#yoooo why is the read more break so hard on mobile Tumblr 😞
Text
JV Childhood: Part I
Summary: Jackie wished they would all just stop staring.
Author's Note: So this is the first part in my mini anthology for Open Heart. I've been saying a lot that we need to be telling the stories all the characters who are BIPOC because there is so much depth to those stories to explore. This first part of Jackie's childhood and part two is her adolescent years, up through high school.
Day Two of @choicescocappreciationweek!
Thanks goes out to @somewillwin. I asked her some of her headcanons for Jackie and I used it to help me write!
Her first experience of true hate was when she was nine.
She remembered her parents whispering in the living room, her mother’s voice trembling as Jackie sat in the living room with her siblings, partly distracted by the cartoons on the TV.
She hadn't really understood why her mother was so stressed out at the time. Her teachers had the same nervous energy and when she went down to their family store, all of the customers were walking with their head down. Even their employee Tom's smile did not quite meet his eyes and he kept glancing at the TV which had been playing the news.
“Jaikalina, Avi.”
She looked up from the table where she was finishing her homework to see her mother with her purse in her hand.
“I'm going to lock the door and go to the store. You're not allowed to open it for anyone, alright? Avi, you're in charge. Dev and Anika are both asleep."
“Isn’t Tom working?”
“He quit, Jaikalina.” She pursed her lips at her daughter, finding the right words in her head. “It’s… complicated but he’s scared. And I don’t blame him.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain later, beta.” Her mother pressed a kiss to her forehead before shrugging on her coat. “I’ll be back.”
Avi watched their mother go with a scowl on his face.
"Tom quit because he doesn't want to be associated with us. Don't let her sugarcoat it for you." He said cooly to Jackie. She turned to him in confusion.
"What do you mean?"
He looked at his little sister with a look of annoyance and a little bit of fear?
"It means that life is going to be different for us, behan. You'll see it soon enough." He went to his room and slammed the door behind him without another word.
-
Jackie was sitting on the couch when her mother finally got home. Avi hadn't come down the rest of the night and after finishing her homework Jackie had turned on TV to distract herself.
“You’re still awake, beta.” She said in surprise.
“Yes. And you told me you would explain later. It’s later now.”
In the dim light, Jackie could see the exhaustion in her mother’s still beautiful face. She gave her a sad smile before gesturing to the dining table. Jackie hopped down and sat across her mother who was focused on a spot on the table.
“You’ve always been straight to the point.” Her mother said sadly. “And I suppose you’re old enough to hear this and I want you to hear it from me before anyone else. Tom was scared because of the things that have been happening to our neighbors and people like us. Do you remember when the airplanes crashed? Well, the men who did it were of Islam and they didn’t like a lot of what America was doing.”
She thought about the moment she saw the planes hit the towers. “But those people are all innocent. And we didn’t do anything. The people who did that are not even our people.”
"But we look enough like them."
She frowned, remembering how her friend Vera had missed a few days of school.
"They hate us because of how we look." Her mother sighed. "We look like the enemy to them."
"That's not fair."
Her mother gave her a weary smile. "No, it's not. But our safety is most important, Jaikalina. I need you to go by your American names for now."
Jackie frowned.
"For how long, maan?"
Her mother didn't answer.
-
She remembered leaving the town about a year later. Despite having better prices and better variety than a lot of the other convenience stores, there had been less and less people coming in. It was mostly her parents' friends stopping by at one point but when it was declared that the country had gone to war, they were afraid too.
Avi had found himself getting trouble with the school. She couldn't understand why he had been so angry since that night but their parents had agreed that they needed new scenery.
So she found herself in a new place, right after the new year. Her father had found accounting work until they could afford to rent a storefront and her mother was working a secretarial job for a local nonprofit.
She felt the eyes of her classmates on her and she nervously tugged at her skirt in her new 5th grade classroom. Her mother had insisted that she dress proper for her first day of her new school and she felt like one of those kids at a snobby rich private school.
"This is Jaikalina-"
"I go by Jackie, actually." She corrected her teacher, remembering what her mother had said. Her classmates stared at her and one of them raised her hand.
"Where are you from?"
"We- we moved here from New Jersey-"
"No, but where are you actually from?"
She stared at the girl for a moment, unsure how to answer that question. Their teacher gave the girl a look and she put her hand down.
"We don't ask people questions like that, Hannah."
"Yes, teacher." Hannah said with a sacharrine smile. "I'm sorry for being rude, Jackie."
Jackie suddenly realized why her brother got into fights. She stood there frozen for a moment, before her teacher directed her to her seat and she stared blankly at the chalkboard.
She got her lunch from her backpack after morning classes and followed the rest of her classmates to the lunch tables. Jackie sat down at a table and pulled out leftovers from the night before.
"I don't want to sit next to her." Hannah, the girl from before said in a loud voice. "Her food smells and my parents say that people who look like her are terrorists."
Terrorist.
She had heard that word coming from the TV, describing the men who had flown the planes into the towers. She stared at the girl who had used the word and was shocked to see the amount of hate in her eyes.
She simultaneously wanted to cry and scream as the eyes of her classmates turned to them. There were pitying looks in some of their faces but none of them seemed to be willing to say anything. She turned back to Hannah who had a confident smirk on her face and Jackie had the urge to slap it off.
Then, a jolt of fear trickled through her bones.
If she hit her, will they label her as a terrorist? Would she get in trouble like Avi and be labeled a bad kid?
"Well, people who say things like you do because of the color of my skin are bullies." Jackie finally said. "And probably racist too."
There was an oooh from one of the other students and a few of them cheered. Hannah narrowed her eyes.
"You better watch yourselves around this one. She'll backstab you for her country." She retorted as she walked away.
Her country? She was born here, in the United States…
She was still thinking about it when she got home with her brother and younger siblings later that day. Her brother let out a big sigh and dropped his backpack on the ground before plopping on the couch. Jackie looked at him, her backpack still on.
"I think I finally understand why you got into those fights, bhai." Jackie said.
Avi looked at her with a wry smile. "I'm sorry to hear that. I hoped you'd be spared that a little longer."
Jackie sat down on the couch next to him and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
"The people at my school here- they put me in some of the 'lower' classes because they saw my old record. The kids in my class are mostly like us. I think the only black and Hispanic kids are in my class but they get it. They get the stuff we're going through."
"It's not fair."
"Naw, it's not behan. It will probably never be fair for us." Avi sighed. "I just hope that you'll be able to do better than I will. It's too late for me."
Jackie frowned. "You're only in high school."
"Yeah, I'm already in high school. It's going to be hard for me to get into college when the classes I'm taking aren't considered rigorous. I was never as into school as you were anyways. I'll probably go to community college for a while and then find a job. You though, Jaks, have time and you're smarter than I am."
"I can't believe your path is basically decided by the time you're 15."
He let out a humorless laugh. "A lot of your path is decided before you're even born."
-
"Jackie, wait. I want you to take this letter to your parents."
She froze, eyeing her teacher warily. She had mostly kept her head down in school, ignoring Hannah and focusing on her schoolwork. She didn't really have any friends, perse but she didn't mind. She had found a renewed interest in reading and instead of playing with her classmates, she would find a tree to sit and read at.
"I didn't do anything." She denied immediately, crossing her arms. Her teacher looked at her in surprise and her face twitched into a sad smile.
"I know, sweetheart. Just give this to them, okay?"
Jackie stared at the envelope and before grabbing it, stuffing it haphazardly into her backpack. When she got home, she slapped the letter on the table.
"What's this, behan?" Avi asked curiously from the kitchen. He had heated up some of the samosas from dinner the night before and was snacking on one as Jackie dropped her bag on the table.
"Something for mom and dad. Teacher wants me to give it to them."
Her brother took the envelope and opened it up. Scanning the letter, he looked up at his sister with a grin.
"Your teacher wants you to enter the advanced classes when you go to junior high. You have to take a test and if you pass, you can take them."
Jackie's face lit up. "Really?"
"Yeah." He ruffled her head. "I'm proud of you, Jaks."
-
"You'll be okay without me."
Jackie looked up at her brother. The summer before she went into junior high, he took a few classes over the summer and when school started again his grades had been much better than before.
So much so that when he graduated high school two years later, he had surprised everyone by telling them he was moving away and starting college in the fall. He had gotten accepted in a state school a few hours away. He hadn't decided what he was studying yet but the tuition was cheap and he had applied on a whim since his grades had improved.
"You'll start out high school right and I know you'll know what you want to do by the time you go to college. You'll be able to go to any school you want and you'll be the famous Varma, I know it."
"I'll miss you. Do you have to go?"
He laughed. "I'll miss you too. Take care of yourself and Dev and Ani too, okay?"
At the sound of their names, Dev and Anika, who had just turned 8 and 6, came forward and each grabbed one of her hands.
"Bye bye Avi. I'll miss you." Anika said quietly.
"Bye, Ani." He got on the bus and waved at them until the bus was too far away for them to see anymore.
#yoooo why is the read more break so hard on mobile Tumblr 😞#jackie varma#open heart#playchoices#missywrites#choicescocaw
35 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
