Tessie D

Momma suggested this weekend that I get a job. 

The only places that hire high school students are the Dairy Queen, the Buckboard, and the grocery store. And, they all pay just $4.25/hour, which hardly seems worth the gas to drive into town for $15/night. Besides that, just about every high school junior and senior applies to those places. A business only needs so many late afternoon and evening employees.

When I mentioned this to Momma, she suggested that I try a restaurant in the next town over since waiting tables for tips pays a lot better. I told her that I didn’t think that any restaurant would hire me seeing that I’m still in high school and I would need them to work around my school schedule. 

“What about Mary’s Diner on the Loop? The one that your uncle owns? Surely, they can help one of their own with a job. It’s not like we’re asking for a handout. We’re not asking them for charity. You can work—you’re certainly pretty and smart enough to be a waitress. A job is the least they can do. And, who knows, maybe you’ll also meet a boy?”

I told Momma that I wasn’t much interested in meeting a boy and that it’d be awkward asking someone that I’d never met—even if they were family—for a job. They didn’t know me. I didn’t know them. It’d be inappropriate.

Still, even as I said it, I knew that it wouldn’t matter. I would work. It was my fault that Prince died. If we were going to make it through the year—and if I wanted any chance of having the money to apply to college—I needed to get a job. 

So, that’s that. I’ll drive to Flugerville and get a job.

I feel like I need to explain myself. It’s not that I don’t want to work. I’m not lazy, and I know that I should help my family. It’s just that I don’t drive very often in town, and I have never driven that far from home. 

I know I am contradicting myself. How can I want to go away to college if I won’t even drive to the larger town next door? I get it. I’m inconsistent. I just assumed that if the time came and I did get into college, that I would be so excited and would figure it out then. I know that I can’t stay in town forever. I have to go—by myself—beyond the farm. 

But, this town, it feels safe. I mean, we don’t even have a front key to the house. Daddy lost it in the pasture years ago, and we never rekeyed the door because what was the point, we never locked it anyways. We kept the keys to the truck in the ignition all the time. If someone ever stole a car in town, I never heard about it. Besides that, if someone did get robbed, everyone would know who did it, and we’d take care of it ourselves. 

It’s not that I’m afraid. I’m not a child, I know that I’m not going to be murdered as soon as I step past the city limits sign. But there’s something comforting about being so familiar with every corner of a place that you find yourself standing in the middle of town, deaf and blind, and could still make your way home. 

And, as much as an outsider that I feel, I still have a community here who know me. I have friends. I have a family. I have my farm and my home. 

I am Walt Whitman: I contradict myself and contain multitudes. 

I am perpetually Schrödinger’s cat.

I am in and out. I am safe and content. I am listless and resentful. I am here and wanting to be there.