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TOC
  _____"In the summer it was never quite dark, and then I went upstairs… thinking meantime my own thoughts, living my own life, in my own still, shadow-world."  
contents
-Charlotte Bronte, Villette, Ch. XIII.

Orientation
by Holly Kent
_____I move through these halls silent - slippery as a rainshower, and insubstantial as a ghost. No one sees or notices me, I know - I am just another face in a sea of faces - just another body in a crowd of bodies. As I move, I am reminded of middle school gym class - of myself, uneasily threading my way through ranks of graceful girls - girls who, even at that young age, had all of the sleek, athletic grace - all of the cool, complacent confidence I knew I would never possess. I can still see myself as I was, back then - my hair trailing down my back in two thin, unfashionable braids - my short, inelegant legs ruthlessly exposed by my (too-short) regulation gym shorts. I can still remember how I felt, back then - deathly afraid that one of the elegant girls around me would suddenly turn, and notice me - equally afraid that they would not, and that I would always move through the crowd utterly unheeded - entirely unseen.
_____I move towards the elevator swiftly - skillfully cutting through the masses of people standing before it, their faces registering a martyred resignation, as they patiently wait their turn. I am able to secure a place in front of the elevator just before the doors begin to close (for I have learned stealth, if not grace, since my middle-school days) and have also learned that it does not always pay to be patient, and wait your turn.
_____The instant the elevator doors open, I am gone - down the hall, to the left, down another hall - and then I am before it. My desk.
_____I always wanted something of my own, when I was growing up. Something that wasn't portable, I mean. For we were always moving - never in the same place for more than two years at a stretch, in all the years of my childhood. My parents always said that it would get easier, for me - but I always knew that it would not. I never stopped hating it - the pain of leaving the old, and the pain of adjusting to the new. Whenever we moved, I would try to carve out a niche, for myself - to find some place, somewhere, where I belonged. In one town, I decided that the big elm tree at the end of the street would be my secret hideaway. I went there whenever I was sad, to cry in private, and take comfort in how small everything - even my parents - looked from my perch amidst topmost branches. In another, I decided that one swing on the school playground was my swing - I headed straight for it, regular as clockwork, at the beginning of every recess period, hoping that the other kids would learn to respect it as my territory. They didn't, of course. One day a big boy with mean eyes and meaner fists knocked me out of it, with one well-placed blow. I still have the scars on my knees, from my fall onto the rough blacktop - they are one of few souvenirs I do have from the long, traveling years of my childhood.
_____I run my hand over my desk's finished wood - across its solid, heavy top - down one of its thick, curved legs. Real oak, my boss told me, on my first day. They'll have to use a crane to get that thing out of here. She'd tried to have the movers get rid of it when she'd first moved in, she said, but they simply couldn't budge it. Not an inch. Not a whole team of them. And so, despite her dislike of it - of its fat legs - its thick, inelegant bulk - the desk stayed. And became my desk, the day that I arrived here, six months ago.
_____And now a little gold nameplate sits on top of it - a nameplate with my name on it - my name, spelled out in clear, strong capital letters. I like it. The nameplate, the thick, immovable desk, my chatty boss - all of it.
_____I slip through these halls like a shadow, unheeded and unseen. Few people know me, here. Few people see me. Or if they do, they see only my outline - if asked, they could probably sketch a picture of woman with hair pulled back into a severe, professional bun - a woman wearing a skirt of a discreet length - a blouse in a muted shade. But that is all. No more than that.
_____And yet, despite that - despite the fact that my anonymity has gone largely unchallenged - my presence largely unacknowledged - I know that I belong here. Strange, that I should belong in a place which seems to need me so little. I know that if I left, this place would not be shaken to its foundations. The office would continue to run with its usual smoothness, even if my assistance were withdrawn. The elevators would continue to open and close - my boss to gossip and laugh - my desk to sit, with the peaceful immobility of a Buddha, in the center of the room. Nothing would change. I could walk away - as I have walked away from so many places, in my life - and still the clocks would tick, and the secretaries would type, and the sun would rise and set, just as usual.
_____Yet despite that, I belong here. I belong sitting at this desk, every morning - gossiping with my boss, every lunch time - getting into that elevator, every night. I belong in this chair, with its faded pink cushions and well-worn arm rests, with the elaborate designs carved into their sides. I belong by this window, looking out at the evergreen trees and the damp, springy grass - at the deer who slip through the woods every morning, silent and solemn as ghosts.
_____Somehow I feel as though I have always known this place - always sat beneath these high ceilings - always worked within these dark walls - always walked these thickly carpeted floors. Somehow I feel as though in all of the mad rush of my life before this, part of me was always sitting here - sitting still - behind this desk. And I take a strange comfort in it - in knowing that this desk - my desk - was here, serene and motionless, through all of my wandering, restless childhood.
3
It does not intend to ever leave here, I know.
And neither do I.
We both of us know a good thing, when we see it.