When Being a Walking Encyclopedia is Not Enough
“Hey, Walking Encyclopedia!”
A group of girls approached, laughing and shoving each other. I ignored them. I was sitting behind the gas meter in the corner of the playground, by the red brick wall. My bare knee was up under my navy blue pleated school skirt. I was watching the ants go about their work. Sometimes they carried bits of grass or dead insects into their nest. One time, I saw a team of them hauling one of those giant winged cockroaches, about as long as my thumb, into the nest. Now and then, I would pick up a pinch of sand, put it on my bare knee, and watch the grains trickle down like a waterfall. Sometimes I would imagine that I was among the grains of sand, tumbling down my leg to join the ant nest. It would be fun to slide down my leg with all the other grains of sand.
The girls got closer.
“Hey, Walking Encyclopedia!” They were standing in a tight circle around me, laughing. “What’s the capital of North Dakota?”
“Bismark,” I replied without looking up, and put another pinch of sand on my knee.
“What’s 17 times 17?”
“289,” I replied. What was the point of all this?
“Can you help us? We are stuck in Sister Agnes’ nose!”
They didn’t look stuck in anyone’s nose to me, but I went along with it. I generally take people at their word. I don’t like to lie, so why should anyone else? Besides, it was usually the safest option. “Jump around and tickle her nose and make her sneeze,” I replied.
They jumped up and down a few times while laughing loudly. “It’s not working!”
“Get out the same way as you got in,” I suggested.
“We don’t remember how we got in,” said one.
“Well, if you don’t remember how you got in, how do you expect me to know?”
“Cos you’re the Walking Encyclopedia!” Then, screeching with laughter, they ran off.
That was the way it went. Girls would come up to me, ask a few trivia questions, then present me with some unusual problem to solve, such as being stuck in the teacher’s nose. Then they would laugh and run away. I still don’t know what was so funny.
I was in third grade. The only friend I had was Jesus. He was brave and kind, and some people hated him for being weird. Jesus also had a mean father, that’s why he had to take human form and be tortured to death. This was necessary before his cruel father could bring himself to forgive our human failings. And he wasn’t from Earth either. He understood what I was going through.
The space race was on, science fiction was in its golden age, and there were shows about alien visitors to Earth. These books and shows gave me some clues as to who and what I am. There was Uncle Martin, My Favorite Martian. There was the Robinson Family, meeting up with strange (yet strangely humanoid) life forms while they were Lost in Space. There was Rhoda the Robot, whom scientists had created to work on the Moon. And there was me.
I was pretty sure I was from another planet. I even knew which one: third from the sun, Sirius B. On that planet, we were intelligent tree-like beings, something like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings. In addition to our individual minds, we all shared in a universal consciousness. It was unthinkable to harm another living being because we felt everything. Besides, there was no need to harm any other creature because we got everything we needed directly from our Sun.
If this seems far-fetched, I was in good company. Many traditional peoples around the world say they come from the Stars, or that their priests, ruling class, or ancestors did. That’s why the Lakota people make Star Blankets and honor White Buffalo Woman, who came from the Pelades to help the people — first for the Lakota thousands of years ago and then, in 1994, for all of humanity. That’s why the Dogon people of West Africa know about Sirius B even though that star is not visible to the naked eye. This may even be the reason why many traditions envision their Gods as living in the sky, why religious art often features stars, and why people tend to look upward when praying. Even the Bible speaks of romantic liaisons between the Sons of God and the Daughters of Man.
In most of these accounts, the Star People came to help us with morality, technology, and religious rituals that sustain community ties. By some accounts, they contributed DNA that gave our ancestors our extravagantly large brains and our irrational thirst for gold. They return from time to time whenever humanity faces a crisis. By these traditions and the genetic memories coded in my DNA, I knew that I am different because I come from far away, and there’s no use fretting about it. I knew that my unusual talents were not for personal gain; they were to help the community.
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Although this may seem far-fetched, it is no more so than the idea that God had to destroy all life on earth by a flood because people were doing naughty things with angels, or that Jesus had to die by torture so God could forgive our sins. We all need sacred stories to help us be kind and brave and to persevere through hard times. They need not be historically factual; they need only provide guidance and set a good example for us to follow.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, I couldn’t even keep track of who was who. Most of our teachers were nuns who wore heavy black veils and gowns called “habits.” The nuns all looked the same to me, and sometimes I got in trouble for mixing them up. My peers all looked the same to me; that’s why I was so easy to bully. My aunts, uncles, and cousins all looked the same to me, so I was always careful not to use anyone’s name when visiting relatives. I could see their facial features alright, but they did not register. So I rely on other cues to recognize people, such as voice, hair, build, complexion, and distinctive mannerisms. But it took a while before a person would come together in my mind. Before a person came together, they looked to me just like everyone else, and everyone looked the same.
Blame it on a brain glitch. There’s a small area of the brain, in the fusiform gyrus, dedicated to recognizing faces. It doesn’t work in about 2% of the population, mostly in people on the autism spectrum and in their close blood relatives. I didn’t know I was face blind. I didn’t even know faceblindness was a thing back then. Most people didn’t. Obviously, my family said, I just didn’t care about other people, that’s why I didn’t bother to be polite or to remember who was who.
Much later on, I read an article in Wired Magazine about prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. The article described the struggles of a man named Bill Chossier, who could not recognize people by their faces. Reading that article, I understood some of the struggles I faced. Since faceblindness is associated with autism, I did more reading and found out that I fit the profile for adult female autistics to a T. My entire life instantly shifted into a new perspective. Before that, I was just rude and weird. In that moment, I saw that my struggles were not character flaws; they were due to living in a society that wasn’t made for people whose brains are wired differently. My self-hatred melted away, and I began learning to extend to myself the compassion I held for every other living being. I was 50 years old.
I had a lot of living to do before I could know these things. Meanwhile, my classmates either bullied or ignored me. My father would engage me in discussion, which often turned into debates over politics or religion, or both. Then he would hit me on the head if I bested him in the debate. And everything was always too bright and noisy. So I liked to hide behind the sofa and read the encyclopedias. It was safe back there. No one could bother me. They probably didn’t even know I was there. I would grab a volume from the shelf, open it at random, and read.
Reading about dinosaurs would lead to reading about their evolution, the ancient architecture of tetrapod bodies, the Carboniferous Era, the process of fossilization, and the production of gasoline from crude oil. Long before global warming was a public concern, I pondered the effects of returning to the atmosphere the carbon sequestered during the age of dinosaurs. Wouldn’t that return us to the climate of the Carboniferous Era, where ferns grew tall as trees, insects were as large as your forearm, and most of Earth’s land masses hosted tropical forests? Humans don’t do well in such a climate. The humid heat strains the body, weakens the will, and sustains the vectors of tropical diseases. Do we want this?
Reading about prime numbers led to an introduction to set theory, number theory, and cryptography. I learned about the Fibonacci Series, Pascal’s Triangle, Pascal’s Wager, various minerals, bird species, handwriting analysis, medicinal plants, and much more. If I got a scrape or a bruise, I knew which leaves to apply to the wound. If I got hungry or thirsty while out and about, I knew which wild herbs and berries were good to eat. I got to be pretty good at analyzing my teacher’s handwriting when she wrote on the board. From my secret hiding place behind the sofa, I could explore the Universe, and no one would bother me.
A few years went by, and we got to eighth grade and received an invitation to take part in the Junior Quiz Bowl. That was an academic game that was very popular in my youth. There were also versions of Quiz Bowl for high school and college students. The first round was city-wide, the next was state-wide, and the third was national and televised. Two teams of students from two different schools would sit at a long, narrow table, and the moderator would ask questions. If you knew the answer, you would hit your buzzer quickly, before anyone else could hit theirs. If your answer was correct, your team would get a point and a “free throw,” where they could answer another question for another point. There were up to three free throws. A strong player could keep the other team out of action for a good while.
Our teacher, Sister Maternostra, was the faculty advisor. I recognized her by her broad, matronly figure and a distinctive nasal voice that made her sound like she had tinfoil in her throat and a clothes pin on her nose. Some kids called her “Sister Mater-noser” and imitated her voice as a joke. Sister Maternostra picked the five strongest eighth-grade students for the team, and I was among them. Then she told us to vote on who should be the team captain and who should be the alternate. Even though I was still the Walking Encyclopedia, I got voted in as the alternate because I was just too weird. I was shorter than most of the other kids, my mother kept my hair cropped in a homemade pixie haircut, and my chest was still as flat as Oklahoma. I had an odd gait and spoke in a peculiar monotone with a certain rhythm as if I were reciting bad poetry.
The captain was Judy, of course, because she was the top dog in the cool kids clique. She was an Ice Queen, with waist-length blonde hair in corkscrew curls, blue eyes, and delicately freckled pink skin even in the summertime.
Judy always caught the eye because she wasn’t like the rest of us, either. There aren’t many natural blue-eyed blondes in New Orleans. Most white folks there are of the “spicy” variety, with Mediterranean complexions and features suggestive of remote mixed ancestry. We smelled like sweat and soap. By contrast, Queen Judy was pink, blonde, pleasingly plump, and always wore Yardley Lemon Fresh Cologne.
Judy did not speak like the rest of us. either. Our soft, non-rhotic vowel blends, flattened consonants, and distinctive rhythms were a secret tribute to the Black domestic workers who had raised our forbears. Our broad New England vowels were from the nuns who had come from the Northeast after the Louisiana Purchase to teach our ancestors English. And some of our idioms were transliterations from 18th-century French. But Judy spoke like an actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood, with (what I later learned was) a Mid-Atlantic accent that sounded both classy and contemptuous. Above all, she had a way about her that let her tell others what to do, and they would obey without hesitation or question. Even though she was different also, everyone loved her. Why?
Every day, we were excused from the last hour of class so we could go to a vacant classroom for drills and practice. We took turns going through textbooks, current media, Encyclopedias, and dictionaries for questions and asking our teammates for answers. They didn’t like me to pick questions for some reason. And I knew most of the answers, but every time I opened my mouth, the other kids on the team would give me dirty looks or kick me under the table. So I was relegated to scorekeeper. My peer’s reactions did not bode well, but I felt that there was nothing I could do. Pride was a sin.
The big day came. It was a hot day in late April. We rode in the convent’s old wood paneled station wagon to the Municipal Auditorium, where the game would be held. Spring comes early in New Orleans, and lasts only a few weeks before outdoors turns into a sauna until Halloween. We got to the quiz bowl, and our team was up. I sat in the audience with Sister Maternostra.
The moderator asked questions. Anything from math, social studies, history, geography, current events, etc, was fair game. I cringed as I watched our team struggle. They rarely got a chance to hit the buzzer first, and their answers were often incorrect. The other team kept hitting the buzzer and getting free throws while I sat beside Sister Maternostra and mouthed the answers. Judy started looking teary-eyed, then sat perfectly still, as if zoning out. Sister Maternostra leaned over and whispered to me that if I knew the answers, I should write them down and show her. I had already been doing that, sort of. I was feeling agitated, so I soothed myself by writing the answers in pencil on my white school blouse. I always used a pencil when I wrote on my shirt so that it would wash out. I knew a lot of the answers. I was still Walking Encyclopedia.
During a break, Sister Maternostra asked the other members of our team if one of them would step down so I could play. No, they said. She’s too weird. Her shirt is all written up, and she might pick her nose or cut a fart. We’re good. So I remained in the audience, writing down all the answers for Sister Maternostra. I had used up all the space on my shirt, so I switched to the paper that Sister Maternostra handed me.
By then, Judy was nearly catatonic. It occurred to me that Sister Maternostra ought to pull Judy out and put me in. But I kept quiet because I knew that pride was a sin. My experience, though painful, was temporary. But I could burn in hell forever if I spoke up and we got in a car accident, and I died on the way home before I could go to Confession.
That’s why my father would hit me across the temples if I got too sassy. I thought everyone’s fathers did things like that. After all, he was simply doing what any father would do, protecting me. It was better to take temporary pain from a human being than endure the eternal wrath of God and burn in Hell forever for thought-sins. Later, I learned from social media that some Black fathers are harsh on their sons for similar reasons: “Better I beat you and let you live than some gun-crazy cop kills you.” My father’s god was the ultimate gun-crazy cop, so I kept quiet and stayed beside Sister Maternostra in the audience.
We didn’t make it to state. We didn’t even make it to the elimination round that afternoon.
On the way home, the others on the team chatted in the stifling air of the station wagon. That was before most cars had air conditioning. I couldn’t follow most of their conversation because the engine noise blotted out what they were saying. Now and then, I tried to put in a word. I got that all too familiar feeling that I was moving my mouth but no sound was coming out.
That was when I found out that who you know is a lot more important than what you know. And it helps to refrain from farting or picking your nose.
I miss my home planet. I was a tree. Third from the sun, Sirius B.
