Atlas and Alice, Issue 16
Emily James
Directions for Substitute 1. Attendance is in the blue folder. Annie will do it, you don’t even have to ask. She colors the circles dark and deep, she doesn’t even need to call their names. 2. Play music if you want to. They may dance, may look at you and laugh. Some will ask: Why you playing this Red Lobster music? Others will say: Hey, I like this Red Lobster music, I do. 3. Talk politics with them. It will make you feel better. My Abuela could do a better job, Diamond will tell you, and she doesn’t even speak English. Republicans be so pressed, she’ll say, like for what? And she’ll shake her head back and forth slowly, brown curls fanning shoulder to shoulder, all her disgust laid out in a line. 4. If you’re going through it, tell them. 5. If you look a wreck, which we mostly do, call up Eileen. She’ll pull up her jeans over her hips and go behind your chair with her Tory Burch Bag all maroon and flat, folders fanned neatly in a rainbow. She has edge cream and this black brush with bristles that prick your scalp and when you flinch she’ll call you tender headed but just let her work, let her brush, let her smack the gum in her lips and when you turn around you’ve never seen your hair that smooth, scalp shining like a photograph you’ve only looked at in a frame. 6. Don’t talk to them about your nightmares where your sunflowers all died and your husband carried them in giant Hefty bags and dumped them over a fence. Unless, of course, you want to see them belly laugh, all cute and round and vanilla blossom scented and hair gelled and free. They will cackle and cackle about white people 28
