Before and After and After Again

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Before and After and After Again
• Megan Howell (bio)

The way you carried on during the Pledge of Allegiance on your first day in class 5B, asking kids why I was the way I was and if that reason had happened in my mom’s womb, you must’ve thought I was deaf. But I wasn’t deaf. I just didn’t have any ears. And no, my mom wasn’t an alcoholic. She was naturally crazy.

“Dog attack,” someone explained.

“Oh,” you said. “That sucks.”

“Shh!” I pressed a finger against my lips.

The worst part about the attention from kids like you was when it ended. I didn’t like the ease with which you moved on from me, going from dog bites to flicking eraser bits off of your desk. You were new to the class and already you’d decided that I was old news.

I didn’t talk at all during language arts. Our teacher Mrs. Johnson would write that I was difficult in her evaluation of me. I didn’t like her, didn’t like you, hated the very idea of school. She wouldn’t let me wear the hat I’d used all of last year to cover my lack of ears. She told Mom that I needed a doctor’s note, and Mom told me it was time to woman up instead of covering up—no more babying, she said as she tried not to cry. I’d grow my hair out if I could, but my curls were the extra kinky kind that grew upward, and Mom said no relaxers until middle school—another whole year. I got used to being told no, but I wasn’t happy about it.

When class ended, it was time to get our costumes. I was so excited that I forgot not just you but the reality of my whole situation. I skipped over to my cubby and pulled out the crinkled paper Shoppers bag, my new identity folded neatly inside.

The Halloween parade was tomorrow, two days before Trick-or-Treating, which fell on a Sunday.

“Not just any Sunday,” my older sister Whitney had said that morning in a ghostly voice. “Eee-vil Sunday for Satan.” She tickled me, saying she was excising the demons as I tried not to spit out my cereal laughing. Mom didn’t like that. We were supposed to be Christian, but Whit had a bullring and stick-and-poke tattoos that just barely showed up on her flawless, blue-black skin. Meanwhile, I’d stopped believing all together.

Our school was Christian too, very conservative, very white. There at the front of the classroom, stapled to an orange-papered bulletin board: the Lone Star, a picture of a Kenny G-looking Jesus, and that one poem about God witnessing 9/11 and crying. This was Galveston, Texas. Our principal had made it so all costumes had to be approved by our teachers after this one parent, a potential mayoral candidate, huge donor, got upset at a kid for dressing up as Bush in a mocking way. The parade rules were no politics, no gender-bending, nothing above the knee, and no excessive gore. Whit and me were supposed [End Page 11] to feel lucky to get full rides here, and we did. But gratitude wasn’t happiness. I was grateful to be alive—grateful and miserable.

All the kids lined up waiting for Mrs. Johnson’s approval. I judged everyone else’s costumes with you and the other boys, me in silence and everyone else out loud.

“Ten!” you shouted at one of your friends, the one who was going as Darth Vader. Mrs. Johnson told him he couldn’t wear the mask. Your rating dropped to a five.

“Now, you and I both know there’s absolutely no way you can see outta this thing,” she said. She tapped a French manicured nail against the hard plastic.

The boys booed.

“I’m about one second away from throwing y’all out,” she said.

Less booing, but also more laughter from the boys as well as other kids, me included.

Mrs. Johnson’s clapped five times and...