I dream in green

I know that my alarm clock has gone off. It is both there and not. I am me, but not really. I am, my essence. I float out of bed. In front my eyes jumps the image of a digital alarm clock flashing 08:00 in green lights. I have to get to school, can’t be late.

My sister and I share a long narrow room which ends with a big window overlooking the garden. An invisible line separates the right side of the room from the left. The left side is mine the right side is hers. The arrangement of the furniture is almost symmetrical. The single beds and desks all placed lengthwise along the walls.

I’m in high school, I know that much. It’s unclear if this is the first day of school, it’s definitely an important day- for me. I sense my mother getting ready in her room and my sister sometimes enters my line of vision. Amma will take us both to school today.

Both my body and mind feel like they are moving through water. I can neither get my body to move effortlessly through my morning routine nor can I get my mind to focus on what comes next.

No action is brought to completion, instead my movements are convulsive. I have forgotten the sequence of things, I am confused and disoriented. I go to the bathroom and instead of brushing my teeth, putting on my lenses and getting into the shower as I always do, I walk out of the bathroom with the toothbrush in my mouth. I dress, but don’t put on socks or a sweater. I flit incessantly like a drunk butterfly.

During my frenzy of incomplete tasks, the time keeps magically leaping in front of my eyes in those big green numbers…08:15…09:00…10:46. Time is passing faster than it should. Just as I think this, more numbers appear…11:00…12:00.

I am already late for school. I’m reaching new levels of panic. How can it already be so late? Also, I just remembered, my sister also has to go to school. I expect impatient shouts at any moment. But nothing happens. I am distinctly aware that Amma is downstairs and my sister, ready to go.

Somewhere in my peripheral vision I speak to her.

We are going to be late.

She doesn’t react, just shrugs and says, whenever you’re ready we can go…13:00… Although it doesn’t feel right, I know that I am ‘ready’.

I open the door, and on the landing there is a green car. An old Volkswagen beetle. Ali my cousin is standing next to it. My sister is sitting in the back seat.

Where is Amma? I ask

She left to run errands with your father, Ali replies.

But she was suppose to take us to school.

They said they had to go do something important, but they left us this car. Those who are not here, wish you luck, he adds.

I am unable to just get into the car and go. I keep remembering things I have forgotten. Things that are essential for my day at school. I go back and forth from the car to my room, remembering in turn my pencil case, backpack, wallet, water bottle and note pad.

Still with every back and forth, Ali stands there patiently and Avraf keeps staring dreamily out of the car window. I move with an unknown heaviness in my body, like rocks in my shoes at the bottom of the ocean.

My last trip is for my sweater, I reach under my bed, there is a white drawer integrated in the design of the bed-frame. I pull the drawer open and pull out the first sweater I find. It is bottle green with patterned black clouds that are stretched horizontally across. I think to myself, this is particularly fashionable for high school, I’m glad I have something nice to wear. I get the sense that this is wrong, this isn’t me, it isn’t me yet.

Then my thoughts start diagonally cascading. The drawer belongs to another me, in an another time. The drawer shouldn’t be here. Neither the sweater. In their place there should be an empty space under the bed where a child has desperately tried to put order with the limited means she has. The drawer suggests maturity and choices. I feel all of this, with my arm still limply holding the sweater. There is no time to remember. I must go.

This time at the door I tell Ali, I am ready. He opens the door on the driver’s side, I look at him and say, but if Amma’s not here who is going to drive?

You are, he answers.

I am perplexed but I sit behind the wheel and put on my seat belt. Unsure what to do next.

But how am I to bring the car down the stairs? I say, turning to Ali who is sitting in the passenger’s seat.

Ali smiles and says, you have to balance the car on its’ rear wheels and go down each step at a time. Just like with a baby stroller.

No time to back out now, so with the deafening sound of alarm bells ringing in my ears, I put the car into gear.