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A loud hiss, the sound of pressurized air being released, made the din of the students temporarily inaudible. The large, yellow, gas-consuming transport behemoth in front of me settled and opened its doors. Not in any hurry, and wearing half my weight in winter gear, I let my schoolmates barge past me to escape the weather. I turned my head acutely to face my three close friends.

“Back of the bus,” I told them. They nodded, shivering. We boarded the steep steps into the bus and made our way through a multitude of loud children to the rear seats. Sheila followed suit, then Joy, then Taylor. Sheila was twelve, naturally a very pale girl, and a lover of dresses, accessories, and fashion (girl things), vampire novels, anime, and dolls. She was tall and thin, had purely dark hair which was neatly separated on tied into little buns on each side of her scalp. Her facial features slightly resembled that of a mouse, pointed and prominent. She wore an incarnadine dress with white buttons and a lace collar which I found adorable, with black buckled shoes and stockings striped black-and-white. These stockings she bore every other day, and they were collecting rips and tears (when I asked her about them, she told me that “threadbare” was her style). I wondered why she wasn’t freezing.

Joy was not tall, just the opposite was she. Stout, and proud were two adjectives that best fit her. She stood straight and as tall as she could, took school seriously, and wore plain clothing. Jeans, a t-shirt, and a thin jacket were all she ever needed. In warm weather, she would shed the jacket and that would be her outfit. She rarely talked about her hobbies, but I knew she played violin and piano. I couldn’t tell if she enjoyed it, perhaps her mother was the reason she played.

Taylor’s long, flowy, hair was dark as night. It went past her shoulders, and almost reached the small of her back. Each week she did new things with it, always growing it and caring for it. She had a feminine, kind face, with long eyelashes and a delicate nose. People were often assumed her soft appearance was matched by a soft personality, and they soon found out they were wrong as they got acquainted with her. She was seen by others as truculent, I saw her as righteous. She had a loud, infectious cackle of a laugh.

Despite our bizarre and differing interests, we had many common traits. We were reticent to those who didn’t know us and we took a long time to get acquainted.

At the moment, Joy, Sheila and I were conversing about boys, and Taylor and a few other kids a few seats ahead were yelling to each other. I heard snippets of their conversation, and at some point I Taylor say this:

“Yo, you are a bitch!” It was followed by clamorous laughter from Taylor and the other kids.

Whatever was funny, I didn’t get it. In my mind, the “b-word” was not something you called someone, and much less something you called a girl. Was it a joke? It sounded like one. I was a little bewildered.

I looked at Taylor. I started to say something, but I stammered, and just made an incoherent mumble.

“Huh?” Taylor queried, turning to see me.

“Um. Nothing,” I said awkwardly. Taylor was about to return to her conversation, when I continued:

“You can say that?” I blurted with sudden clarity.

“Say what? ‘Bitch?’”

“Yeah.”

“Of course!” She stated, almost too kindly, as if trying to not misunderstand what my issue was. “It’s just something girls call each other.”

“I thought it was especially bad when you said that to a girl.”

“Well, maybe if you’re a boy,” I was a boy. “But it ain’t that bad.”

Sheila and Taylor looked at me. I felt funny. Was is just me? I couldn’t call a girl the b-word yet other girls could address each other as such? Wasn’t it a bit unfair? The whole encounter left me confused. Was that double standard justified by gender? I never found the answer.

Jonas Bromley

11/10/13

Journey To Swindon

He left the mansion that morning feeling good, going to visit a town his father was thinking of starting a new mine in. His father was letting him take on more and more responsibility with the different mines his father owned. He asked his manservant, Charles, to bring him his horse. He waited for a couple of minutes and Charles had his horse, “here ya go Sir Robert.”

“Thank you Charles.” He mounted his horse and briskly trotted down the road towards the town of Swindon,where the mine would be, after five hours on horseback he stopped at a roadside tavern, called The Drunken Dragon, and called to a stable boy to put his horse up for the night in the stable. He tossed the boy a pound coin. He walked inside the tavern and asked the barmaid for a room and dinner and a flagon of mead then he sat at one of the tables and waited. It took a while for the food to come, they brought out his food and the barmaid said in her broken speech, “this is pork kilt yesterday ‘round noon and fresh potatoes from me garden.”

“This looks delicious, thank you very much,” he replied.

“s’No problem,” she said.

He ate dinner quickly and went upstairs to go to sleep, he was tired from the long days ride but at the same time he was excited at the prospect of his first real work in his fathers business. He went to sleep quickly.

The next morning he awoke to the sound of a rooster crowing in the yard. He got out of bed changed back into his riding clothes and went downstairs for breakfast. He was served eggs on some slightly stale bread, despite the bread it was still quite good. He thanked the owner payed him and left. The rest of his ride to swindon was very uneventful. He rode into the town and looked for the house of his father’s correspondent, Mr. Smith. He finally gave up and went to ask for directions, he pulled up outside a bakery and asked, “Do you know who David Smith is and if so, would you be so kind as to tell me where he lives?”

The baker replied, “yah I know a’him he live right round the corner o’er there.” he pointed with a flour covered finger. “Thank you very much sir.” He walked down the street leading his horse, and knocked on Mr. Smiths door. The door opened and a maid answered, “you must be Robert, Mr. Smith is right this way sir. He walked into a fairly large living room where the fairly large David Smith was sitting eating a lunch that consisted of a roast beef sandwich and a small flask of ale. “Hello Robert, thank you for coming all this way to see me. How is your father doing?”

“He is doing quite well.”

“So your old man is giving you more control over the company?”

“Yes sir.”

“So lets get down to business,” he said with a more serious tone, “ I want to open the mines in less than a week.”

“How are we going to do plan to hire all the workers needed in less than a week.”

“I own most of the land around here and I can raise the price of the businesses rent so they have no choice but to come work for us.”

“Thats illegal! You can’t do that.”

“It is perfectly legal, just immoral and I will do it.”

​My first collage is all about how fast time passes in high school. I made it out of transpass that I have been saving transpass scenes freshman year. So I chose a mix from 2011-2013 and I ended with one that shows graduation. The second and fourth one show how the media shows Black women. They all have straight hair and are thin with perfect skin. However the third one shows what I see Black women as. They are colorful, different shapes and sizes, and some have natural hair. And diversity is needed in the media.

Eyes closed and sitting. Thoughts about random things started to run in my head. Slowly, I opened my eyes and I squinted at the large mirror, seeing the reflection of the shower curtains and the tiled walls. I blinked a few times to get used to the extra bright light. Then the door opens, my sister comes in to wash her teeth. A message comes out of my mouth to her. It was spoken through a native language in the United States. I didn’t notice it at first when the words spilled out my mouth. But a few minutes later, I started noticing that I was thinking about things and saying things in my head in English as well. I was surprised, but I felt a little bad about myself. A part of who I am and where I come from was starting to become faint. It never came to my mind that I would have this conflict. I feel as if that actually might be one of the main reason why this is happening to me.

For most of my childhood years I’ve lived in India. However, I am Tibetan. My family comes from a country called Tibet. My family and I lived in India surrounded by two unique cultures. My own, the beautiful Tibetan culture and the beautiful Indian culture.

My life in India can’t even be expressed in words now that I think back about it. Surrounded my friends and families all the time, I was always connected to the environment. I had a strong foundation at which I’d learned about my culture. Even though I didn't lived in India, I went to a tibetan school and I wrote, read and spoke Tibetan. There were many Tibetans living in the village where I lived, so I never forgot my language and cultures.

We’ve lived in India for a long time, so we did have certain words which were always said in hindi. Some of the common words that I thought were in Tibetan, were actually in Hindi. An example of it is the word “shoes.” I’ve always thought it was a tibetan word. My parents and all of my friends said it in hindi all time. However, we never really mixed phases of hindi and tibetan together when we were speaking, unless it was on purpose. My whole family spoke fluent hindi but they never mixed the two language. On a regular basis, my family spoke in tibetan when they were at home and when they were talking to a tibetan person. My friends also talked in tibetan, so I was the same as them. I continuously spoke tibetan unless the person I was talking to didn’t understand the language.               

I’ve learned that the day I left India. The day I left half my family, my grandpa, grandma, aunts, cousins, and friends was the day I was a step further from my culture and language. It’s been about six and half years since I’ve came to America. Life here is so different and its crazy how much I’ve changed with it. Its also crazy how much my family has changed with it.

My sister speaks tibetan but she mixes it a lot with english just like me. As for hindi, both of us have difficulty speaking it, but we’re still able to understand. About thirty percent of the time my mom speaks english at home. She can still speak and understand Hindi very well, but she never uses it at home. My dad does not speak much english at home, he mostly always speaks tibetan. On the other hand, my little brother doesn’t speak tibetan at all. Luckily he can still hear and understand it. In addition to not speaking tibetan, he doesn’t speak or understand hindi.

I became distant to my language. I couldn't speak it anywhere because wherever I went, no one spoke tibetan. The only place I could speak it was at home. When I started school in America, I could only speak english if I wanted to communicate with someone. Thankfully, I was taught a little bit of english in India, so I wasn’t entirely clueless. I was able to build my vocabulary daily, I learned idioms, different ways to say things and I learned slang. I watched and listened to other kids speak to each other. It was one of my main ways that my new friends taught me english. Also, I remember my Esol teacher Ms.Kean. She was always cheerful and very supportive to all the students in Esol. She taught me a lot of new words. She taught me how to get through my first school year in America.

School wasn’t the only place where I learned english. My sister, Ngawang, would also teach me things. My little brother, Dzineon, Ngawang, and I would all bring new things from outside. As time passed, we lived with those new little things. They slowly changed us, day by day. Soon, Dzineon couldn’t speak tibetan anymore. When he spoke, he would say it in english and this somehow automatically made me speak back to him in english. So, I started speaking a lot of english at home and so did my sister.

In 2011, after being in America for four years, the tibetan society in Philadelphia decided to start Tibetan Sunday School for kids like my siblings and I. I learned that I had forgotten the most basic tibetan writing and I had forgotten how to read tibetan. So, I went to sunday school every week. Little by little, I started to be able to read and write in Tibetan again. As for hindi, I remember and understand the language by watching bollywood movies.       

“Through lack of practice and not having others who speak it, I’ve lost most of the Pachuco tongue.” This was written in a passage named From Borderlands/La Frontera by Glona Anzaldía. Just like me, others who speaks more than one language and or had spoken more than one language, experiences situations like this. When you don’t speak a language for a long while, you tend to forget how to speak in it or it gets difficult. People don’t take the time to practice the language they know. We’re lazy, we get lazy. But when you have others who speak it around you, you never forget it. You don’t think of it as practice but we think of it as just talking.