Wings for Jahama

Of course she heard it!  How could she not have? 

“Poor little Jahama.  She’ll just never get her wings, I guess.  I would be mortified if I had to start school this year without my wings!  Don’t you feel so sorry for her? Oh, no, there she is! I hope she didn’t hear me! Poor thing!”

But--she did hear it. Over and over and over.  Those words had re-played themselves a zillion and one times in her mind. And every time they did, Jahama felt exactly the same way she did when she heard them for the first time.  Her face became hot and flushed and her stomach knotted up so tightly it almost doubled her over. She struggled constantly not to cry in front of anyone.  Because if she cried, she would have to explain why, and she didn’t think she could bring herself to let anyone (not even her mama) know how unacceptable and inadequate she was. 

She had said those same words to herself constantly; but, to hear them out loud, from someone else‘s lips--well, something about that ‘pronouncement’ had made it terribly official! She thought that the group had more than likely continued their conversation--but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember any of it after those stinging; albeit, ‘sympathetic’ remarks.

It was the final thing she had heard at summer camp, and those biting observations moved in and made themselves right at home in her very being.

She had looked in the mirror a thousand times a day since then.  One time she even thought she saw the beginnings……but when she moved a little sideways-- it went away.  Just a shadow, she guessed.

“How am I supposed to show my face at school tomorrow with no wings?” she asked herself.  “I’ll be the only one without them.”  The dread grew bigger and bigger. It was so real that she felt as if she could stuff it into her backpack with the rest of her school supplies.

“None of those girls care whether I get my wings or not,” she thought to herself.  “The only reason they even said anything at all was to call attention to the fact that they have their wings.  They have no interest in me.  They don’t even know I’m at the same summer camp with them most of the time.”

She knew what they said wasn’t personal.  She almost wished it had been.  At least then she would know she wasn’t totally invisible. She would definitely be lying to herself if she said that she didn’t sometimes dream of being one of those girls; but she also knew that she never would be.  

“Don’t let it bother you so much!” she scolded herself.  But it didn’t do any good.  It did bother her.  “I don’t know if it’s because I’m a girl or because I’m just me, but I wish I was prettier.    Maybe when I get my wings…..just maybe they will make me better and maybe I will fit in like the other girls do,” she kept wishing to herself.

She supposed that they hadn’t meant to be cruel.  But, still, she had to wonder what they said when they were certain she wasn’t around.  They were nice to her face.  Too nice.  But, she had seen them be just as nice to others.  And then, the minute that particular ‘victim’ walked away, they turned into a school of piranhas, not stopping till all the flesh was gone.  

She shuddered just thinking about it.  “I don’t know how anybody could be okay after that!” she thought.  Some of the people they had treated that way had way more going for them than she did.  She knew they had more than likely kept on about her after she left.  And was she ever grateful that she hadn’t been subjected to that humiliation!

For now, she guessed, she would just have to pretend to be happy with the fake little greetings they would toss her way tomorrow, as if she were their charity case for that week.  

Her neighbor and friend, Calujax, had an entirely different attitude about them than she did.  “Just ignore them,” he would say.  “Who cares what they say when you’re not there or when you are there, for that matter?”  Calujax didn’t care what anybody said, whether it was behind his back or straight to his face.  He had other things that he had to worry about.  Like how to do the dumbest thing he could think of on that particular day without hurting himself too badly.  Calujax didn’t have a mother and Jahama felt kind of sorry for his dad.  It seemed like his dad was always looking for bandages or an ice pack.  Calujax didn’t understand the difference between adventure and stupidity yet, and his dad certainly had to pay the price for it-in every way.  (Jahama even kidded Calujax about having his own bed in the hospital emergency room.)

“Shoot, I don’t even want wings,” he had said when Jahama had mentioned it to him.   “If I ever do get some, I’m gonna tie ’em up behind my back so they don’t get in my way.  You can’t army crawl under nothin’ with some big old wings catching you up on stuff.”  

Jahama figured that Calujax was most definitely not the person to talk to about getting wings.  

So, during supper that night, Jahama approached her mama about it.  “Mama, after we get through with supper, and the pipsqueaks are out of the bathtub, can I talk to you privately about something?”