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Blacktop | Dec 20 2002

She walks along the fence on the far side of the playground, heading toward the blacktop. She’s in third grade and no one in third grade ever goes to the blacktop. The blacktop is bigger than the whitetop and doesn’t have painted lines for hopscotch or kickball or bottlecaps; it’s just black. The only kids that play there are older kids, and some have been suspended.

She doesn’t really want to go to the blacktop, but according to the game she’s playing, you have to go farther each time. Last time she made it to the backtop and stepped over with one foot, so this time she has to step over with both. This is the rule, and though it’s her game and her rule, it would be wrong to break it just because she doesn’t want to step all the way.

When she reaches the edge of the blacktop, she looks down and sees that the surface is made of the same thing streets are made of. Everything is made of something, and this is what the blacktop is made of. Seeing this gives her courage. She steps forward, first one foot, then the other, and stands with both feet in the blacktop.

Nothing happens.

Looking along the length of the fence into the far corner of the playground, she sees some trash swirl into the air and fall back down and swirl up again. Then she turns and faces the whitetop, which is different now.

The changes are all small things, and at first she can’t see them, she just knows they’re there. Soon, though, she realizes that one of the kickball fields starts farther from the building and that the dodgeball circle is smaller than it was and painted a darker shade of yellow.

To make the lines change back, she steps into the whitetop with both feet, but nothing happens. Then she steps back into the blacktop, but again nothing happens. Several more times she steps between the surfaces, standing on one side, then the other, but nothing ever happens.

She looks for the playground monitor, Mrs. Chamberlain, who always stands near the bathroom the little kids use. A woman stands exactly where Mrs. Chamberlain always stands, but she’s not Mrs. Chamberlain.

Scared now, or something worse than scared, she runs to where Laura and MJ were playing Chinese chink before, but the girls playing Chinese chink now aren’t Laura and MJ. She scans the playground, frantically searching for a familiar face, it doesn’t matter whose, only none of these kids even go to her school. They all look like kids who would go to her school, but none really are.

Later, in the Vice-Principal’s office (a different Vice-Principal, though no less mean), she tries to tell him how she stepped with both feet on the blacktop, but the Vice-Principal isn’t listening. Instead he wants to know what her “real” name is and where she “really” comes from, because to him she’s not a student in the school, nor is her teacher a real teacher, nor her street a real street.

More than anything she wants to scream, to yell as loud as she can, but something tells her to stay quiet from now on and not say anything to the Vice-Principal, or to anyone, no matter what anyone says, or what happens, or anything.