For Aria, school was yet another part of the prison sentence of childhood. Unlike so many of her fellow students, she had no plans to go to college. She swore to herself that after her time was up she would not sit in another classroom for as long as she lived.
Aria had no friends to speak of. Loneliness graced the corridors of her life. So when the final school bell rang, she put one of her headphone earbuds in her right ear, chose a song to play and pulled her hoodie over the top of her head so that it hid her profile. Ignoring any others, she made her way to the city bus stop, where she waited with a loose collection of vagrants, students and businessmen. The bus swayed this way and that, starting and stopping to let people on and off. She glanced at their faces, trying to feel the people beneath them, but averted her eyes if they tried to make eye contact. The very connection that she wanted so desperately to make frightened her.
The bus pulled up to a stop in a suburban neighborhood on the south end of the city. Aria inched her way sideways past the other passengers’ knees and briefcases. The air outside was unfriendly, a frigid grayness known only to cities. She walked the six blocks to her house with her face turned toward the cement sidewalk, careful not to step on the cracks. Aria didn’t like to think of herself as superstitious, but when all was said and done, she was. She made the turn toward her house reluctantly. Went up the stairs and stood before the pastel plaque on the door that read “Bless O Lord, this thy house, and all who enter in.” Turning off her music, she opened the door. The air inside carried the fake scent of cheap cinnamon potpourri.
Inside, the sound of clanking in the kitchen was suppressed by a voice that called to her, “Aria, is that you?”
“Yeah.”
Her mother stepped around the corner, wearing a patchwork apron. The bangs of her bobbed, sandy hair were perfectly curled. She was wearing a scowl on her face. “I got a call today from your school,” she said in an exasperated tone. “You can’t keep doing this.”
She paused and then continued, “I called your new case worker. She said we should take you to see one of the counselors. Is that what you want?”
Aria stared at the carpet and said nothing. Irritated by the silence, her mother went on. “Your father and I have told you again and again that you have to set a good example for the littler ones.”
Aria looked up from the carpet. She wanted to yell. She wanted to scream but nothing came out. Despite the fury that burned its way through her veins, all she could say was, “Sorry.”
Her mother fidgeted, a pair of plastic tongs still in her hands. “Don’t do it again,” she said. “If you keep sloughing school you’re not gonna graduate.” Aria granted her nothing but more silence. So her mother ended the one-sided conversation with, “Your father will decide what to do about this later. Do your homework before you watch TV.”
Aria sprang out from beneath the tension like a racehorse out of the gate. She ran upstairs and closed the door to her room. She could still hear the sound of her younger siblings in the background. She reached below her bed and felt around until her fingers found the texture of her journal. Pulling it up onto her bed, she grabbed a pen from her backpack and began to write her frustrations down between the lines on the paper. She is not my mother. He is not my father. Who the hell does she think she is? I hate her. She underlined the word hate with three straight lines for emphasis.
The woman who was downstairs cooking was not her mother. The man who would be coming home soon was not her father. The children whose noises she could hear beyond the door were not her siblings. The omnipresent dust of the past covered Aria’s world with grief. There is something about the shock and groundlessness that comes with grief that makes the world around you stand still. Aria’s world had been standing still for quite some time now.
Aria didn’t know where her real mother was. She had been taken by the state at seven years old. From what Aria had been able to piece together, her mother had dropped out of high school when she was 16 years old after finding out that she was pregnant. Her name was Lucy. She was named after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” She used to play that song for Aria on repeat when Aria was young. The lyrics were etched into Aria’s memory for all time. Her mother loved music. She had always wanted to play the guitar but because Aria came along, she hadn’t had the time or resources to learn. When Aria was born, Lucy stared down at her perfect little face and felt that this baby was her great creation, this baby was her song … her aria. And so Lucy named her as such.
After Aria was born, Lucy had struggled to
