Growing up in the American South, I knew I was very Americanized. My accent and interests were the same as my classmates. And nothing about my physical appearance let on that my background was all that different. Yet I still found myself codeswitching, or changing the way I spoke and acted, even before I learned what codeswitching meant. For example, when entering a room full of Bermudians, I knew always to say “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening” straight away. To do otherwise was unthinkable and worse: rude. That is a cardinal sin among Bermudians, being rude. It is especially frowned upon from the too-Americanized children of expats.
I never wanted any of my family members still in Bermuda to think that I had been led too far away from our roots. Around them, I affected my best Bermudian accent. And I developed a taste for farina pie, a local dish, even when all my cousins said they did not like. It was my way of reinforcing my connection to the island.
I kept a small Bermudian flag on my desk all through college. And even now, I have a five-by-seven-inch, framed map of Bermuda on the wall in my office.
When I visit my family’s homeland these days, I feel much more American than I did as a kid. And I am okay with that. My adolescent cousins want me to bring all sorts of goods that they do not have access to in Bermuda whenever I fly home. I hear them modulate their voices and try out new slang to sound more American. And at this, I smile. No matter where we are, we long for a little bit of something else.
BERNA DA’COSTA
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Sophomore
HIGH SCHOOL: Stuyvesant High School
BORN: Goa, India
LIVES: Bronx, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: It wasn’t instant. It was awkward pauses in the middle of conversations and not knowing what to say next. But somehow, my mentor still heard the words that were left behind through the writing I shared with her. It has become easy to write around Jamie, to sit in comfortable silence behind our laptop screens and try to capture our thoughts onto the blank page. There are people who have been in my life, who have encouraged me to write, and write, and write. I will always remember those people. My mentor is now one of them.
JAMIE SERLIN
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Director, West Wing Writers, LLC
BORN: Philadelphia, PA
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Though we may seem different on the surface—I am pretty chatty, Berna is more soft-spoken—I’ve found that Berna and I actually share a lot in common. We are both incredibly sassy—Berna in her writing, me in all realms of life. We are both night owls and procrastinators who suffer from occasional writer’s block before getting seized by a last-minute idea. Berna’s confidence, creativity, and openness in sharing her writing have been a huge inspiration to me in getting over my own fear of sharing my work.
James is the first character I have ever created. She is the person I hide behind in my writing and she speaks the words that I don’t say. I have gone mildly crazy with the power I have over her story.
This is dedicated to the night the criminals were born and rolled into blankets. Under the cracked ceiling, an infamous one-word story was whispered . . .
James was walking down the street, a flare of ombré, a surge of spearmint, and a book in her hand, slowly meandering from the sidewalk onto the curb strip as she became deaf and blind to the world. Her feet crushed the spring grass, stepping on water droplets and sprinkling them inches into the atmosphere only to fall back down to Earth. The sun was shining, the trees were dancing, and the people around her were talking, filling this quiet, empty world with meaningless noise and mindless chatter.
She hummed to herself, the sound echoing in her ears. It was a soft melody, coming from her raging mind, that flew into the air and out into space. NASA had just found three Earth-sized, potentially habitable exoplanets around a single star. That was the kind of headline she had always wanted to see. James was ready to be launched from this flaming garbage pile. She hoped that, maybe, the aliens who dropped her here seventeen years ago would finally come back to get her.
Would anyone notice if they did? Lately, it seemed to James that no one wanted to give a second glance to someone like her—someone who wasn’t filled with that obligatory happiness. They won’t bother with you until you’ve fixed yourself, because no one wants to willingly clean up messes.
That’s why James trusted her books. She wondered why no one else could understand this—that within their reach was a world that they could control. They could open it, read its secrets between the white spaces, and put it down before it got to be too much. They could touch and kill their monsters instead of running away, tripping over their mistakes and losing control. James always fought an internal battle, wanting to reach the last page, but at the same time, never wanting to reach the end of the story. She had become a nocturnal creature, falling asleep with the sun and surrendering to her tired eyes when everyone else had just opened theirs. She lived in the moments where nothing was real.
She let herself fall onto the ground, the cold grass shocking her nerves awake like volts to a dead heartbeat. She wanted to leave; to go home. She wanted to lock herself up in her room and let the music blast and blow up her eardrums so she couldn’t hear the bullets shooting out of everyone’s mouths. Being alone was so much easier.
Her sight blurred when she heard footsteps making their way toward her.
“What are you doing?” came a voice. Jude? Quick, make a joke. Make her smile. Fill yourself with that obligatory happiness.
“Becoming one with nature. Experiencing Zen,” James responded.
“On my front lawn?”
“Huh?” How did she . . .
“I saw you from the window. Are you okay?”
Is she okay? Definitely not. Jude tilted her head, looking worried. Her black curtain of hair spilled and looked like a starless night sky.
Jude tried again. “Well, you see, I thought you were dead because you weren’t responding to any of my texts.” She pinched James’ cheek and sat down next to her on the grass, hands tucked under her bony knees.
James felt a raindrop, and then two. It was drizzling. Not raining, not pouring. Thunder rolled the clouds. Jude was wearing James’ wrinkled black hoodie, drowning in the size of it. She looked small and insignificant, like she shouldn’t be in this big world. James was completely wrecked for her.
“I have a shitty crush on you,” James finally confessed.
Jude widened her eyes and blinked.
James continued. “Do you want to go out with me? Like on a date, or whatever. Be my girlfriend.”
Jude turned away. “That was horrible. You’re horrible. You want to go out on a date with me and that’s