Flash Nonfiction: That’s My Story

First grade. Always a sucker for a fad, that nation. It had latched on to its latest fear last September. She knew more than some, caring for the city in question as it had proven to care for her. Proof she could see, that was no easy feat. Something was brought out in her there that stayed trapped inside here—there wasn’t room, joining classmates for story time on the rug, primary colors in pleasing concentric circles, legs criss-cross-applesauce. Small for her age. Knew how to leave the body. Her wandering attentions led her without leading, drew her out to the perimeters of classrooms and playgrounds with a force stronger than gravity, orbiting like Major Tom. Ages later that song would make her cry almost as much as she did that year. No child left behind, no sir: she would volunteer to be projected into hallways, destination unimportant, eternal fool’s errand. But today no grace, no offer to slip the bonds, a papered door closed. These stories had been wrought by the children, under the tutelage of a lady at the end of her rope. The fruits of their labor set before them for devouring. She selected the wanderer’s work to read, a spasm of compassion toward the imp, who time and time again had seen her at the end of her rope and held the match to the fuse. Lifting the parchment, veiny against millennium-age fluorescence, the lady at the end of her rope intoned oversized words from oversized lines: an undersized crawler—a spider or a ladybug—getting a bit of its own back. “You know,” said the lady at the end of her rope after finishing, “that would have been a perfect story.” Then she sought the class’s editorial judgment. What kept this juvenile allegory from being sealed in New Yorker serifs? The jury placed the fault with the final three words. That’s my story. Authorial aside, statement of ownership, quality guarantee. The small girl was well versed in believing there was nothing she could do. Kept a socially sanctioned silence like a promise to do better. In that silence her classmates’ voices carried; she heard the echo long after she was small, long after she had quit trying to show them what she would do to protect the one thing no one could take from her, her story, the story of her.