Ghost of Sharon

Sometimes a backpack is more than a backpack

It’s the first warm day of the season, and Ms Ficca has opened all the windows in the classroom. Sunlight and shadow dance around the courtyard in the breeze, but that’s not what ripped my attention from the lecture. No, what had been powerful enough to completely pull my focus was instead a ghost.

Not the spooky kind of ghost that other kids dress up as for Halloween, but a ghost of a memory, its presence a fleeting floral scent with spicy resin undertones. Its a portal to another time and place, before I had come to this country.

The hearty shrub grew right outside my window, its heady tea-like fragrance wafting over me as I slept, waking me up in the morning with my mother’s gentle fingers. During the day, I’d string the pink blossoms together into a crown, anointing myself Queen of Blank, the small village I lived in with my parents and grandparents. I loved the starbursts of hot pink that burst from the middle of the flower like a secret that had refused to be kept.

“Natalie?” The sound of my name snaps me out of my daydream.

Ms Ficca stands in front of my desk, a look of concern etched on her face. We are the only two left in the classroom, and embarrassment rises in me like a tide. I can feel my face turning hot and I jump up and start shoving my things into my bookbag.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumble as I try to clean as fast as possible, but the backpack that was given to me by the nice church ladies when we first got here was old when I was six, and the four years of heavy usage between then and today reduced its structural integrity to the breath of a moth. Maybe if I had been a little more careful, and not just tried to jam the large, sharp-cornered math book into it, the bottom wouldn’t have ripped out completely, spilling the contents all over the floor.

My breath stops in my chest and the walls begin to close in on me. Heat radiates from my body and sweat pools in my armpits and the hollow of my chest. The room spins, the walls pulse forward and back disorientating me.A light touch on my arm makes me jump, knocking the chair behind me over.

“I’m sorry,” Ms Ficca says immediately, pulling her hand away, and I instantly burst into tears, “Oh, no, Natalie, it’s okay. It’s just books. It looks like your bag was in need of replacing; it wasn’t your fault.”

But I am already on my hands and knees, scrambling to pick up all the precious school supplies. She doesn’t know that I only have the one pencil and one pen, and can’t afford to lose them. Mentally I am already calculating how much it will cost to repair the bag. Maybe I can stop at the Five and Dime on my way home, buy a cheap spool of thread and try to stitch it back together. I think there’s a couple needles in the carpet bag my baka had brought with her, one of the two bags we had to bring with us when we were shipped off to the states. Rescued. Resettled. Refugees.

Ms Ficca kneels down beside me and helps me pile my things up. She picks up the torn bag, turning it over in her soft perfumed hands, examining it. Her palms are milky white.

“Well, it looks like you’re in need of a new backpack,” she muses. I clutch my writing utensils until my fingers go numb. She looks up at me.

“You know, I might have an old backpack lying around that you could have if you wanted,” she must see something in my eyes, because she quickly adds, “A lot of times kids leave their old ones after the school year ends, because they’ll get a new one in the fall. They’re just going to be thrown away.”

We stand on a dock. Men shout and run around, and in the distance I can hear bombs going off.

“Why don’t we go look at them, and see if there’s one you like?”

She leads me down the mostly empty hallways; most of the kids still around are in sports or other extracurricular activities that require money. I can hear the distant sound of laughter and shouting. I expect her to take me to the main office, but instead she guides me toward the gymnasium, stopping at a door set way past the locker rooms. I’ve never even been this far down the hall.

It opens with a loud creak into darkness but Ms Ficca fumbles around on the wall and one old light hanging from the ceiling pops on. Its a storage room, maybe ten by ten, full of plastic totes. She starts peeling lids off, revealing a jumble of puffy cloth in one, ratty old gym uniforms in another, until finally one is full of backpacks.

“Here we go,” she paws through the assortment of mostly nearly brand new bags, “Is there a particular color you like, Natalie?”

She piles them up as she goes: a dark red and black one, a forest green one with camouflage accents, a yellow one with glitter and unicorns. I watch, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them. How can I pick one? Do I even remember what my favorite color is?

I twirl the flower blossom in my hand as we wait for our names to be called, watching the starburst in the center turn into a perfect circle from the blur of the revolutions. My baka holds on my shoulder firmly, tethering me, keeping me safe until we can get on the boat.

It is a dark pink, embroidered with green leaves on the front pocket and around the edges.

We stand for so long that when my baka finally pulls me toward the boat, led by a man in a tan uniform with a rifle slung across his back. She whispers to me that he is a very special person, from the United States, and they are helping us escape. When he smiles at me and speaks, I nod, but English is still new and strange to me and I don’t understand what he’s saying.

I reach out toward it without thinking and run my fingertips over the soft embroidery.

“That one is beautiful,” Ms Ficca says, “Do you like it?”

I want to ask what we’re escaping. I want to ask where my parents are, but when I do, my baka cries, so instead I keep quiet and follow her, clinging to the small blossom. The rickety gangplank is slick and shaky beneath my feet.

I nod, just a small movement of my head, but she sees it and pushes the bag into my hands. I open it up and look inside. I am surprised to see that the interior is a much lighter shade, as though someone is playing a joke on me.

We’re almost to the boat when a wave hits and the walkway lurches. My foot slips and I fall, sliding under the railing and toward the choppy water of the bay.

It is the exact light pink of the small flower I held in my hand all those years ago.

For a split second I am suspended in space, my stomach in my throat as I anticipate the waters crashing over my head, pushing me under, but then I am caught by the arm and dragged back to the gangplank and up onto the boat. I am surrounded by people pulling me into a room where I can sit, away from any danger of falling again.

I kneel and slide my books into place in the backpacks, slowly, reverently, as though it might disappear.

It’s only when everyone has calmed down that I realize my hands are empty. The flower is gone. Panicking, I jump up and race out onto the deck of the boat, but the gangplank as been drawn, and the boat has begun to move away from the harbor. Leaning over the railing, I can see a spot of bright pink winking at me from the waves.

“Natalie,” Ms Ficca pulls me back to the present, “If there’s anything you ever need…”

She trails off. She doesn’t know what to say, and I don’t know how to answer.

“Well, at least let me get rid of this old one for you,” She bunches up the old bookbag into such a small circle that I can’t believe that only hours ago I had filled it with books before school.

“Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” Ms Ficca’s smile is warm as she stands up, “Do you have a ride home?”

“Um, yes, I do, I should go see if they’re waiting,” I answer fast, even though I am lying. I walk to and from the small apartment I share with my baka, over the garage of the family who agreed to let us stay with them. Even though they drive their daughters and son to school every day, I’m never offered a ride.

She nods, although I have a feeling she knows I’m being untruthful, “Okay then Miss Natalie. You have a great weekend, okay? I’ll see you on Monday.”

“You too,” I mumble and duck out of the school, behind the building where the gym is. The path through the wooded area of the park is visible and I head toward it. Something stops me when I’ve almost reached it, and I turn back to see Ms Ficca through the large plate glass windows, watching me. Her eyes look just like the soldier’s did and I turn away quickly, letting the forest enfold me.