In the Garden - Bonnie Smetts

I could see Randy sitting in the little garden outside the classroom window. She’s waiting for me, waiting to take me home after my test. And I’m starring at her curls like they’re little lifeboats, each one. I don’t remember ever being so nervous. My counselor at school said I was the best typist she’d ever had, and she certainly acted as amazed by that as if I were walking on air. But for some reason I’m as peaceful as a baby when I’m typing. Something about that tap tapping that makes me content. That’s why counselor had recommended I try out for this school for becoming a Court Reporter. He’d warned me that I’d have to improve my grammar, but again they all were surprised that I could write a bit better than I talk.

I’m not the one who thought I wrote better than I talked, though. I didn’t see any difference. But I don’t have to take that test until later so all I’m thinking about today is typing. We got a dozen or more girls in this room, moving back and forth in their seats, looking as nervous as me, each of us sitting at a monitor and a keyboard. I see the other girls running their fingers across the keyboards as they were warning up. That’s when I see that the keyboard is ever so different from what I’m sued to. Newer, ever so different and that makes me feel more uncertain than I had been until that very minute and I wished I hadn’t spent that time looking at Randy’s head outside.

So I slide my fingers over the indentations in the keys, passing over the letters I know so well, like I’m blind with eyes only on my fingertips. That’s when I see that the spacing’s really no different, just little dips where you put your fingertips are a little deeper than I’m sued to and the keys themselves are shallower. A few passes, like a bee over a picnic table, and my fingers are getting comfortable and I’m starting to feel that maybe this will be OK.

“Ladies, I see we’ve only got ladies today. Ladies, here are the rules of the test. You will be asked to type first from dictation. You will listen through the headphones—does everyone see your headphones? The first part of the test will last five minutes. You will then stop when the dictation stops. You will get a fifteen-minute break, you can go outside, you can use the ladies room, whatever you want. Then you will be back here, in your seats, and ready at 10:30. Then we begin the typing from manuscript part of the test.”

“Any questions?” the test-giver asks us. I swear he took the time to look at every single one of us.

“Can we adjust the volume of our headphones?” a girl asks. I can’t imagine how she’d even known to ask that. But I couldn’t concentrate on the answer because all I was hearing was my heartbeat booming in my head and I hoped that I’d be able to hear the voice inside the headphones over all that noise. I’m just trying to push out my breath to get some room inside my chest so as I could breath. And that’s when I realize that everyone’s picking up their headphones and is getting them comfortable on their heads. And that’s when I realize I shouldn’t have worn earrings but I got no time to take them off so move the headphones around as best I can. Inside I hear test, test, test.