Vote 4 Becca

Vote 4 Becca

“Vote 4 Becca.” The lime green and baby blue chalk bubble letters get scuffed under tennis shoes. Poster boards announcing “Becca Huerta for ASB President” also show pictures of the braces clad candidate holding a well fed Norridge Terrier. The Terrier is sticking out his tongue. Becca and the dog tilt their heads at complimentary angles. There is much glitter.

             It is going to be another hot day in the Bay Area, though the weathermen have assured its residents there is a cold front coming in, with some fog and some clouds, somewhere. The sun is already high and bright over Santone Valley High School. Students shuffle out of cars and busses and through the tall black iron gates. Chalk dust clings to their sneakers and stains their socks. They track it with them into the courtyard, through hallways or past the heavy green steel doors of the Cafeteria. On the western wall of the Cafeteria, three long slabs of butcher paper advertise “Becca Huerta ~~~4~~~ASB President.” They have been placed high up, painstakingly equidistant from the ceiling, walls, and other slabs and, unfortunately, receive the best portion of the Sun’s light. Glare ricochets off the large white spaces and the freshly Windexed Sneeze-guard.  Pupils shrivel.

            “Ahk, Fuck.” One student sheilds his eyes with a freckled forearm, “there’s no escape!”

            “I know,” another says, ducking her head into the shadow of his armpit, “it’s awful, I can’t see anything.”

            “Becca…Huerta.”

            “What’s that?”

            “She’s running for ASB president.”

            “Huh, probably some Cheerleader Bitch…Thing”

            More students arrive and complaints amass. “Take that paper down!” they say, “it’s too bright in here!” They cover their heads with their arms. They hide their faces against the Plexiglas and leave small grease circles. They groan as they notice the chalk stains on their shoes. The Lunch Lady pushes her aviators up on her sweating nose, the light is oppressive: she swallows twice to retain last night’s whiskey; she drops her head on the counter, hair blanketing the “ham and cheese” croissants. She sends for Janitor.

            Heads rise from the sneeze-guard as Ricky, suave young sanitation technician, throws open the Cafeteria doors. Ricky: always Aqua Velva fresh shave, always hair jelled straight back, always sleeves rolled up like he’d have a pack of Lucky Strikes up one, if this were the Fifties. He sets his ladder on a table before three giggling freshmen and struts over to the cash register.

            “What’s up Ray?” He croons to the Lunch Lady.

            “Ricky,” the Lunch Lady purrs, “Can you please, for the Love of God, take that butcher paper down? It’s gonna blind the students.”

            Ricky covers his eyes with his muscular right hand and scans the signs: “Vote… Becca… Huerta… 4… ASB President… Well…” Ricky made it a point to know all of the cheerleaders’ names, hobbies, starcrushes. He decides she is a Mathlete, or some such thing.

            “Just take them down Ricky.” The Lunch Lady places her hand on Ricky’s shoulder, “they’re giving me a head ache.”

            “Gladly,” Ricky says. There are cheers all around.

           

Students from the cafeteria gather around the nearest poster board outside. “In this hand,” the girl with the forest green backpack waves an extra fat Sharpie above the crowd, “I carry JUSTICE!” She wields the Sharpie like Excalibur. She is King Arthur to the British. “Who’s first!”

            The students curse and yip for justice between bites of ham, cheese and egg. All jump to be the first to remedy the pictures of “Becca” with a Hitler-stache, unibrow or suggestively angled phallus.

            “I had her in government!” One says “She’s a Nazi!”

            “I had her in Biology,” another reasons, “Ms. Guzman had to exempt her from the final cause her Mom called and said they were creationists!”

            “I had her in English!” A boy with spectacles and a fedora says, “She spent a half hour defending Ezra Pound!” His Comrades are very shocked.

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            Becca does not want to leave her bed today. She tells her mother she is sick. Her mother, who woke up at six to prepare her daughter’s favorite breakfast—Banana Pancakes with Whip Cream—is initially shocked: Becca seemed perfectly healthy decorating the school for her campaign the night before. She eats the pancakes herself and saves the extra batter for later.

            Becca puts her phone on silent and covers her head with the retro-flower print comforter she bought at Ikea two weeks prior. A birthday present for herself. She drifts off again thinking about strange Sweedish names.

           

When she awakes, the sun is streaming onto her bed from between venetian blinds. She has sweated a Becca-shaped outline onto her sheets. Glorious, she thinks. The house is empty: no parents, no Nana. She goes to the bathroom, runs water for a shower, then searches the medicine cabinet for the left-over pills Dad got when he broke his arm—slipped on some pâté during an open house. There they are, behind the bottle of Tinactin and an Electric Toothbrush. She counts the pills and judiciously takes only one. More for later.

            Her Ipod is still in the port on the counter by the sink. She turns it on. Gypsy Kings, oh god: Mom. She and her mother used to sing the lyrics together; loud, her mother with a throaty French accent. When her parents split up and Dad went to live with Nana, Becca and her mother would put on the Best Of Gypsy Kings album and dance around the kitchen in the tiny apartment they rented until they burned dinner and had to order out pizza. That’s when they got Frank, the cat.

            She gets out of the shower still wet. She wraps one towel around her chest and another around her hair. Feeling the Vicodin on her empty stomach, she does not spring down the hall like she usually does. Frank is in the hall, meowing to be let outside.

“You’re not going out Frank.”

“Reooow.”

“As usual Frank, your position is untenable.”

Frank is her’s. Her parents got the Norridge Terrier to symbolize their getting back together and moving into this house, the house on Canfield Avenue. Nana, the indefatigable late-life queen of Santone Valley real estate, had arranged the deal personally. Nana: immigrant widow, overcame depression to save family, repay Son’s debt, skyrocket family to affluence, install herself, not too intrusively, in Home—always small, always cold, always the improbably accurate ability to judge the true cost of things hiding behind gold-rimmed glasses (how she’d managed to make money in real estate during the Great Recession).“I am proof that the American Dream still exists,” She’d say to her potential clients. Young couples, bachelors, restructuring families, all would leave the meeting mysteriously singing the National Anthem.

Becca was sure her grandmother was really behind it when her mother suggested she put a picture with “Yogi” on the posters. Animals, she’d insisted, are relatable. Becca had then suggested Frank.

“Webecca,” Her mother had said, “Whun wus de last time a Pwesident of the United States had a chat?” The tall blonde Frenchwoman, leering, camera in hand, hand on hip, “Now pick up the dog and smile.”

The Gypsy Kings have depressed her. She dries herself off while Frank explores the mounds of dirty and clean clothes on the floor. She puts on jeans and a baggy Metallica shirt she only wears at home. The cat sniffs an electric guitar beneath a blown up photograph of Jean-Paul Sartre smocking at a café. There’s another poster of The Great Kat above a bookshelf across the room. On the shelf there are text books for AP English, Physics, and AP European History along with few study-guides for the SATs and even one for the LSAT given her by Nana, the hopeful note on the inside jacket  “Hija, just in case.” They made her sweat just looking at them.

She grabs the guitar and picks a few lines of “Jump in the Fire.” Her phone lights up on a small stack of books piled on her nightstand—A collection of Sartre’s short fiction, an anthology of Modernist Literature, and Wings of a Dove. The last two she was suffering through. The anthology had some poetry she liked very much, but she hated the introductions, which always had a bunch of information about how the poet was starving, consumptive, angsty—were they not also human? On the other hand, she didn’t like Wings of a Dove at all.  She stuck with it, though she found him unbearably dry, because everyone said she “had to understand Henry James to understand American Literature.”  She picks up the phone, 8 new text messages. She doesn’t read them. Probably Fiona wondering where I am. It’s 10 o’clock.

She doesn’t really want to know if people noticed the posters or not. She suspected they didn’t. Fiona would probably tell her everyone loved them and try to get her to come to school. If people didn’t like them, then just as well. Things blow over pretty quick in High School, she felt, if they didn’t get too bad. She’d be out of this town by the end of this year anyway. Hopefully, fingers crossed, to Columbia; going to school in New York city, writing, conversing with interesting people, drinking copious amounts of coffee in many hip cafes. If things went well with the posters and she was elected, which she almost feared more than a negative reaction, then she’d grin and bear the extra responsibility. It would, as her mother adamantly stated over and over again, look good on her applications. Both her mother and Nana pushed the issue almost every night over dinner. She reads the text messages.

7:55 am. Fiona: “hey, you at school yet? I’m running late.”

8:55 am. Fiona: “u missed a pop quiz in Hoit’s.”

9:10 am. Fiona: “where the eff r u?”

9:15 am. Charles: “hey grrrl where u at?”

9:50 am. Vinnie C: “Missed you in second period xp”

10:00 am. Fiona: “Jesus… R u at school?”

10:00 am. Vinnie C: “Oh uh sorry I hadn’t seen…”

10:01 am. Fiona: “Creeps! Don’t come to school yet, hope you didn’t come to school.”

So it’s bad. Now she has to live with it for two semesters. Hell is other people, she looks at the picture of Sartre, you were right you dirty French hipster.

            She picks up Wings of a Dove and tries to read. She scans the lines and gets through two pages but by the end of them she doesn’t remember a word. I wonder if Columbia counts Public Humiliation as an extracurricular activity. She goes to the kitchen for some coffee but finds none. She decides to go to Starbucks. If the line isn’t long, she’ll be back home in fifteen minutes.

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Of course, the line is out the door at Starbucks. She takes a spot behind two ladies in Probably Banana Republic Pantsuits. She has her headphones on and turns her Ipod up: Sacred Reich. None of her friends listen to metal. Vinnie listens to Avenged Sevenfold but that isn’t the same thing. There are other kids at school who like metal, or at least wore the paraphernalia, but they never hung out with girls who dressed like she normally did—conservative, pastel colored blouse, jeans, sneakers. These kids were too cool, too “fuck you,” for pastel blouses. Are these kids making fun of me now? Do I care? She decided she didn’t.

Does she want to be like these kids? To dress cool like them? She didn’t think her music had anything to do with the new impractical $70 studded boots or fresh $30-something very rip-able leggings. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with making oneself up to look like Bella Swan. At least for her, the music is outside the way she normally has to act: prim, proper etc. etc. A guitar riff is a guitar riff and it doesn’t need to be anything more than that. It’s free of grades, hierarchy, qualifications. Just being a guitar riff: beautifully ugly, smoothly twitchy, heavy, abrasive; eloquently misshapen, possibly some feedback, maybe a squeal. That’s good enough. It doesn’t have to do shit, it just is.

Maybe it’s the Vicodin, or maybe it’s her music, but Becca begins to feel better. She feels in control of her life; like everything makes sense. By she gets to the front of the line, she doesn’t want coffee any more. She absent mindedly mouths the names of some drinks and when it’s her turn to order, asks for a glass of water. It’s ten to eleven now. Almost fourth period: A Capella choir with Ms. Niko. She always liked this class and the school is only three blocks away, more than enough time to get there. She decides to go.

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Becca texts her mother that she is feeling better and is going to school. There’s a fifteen minute break at 11 between 3^rd and 4^th periods, and when she arrives she can hear the usual yelling, laughing and general gafawing. She slips in the back door of the performing arts building and takes her seat toward the front of the choir room.

At 11:15, the other vocalists begin to enter. Becca listens to her Ipod and sorts through songs. None of the students tap her on the shoulder or otherwise acknowledge her presence until Fiona enters and sits beside her. Becca slides her headphones off.

“How are you?” Fiona places her hand on Becca’s knee.

“Fine, what was up with those texts? Is it that bad out there?”

“Have you been here long? At school? Are you sure you’re feeling fine?”

“Yeah, I’m fine… I just got to school” Something is odd in the way Fiona is talking to her. Why shouldn’t she be fine if she says she’s fine?

“Oooh, Becca, I’m so sorry.”

“Why?”

Before Fiona can answer, Ms. Niko shuffles into the room holding a stack of sheet music. She hands them to Gwyneth, an Alto and her unofficial student aid. Gwyneth passes the sheet music around.

“Alright class,” Ms. Niko says, “everyone stand. Curtis is going to be late today so Patricia, would you mind playing accompaniment to our warms ups?” Patricia sighs from the back of the room, and begins to wind down the rows of seats.

“Becca,” Ms. Niko says, “can I have a word with you outside for a second, honey?”

Becca feels her classmates’ eying her as she hops over the row of seats in front of her and follows Ms. Niko out the door.

How are you sweety?” Ms. Niko asks her. She is quite tall and Becca is quite short so when she begins to rub Becca’s head, the motion resembles that of a human to a puppy dog.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Becca replies. Ms. Niko stops rubbing Becca’s head.

“Listen,” she says, propping her hand up on her own hip, “I saw the posters and Principal Gadamayer has told me that he will do whatever he can to take care of this situation, Honey, so you don’t need to worry.” Becca tries to reassure her she’s fine but Ms. Niko the soothsayer will have none of it.

“You must be feeling down young lady,” Ms. Niko reassures her, “You know, I have some experience with that myself. When I was your age, I had a boyfriend who broke up with me in front of my entire graduating class, at Prom no less. Damn Jesse Studabaker.” Ms. Niko always brought up Jesse Studabaker when she needed to relate to her students. The story was actually a little joke in the class. Becca had to avoid eye contact to keep from laughing. Ms. Niko, taking this as a sign that she is too embarrassed to talk, returns to the room after making Becca promise to “come talk” after school. She sweetens the deal by hinting that she will go buy some “treats, for just you and me.”

Becca returns to her spot next to Fiona. She is happy to be immersed in the breathy voices of her peers. Fiona smiles at her. Half way through class, having completed one strange improvisation of a song entirely in scat—were the lines doo wop din doh weh or hoe bop fins go gay?—Becca forgets Ms. Niko’s odd conversation. She even nails her part in “Java Jive,” although, of course, nobody can hear her voice specifically. She feels very proud. Then the announcement comes over the loudspeaker.

“Hello students and staff, Good Afternoon. This is your Principal Mr. Gadameyer. I have recently been informed that some students have taken it upon themselves to deface a certain Candidate for ASB President’s campaign posters. It also appears that some of our staff have overstepped their authority with respect to some of these posters,” Its that bad? They “defaced” my posters? “This is not who we are at this school. Now we are going to be forced to take disciplinary actions, as some of the graffiti has been particularly… Insidious.” There are a few chuckles from the Alto section. “I assure you, those responsible will be disciplined.” Punishment? Becca doesn’t listen to the rest of the announcement. She looks at the floor for the rest of the class. She does not sing.

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Lunch is after 4^th period. Becca, nervous, shaking, decides to talk to Principal Gadamayer; tell him that she doesn’t want people punished, she just wants this whole thing to blow over. She does not like the proportions to which these people are taking her failed campaign. The posters are corny. Her mother assured her they would win her audience over, but they hadn’t. So what? Why defacement? Punishment?

When the bell rings, she takes Fiona’s arm and they walk on the outside of campus to Principal Gadamayer’s office. In the waiting room, a few sullen students sit in a row by the secretary’s desk. Becca recognizes one from Studio Art: a very good artist who does many improbably detailed portraits using only an extra fat Sharpie. Becca knocks on Principal Gadamayer’s door.

“Just a moment,” comes from inside, followed by a rustling of papers, “Okay, come in.”

Becca opens the door, “Mr. Gadamayer…” she says.

“Oh yess, Rebecca, I’m very glad to see you. I understand you were not in class this morning, please come in, sit down.” Principal Gadamayer waves a hairy hand towards two cracked pleather chairs.

“Yes, I wasn’t feeling well,” Becca enters the office and closes the door behind her. She takes the seat closest to the large untinted window. “I went to fourth period though.”

“Oh, glad to hear you’re doing better. What class was that?”

“Choir.”

“Ah, very good, you are one of our vocalists? Very good. Well, I assume you have come to see what kind of progress we’re making?”

“No, not exactly..”

“Well, we are making very fine progress. I believe we have the few students who masterminded the entire thing and Raylene the Lunch Lady has been reprimanded, severely.”

“Severely?”

“Oh, yesss, quite severely.” Noticing Becca’s distress, he adds, “Well, not terribly, I’m no moster, but I think it’s fair to assume she won’t be overstepping her authority again. You have something on your mind?” Gadamayer pushed his blue shirt sleeves up on his hairy thick forearms.

“Well yes, I…” Becca stammers, “don’t think you should be punishing anybody. I mean,” She crumples and flattens a dollar bill in her pocket, “I didn’t even like those posters. To tell the truth, I didn’t even want to run for President.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I mean, my mother said it was a good idea, that it’d look good on my applications to college, and I always wanted to go to Columbia University, they have a very good Literature program there. And a very good Creative Writing program. Maybe I’ll study writing.”

“I see,” Mr. Gadamayer leans back his chair and heaves his large feet onto the messy desk. “Well, Rebecca, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can really do.”

“But I don’t care about the posters.”

“Oh yes, quite, but you see Rebecca,” Saliva shimmers at the corners of his cracked lips, “If I let certain students and faculty get away with defacing your posters, then, well, what’s to stop them from defacing other posters? Of other candidates? One’s who actually take their campaign seriously. Or, even school property? No, no, no, that wouldn’t be appropriate at all, wouldn’t you say, hmm?”

“But…”

“No, Rebecca, this isn’t about you, this is about the preservation of order at Santone Valley High School. It’s about our community. You do like order, don’t you, Rebecca?”

 “Well… But…”

“One must be constantly vigilant in preserving the integrity of the community. That’s what you would have understood, had you actually been elected as Student Body President. Certainly you know the song ‘It Takes a Village?’ We are all in it together, Rebecca, each individual must do her part. You’re a good student, you like being a good student, don’t you?”

“But…”

Mr. Gadamayer has stopped listening. He is humming “It Takes a Village” and looks out large window at the spacious lawn in front of the school. Freshly mowed. He calls his secretary into the room and has her escort Rebecca from the office. On her way through the lobby she catches a glance from the artist. The artist’s brows narrow as if to crush Becca out of existence. Becca grabs hold of Fiona’s arm. They exit the office into the school.

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 Students have gathered outside the office. Having heard the “Becca Huerta” is actually at school, they wanted to have a look. Some are sympathetic. Others not so much. Now they swarm on either side of her.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” came from her right, “those bastards should pay.”

“Thanks for getting my Girl friend suspended, Becca” a pale boy on her left grabs her arm and forces her to stare into his pimply face.

“Becca 4 President!” the group on her right yells.

“We wont be able to go to Prom now!” the pimply faced boy cries as Becca pulls away from him.

“Becca! Becca!” Supporters chant.

“Nice shirt Becca!” a leather clad boy on her left jeers, “Metallica, very original!”

“Yeah,” says another voice on her left, “You’re Some Kind of Monster Becca!”

It starts out being an insult, but her supporters gradually reclaim the label: “Yes, Becca, you are Some Kind of Monster! The kind I wish the whole school was! Both sides now yell with different intonations “Some Kind of Monster! Some Kind of Monster!” Becca begins to feel dizzy. She runs back through the office, outside, to the front of the school. She stumbles, falls on the law, crawls to a nearby tree. Across the street, three boys are sharing a cigarette. One of them holds up one of Becca’s posters. “Vote 4 Becca! Vote 4 Becca!” They throw fists into the air.

Between the roots of the tree is a fist-sized rock. She picks it up.

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The next few hours “are a blur.” A cliche, but appropriate. They are an overexposed montage in a low budget film. Becca is half way to San Francisco, curled up on a dusty blue BART seat before she actually processes the sound the rock made when it shattered Principal Gadamayer’s window. She remembers the shock on his bloated face as they stared at each other, neither equipped with the experiences necessary to cope quickly with an event like that. Becca acts first.

“Fuck You!” Spit dropped on her chin. She raised the appropriate finger.

She does not remember how she got to BART. Probably ran because of the way her heart pounded and couldn’t catch her breath. Her mother called: she’d been expelled, all that’s left is the paperwork. New York faded. She got bitter to keep sentient. Hell is other fucking people, she laughed to herself.

Now she is sitting at a café. She bought a book of poems from City Lights bookstore in North Beach. The poems are in no way good. Not at all “life changing” as the cover asserts. In fact, Becca decided, they blow with a mighty wind.

The poet, Becca is very certain, is a chronic-masturbater. His face, displayed on the back cover staged to look very writerly, looks, to Becca at least, like that of a man who has a very specific course to orgasm—one which is most easily accomplished through onanism. The impression is enforced by the Poet’s striking similarity to Ricky, the young janitor at her school who hits on all the cheerleaders at lunch and who, according to Becca’s mother (who works with Ricky’s mother), has been caught several times jerking it into a full length mirror in the bathroom.

Unlikely as it may seem, even more than the portrait, the poems themselves appear vain. They are poems about poems; really, they are poems about the poet’s interpretation of other poems. It is as if his entire goal were to place himself in the western philosophical cannon: an elaborate Literary photobomb. Living has nothing to do with them. They said nothing about life, but instead gave off all the signs of what life should be. It’s well read academic masturbation, exploring the fantastic depths of the poets knowlegability regarding what it means to be alive without ever touching the subject of actually being. Becca found this, actually, reaffirming. Here was a poet who, by the way, had an MFA from Columbia, and who probably hung out in many cafes with many interesting, intelligent people, yet here was his poetry which sucked profusely but was well liked.

By the time her mother comes, Becca is calm. In quite a good mood actually. Her mother shakes her head: “Whut will you do Becca?”

Becca shrugs, “Meh.” She uses a stir stick to push a piece of Muffin from under her red and purple braces. On the way home she puts her headphones on and sticks her head out the window, feeling the wind pull her lips over her teeth. The wires cool and feel electric.