CHRISTINE’S BLUE NOTEBOOK

I know this is dumb. It’s hopeless. Maybe it’s even babyish. That’s why I’m just putting it down in this blue notebook and keeping it to myself. I might tell Carla some of it, or even read her parts. But not Rachel. She’s only nine, and she was only seven when it happened. I don’t think she gets it much. She didn’t even get it about last night when I tried to show her this morning. She just kept doing dance stretches on the floor and pretending to look at the screen. She went to the bathroom or something before it was even over. Like she didn’t want to be reminded or something. I thought she forgot two years ago, but I’m not sure. Hard to tell with Rachel. Whatever. I was pretty clueless when I was nine, too, I guess. So probably no point in talking to Rachel about any of it.

Little sisters are good for a lot of things, and she’s a great little sister, but not for this. So what happened last night was a big reminder, for me at least, even if not for Rachel. It got me all ruffled again. I like that word—ruffled. Grandma says it a lot. She only says it when she doesn’t want us to be it. She says, “Girls, don’t get all ruffled over a little thing like that.” I knew right away first time she said it what it meant. You can tell from context like Ms. Myers says at school. Context is like looking for clues. Or listening for clues. So I knew what ruffled meant from the first time Grandma said don’t get it, and now it’s my favorite word for that feeling. Like anger. Hurt. Or angry hurt, because there’s more than one thing in it. Or bad surprise and disappointment, big disappointment, like not hitting your landing in gym. You’re saying you’re all that stuff when you say you’re ruffled.

But I’m really ruffled now. It’s a good word for bad feelings. I was ruffled, really ruffled, when it first happened two years ago. I was ten, just. The summer before, when I was still nine, we went to the Capitol. I mean, like just five months before it happened, pretty close to the election when Mr. Biden got to be president. We saw the big white beauty of it. We walked all way around it before we did the tour inside.

That’s how Papa is. “Girls, we ought to walk all the way around it before we go on the tour. I’ll tell you some things about it and about history before we go in.” I knew he wouldn’t know more than the expert guides who would give the tour. Not near as much, even. Not about the details. Even Rachel knew that. We rolled our eyes and frowned at each other, because we knew we’d be walking around this giant building that’s about big as half our town, which is like about ten football fields or something. And we knew he’d be telling us stuff that’s boring, like ideas and why the country is good but also bad at the same time. Blah, blah. Adult stuff, I guess. We knew the tour would be better, about where George Washington walked around or sat or something like that Papa wouldn’t know. No, wrong. The Capitol came after George Washington. That’s the kind of thing you don’t want to get wrong in front of Ms. Myers. Whatever. Anyway, we frowned and rolled our eyes, and sure enough we walked all the way round that huge white thing, Papa talking all the time about stuff no decent nine year old could get or care about, much less a seven year old.

It only has one really good side, the one that points to the Washington Monument. The bad side is just a big old place with a giant ugly parking lot, like a train station, but the good side is way taller and prettier and where they have the new president put a hand on the Bible and stuff.

Whatever. I know I’m stalling. That’s dumb, since I’m only writing for me in my own private notebook and probably won’t even let Carla see it. I guess I’m stalling because I know I’m trying something different. I never just sat down and wrote about being ruffled. You don’t usually need to, I guess. Somebody says they’re sorry and nobody’s ruffled anymore. I’ve been ruffled pretty bad, like when I had that phase when I had to do all those steps to brush my teeth just exactly right and all. Mother calls them phases, and I guess she’s right since they get better. Mostly. But I didn’t write that down, I don’t think.

I guess it’s just I’m twelve that writing this ruffled down makes sense to me. It’s more of a thing that happened and is still happening two years later and not just a phase. So it’s like writing it down makes it real or realer and you can look at it better or something.

So maybe it’s working. I didn’t really know even when I started writing why I was doing it. I called it dumb and baby. But maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m old enough to search for a message. Papa says that. “Girls, search for a message,” or “Girls, search for the message.” Whatever.

So stop stalling, Christine. You’re ruffled. Bad ruffled. You’re writing because you’re ruffled and it might make you less ruffled to write it down. That would be good, because this ruffled is bad, like nothing makes sense. And doesn’t make sense not just to a kid—Mother says we all go through phases when stuff doesn’t make sense, and it passes. But this one is two years now, or two years ago and yesterday added, and I’m more ruffled by it than any of the other stuff I remember. This isn’t like having to brush your teeth just the right way so many times up and down and sideways. This one is about the whole world brushing their teeth the wrong way, and the grown-up people don’t know it’s happening or don’t know why and don’t know how to fix it or they just don’t care. Papa and Mother care, but I don’t know about the others. Ms. Myers cares, I bet. This is like nutso, like Carla says when her parents fight and yell at each other.

Okay, Christine Hamby. Get to the point. Develop your theme, like Ms. Myers says. I am ruffled. I’ve been ruffled over the same thing since that Wednesday when I stayed home from school when Mother was afraid I had Covid but it wasn’t Covid and I watched it all happen on TV. Wish I’d been at school. Rachel was at school and missed it. Well, didn’t really miss it, since Mother and Papa kept watching what happened over and over and even forgot to get me and Rachel ready for bed on time that night. That was one good part, I guess.

That’s when I first knew it was nutso, that day at home watching. It was weird and scary when I saw it really happening on TV. I’ve seen movies that are weird and scary, even though Mother and Papa don’t approve of them. Carla’s parents let her watch anything, so I can too over at her house. Whatever. At first I thought what was on TV was weird and scary but something adults just do sometimes and not a big, big deal. But when I saw the faces that day and night watching TV and watching Mother and Papa watch it over and over, I knew it was a big, big deal. The faces of the news people on TV were the same. You knew it wasn’t just ordinary weird and scary even for adults. You knew it was nutso for them too. Even Rachel knew it was nutso, and she was only seven. She was still crying when I finally fell asleep, and I was crying too till then.

It was one of those times you know grown-ups don’t know everything. No, it was the first time I really knew they don’t know everything. And it was even worse. It was like seeing grown-ups might not know anything. Or not much about a lot. Even Mother and Papa, who know everything, didn’t know this thing. That didn’t know how it could be. I knew they thought it was nutso, and that really got me ruffled. There are supposed to be grown-up people watching out for nutso and stopping it. Not all grown-ups. Like Carla’s parents don’t watch out for nutso and stop it. They are nutso, so they can’t watch out for it. That’s bad luck. That makes me so sad. Mother says she’s glad I’m Carla’s friend, even though I think she knows I watch things at Carla’s I shouldn’t, because Carla needs a good friend. Mother knows Carla’s parents are nutso.

But it was something different that Wednesday. I could see Mother and Papa thought this was something big, real big, the whole world big, that kind of nutso, and there wasn’t anyone who could watch out for it and stop it. I don’t think kids are ever supposed to think that about grown-ups. Now I think we aren’t supposed to think that because it’s true but you shouldn’t have to learn it till later, like when you’re married or something. I knew it that Wednesday. Maybe even Rachel caught on.

There were all those grown-up people, like just everywhere on the tall, pretty side of the Capitol. Like thousands of them. And I’m thinking how we were just there last summer and Papa was talking about promises and broken promises and Mother was pointing out flowers like she does when she knows Papa is boring us. The place was so big and white and beautiful, and the sun wasn’t too hot, and we stopped for a granola break in this pretty garden, and the whole Capitol looked way more like promises than broken ones to me.

When we started back to school, Ms. Myers asked us to write an essay on something we did during the summer. Of course I chose our trip to Washington, and especially the Capitol. I even remember I couldn’t say how much I liked it, like the words I knew weren’t good enough for all that huge, beautiful white promise. I looked up synonyms, like Ms. Myers says we should do, to find something better than awesome or beautiful. I picked majestic. That was what it felt like, majestic. Like magic and magnificent together.

I had a photo of us in front of that best part where presidents get to be president looking down the Mall. I kept it on my desk in my room. It was still there that Wednesday in January. It was me and Rachel and Mother because Papa took the photo on his phone. We looked tiny in front of that majestic place, all those stories and windows and the huge curved top and steps everywhere and columns and gardens and porches and rails, all white in the sun glowing. After the photo, we climbed some of those steps all way to the giant doors way bigger than people. I thought maybe they could drive cars inside, but Papa said there were too many steps inside and outside for that, and I guess he was right.

Whatever. I’m stalling again. The point is—Ms. Myers is always telling us to get to the point, but in a nice way—the point is I was looking at that photo every day and I’d smile. I showed it to Carla about twenty times until she told me she was getting tired of hearing about our trip to Washington and the Capitol. I was sort of ruffled by that, but it was on a day when her mom and dad had been yelling the night before, and I knew she’d never been on a trip like that with her mom and dad. So I could understand and not stay ruffled, especially after Mother sort of said maybe that was why Carla was mean about it. Anyway, that photo was special. Like my special place. One of them.

What was so funny…No, not funny. Ms. Myers says be careful how you use words. What was so not funny was that Wednesday when I’m lying on the couch with a temperature and the TV stops the show I was watching and switches to what’s going on at my majestic, special Capitol. And the first thing is a view of the Capitol from pretty far away, showing just where we stood for my photo on the desk. But it was all covered with people. People like ants there were so many. And not just on all the steps and up to the big doors but climbing up the walls and all over those metal stands Mother said were there for the day the new president was going to start being president. It’s called an inauguration.

Those people were everywhere, like ants, even standing on rails on the big porches, carrying flags and stuff, acting angry. Then the TV showed them close up, swinging flags and sticks and knocking things around and throwing cameras on the ground and stomping them. They were swinging at the police people with yellow tops on and helmets and sticks of their own, everybody yelling and screaming like a crazy nutso thing. These big metal rack things like they use to keep you from walking on the grass or going where you aren’t allowed to go got thrown by bunches of people. Not just so they could go where they weren’t supposed to go, but thrown at the police, and some of them even hit the people doing the nutso stuff, like they didn’t know who was who or nobody was in charge. People were falling down and some were bloody, both angry people and police. Smoke was everywhere. Papa said it was tear gas but I already knew that. I’d seen that smoke before on the TV, like when people were upset after police killed some people they shouldn’t have killed and people were angry about that.

But this smoke was all over my special, majestic place. All this nutso was all over my special place, like it didn’t matter where they were. And all those angry, swinging, slugging, mean people.

And all this was just the outside part, before the angry people got inside. They got up to some doors and windows and were banging on them and smashing at them with big things Papa said were police shields or equipment the angry people took from police. I’m not sure if the doors were on the pretty side or the ugly parking lot side, because you could see them so close up you didn’t know what side it was. And seeing it that close you could see the faces real clear, all twisted up and shouting, all mean and out of control, and a lot of bad words yelled right on the TV. Not just grown men, but grown women too. It was worse than any movie I ever saw at Carla’s, because it wasn’t a movie but real, and it was my Capitol. Thousands of real angry men and women going nutso at the majestic Capitol. And I thought about Papa talking about promises again, and about the broken ones.

So we watched all day and all night. Mother was working at the university like usual that day, but she came home early. Papa was working from home like he always does, but he didn’t go in his office room all day after about lunch when all this started, just watched with me.

But I was saying the first part was all outside. It seemed hours all the angry people were outside like nutso ants, all over the porches and steps and rails and the metal things for the inauguration, covering everything so you could only see people. Then they got inside. They broke those doors or windows and climbed in, and somebody opened more doors and they poured in, like a flood, and they poured down the gigantic halls and through the huge round room with the statues and giant paintings we saw that summer on the tour. There were police everywhere, but not near as many as the angry people, so the police didn’t seem to be able to do much to stop the angry people. Even police can’t stop a flood. It was like the police just got washed away sometimes, but sometimes the angry people stopped. Everybody was hitting at everybody, and sometimes the police made lines to stop the flood, and sometimes it worked a little and sometimes it didn’t, and it was like neither side knew what ought to happen next.

That was the worst part, when I saw nobody, none of all those grown-ups, seemed to be sure what to do. Even the angry ones who acted like they knew what to do or what they wanted to do and yelled for people to follow like they were leaders or bosses or something would run up steps or down a hall, yelling, but they’d reach another police person or come to a corner and not seem to know what to do next. Like there was no plan. Then I looked at Papa. He didn’t know what to do either. I don’t mean he could do much, since it’s like hundreds of miles to the Capitol from our house, and it took two days to drive there and two days back. I mean I could see from his face Papa didn’t know what any grown-up could do to make it right, like it was so nutso that it was past where anybody could say or do a right thing that would matter. Like it just had to go on till it quit. Like it was so wrong and so bad that nobody could fix it.

I know I cried then. Maybe I was crying the whole time, I don’t remember. I had a little bit of temperature and I wasn’t feeling so good even before it started, but I got feeling a lot worse watching. I was crying when I saw Papa’s face saying there’s nothing anybody can do, so I’m not sure, but I think Papa was crying too. And then I knew even a grown-up, even one as smart as Papa, could feel helpless and hopeless just like a kid.

It was the longest day and night ever. I don’t even remember going pee the whole time, we were so caught up in the TV. I must have. And eaten and drunk too, but I don’t remember. Whatever. Then the people on the TV said it was contained, or getting contained. I could tell from context they meant like getting under control, or more like just wearing itself out like the puppy next door does when he runs around until he can’t run anymore. It got contained after a lady got shot going through a window in a door. She died. They showed that a hundred times, a live lady shot right on TV.

Even after it was calming down some, the TV people kept showing all the stuff from before, all the nutso stuff, over and over. Somebody said the angry people put somebody’s poo on the walls. Poo. They showed people with their big boots on desks of people who work in the Capitol, boots right on top of papers and things that must be important since Mother said the people working there are our government making the country run. They showed that poor policeman with his head stuck in a door, stuck because all these angry people were pushing the door shut on his head even though he was screaming. I don’t think he got killed because he had on a helmet, but you could see they didn’t care if he got killed. I never heard a grown-up sound so scared.

By the time Rachel and I went to bed, it was over. The angry people left or got arrested or just got tired and quit or something. Mother said the next morning that lots and lots of people that work there had to hide or escape, and I saw some of them lying down behind chairs on a balcony. She said it was only luck that more people didn’t get killed. They even yelled to get the vice president, who was right in the Capitol, but he hid or something. Mother said the workers got back together in the middle of the night and did what they were there to do when it all happened, so it was still okay for the inauguration of the new president.

So I guess it turned out not as bad as it could have. That lady got shot, and Papa said hundreds of people, angry ones and police ones, got hurt, some real bad. Maybe it could have been worse, but it was real bad anyway. I listen to Mother and Papa, because they’re always talking about serious adult things and important issues they call them, and I know that Wednesday was a really big deal, like it came close to changing everything. Papa says close to destroying our country. It’s about having votes and laws and rules and having everybody want to be a country together, and I think I sort of get it. Maybe it’s like Carla’s mom and dad, like people being together after they don’t want to be. I think it’s that promise and broken promise thing. Papa said the last president, Mr. Trump, even though he was president, wanted the angry people to act nutso so he could stay president even after he didn’t get enough votes. Papa said, “Girls, can you grasp the enormity of this event? The president of the country trying to make himself king of his country through violence.” I didn’t get that, but it sounds real bad. Papa hates Mr. Trump.

Whatever. I’m stalling again, because I haven’t even gotten to what happened yesterday. So like I was explaining, I got really ruffled that Wednesday two years ago when I was ten, and I stayed ruffled a long time hearing Papa and Mother talk about it so much. Even other adults talking about it. Now I’m getting older, and I get better how big a deal it was. Ms. Myers calls it really grasping things. That look on all the faces of the angry people, the police, the news people, Papa and Mother. I can’t forget that look. It means nobody in the world can look out for you and make you not go nutso. Even a president can tell you it’s good to go nutso. Nobody is running the class, like Ms. Myers is always running her class. If you’re not nutso, you can’t stop the ones who are. It’s all a kind of luck.

But I was getting better. I guess I grasped how big it was better because I got older, but I was getting better because our luck has been good. I wasn’t as ruffled, and I got to thinking maybe some of it was one of those phases Mother talks about. Even Ms. Myers said I’m growing up, and she doesn’t go around handing out compliments. I think I was getting more philosophical about it. That’s what Papa calls it when you stay calm even when things seem really bad and scary, even though sometimes Papa forgets to be philosophical.

Mr. Biden seems like a nice old man. That’s what Papa calls him, that and decent. No more gobs of angry people have flooded all over and into the Capitol. Another voting happened not long ago, like last year, and it went okay without any nutso.

But then yesterday. I didn’t even see it. But Mother and Papa talked about it last night, and they almost had the look again. Papa looked almost like one of the angry people at the Capitol, but he also had that look that means some nutso is impossible to understand or stop.

Mother and Papa said a news man on TV that we don’t ever watch had been talking and showing films from the Wednesday two years ago. Mother said millions of people watch him and believe him and think he’s smart and right, even though he’s a fake. I never heard her call anybody fake before. I don’t know why he’s a news person if he’s fake. I don’t even remember his name. Carson, I think. Whatever.

Anyway, Mother and Papa were angry about how this man was telling millions of people watching his show that nothing bad happened that Wednesday. I got online after school today and watched some of what he said and some of the films he showed from that day. There weren’t any of the parts where the angry people were like ants covering everything and acting nutso. None of the swinging and throwing racks and smashing heads in doors and running like packs through the Capitol. Just people acting like normal people. I don’t even know if the films were from that Wednesday, since Mother said he’s a fake. If they were, they were like films of a tornado that happened that day

before the tornado hit, when it was still a regular day.

I’m just a kid. I was only ten then when I saw it happen on TV. That’s the point, Ms. Myers—it happened and I saw it happen. Even a kid knows somewhere else that day there were people who weren’t acting nutso. Maybe even most of the angry ants weren’t all nutso, or at least not at the same time. But it happened. The tornado came. And it made me really ruffled for a long time.

So here’s a whole new nutso. What got me so ruffled two years ago was the look of all the grown-ups that said some things, bad things, can’t be stopped. Not even in yourself, a grown person. Like there’s a nutso in everybody waiting to pop out. Like there’s a ruffled worse than any phase or one thing bad happening, like everybody is really Carla’s mom and dad inside, yelling and fighting. Like the way you felt when you were a little kid worrying about monsters, but the monsters are real.

And now I have to work out if yesterday and the fake man are even worse. The man was calm. Ms. Myers would call him poised and articulate, even though he raises his voice. She’d say he’s a good presenter. He must have chosen which films to show the millions of people. He was pretending that Wednesday didn’t happen. Like all those angry, scared faces weren’t there acting nutso and all of us weren’t watching them being nutso on TV. He was pretending somebody was running the class like Ms. Myers, like there was no problem, like there was control. Like there was nothing helpless and hopeless about it.

Even we could see helpless and hopeless, enough to make me and my sister cry. To make Papa cry. Helpless and hopeless all over my majestic Capitol. Like the ground went away and left nothing to hold you up. Like you’re on a balance bar a thousand feet up with no net and not even a spotter.

I have to decide what was worse. I think the man yesterday was worse. Helpless and hopeless are real bad. But that Wednesday was like a wild attack that happened to people, like getting a crazy high temperature and acting all weird because you’re not yourself. That man is worse. Ms. Myers talks about folk tales, make-believe things that could happen but don’t in real life, like witches eating children. They’re just scary stories to scare kids for fun, stories about evil, she calls it. People can get like evil from a nutso attack. But the man was evil on purpose, for real. I’m going to put my photo away till I get this sorted out better. It’s got too many broken promises now.

March 7-10, 2023
©2023 Lawrence Helms