Four Times Blessed Read Free Page B

jellyfish.”
                  “You are so weird.”
                  “I know. Night, Len.”
                  “Night, Crus. Love you.”
                  “Love you, too.”
                  There is a pounding coming from the wall behind my empty bed.
                  “What are you two girls doing? It’s the middle of the night, why are you not asleep?”
                  “We are, Zizi!”
                  “Yeah, night, Zizi!”
                  We listen to her mumble something, but she doesn’t yell anything more back. We giggle and soon Eleni really does fall back asleep.
    I listen to her soft breathing, and, knowing the rhythm so well, I fall into it myself soon enough.
     
     
                  The next morning, I open one eye at the window, who I guess lost its shutters sometime in the night, and observe that the hour has taken on the same color as Eleni’s eyes. The birds are off and chirping. There is the scent of fresh cut greenery in the air. It’s altogether a lovely morning.
    I, however, detest greenery and birds and beautiful colors at the moment.
    I roll upright with heavy eyelids and then just sit, slumped at the edge of the mattress.
                  I have a spasm in my neck. Probably from falling asleep shoved against the wall last night. The ache wakes me up enough though, that I can stand and shuffle my way to the closet.
                  I feel around for my stiff pencil skirt, the same color but somehow less pretty, than the groggy light outside. I finger the heavy belt woven through the loops, and the white blouse that goes with it. And the hat and the tie.
    I throw everything on with practiced movements that almost put me back to sleep. Casting a narrow glance at the lump in the bed who doesn’t have to go to school anymore and gets to sleep in, I walk barefoot to the door.
                  It slams behind me and I honestly don’t know if I did that or if it was due to a sudden change in air pressure.
    Either way, I disappear from the hall before anyone can come blame me.
                  I guess it’s not technically school that I have to go to anymore. It’s an official, honest to goodness military appointment.
                  Our first steps into the real world, as they told us at the commencement ceremony. Commencement means “beginning,” did I know that? Yes, yes, I did. It had been a word on a vocabulary test they’d given us in second grade. And still they ask me the question on the very day they graduate me. Honestly.
    It was only my military discipline, which they also taught me, which was smart of them, I guess, that kept me from rolling my eyes.
                  Which is a good thing, because I was sitting in the front row. That’s what they make you do if you graduate first in your class.
                  My aunt called the school three times that day to tell me to brush my hair. I could just imagine her, hiking up and down the little trail to use the public phone on base. I felt guilty about it by the fourth or fifth time a swab ran up to me with a phone, so I gave it to my chaperone Ms. Tiffany to answer, on account of she’s the one who hunted me down at four a.m. that morning to straighten my hair so flat I thought it’d disappeared. And then picked at me with her comb every two seconds.
    During the ceremony, I saw Ms. Tiffany in the front row of the audience, dress uniform starched and pressed to a degree that you might call luxurious if it weren’t what it was, all the while her hand twitching towards her side pocket. For the comb, I’m sure.
    Basically, this all meant I was paranoid the entire ceremony, thinking every strand on my head was standing on end like I’d touched one of those static ball things they have in the academy museum.
                  But