Notes on a Banana by David Leite

Author:David Leite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

19

MISE EN PLACE

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in the hollow of my throat. I faced the wall. A few pieces of tape curled like eyelashes. Behind me, two dozen or so people were about to judge me. I took a deep breath and turned around.

“It’s cold,” I said, rubbing my arms to warm them. I wasn’t acting when I said my next line: “I’m trembling all over, just as if I’d got an examination before me.” A few scattered laughs. Not enough. I backed up against the wall and clutched my chest like I was having a heart attack. “I suffer from palpitations, I’m excitable and always getting awfully upset!” More laughs. Better. Buoyed, I stole a glance at Angela. She couldn’t hide her disdain; she shook her head and rolled her eyes. When I saw her put down her pen and close her notebook, I gave up. I said the rest of my lines mechanically, leaving my scene partner bewildered, her eyes pleading.

It was the start of sophomore spring semester, and I was doing a scene from The Marriage Proposal by Chekhov. Ever since I’d arrived back in Pittsburgh, the anxiety that had gutted me during the summer had been slowly replaced by a frightening darkness—“the Gloaming,” I called it—that closed in, fading me to black. I cared about nothing. The clothes I bought went unused; the rituals that had given me so much comfort, forgotten. My bed remained unmade and unchanged for weeks. I looked just as rumpled. I had stopped running, and weight piled on; I ate constantly. Days would go by, and I wouldn’t touch my journal; then, seized by a sudden, thundering imperative I couldn’t ignore, I’d write long, rambling entries about the Quiet Me versus the Loud Me, introverted-self versus extroverted-self, and I didn’t understand any of it.

The previous fall semester, my grades had plummeted so low that I’d been put on academic probation. Even my grade in voice and speech, which in freshman year had been an A, had fallen to a C. At first, Angela had tried to rally me in acting class, joking affectionately, finding every way into my work to pinpoint my problem. Once, she had even pulled me into the hall to verbally bitch-slap me into the moment. Nothing had worked. By December, she had given up. In the coup de grâce, she transferred me out of her class and into another section. A demotion. If I’d been myself, I would have been gutted by her abandonment. Instead, I was relieved. I was out from under the heft of her disappointment. But just before the semester started, my new teacher had gone on sabbatical, and Angela had taken over his class. Which was how I ended up standing in front of her, defeated, bracing for her critique.

“That was caca,” she said through her clenched jaw. “You were indicating all over the place. I didn’t believe a minute of what you did. What’s wrong with you?” Everyone fought hard to find a place to look at that wasn’t me.

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