A Tiger Caged

When I was five years old, my Aniki finally told me it was time that I went to school.

“I don’t need school!” I thought that this argument might work, because my Aniki always said we couldn’t afford anything that we didn’t absolutely need.

“Nice try Torako,” he said as he tied my shoes for me. He laughed when he said it, like he didn’t expect me to be so clever. “You don’t have to be scared. I’ll take you to your class room on my way to work and I’ll be there before you leave to take you home.”

“I’m not scared!” I protested indignantly, swinging my feet to make his task more difficult. “I don’t need school, I don’t want school! I won’t go!”

My Aniki sighed and sat back on his heels, looking up at me. I sat on the edge of my bed, my arms crossed. I was never going to back down. School was bad, or so the Augustino twins on the second floor told me. Antonio and Joseph Augustino were the sons of Gracia, who was the woman who watched me during the day since the old Russian died. They were the ones who taught me how to be a proper Ninjo, so that no one would ever mess with me. They taught me how to spit like a boy, talk like a boy, fight like a boy and even eat messy like a boy. Antonio and Joseph had been going to school for two years already and they said that it was Diablo’s place. And of coarse, since they were seven years old already, they knew much more of the world and therefore had to be right.

“Listen...” My Aniki looked like he was thinking something over hard. Of coarse, it didn’t matter to me. There was nothing that my Aniki could offer that would make me go to school. “If you go to school all this week… I’ll buy you a real sketch book.”

Well, anything except for that.

“Really?” I sat up straight and my eyes lit up like a lamp. “A real one? Like what real artists use?” With all the saving and only purchasing necessities, I had had to pursue my favorite activity on whatever spare paper I could find. Our apartment was filled to the brim with my work. Newspapers, flyers, tissues and even the walls were covered in drawings done with the stubs of pencils and crayons that I either found in the streets or snuck from the Augustino twins’ room.

“Like what real artists use,” my Aniki agreed. “And every week after this one, I will buy you a new pencil to draw with. Do we have a deal?”

I bobbed my head immediately. Let the devil bring on his worst at this school, I would take it.
·
The school’s halls were square and plain looking, with what seemed like hundreds of doors leading to all the different layers of hell. I held my Aniki’s hand all the way down to room 12A, not because I was scared or anything, but because I thought he would feel like that was what he was supposed to do. When we finally got there, the door loomed up like a long cold grave stone slab in front of me.

“You ready?” My Aniki smiled down at me encouragingly and squeezed my hand, so I put on a grim, serious face and nodded. He opened the door quietly and led me inside. He always gave me that look like he knew what I was thinking, but he was usually wrong, because he usually assumed I was afraid of stuff like big scary school houses. I braced myself for whatever horrors lay waiting for me.

To my surprise, the room was cheery and well lit, rather than the grim death trap I had imagined. Instead of spikey iron desks, low blue tables with red chairs sat in neat rows, facing a medium sized oak teacher’s desk, behind which a clean black board sat. Despite the innocent appearance, I entered cautiously, ready for whatever was going to jump out at me.

“Hello there!”

The lady that had been digging in a closet out of sight peaked her head around the door. She looked like she was both very old and very young at the same time, somehow. Her long, sleeved sun dress hung off of her thin shoulders like a sheet, and when she moved I could hear her beaded necklace clink together. She smiled kindly at me with thin but pinkish lips, but gave my Aniki a strange look, almost like she didn’t like him before she even knew him.

“Now what is your name?” She crouched down in front of me, smiling again. I hung on tighter to Aniki’s hand, you know, to reassure him that I wasn’t scared. “I’m Ms. Cardinal.”

“Torako,” I replied guardedly. Ms. Cardinal had clear looking gray eyes and long, straight wispy white blond hair. Her skin looked almost see through with spiderweb lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. I was pretty sure that if she stood in front of a bright light, I’d be able to see right through her onto the wall.

“Well good morning Torako.” She gave me a big smile before straightening up to look all disapproving at my Aniki with her lips set. “And you must be Torako’s father, Mr…?”

My Aniki laughed a little bit, shaking his head. “No, no, I’m sorry-“ He held out his hand. “I’m Takeo Hiro, Torako’s brother. I take care of her.”

“Oh!” Ms. Cardinal turned a little pink and embarrassed looking as she shook my Aniki’s hand. “I’m very sorry. I made an unprovoked assumption. It was an ignorant prejudgment. I hope you will forgive me.”

“It’s alright.” My Aniki has a smile that makes you feel like everything’s all perfect and right in the world and I could tell that it worked on Ms. Cardinal just like it worked on me. She didn’t seem to stay flustered and embarrassed for long. Even though I didn’t know why she had been embarrassed in the first place. “So you think you’ll be alright here with Ms. Cardinal?” He asked me, pulling on a little bit of my hair gently. I scowled up at him. Though it never hurt, the habit was irritating. But I nodded stoically up at him. I could take care of myself, he didn’t’ need to constantly follow me around to make sure I was okay. Never the less I felt something tighten in my stomach as the door shut behind him. Despite the fact that he left every day to go to work, I wasn’t used to saying good bye to my Aniki in an unfamiliar place. It was easier to see him leave me in Gracia’s apartment, where I could smell her hot spicy cooking and hear the twins fighting in the next room over who got to pick out their clothes first.

I finally turned back to Miss Cardinal, still suspicious, but with the feeling that now that my Aniki was gone, I was on my own so whatever happened would happen.

“So, Torako.” Miss Cardinal smiled down at me. “Since you’re the first one here, what would you like to do?”

I stared up at her a little skeptically. From what the Augustino boys told me, teachers don’t ask what you want to do, they tell what you have to do. But I figured that’s I’d play her sick manipulative game until 2:00. I wanted that sketchbook. “Do you have any colors and paper?”