Umbrella
A woman with dead eyes, dressed in the same uniform of stringless blue scrubs, shuffles across the linoleum. She doesn’t see me.
Are you okay? asks a voice. I glance up at the boy who uses it. He wears the same smock, but they must not have had a size large enough for him, because his chestnut belly sticks out like Winnie the Pooh.
I shrug.
How old are you? He sizes me up.
I’m twenty-three, twenty-four soon.
Oh! You’re old!
I might’ve laughed at that, before.
Do you ever get angry? he asks.
Not so much, mostly just sad.
I wish I was more like you, the boy frowns. I get angry. He shuffles away.
A nurse comes over and pierces the soft flesh of my elbow, drawing ruby. I close my eyes.
You’re done. They fly open again. He stares at me funny. You’re allowed to move.
Oh!
I wander.
There is a small bookshelf in the “TV room,” which is really the hallway, and everything else. All is blue here; windowless.
I want to see what words it holds, but an old man is sitting in front of it and I don’t wish to disturb him. He has warm cheeks like Santa Claus and biting blue eyes. The back of his bicep reads BROOKLYN in teal ink.
Oh dear! He shouts to no one in particular. August! Get in here. Another deputy of the Starship has arrived!
He introduces himself as Gideon.
So what got you in here?
I tell him. It’s the first time I’ve said the “s” word.
You’ve got some demons in your head girl! Gideon whistles through his whiskers.
Just then, a girl, something like a willow branch, darts in front of me.
You’re new, she growls like a kitten. There are stripes of acne across her forehead. She’s young. Probably younger than the angry boy. I want to go home, says the girl.
Isn’t that nice, Gideon muses, to have a home worth missing. He nudges me and lowers his voice. That poor boy over there, he murmurs, the angry one. He don’t.
Is the boy angry? I ask myself. Or is he just an umbrella?
Carolyn Gevinski’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Lavender Review, Out Magazine, GLAMOUR, El País, and Al Jazeera. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School, where she currently works as a fellow on their postgraduate investigative team. She lives in New York City.