Kalinda nods at me, agreeing that neither of us are really children anymore. We’re not adults either, because adults have forgotten how to live, and I know Kalinda and I have not. Adults wouldn’t understand something like this—that Kalinda and I are neither children nor adults. They only look at us and see two twelve-year-old girls, and so think we know nothing about life or death. They assume we have nothing but innocence. I think we must be closer to being alive than adults. They’ve been alive too long to remember the passion of life. And Kalinda and I, maybe we’ve been alive too long too, and the only animals on this Earth that really understand life are the insects that are born and mate and die within seconds. They’re really the ones that understand it all.
As we walk, I realize there are now two things that Kalinda and I have in common: the reality that we are no longer children, and the fact that we can both see the things no one else can see.
I want to ask her again. I want to ask her for the truth this time, and tell her that I know she’s lying, and demand to know why she’s lying about this, when it’s so clear that we both looked up in the cafeteria, both looked in that woman’s direction, and for a split second, Kalinda had fear in her eyes, because she had seen something no one else could see.
But what if it isn’t true? What if it’s my own mind playing games with me, and not Kalinda? What if she’s not lying at all, and she really didn’t see anyone there, and she would have no idea what I was talking about if I dared to ask her? I’d make such a fool of myself, and I’m already lucky enough as it is, that Kalinda decided to speak with me and walk with me and invite me to her home. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to a classmate’s house before. If I insist that we speak about this again and again—well, I don’t know how Kalinda will react. Tomorrow I might find myself sitting alone in the cafeteria.
No. Best to keep silent about this.
We come to her house, which is in a neighborhood where men slam dominoes on a rickety table under the shade of a yellow mango tree, and where the roads are lined with rusting cars missing their tires. Her concrete house is missing its paint, or maybe it’s just been that long since anyone painted its walls.
The inside is missing its furniture as well, except for a single chair and a little table that doesn’t even reach my knees. Halls break away from the room, which is where all the furniture must be. There’s a man who I think must be Kalinda’s father sitting in the living room, which doesn’t have a TV, and he’s bent over an ornate chair leg growing from the block of wood that stands on a square of plastic and wood shavings.
He sees us, and we say good afternoon, and so does he, but then he goes back to his carving, and I wonder why he doesn’t ask me for my name or say that it’s nice to meet one of Kalinda’s friends. Does Kalinda bring new friends to the house so often? I feel a pinch of jealousy. But then Kalinda does something with her hands so it looks like she’s pointing and then twisting her fingers, and he nods again, and Kalinda smiles and walks on down the hall to where her bedroom must be. Every door we pass on the way is closed, until we reach the door at the end of the hall. Kalinda pushes it open, and I see that her mattress is on the floor, but she has the most beautiful dressing table, and her nightstand looks like it’s made from gold. Kalinda sits on the edge of her mattress and tells me her father hasn’t built her bed frame yet, though it’s next on his list.
“He makes beautiful furniture.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
We sit in silence for some time. I try to think long and hard about what to say to Kalinda. I don’t want to tell her how excited I am, how overjoyed, that she’s chosen to be my friend, to the point that I would like to hold her hand in the same way the two white women walking down the street did, because then I think Kalinda wouldn’t speak to me anymore. But then I’m not really sure what else to say, because it feels like there’s nothing that can be said until she understands how I feel about her at this very moment.
“He can’t hear,” Kalinda says.
I’m confused. “Who can’t hear?”
“My father,” she says, before she launches into a story of how her father’s greatest dream had once been to be the best guitarist of Barbados, playing in his local band and singing soca and calypso, but when he was eighteen his disease near took his life and succeeded in taking all his hearing, so he had no choice but to find a new dream. “That seems like a most difficult thing to do. Finding a dream alone is hard. I’ve spent many days wondering what my own dream should be. But I’m not sure I have any dreams yet. Maybe my dream is to find a dream. Find something to live for. Can you imagine, doing all that work to find something to live for, and then being forced to find another dream at the end of it all?”
This is such an interesting thing to say that I’m intimidated into silence. Kalinda intimidates me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I really am still just a child, while Kalinda is the only one who isn’t a child anymore. It’s enough to make me wonder if Kalinda is
