Though there are still crowds wandering around. I feel claustrophobic. Who knew that living in the real world included so many people?
I walk down the covered sidewalk, past some bizarre modern sculptures in a garden, craning my neck when the roof opens up to see the domed tower atop the museum, accented with blue and yellow tile. A bell chimes the time. Almost late.
I walk slower.
But not slow enough, and even dragging my feet up the stairs brings me to the doors just as they open. A tiny, energetic brunette flashes me a brilliant smile. Her eyes are about even with my chest. My relative height here keeps surprising me, too. Even after my painful growth spurt, I was always the shortest, other than stooped Thoth.
Here I am tall. Really tall. Of course, my spike heels propelling me well past my 1.8 meters probably help. I enjoy it, though. I feel like I can breathe better.
“You must be Isadora!”
I hold my hands out in a silent ta-da motion.
“I’m Michelle! We’re so excited that you’ll be with us this summer. Museum traffic swings up so much—especially once schools go on break in the next couple of weeks. It’s always nice to have extra hands, and with your background, well! It’s going to be great. And I can’t even begin to tell you how thrilled we are about your parents’ incredible donation of their traveling exhibit.” She’s practically bouncing up and down. I see why my mother picked her—she’s even wearing an ankh necklace under her nice white button-down blouse.
I’m dressed in a black pencil skirt and a cherry-red top, my hair down, stick straight, my thick bangs so long they almost cover my eyes. I debated this morning whether or not to show up in jeans and a tee, torn between rebelliously refusing to adhere to the dress code and being nice. But it isn’t the museum’s fault my mother’s a control freak.
I’m entertained by the way Michelle chops her hands through the air as she’s explaining the plan for a separate wing when the exhibit arrives, and how she prefaces many of her sentences with, “I mean, look.” Unfortunately, if I cave and like anything about this (including Michelle), my mother wins.
Conundrums.
We walk past a circular lobby with double desks and into a massive main room, the ceiling open to the top of the building. The second-floor balcony wraps all the way around and lets in natural light from huge, round-top windows, and the middle of the floor down here showcases massive carved stone pillars. Michelle cheerily tells me about this exhibit on ancient Mesoamericans, its history, how long it’ll stay up. I’ve never heard anyone talk so fast in my entire life. She packs more words into a single breath than most people do in five.
We head up the stairs, past some exhibit on the origins of humankind, and over to the Egyptian room. The entrance is deep purple and green, with gold lettering. The colors are all wrong, really. I appreciate the effort to make it look regal, but I’d have done it differently.
The actual exhibit is shockingly small—a single room, with cases on the sides and in the middle. I’m greeted by a cartoon version of my creepy, lecherous half brother Anubis, which makes me giggle.
Michelle turns to me midsentence. “What?”
I shake my head. “Oh, nothing. Sorry. Go on.” Cartoon Anubis is pointing to the centerpiece of the room—a headless mummy. We have better in our tombs at home. But it’s a decent collection for such a small museum. And there’s a whole case of things from Abydos, one of which is allegedly from the tomb of Osiris. It’s kind of adorable they think someone could find the tomb of a god.
“The Children’s Discovery Room is through those doors,” Michelle says, pointing to a set of double doors with a sign across declaring the exhibit closed. “It’ll open up later, and is one of our most popular rooms. There’s a video presentation on the mummification process narrated by Anubis. You’ll love it!”
“I’m sure I will.” I can see it now: Anubis leering and smirking, sharp eyes and sharp teeth with a smile curled around them. Because he’s totally the most kid friendly of the gods. I know the jackal-headed jerk is the god of embalming, but really, for children? They should have Thoth with his birdie hands.
“If you’ll familiarize yourself with the room, I’m going to give you some extra reading to do so you can answer any questions that people might have, but I’m guessing that, with your parents, you’re already something of an expert.” She pauses, looking at me with a cocked head. “You know, put on a headdress and a white tunic, and I’d swear you walked straight out of one of these exhibits!”
“Which is why I make a policy of never wearing headdresses.”
Michelle laughs, shaking her head. “I’ll stay here with you for most of the morning, and then you can take over. Really your job until we get your mom’s shipment and fit out the special exhibits room is to be accessible and help people have the best possible experience here you can. We have security on-site, so if there are ever any problems, you just call it in right away.”
“Got it.”
She fits me with a temporary name badge and a radio, and I hang out and try not to show how incredibly bored I am with the few dozen patrons who visit in the next two hours. I’m relieved when her radio buzzes and she leaves me with a smile and thumbs-up. It was starting to feel really pointless, standing in the corner.
But now I’m alone in a room with artifacts from my parents’ heyday and a dead body that my father probably ushered into the afterlife. In the middle of San Diego, in America, where I was supposed to escape my history.
This is just phenomenally weird. I’m glad it’s slow and no one has come through since Michelle left. I still can’t stop smirking about kid-friendly Anubis. If they only knew.
“Hey!”
I about jump out of my skin and turn to see a lanky white girl grinning at me. She’s nearly as tall as I am, with rectangle glasses and hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her button-down shirt and pin-striped black pants fit her awkwardly, pulled too tight across her shoulders and hips, like they weren’t meant for her body. What if she has questions? I’m not going to pretend like Anubis is awesome, or try to get excited over the amazing stone-knife display. My mom’s requirement is that I show up. I’ve done that.
“You’re the new girl! Isadora, right? Michelle wasn’t kidding—you look like you stepped out of one of the murals! Wow. That’s so cool that you’re actually Egyptian.”
I paste a smile on my face. “Cool is one word for it.”
“I’d kill for some sort of actual ethnic heritage. I’m a glorified mutt, really.”