Beyond Dreams by Marilyn Reynolds

Author:Marilyn Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Wind Publishing
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Beyond Dreams

***

In my dream it is nighttime, darker than black, yet I can see. I am very small. My mother is holding me so tight I can’t breathe. Her face is fierce. We are rocking, rocking. Screaming voices, thundering ocean, howling wind. Breathe! I want to breathe! Men stand over us, pull at us. I awaken, shaking, gulping air, my voice caught in my throat. I am afraid to go back to sleep, to hear what I’ll hear and see beyond the darkness to what I don’t want to see. I lie with my eyes open, pulling myself out of the dream, into tranquil thoughts of blue skies with white clouds, of birds in flight, of cleansing rain and warming sun.

Although it is not yet light out, I get up from bed, go to my desk and switch on my study lamp. My history book is still open to chapter 12, and I begin studying the pros and cons of the Marshall Plan. It will keep me from the darkness of my dream, and make the A I hope to get on Friday’s test more of a certainty.

With the first rays of sunlight the dream sinks back to the dark place, the place where it hides, waiting to catch me in some unguarded moment of sleep.

Khanh, my twenty-nine-year-old brother, looks disappointed when he comes to my room and sees me already up and at my desk. I think he takes a mean pleasure from waking me up on school days, poking me in the arm and yelling at me, “Wake up, you lazy!”

I like being up, taking away his excuse to poke and yell at me. After I finish rereading chapter 12, I shower and dress, drink a glass of juice, and pick up the lunch money my mom set out for me before she went to work.

On my way to school, about a block from Hamilton High, I hear a familiar voice booming behind me, “Hey, Twinkie!”

I know without looking that it’s Leticia.

“Hey, Oreo,” I yell, turning back toward her, laughing. We’ve been best friends since fifth grade and that’s what we’ve always called each other. One of our other friends is Candice. We call her White Girl. When we go anywhere to­gether, Candice always walks in the middle, like the filling in an Oreo, or a Twinkie. It’s a joke that’s become a habit. Our Peer Counseling teacher, Ms. Woods (Woodsy for short), says these names are racist, but I don’t think so. I think racism is in the heart, and I know our hearts are good.

I watch as Leticia runs past a bunch of slow-moving kids, stretching out her coffee brown, track star legs, and catches up to me.

“Hey, Girl. I tried to call you last night. I thought it was grocery shopping night for your guards.”

“It was, but Khanh got off work early, so they were back home by the time you called.”

“I hate how King Khanh hangs up on me with that ‘not home’ business!”

“I know.

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