excited that this unnamed classmate’s favorite color was red because I proudly boasted a three-inch long port wine stain birthmark on my upper left thigh. This birthmark was not only red (well, more of a purplish red) but shaped like a bird as well.
“It’s red, like your favorite color,” I told her for the second time. She nodded eagerly, and I prided myself in my ability to fully capture my peer’s attention by discussing my birthmark. “I’d show you,” I started, “but I can’t. On account that I’d have to pull down my pants in the middle of school. My mom says I can’t do that.” I knew it’d be inappropriate to pull down my rhinestone-embellished jeans during the middle of recess. The unnamed girl nodded again, unspeaking since she told me her favorite color. I thought back to a minute ago, trying to recollect whether the fair-headed girl had even told me her name. My child-like mind raced from thought to thought, and any memory I had of this girl’s name was long gone.
I stared into her blue eyes as she stared into mine. I briefly remembered how my eyes were brown and wished for eyes of a different color. Blue. Green. Hazel. Pink. Purple. Any color but earth brown. I looked toward the grass as I thought about dirt. I saw a large tree, a vast blacktop, and a grass field. A soccer goal sat unused further down the field. Other kindergarteners kicked plastic balls and played tag.
A thought came to me. I had to ask my new friend. “Hey, how come we don’t have a playground over here?” I remembered a playground on the other side of the school, near the older children’s classes. I could see the playground from the cafeteria every day as I waited in the lunch line. I had never played on that playground before.
“I mean, why can’t we play on the playground over there?” I pointed over the school building towards where the playground sat, peacefully undisturbed. I frowned, remembering I hadn’t even played there before. “Have you been on that playground before?”
The girl looked at me and shook her head. Her blonde ringlets swayed as she gave me her silent answer. My frown persisted. I sat down, sulking and feeling dejected. “We don’t have swings over here neither!” I threw my small hands up in frustration. I crossed my arms, furrowing my brows. “I want my mommy. I want to go to my backyard. At least I have a sandbox there. And Barbies at home. And a house for the Barbies.” I had forgotten the playground existed by now. I looked at my new friend, who I wasn’t actually sure was my friend yet. I hadn’t asked her to be yet. “Do you have Barbies at home?”
She nodded again, her expression unchanging. I sat down on the grass near the edge of the blacktop. I kicked a small pebble, feeling confused. I wasn’t sure what my new friend was feeling. Her face did not seem happy or sad. She didn’t look confused or mad. She didn’t look sad or scared. I raised one brow at her. “Are you shy?” I asked.
She looked at me with her big blue eyes. Her eyes were the color of the sky. I felt angry that I did not have her eyes at that moment. I wanted eyes the color of the sky, the color of my new friend’s. I did not understand what I felt then, though I now know that feeling was jealousy.
She nodded, her expression still unchanging. It made me feel an unexplainable feeling at the time, something that resembled sympathy mixed with discomfort.
“Are we friends? Do you wanna be my friend?” I asked the unnamed girl. I felt anxious and uncomfortable asking, my own shyness creeping up on me.
The girl finally spoke. “I already have a friend,” she said, pointing to a small, tan girl with thick curly hair. The girl smiled at the unnamed girl, and the unnamed girl smiled back. She immediately forgot I existed and ran to her friend, leaving me sitting alone on the edge of the blacktop.
I sighed and kicked another small rock. Perhaps if I had learned Ashley’s name before bombarding her with questions, she would not have deserted me so quickly for her friend Victoria. I remember those names better now at twenty-three than I did at five.
I looked up to watch the sixty other children run around the blacktop. They looked happy. They screeched and cried and screamed and giggled. A group of girls played with each other’s hair while some boys ran up to them, holding worms to scare them away.
My mind went back to the playground. Did anyone know one was on the other side of the school?
I stood up and looked down at my sneakers. Brand new Lelli Kellys. White sneakers adorned with tiny rhinestones and sequins, sparkly enough to match my bedazzled jeans. I couldn’t get either of them dirty. I looked around for the lunch aids, who were all crowded in a gaggle, squawking at each other about their pain-in-the-ass daughter-in-law or the bitch next door who ruined the neighborhood potluck or the divine pasta alla vodka from the Italian restaurant a few blocks from my house on West Elm Street.
I looked toward the small blacktop to my right, where the second graders ran around. They played more sophisticatedly than the kindergarteners, the boys kicking around soccer balls while the girls braided each other’s hair. I began to walk over to them, staring down at the grass as I walked. I was conscious of each step, avoiding mud, dirt, or grass stains on my new embellished sneakers. The sun blazed down onto my dark, tight ponytail, making the muggy September day even hotter. My legs began to sweat under the thick denim. There was a stark absence of trees near where the kindergarteners played. Though confined to a small blacktop no bigger than a classroom, the second graders were granted recess in the shade, away from the harsh sunlight.
Every second grader had a friend to play with except for one girl. She stood on the edge of the grass and blacktop, kicking small rocks just as I had. She was tall, taller than most of the other children. She was very skinny and wore jean shorts and a bright t-shirt, which contrasted greatly with her dark skin. Her hair came down to her chin in thick braids with neon flower barrettes at the ends.
I walked over to her, forgetting my goal of reaching the playground for some time.
“Hi.” I looked up at the girl. She looked down at me. The second-grade girl towered over me by about a foot. I lamented about my previous interaction with the fair-haired girl, and in an attempt to make a friend more easily, I knew what I had to ask. “What’s your name?” I asked the girl.
“Aisha.”
I smiled and waved to the girl. She looked back at me solemnly. She did not wave back. I felt cast down, wondering why Aisha seemed so sad. She seemed confused too.
“I saw you walk from there,” she pointed over to the blacktop I came from. I had walked a long distance, as my little legs could not take me as far as they can now. It took me five minutes to walk from Ashley to Aisha. “You’re a kindergartener. You’re supposed to be over there.” She pointed back to the kindergarteners. The boys were still chasing the girls around, holding worms. The girls screeched and ran away. The recess aids still did not pay attention. “Why are you over here?”
I shrugged and looked back to where she pointed. “I don’t have a lotta friends over there.” I looked up at the girl, my eyes meeting hers. “Sometimes the girls don’t wanna play with me ’cause I don’t like some-a the same things.” I began rattling off, a habit I have trouble breaking to this day. “On account that I like SpongeBob. You know SpongeBob? I like him. But I don’t like High School Musical. That’s what the other girls like. And whenever I play with them, the other girls, they make me be Gabriella. And I don’t wanna play Gabriella.”
Aisha looked at me intently. I was not sure if she cared about what I had to say. I had to tell somebody, though.
“I went to Gina’s birthday party last weekend, and she made me be Gabriella. And I cried. It wasn’t very nice.” There had been four Sharpays at the party. I was the only Gabriella. Gina, from what I remember, was a friend from church. We also went to school together. She, like most of my friends, had blonde hair. She once told me that my legs were too hairy. “I don’t like High School Musical.” I crossed my arms and stared at the ground, scowling.
I looked back up to Aisha. Her expression changed. She seemed more interested in my monologue.
“And the boys are gross. I don’t like the bugs. And the boys are also super boring.” I put my hands on my hips and faced the kindergarten blacktop. “All they do is talk about the Cars movie and Hot Wheels!” I threw my hands in the air. “How am I ’upposed to talk to them about Barbie dolls?! And the girls play with dolls I’m not ’upposed to play with! My mommy doesn’t let me have Bratz dolls. ’Cause I’m not a brat. And the Polly Pockets are too small for my little sister! She’s three. She…”
I looked up to Aisha, whose expression had changed yet again. She looked sad and brushed her finger against her eye. I knew what that meant. It meant she was crying. I stared at her, bewildered, unsure of what I did wrong or what I should do next.
She looked down at me, seeing that I was confused. She sighed. “I don’t have a lotta friends, too,” she confided. “I usually play by myself at recess.” Suddenly, the sharp sound of a whistle cut through the air. Recess was over. Aisha turned her gaze toward her peers lining up to walk back into the school. I wondered if Aisha felt the same rejection I had when I was cast away just ten minutes before.
“Do you wanna be my friend?” I asked the tall girl as she began to walk to the line. She turned back to look at me. I glanced at the kindergarteners and noticed they were heading back inside too. Nobody noticed I had left.
“Well, I don’t know your name,” Aisha replied. “We can’t be friends unless I know your name.”
I gave her a toothy grin, my two front teeth missing. “My name’s Bella!” I had to give her a few-second run-down about myself before she inevitably had to return inside. “My favorite color is the rainbow, my favorite show is SpongeBob, and I have a sister who’s three and named Juliana. Her favorite show is Elmo. I have two cats, but I don’t think they like me much on account that they scratch me lots, and the stuffed animal I sleep with every night is a guardian angel named Gabriella.” I rambled about myself as we walked toward the line of second graders filing inside.
Aisha smiled for the first time and waved as she trailed behind her peers. “I hope I can play with you tomorrow, Bella.” I smiled and waved back at her as she walked in the doorway, the last to leave the blacktop.
I was alone outside now, and I was halfway to my destination.
I counted my steps as I continued walking to the playground. I could count higher than one hundred now without losing track. “Thirty-five… thirty-six… thirty-eight…” My little feet took me from the small blacktop through the shaded grassy area outside the older children’s classrooms. I glanced in the window into a fifth-grade classroom. Twenty bored fifth-graders stared impassively at a chalkboard riddled with examples of long division. They daydreamed of their turn for recess on the blacktop, which would not happen for another forty-five minutes.
As I walked through the shade, a gentle breeze began to cool the sweat beneath my jeans. My sunburn began to calm as the sun ceased beating down on my already blistering skin. It was nice to be in the shade, finally. I wondered why the kindergarteners, who ran around and screamed the entirety of recess, were subjected to playing in blinding sunlight every day.
Yet something was not right amidst the tranquility of the shade and the breeze. I immediately recognized the smell of a campfire. It smelled like the few seconds of wood burning before putting marshmallows over the fire for s’mores. Nobody was making s’mores, though. Usually, the smell of a campfire filled me with feelings of warmth and safety. This smell did not bring warmth and safety. It brought unease and apprehension, which was soon replaced with horror upon noticing the fire.
I screamed the loudest I had ever screamed. Louder than when I jump like a cannonball into a pool. Louder than when I was tall enough to ride a rollercoaster for the first time. Louder than when I can’t escape a tickle-fight. Louder than any other time I had ever screamed because, for the first time, I was screaming out of fear instead of laughter.
The mulch beneath the playground had caught fire. Dark clouds of smoke rose through the air. I began coughing as I inhaled the smoke. It burned my lungs as I breathed in. Tears flowed down my cheeks, though I could not tell if it was from the stabbing pain caused by the smoke or crying from the pure terror coursing through me.
It felt like no matter how much I screamed, no help was coming. Though I could hear sirens blaring, it felt like the firetruck was nowhere to be seen. Students began evacuating from the school as far away from the playground as possible, yet it did not occur to me to return to my class. I just watched in shock as the playground went up in flames. I stood only a few feet away as men in bright suits doused the fire in water. I had ceased screaming and succumbed to a wave of grief that washed over me as the hose from the truck drenched me as well. I did not know what to think. I did not know what to say. All I knew was that I would never get to play at that playground, ever.
I moved to a new school shortly after the playground burned down. That school had three playgrounds when I arrived, and a fourth was built when I began third grade.
A few years later, upon recollecting the event with my mother, she told me that the fire was started by a teenager who lit a match and threw it into the wooden mulch.
I visited my early childhood school eighteen years after I witnessed the playground burning down in kindergarten. I wondered if the playground had been repaired yet. I parked my car next to the curb near the school. Most of the area looked the same. I could hear kindergarten boys chasing screeching kindergarten girls with bugs in the distance. In the background could see second-grade girls braiding each other’s hair while the boys played soccer. The trees looked the same, though quite a few rings were undoubtedly added to their trunks. The playground, as well, looked the same. No work was done to repair it. Instead, bright yellow tape labeled “CONDEMNED” wrapped around the charred wooden poles.
Even eighteen years later, I have never stepped foot on that playground.
