SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

TORTURED, NOT TAUGHT

I have suffered through three months at Precious Baby Junior High. I should get a medal for not slapping people.

Ms. Rishanki hands back our essays on I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. We had to write five paragraphs on what the caged bird symbolizes. I wrote one paragraph explaining that the caged bird represents Maya Angelou's sorrow in knowing her novels are being skimmed by drones in Wilmington uniforms. There is no grade on the rubric, just the words see me written in squiggly red pen.

I know that I did squat for my essay. I know the caged bird is Maya Angelou's spirit, all the fear and memory and anger that has been locked up by the society she lived in. I know that the world was an ocean, that racism and oppression were anvils tied around her feet, and that she swam back to the surface and wrote a book about learning to breathe after being drowned. This is the symbolism bullshit we're forced to learn about. I know that I know what the caged bird symbolizes. But no one else needs to know that.

I report to Ms. Rishanki's classroom at lunch. She's typing on her computer when I chuck my backpack against the heater and slump into my desk.

"Ah, Vidya," she says. "Good to see you."

I cross my arms and don't say a word.

She rolls her office chair across from my desk so we're sitting face-to-face. I can smell the taco salad she ate for lunch and the deodorant she wore too much of. "Do you want to tell me why you wrote what you wrote for your essay?"

My I don't care face melts into a glare. She sighs and drums her fingernails on the desk. "Do you at least want to explain your thought process?"

I dial up my serial killer glare. She pushes off from my desk and rolls back behind her computer. She pounds on her keyboard. Clackity-clack-clack. I'm missing my lunchtime nap for this. Ms. Rishanki turns the computer around for me to see. My second quarter report card. All C's and D's.

"I'm not failing," I say.

She rolls back to my desk. "But you could be doing much better."

She stares at me for a long time before exhaling in defeat. "I know you're in the system. I know you don't want to be here. I know you think you're better than all this. But you must take your education seriously."

Tick, tick, tick. My bruise pulses in sync with the clock.

Ms. Rishanki purses her lips. "You're not listening to any of this, are you?"

I yawn. A locker slams in the hall. The clock ticks on.

She won't leave me alone unless I speak. "Why do you care what I think the caged bird is? Maya Angelou probably explains it in dozens of interviews."

"Because the story means something different to everybody."

When I don't respond, she tries again. "What I mean is, everyone has their own caged bird."

I hate how much she sounds like Lin. "This is a junior high english essay. Don't bring Gandhi into it."

Ms. Rishanki puts her chin in her hands and gives me that sympathetic you're a failure look. "You're not reaching your full potential--"

"Want to know what I think the caged bird is?" I don't mean to shout. But I do. "To all the robots in this class, the caged bird is worksheets and essays and straight A's. I bet the whole class wrote about how the caged bird represents Angelou's soul, but the truth is, the caged bird represents an A+ on their report card."

Ms. Rishanki stares at me for a long time before reaching back to her desk and unwrapping a cherry cough drop. "Is that what you think?"

I watch her suck the cough drop for a moment. The heater kicks in and a whoosh of warm air rushes from the furnace. If I wrote the truth, the school would give me a year long vacation at the local asylum, all expenses paid. The caged bird is the duffel bag in my hands when I first came to Washington Point. The caged bird is the peanut butter sandwich in the toilet at the theatre. The caged bird is the mehndi on my arms, the bruise beneath my eye, and the mehndi over that. The caged bird is my skin, my eyes, the horror stories in my head— and it is Vanessa's perfume, Sebastian's toy box, and Lin's coat, which made me believe that someone was going to pick me up and rock me to sleep and sing me lullabies until the world went away.

My chair screeches when I push it back to stand. "What I think, is that I need to eat my lunch."

I sling my backpack over my shoulder and slam the door on the way out. Ms. Rishanki does not come after me.