My name is Constantin, but it's not really anymore. I am not even supposed to tell anyone, but this is my diary so I don’t think it matters much. I got my name changed at the Interior Ministry near Hostivice. I am called Lawley now. I like it because it sounds like the English word laundry. I never spoke English until about three months ago. I mostly spoke Czech, sprinkled with bits of Knaaic and Yiddish profanity. When my mom told me we were moving to America, she enrolled me in an accelerated English course in a large building called the English House. It was really hard for me to settle down in the English House because I wasn’t ever planning on speaking english. Im bad at it anyway, but my pronunciation is great, they say.
I got this diary at while I was saying my goodbyes to my other teachers who taught at my old gymnázium. Its actually a Czech mathematics book, but something had gone wrong in the production and all of the pages ended up being blank. They gave it to me because they didn't want all of the paper going to waste. I like writing in it. Its so big and weighty, holding it in my arms makes me feel like an author. Being able to write had distracted me from crying so much. I was crying a lot when we left because I didn’t want to leave my home. The hardest part was leaving my mother’s cunicology farm. She sold our rabbits to some man with no hair. That's all I could remember from that man. Now every time I see a bald man I start to tear up, which has led to a lot of tears because a lot of people in airports are bald. Does flying in an airplane make your hair fall out? Is that why all of the people here are bald? Will it grow back if you stop? I saw a service dog lick a bald baby’s head so maybe dog spit makes your hair grow back. That's gross because dogs eat everything in front of them. I never had a dog. I've only had rabbits. Now I want to cry again.
I fell asleep. I was still holding my diary when I woke up so that's good. We are almost to America. I don't know what I will do when I get off the plane because this is the last plane of the trip. We are over Nebraska now. Nebraska looks like a quilt this high up.
The state is nearly a perfect square on the map, all for a panhandle that juts out on the left. I asked my mom if what happens in the panhandle, but someone sitting behind me overheard, and, in an accent that was hard for me to grasp fully said, "hardly nothing”.
šťastný nový rok!
The house was here before the cornfield, and the cornfield was here before the funeral home across the road, probably. I woke up on the bare mattress upstairs which had left a floral pattern on my face in the morning, which really scared me because when I looked in the mirror I thought I had a rash.
I drew a picture of my new house
I am standing in the kitchen right now. The clock on the stove says “11:46” and the sun is shining. I don’t even know what to do right now. My mom got up at 4 am to a call from the freight terminal telling her that our belongings had just arrived on a train coming all the way from Rhode Island. Before they were in Rhode Island they were on a cargo ship in Germany, and before they were in Germany they were in our house. We don’t have a car, so my mom got on the public bus. I wanted to look up the name "startran", which was on the side of the bus, but we don't have a computer.
I cant remember exactly what I packed because it was hard to see through all the tears. We left a few things in the Czech Republic, like our kroje and some cookware and a few other things in boxes I never looked in because they were shoved under the beds. Those things we left behind are with my grandma, who isn't even my grandma. My mom isn't even my mom either. It's hard to tell if I was adopted or just a hitchhiker. That's what people in my village called me because I suffered from statelessness, which means that the Czech Republic, Slovenia, or any country for that matter didn’t recognize me as a citizen. I got my citizenship in the end, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. I live in America now.
My grandma refuses to say I'm adopted. Instead she calls me a wild animal because my mom found me in her rabbit pen in the middle of winter. My grandma says I had a tail and large cornets sticking out from the sides of my head. I don’t really believe her now, but when I was little I did. I told all of my classmates that I was a víla and I got a punishment for lying.
My grandma owned the rabbit farm before my mom did, so I think that's why she doesn’t like me too much. I am a víla hitchhiker.
I haven't been busy besides unpacking my things from the freight terminal and taking apart and putting back together the television remote countless times. That's actually the problem. I don’t have anything to do now, but there is so much to do. It’s endless. I could read the television guide, I could paint the house, I could walk the dog that we don’t have, I could hitchhike until I don’t know where I am anymore. That's what I was made to do; hitchhike.
But thats not true because my mom has always told me that I was made to listen, like a therapist or Michael the angel. That either means I become a therapist or protect my land.
(Lawley draws a smiling face here).
The bank on the hill named “Saint Sebastian Bank” slants downwards at nearly an 180 degree angle, and has a big blue PVC banner tied to the front that reads “now hiring”. They would take me in, my mom says. Just like everyone else in my life; taking me in from the cold.
I am ironing my best shirt for my interview tomorrow. The hot water splashed on my feet.
For the thousandth time in my life, I was taken in. I got a job at Saint Sebastian Bank, which wasn't actually a bank. A therapy organization had bought the building, but the building still had the words “Saint Sebastian Bank” in blue and white on the front, and a small caricature of a man impaled with arrows, tied to a tree that had money for leaves. When finding the directions from my house, I noticed the building was still under the name, “Saint Sebastian Bank”, like the true identity to the building was unknown. If I could ask the building who they really are, they might say "Im a therapy building now", even though thats not what the outside says. But I guess that doesn't matter. A house is whatever is inside it.
It smelt like sawdust on the inside, which almost had distracted me entirely from the ridiculously large old fashioned vault just past the receptionist’s desk. There were large pots of fake flowers and rows of chairs lined up against both walls, which forced you to look at the other miserable people sitting across from you. My interview was with a lady who had messy brownish-blonde hair. I avoid calling it dirty blonde. Her name was Sandy. She wore navy heels with a silver buckle on the toe of each shoe. There was a thin line from her skin-toned tights on the back of her legs.
Sandy was sweet. She looked happy to interview me, happy to take me to a room in the back, happy to give me a job. I didn’t need a masters degree, she said, which was nice to hear because I'm not in school. I haven’t even thought about school ever since I graduated from my old international school. I was seventeen when I graduated because as soon as I got my Czech citizenship at age four, my mom rushed me out the door and right into school. She’s since apologized for pushing me so hard at such a young age, which, I don't know— I wouldn't have cared if the kids weren't so mean to me. I used to put pheasants in my school bag and release them at the other kids as soon as I got there. Getting citizenship was hard because they couldn't tell what sex I was by looking. A rare case of intersexuality.
I wonder when the constant adoption or espousement will stop. I wonder if one day I will house myself. My mom doesn’t want me to live alone. She has always scared me into staying with her by telling me some gruesome story about a sibling I had who ran away and was killed on the railroad tracks in Germany. My grandma tells me I never had a sibling because my mother was a virgin.
I used to think there were two boys in my head. One was an angel and one was the devil. Sometimes I would mentally ring a bell, and whoever would get there first would be the one I listened to. The angel liked me the most. I would always try to get the devil to admit he liked me too, but he never admitted it.
Things have been so interesting lately. I feel like a movie character. Im seeing in third person, thinking in first. I always have company, I don't spend any mornings or nights alone anymore, and I don't watch TV as often. I used to watch TV a lot, especially at night because I liked to hug the television for warmth before going to bed. My bed is always warm nowadays.
There is loud tapping and on my wall coming in from the other room that gets longer and louder every day. Its been going on for weeks. I think they might be mounting a shelf?
Sean always tells me the story about the day his dad was buried. He says that it was so windy, a chicken laid the same egg seven times. I laughed so hard I spit out my juice and had to run to the kichen sink to catch what was dripping down my chin. His dad died 5 years ago because someone shot him while he was crossing private property on the way to work. He was always late to everything, according to Sean. I feel bad for laughing at the chicken story because, he opened the story with saying it was a funeral. I hope he doesn't think Im laughing at his misfortune. He's had a very sad life. I am not supposed to write about this due to a confidentiality agreement between Sean and I (as his therapist), but Sean told me that he was just about 18 when his dad died.
My Mom left me in America while she goes back to the Czech Republic to take care of my grandmother. She has whooping cough. I wanted to go along but that would mean I miss work, so I decided to stay here in Nebraska. Now Im regretting it because my mom decided Im not old enough to stay on my own so she put her rabbit statue in my room to watch me! I am 21, and she put a statue in charge!!! She says it can talk to her *but I don't believe it *(Lawley scratches this part out due to paranoia that the statue can actually understand him). It is a family heirloom. A two-headed rabbit statue my ancestors made in the 1700s when they found a two-headed rabbit in their farm and decided to put it inside a box that the statue is mounted on. They thought it was a sign of god. I wish we hadn't sold the farm. I could have taken over but my grandma didn't want me to. Sean is coming over today to keep me company.
I love the toaster strudels Sean buys me. He comes to my house with toaster strudels and lemonaid and chewing gum. They are all the things I like the most. They are really the only things I've been eating lately. He sits down on the couch an I lay over his thighs because he rubs my back whenever Im on my stomach. He tells me the story about his uncle who had type 2 diabetes. He has told me the story twice now but I dont mind. He starts the story the same way each time. “Did I ever tell you the story about my uncle and his donkey? His foot came off in his boot due to diabetes. He smelled so strongly of sugar that his donkey couldn’t stay away. He ate him and then licked out his boot clean”, he says and then awkwardly strokes my calves as if he doesn't know where to place his hands. Im like the donkey that can't stay away. I love sugar. Ill lick his boot clean.
The noises are so loud. I want to go in the next room to see what is up, but I don't want the contractors to think they are bothering me. Im sure Ill see it once it's done.
Im too scared to go to work. The noises in my wall arent from renovation in the room next to mine. Nobody even goes in there. I peaked through the door yesterday at 5 pm when the noises were the loudest they had been and there wasn't anyone in there. Theres a large crack going down the wall. Does it say something? I don't feel good. I feel sick and Im writing this in the bathroom on the floor. It feels like electricity is running through my mouth and Im salivating intensely and can't stop.
When Lawley came back from the bathroom, that was the end of his diary
