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Morning found the four scattered all over the RV. Mr. Parker was fast asleep somewhere, unable to keep his eyes open and focused on the road any longer; Dilani, surprisingly, was driving, given that the interstate was almost deserted and she was much more eager to than Mrs. Allweather. "I've never driven something this cool before," Dilani had said, spinning the steering wheel in her hands. "When I'm all rich and famous, I'm getting one of these." Mrs. Allweather had been reading almost the entire morning; she was sprawled out on the couch, eating a bagel and thumbing through a notebook, occasionally turning back a few pages to check something, occasionally getting up and disappearing into the driver's compartment for a few minutes before returning with yet another book full of Dilani's scrawling print. "Is it interesting?" Amaranthine asked, peering over Mrs. Allweather's shoulder at one point. "Yes," Mrs. Allweather replied, half-listening. "Some of it is right, too." Amaranthine smiled, and went to look out the window again. Eventually, Dilani and Mrs. Allweather traded places, and the two young women were left alone in the living room, Mr. Parker still fast asleep in his bedroom. Dilani was writing half-heartedly, her pen pausing often as she looked out the window at the fields of corn they were passing. "Iowa really is flat all over," she commented, chewing on the top of her pen in thought. "D'you think I could write about that?" "You should write about whatever you wish," Amaranthine said. "But I must ask you. How did you come to be where you are?" "What, poor as shit and walking barefoot until I see someone with enough pity in them to pick me up?" Dilani clarified. "Well, bad luck, I guess. Who cares?" Dilani's face had an unusually defensive expression on it. "Not like I did anything wrong, my mom's the one." "You seem angry with your mother," Amaranthine observed. "What has she done to deserve such scorn?" "What's she done," Dilani scoffed. "What hasn't she done? You can imagine what her profession was, to have no boyfriend and still have a baby. She had a little apartment on the south side where she lived, and the only thing that changed in her life after having me was that she slapped a crib in there and got lypo with her savings account. The neighbours came in and checked on me a few times in the night while mom was still at work, but, other than that, I never saw much of anybody. Didn't hurt, obviously, but that's not the way a kid should grow up, is it, then?" Amaranthine shook her head, but did not speak. She could tell that Dilani was not finished. "And then, as soon as I could walk, it was, 'Dilani, clean the living room, Dilani, fix dinner, Dilani, make yourself fuckin' useful and empty the cabinets.' Not just mom, the neighbours seemed to think I owed them some kind of debt or something, which was bullshit, but I didn't know different, right? So they decided they were going to take advantage of that. Do you know," Dilani said icily, "I got my first job when I was eight? Eight. 'Cause it was time for me to help paying the bills, apparently. Delivering newspapers from five in the morning until seven, which was when I went to school. "And what a school it was," the girl continued, laughing bitterly. "All the grades were in that one little building. There was one computer, and it was a model from ten years before I was there. Half the keys on the keyboard didn't work, so everybody had fun inventing new ways of spelling things. We had a few books, but pages were torn out left and right, and the ones that were left were all drawn on and stained with all kinds of shit. Most of the kids didn't want to be there, but I did, just because I knew that if I got good grades and did my work, I'd be able to go to a nice college and get a good job and make lots of money so that I wouldn't have to live there anymore, or be a slut like my mom just to pay bills. "So I was the best in my class. I was tattooed and pierced like the best of them, but I knew my shit. And when it came time for me to get the hell out, I go to the first college I see, and what do they do? They take one look at me and kick me out. Doesn't matter that I more than fulfilled all their course qualifications, doesn't matter that I spent three weeks on my entry essay and that it was 14 pages long. No, I'm going to come traipsing into their campus, shitting on their ideals and bringing modern ideas into the midst of their time-honored traditions. "Well, I kept trying. I hitched all over the fucking country, looking for a decent college that would take me. And no little community jobs, hell no. I want Harvard, man, Yale. But it seems like that's not going to happen. And it's because of my face, not my brain. Hell, if they're stupid enough to turn me down because of my hair or my clothes, the finger to them. I'm not going to change to fit what they think I should be. They don't even know me, and they want me to change. The finger to all of them." "I am glad you are sure in who you are," Amaranthine said quietly, while Dilani was catching her breath. "It is important. You should not change for them, or for anyone." "Damn straight," Dilani said. "I went home, one time, you know. Came to find out my mom got caught selling crack, and she's in jail, now. So much for that. My neighbors were so wasted they didn't even remember me. Haven't been back there since, and I'm not going back for a long time. Maybe someday, to see the kids. I won't try to find my mother." Amaranthine nodded, and crossed her legs. "It is unfortunate, what you have gone through," she said. "But do you think you would give it up?" Dilani looked at Amaranthine for a moment, and shook her head. "No, I don't think I would," she said. "Looking at the shitty way those poor people lived, and then going elsewhere and seeing the riches, the abundance...." She paused, and gestured around the RV, as though it proved her point entirely. "And I'm thinking, why can't everybody have that? What would it hurt, for everyone to have an equal chance at succeeding? What if, Amaranthine? What if everybody started on an even playing ground? What if nobody had to overcome hardships because they came from a bad place, or because they were black, or because they were a woman? What if everybody ... everybody ...." "Were the same?" suggested Amaranthine. "No, no, not the same," Dilani said, sounding frustrated. "No, if everybody were different in the way they looked, the way they thought, the way they acted, but they were the same in the eyes of everybody else. Like ... I'm not making sense. Shit. If ... okay, say you and I were standing, side by side, and someone was looking at us." "Okay," said Amaranthine, closing her eyes. "What would that person think right now, in this world, honestly? They would think, 'oh, that one girl looks smart, she has beautiful hair, big dark eyes, nice skin, she's pretty, she's smiling and her teeth are all nice and white. And wow, that other girl probably smokes a thousand different things, look at her hair, her skin's all gross, her clothes are too big and they're dirty, and she's smiling but her teeth are all yellow, disgusting.' That's what they would think. "But what if? What if that person didn't think about what we looked like? What if all they thought was, 'oh, look at those two girls, they're smiling so nicely, they must be happy, maybe they're best friends and one of them is having a birthday....' That's the way the world should work, then, isn't it?" "I think you need to write your book," said Amaranthine, opening her eyes and fixing Dilani with a piercing gaze. "Your words are wise beyond your years. Have you written that down, yet?" "Honestly, I just came up with that on the spot," Dilani grinned. "But it's good, isn't it?" "It is ... fabulous," Amaranthine said, smiling back. "Do you remember what you said?" But Dilani was already writing, and Amaranthine closed her mouth, looking out the window by where she was sitting. They weren't moving. Confused, she looked up at the driver's compartment, and saw Mrs. Allweather staring back at the living room, deep in thought. Amaranthine smiled, and Mrs. Allweather blushed as she snapped out of her trance. "Do you agree?" Amaranthine asked, softly, so as not to disturb Dilani. Mrs. Allweather nodded, and turned back to the road. The RV began moving again. |