The Little People Followed me to New York

Moving to New York, as you can imagine, was both terrifying and exciting. A weird feeling of melancholy -- being homesick before I was even officially away -- had really hit me on just the nine hour drive in the van with my dad where we spent those nine hours talking about a little bit of everything. The night before we left he handed me a medicine bag full of tobacco. The smell of it and the leather that encompassed it was soothing and homely. I sprinkled some of it in the doorway of the new apartment not long after arriving. I also sprinkled some in the park the day before work began. None of this, however, stopped the Little People who'd followed us from totally fucking with me. 

"Maybe they're mad at you for moving so far away," my roommate suggested after I'd told her of all the things in the Kindergarten classroom that had gone missing. 

"They only disappear when the lead teacher isn't looking or in the room. She hasn't seemed to notice," I said. It was true; all these strange little mishaps happened when only I was there which is how I knew it was the Little People. But my suspicions came even more true when they stole something right out from under me. Almost literally, too.

The Kinders have these things called counting jars. It's exactly what they sound like, I guess. Little plastic jars with a piece of felt and plastic tiles to count on the felt. The purpose is to help teach the kids how to count properly and begin doing the absolute most basic math. My job, before the school year began, was to help set up the classroom which meant going through every counting jar and making sure there were exactly twelve plastic tiles in each. There were several there from the end of the last school year. So I would open the jars, pull out the felt, count out twelve and push the extras away before returning the felt and twelve tiles. It was tedious. It was procedural. Which is why my mind wandered and I wasn't very observant, which I guess the little fuckers noticed. 

I pulled out the felt and put it to the side. Then I poured the tiles out on the carpet and proceeded to count them mindlessly. The tiles made loud clicking sounds as I pushed the extras into the colorful Extra Pile which was starting to grow a little too big of a mountain, if I'm being honest. I was going to run out of room and have to back up in order to make enough space for the rest of the extra tiles. I had several more counting jars to go. Like I had done for all the other twenty-something counting jars for the past half-hour, I reached beside me for the felt--but it wasn't there. I turned to my other side and didn't see it there either. I looked behind me, but again didn't see anything. I stood and frantically looked around me for the stupid piece of felt that shouldn't have been that easy to misplace because it was bright orange and the carpet was black. 

When it became clear it was gone for good I put that counting jar to the side and would figure out what to do with it later. Probably lie and say for some reason there wasn't any felt in there to begin with. How could I explain to my all-white lead teacher that the trick-loving Little People followed me all the way from North Carolina to New York and was now running around someone in our classroom stealing name tags for the desks, behavior color cards I'd cut out and felt out of counting jars? 

I looked around for the felt all day, but never found it and the lead teacher never even said anything about the strange felt-less counting jar. Who knows what last years Kindergartners did to their counting jar tiles and felt? Probably took it home or something...she didn't seem to pay it any mind. 

I didn't recount all of these issues with my dad until they pushed a box on my head.

I kept my things in the cabinet at the back of the room, as the lead teacher had suggested I do. On top of the cabinets were old prize boxes and a few amazon boxes full of school supplies. All week they'd been pushed back and I almost hadn't even noticed their existence. The lead teacher had her back turned to me and was talking as I went to get my things out of the cabinet. 

As I opened the door one of the amazon boxes suddenly fell from above. I successfully threw my hands up fast enough to stop the (reasonably heavy, by the way) box from hitting me in the face as I looked up. The teacher didn't notice as I shoved it back up on top. She didn't notice anything was out of the ordinary, but it was clear to me that someone was really after me this time, for whatever reason. 

At the bus stop I texted my dad about all the incidents, specifically the felt and the box. He thought it was kind of funny, but suggested I sprinkle some of that tobacco he gave me in the doorway of the classroom, because that'll make them happy.

When I was alone during our short lunch break the next day, I pulled the leather pouch out of my backpack. It still smelled of home and solace. I could see why it might make them happy. Aside from all the traditional reasons, of course. 

The hallway was empty, which was good. I wasn't sure how to explain it to my brand new coworkers who were all still learning my name. Well, you see, my dad's Indian--sorry Native American--and these little trickers seem to have followed me all the way here because things have been disappearing and falling on my head for like, no valid reason. So I'm sprinkling some tobacco in the doorway to make peace with them. 

I guess this sounds perfectly normal, actually. Extremely superstitious, I guess, but reasonable. But then I'd have to hear the same bullshit I always did. "Your dad's Native American? You don't look Cherokee. My great-grandmother was actually..." 

Nope, wasn't ready for this. Hadn't yet found the strength to scream all that to the world because I was (okay, still am, really) still too uncomfortable with all that extra shit that goes with flaunting that one particular side of the family. 

I took a huge breath in, the leather pouch held up to my nose. 

I may not flaunt it and tell the whole world, but the Little People were apparently not ready for me to leave. They didn't care that I kept back anything from this world because to them I'm still from their world. And they wanted to make sure I didn't fucking forget it either.