Separation Anxiety - Laura Zigman Page 0,10
along the sides of my face. Then I step forward to start my presentation.
That’s when the doors to the all-purpose room fling open and a teacher runs into the crowd. Her hands form a frantic T—for time-out. “We need you upstairs right away, Mr. Noah!” she yells in a panicked screech. “It happened again!”
Mr. Noah turns and stares at her across the sea of student bodies. His mouth drops open into a horrified O. “Again??” he says, before chasing her through the crowd and out the doors toward the middle school, his crepe-soled shoes squeaking on the polished wood floor as he flees.
* * *
The interruption of my “talk” before it even starts proves to be a total buzzkill to the crowd, and to me, and I can’t help feeling annoyed that what I assume is nothing more than a clogged toilet or maybe a mouse in one of the middle school classrooms couldn’t have waited until I finished. Rattled by the teacher’s dramatic entrance and Mr. Noah’s even more dramatic departure, I stand there for a few silent seconds with the stupid Peruvian bird hat on my head, staring out at all the children, who are looking at me expectantly. My presentation, if you can even call it that, lasts no more than five minutes—just long enough for me to explain that my book was essentially a “weirdness manifesto” about “embracing difference,” and that I’d written it because my mother always used to look at me like I was the strangest person on earth—“like I had a bird on my head.” When it’s clear they have no idea what I’m talking about, I try reading from a page tagged with an ancient Post-it note:
“Why are you wearing orange tights with a purple skirt?
Why not a girl’s blouse instead of a boy’s shirt?
Why don’t you color instead of playing with dirt?” my mother always said,
Looking at me like I had a bird on my head.
“There’s a bird on my head! A bird on my head! But I love my bird!” is what I said.
Crickets. I don’t understand the logic of having a parent or grandparent or beloved guardian speak to an audience having such a large spread of ages—how could you possibly appeal to everyone? What might be mildly interesting to thirteen-year-olds will be excruciatingly dull to eleven-year-olds and incomprehensible to six-year-olds. I might just as well be speaking in tongues.
Once I’m done, and once I open it up to questions—and get none, which surprises me, since all they ever told us when we started at the school was how curious and inquisitive Montessori kids are—I’m instantly overcome by a strange combination of humiliation and relief. Just the way I was when I did painfully underattended bookstore events for my second and third books—Stop Doing That! and Why Don’t You Like Me Anymore?—all I wanted to do was leave.
This morning I speed-walk with my arm under the sling through the school’s hallways, which are festooned with student artwork (Who I Am: A Self-Portrait Project is clearly the current unit, which I have mixed feelings about—isn’t this generation self-referential enough?) and fake-talk into my phone past the library to preemptively avoid real-talk with anyone who might try to engage me in conversation. I pass a TUITION DUE! sign on the window of the main office and ignore Grace, the combination business manager, Spanish teacher, and after-school program director, who’d summoned Mr. Noah and interrupted my presentation earlier and who is now practically falling over herself waving at me through the glass, trying to get my attention.
I put my phone away, give a mom walking toward me a big aggressively smiley “Hi!” because she’s staring at the sling, and then at me, like I have a bird on my head, and am about to storm through a side door onto the playground. Just when I think I’m safe, I feel the poking: first on the arm, then on the shoulder. I close my eyes and try to collect myself before turning around to face Grace, who has somehow managed to catch up to me.
“Boy, you’re fast!” I say, hoping that opening with an aggressive compliment will help me stall for time. “And you’re not even winded!”
“I run.” Grace shrugs matter-of-factly. “Marathons.”
“Seriously? That’s impressive.” She is wearing a fleece zip-up with the Morningside Montessori logo and a nylon knapsack loaded with hot and cold reusable beverage containers in both side mesh compartments.
Another shrug. “Not really. I used to have an eating disorder but