Illusions of Fate

She beams, either besotted or trying to get a better grade. Please let it be the latter. “Anyone who follows your column on the theoretical benefits of Alben policies on Iverian continental countries would be able to say the same. The colonization case studies are perfect examples.”

I cannot stop myself and raise my hand.

Professor Miller does not call on me.

I talk anyway. “What about the steep rise in infant mortality for the period of twenty years after colonization? Taking Melei as an example, death rates among infants went from one in ten to one in five and have only recently begun to taper off.”

Professor Miller clears his throat, and the sound does not cover a blond girl on the end of my row sighing, “Island rat.”

“Why is she even here?” the mousy girl whispers over her shoulder.

“My father has complained to the superintendent about the decline in quality of students.” The blond girl does not look at me as she says it. None of them ever do.

Professor Miller, having finally cleared his throat but not his ears, which remain deaf to my comments, lists the chapters we are to study for our next class and then leaves without dismissing us.

I feel utterly dismissed nonetheless.

Leaving in a c

ocoon of silence amidst the chattering of my classmates, I find a bench outside and begin writing my calculations with fierce strokes. I’m not in a mathematics course, and barely have time to balance my actual studies with work at the hotel, but I don’t care. I will learn everything I can. I wish I were like the other students and that studying was my only task.

Fortunately for them, none of them are poor.

I have never been poor before. I had everything I needed on Melei, with a private tutor to teach me the hard consonants and neglected vowels of this language. Mama wouldn’t even let me speak Melenese at home. She sent me to classes on the manners and social customs of Albion. My friends got to learn traditional dances from their grandmothers while I was forced to memorize the stiff measures of this country’s music, the stilted, passionless steps to their waltzes.

Sighing, I pull out a paper and, balancing it on top of the library’s mathematics book, compose another letter to Mama, as always writing lies and telling the truth in my head.

Dear Mama,

I hope this letter finds you well. It contains all my love and affection. (It also contains all my questions about how you could ever have loved a man like Professor Miller.)

You asked about where I live. I cannot believe I haven’t mentioned it, but I suppose I’m so used to it now I don’t think of it. The dorms are small and plain, but as a student I don’t need much more. (I cannot afford the dorms. I do not live in them.) The food is dreadful, all heavy meat and sauce. I miss fruit! (I am always hungry; a supper with a strange man was the fullest my stomach has been since I got here.)

As I have mentioned in every letter, my professors are all interesting and I take copious notes during lectures. (If you do not bring up my father, I am certainly not going to offer you information on that louse of a man.) The course work is challenging but I am excelling. (I have to be perfect so they can find no excuse to dock my grades.)

I have delivered Aunt Nani’s package to Jacabo. He was so happy to receive it, and I take tea with him once a week. It is a great comfort to speak Melenese with someone. (I live in the hotel where Jacabo works. He saved me when I realized I could not afford room and board at the school. I work long, hard hours in the evenings to earn a tiny hole of a servant’s room and whatever scraps of food are left over.)

Please give everyone my love and tell them how much I am learning to bring back to the island as a teacher. (I will not fail, and I will use everything I learn here to make Melei better.)

Your affectionate daughter,

Jessamin

A large black bird lands on the bench beside me, brazenly close. “Hello there,” I say as it considers me with flat, yellow eyes. “Where I am from, you’re known as an acawl for that awful noise you make.”

It cocks its head reproachfully.

“No disrespect, Sir Bird. You cannot help your harsh voice any more than these Albens can help their love of ugly words and sounds.”

A boy walks by, not bothering to hide his snicker at the quaint island girl talking to the local wildlife. Sir Bird caws sharply at him. I approve.

“Anyone who shares my distaste for the men of this country can also share my lunch.” I break off the stale heel of my bread, crumble it in my palm, and then toss it onto the bench next to my friend. If birds had eyebrows, I’d swear it was raising them at me. “Spirits bless you, you arrogant little thing. I suppose I wouldn’t eat it if I didn’t have to, either. Good day, Sir Bird.”

Unaware it has been excused, Sir Bird continues to sit and stare until I have to report for my next lecture. Even the birds here are strange.

Two days in a row of the sun breaking through clouds, and while it isn’t anywhere near what a rational person would deem warm, it feels as though the whole city has sighed in relief. Everyone is shedding their outermost layers of clothing to sit outside and soak in the light they can.

I elect to stroll through Haigh Park, a lonely jewel of green adjacent to my school. Humming to myself, I wander a twisting path and play with the lines in the park, tracing imaginary triangles between points and calculating their areas based on estimated lengths.