The Agony of Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  Wrapped in brown package paper, I stood miserably onstage while Pamela Jones, as Rosebud, waltzed back and forth in her long red dress, singing. When she wasn’t onstage, she was off in the wings brushing her long blond hair, which had grown another inch since Halloween. I closed my eyes against my anger and disappointment.

  There was one part in the play where Pamela and I were alone on the stage together. She was supposed to be lost in the woods and, in her fright, run directly into me. The bramble bush, with branches thick, said the playbook, catches Rosebud and holds her fast.

  During the first rehearsal, I grabbed her sleeve. That was the rehearsal she stood right in front of me at the very end so no one could see my face. During the second rehearsal, I grabbed her shoulder. That was the rehearsal my wrapping paper ripped and she laughed. I was too angry to laugh, too angry to see the humor in anything. But the day of the pageant, in front of a hundred and sixty primary students, Pamela Jones stepped on my foot. Whether it was an accident or on purpose, I didn’t know, but all the hatred I had felt toward her exploded at last. The bramble bush, with branches thick, grabbed her by the hair and yanked it hard.

  Pamela shrieked, and suddenly, right there onstage, she yelled, “You did that on purpose, Alice McKinley!”

  A gasp came from all the first, second, and third graders there in the audience, followed by laughter. Pamela’s face turned pink and so did mine, and suddenly she ran from the stage. I stood alone and embarrassed, listening to Pamela weeping off in the wings, and Mrs. Plotkin coaxing her to go back and finish the scene. I couldn’t even walk in my brown paper wrapper so I couldn’t go anywhere. Meanwhile the primary kids started talking and crawling all over each other, and the teachers were waving their arms, telling them to sit down.

  After a lot more whispers from backstage, Pamela Jones came back on, her face tear-streaked, and somehow we finished the play. But I knew that after all Mrs. Plotkin’s work on the pageant, I had ruined it for her. The lump in my throat felt like a baseball.

  I sat silently in the front seat of Mrs. Plotkin’s car, trying to hold back the tears. The bell had rung, and everyone had left for Christmas vacation. We sat there so long I began to think my punishment was to spend the night in Mrs. Plotkin’s car. But finally she said, “I don’t think you feel very good about what happened, Alice.”

  I needed to talk, but only a little bit of the feelings came out—only a little of how awful, mean, and rotten Pamela was for trying to horn in on Mrs. Plotkin and me after school, only a part of how much I hated Pamela for getting to be Rosebud. The tears kept welling up and spilling over. On top of everything, I couldn’t bear the thought that I had flubbed Mrs. Plotkin’s play.

  “It seems,” Mrs. Plotkin said at last, “that you’re angry at Pamela for wanting the very things that you want. It’s not so horrible to want to be special, Alice.”

  I sat without moving.

  She reached down and turned the key in the ignition, and the Chevy backed out of the space. “The thing is, no matter how many people are around, you are still very special.” She smiled a little bit. “And whether you are a bush or a rosebud, Alice McKinley, doesn’t make one bit of difference to me.”

  I swallowed. Maybe it didn’t make any difference to her, but it did to me. There’s a lot of difference between waltzing around the stage in a long red dress and standing up there in wrapping paper.

  Mrs. Plotkin must have known where I lived, because the car took all the right turns. But when we reached my house, I didn’t even try to open the car door. I just sat there gulping. Mrs. Plotkin turned off the motor.

  “Sometimes,” I said, “I worry … that I’m not growing up… at all.” And as if that wasn’t crazy enough, I added, “Sometimes I think I’m growing backward.” Then the tears really poured.

  It’s strange, but all the while I was sitting there listening to myself cry, I was wondering what I would do if I were the teacher, what I would say to a bawling girl who thought she was growing backward.

  What Mrs. Plotkin said was this: “We really don’t have any choice, Alice. We grow up whether we’re ready or not. It’s just more difficult for some people than it is for others. I don’t know about you, dear, but I just have a feeling that the New Year is going to be better for you somehow. I really do.”

  I sniffled and gulped, and Mrs. Plotkin handed me a tissue. I wiped my nose without blowing. Lester says I sound like a truck when I blow, and I didn’t want to make things worse than they were.

  At last I got out of the car and went up the walk to the house. I opened the door without turning around and closed it without waving good-bye. Then, from behind the curtain, I watched Mrs. Plotkin drive off. I didn’t feel good, but I didn’t feel quite as bad as I did before. Mrs. Plotkin was giving me another chance, and no matter how many stupid things I’d done in her classroom, I knew she’d be glad to see me again after the first of the year.

  11

  LOVE

  IT WAS A WEIRD CHRISTMAS. DAD ALWAYS feels low because he misses Momma, Lester was missing Marilyn; and I wasn’t feeling very Christmasy myself. When Uncle Harold called from Tennessee to ask how we all were up here in “Silver Sprangs,” Dad said, “Fine, just fine,” and I thought how easy it was to fool yourself.

  Mrs. Plotkin was right, and I knew it. I didn’t like Pamela because she was trying to steal attention, the same attention I wanted for myself. It was the same with Charlene and Elizabeth Price. The harder they tried to be special to Miss Cole or Mr. Weber, the more I disliked them, because I was trying so hard myself. When I added up all the hateful things the girls had done or said to me, and then added up all the hateful looks I’d given them, I think we came out about even. Mrs. Plotkin saw right through me; she saw Alice McKinley at her worst, but she didn’t stop liking me. Knowing that made the holidays bearable.

  It was Janice Sherman at the Melody Inn who had helped me pick out a gift for Dad: a book about famous composers and the great loves of their lives. It wasn’t till Dad opened it and said, “Hmmm!” that I got the terrible idea that maybe Janice Sherman was in love with my father and wanted to be his great love. Even worse, Loretta gave me a pair of Jockey shorts to give to Lester. They had little snowmen all over them, and she said she got them in a package of three for her brother, and that I could have one for Lester. Then I began to worry that Loretta was getting ideas about him. I decided that if I ever came home and found that Dad had married the woman in sheet music and Lester was engaged to Loretta, I would hitchhike to Chicago and go live with my Aunt Sally.

  I think we were all glad when the holidays were over and things sort of fell into place again. Most of the kids had forgotten the pageant and were friendly if I was. Pamela Jones still wasn’t speaking to me, but I tried to take an interest in whatever Charlene and Elizabeth talked about at recess, and what they were talking about already was Valentine’s Day.

  Wasn’t it sad, they said, that this year was probably the last time we’d ever make valentine boxes? When you get to junior high, they said, you don’t get valentines anymore. I tried, but I couldn’t feel the least bit sad about it. I remembered how back in Takoma Park one girl found a box of Whitman’s chocolates stuffed in the slot of her valentine box, and while the rest of us took home a shoebox full of punch-out valentines from the drugstore, that girl was choosing between raspberry cremes and chocolate nougats from the chart on the lid of her sampler.

  It was February before I knew it. I couldn’t think of a single idea for a card, so I asked Lester, and for once he was helpful. He said to cut out a bunch of white hearts from cardboard, glue a stick of gum to each one, and write, “Valentine, I Chews You” in red pencil, so I did.

  It was a dumb party. We had pink punch and little candies with things like “Hot Mama” and “Big Time” printed on them. We were allowed to give valentines to people in other classes, but I just slipped in Miss Cole’s room long enough to put a valentine in her box, a white handkerchief from the Melody Inn with the note
s to “Schubert’s Serenade” printed in red. I gave the same thing to Mrs. Plotkin.

  At three o’clock I picked up my decorated shoebox and went home, glad to have it over with. The hearts were falling off my box already because I’d just slopped them on and scribbled my name on the top.

  Lester was reading on the couch.

  “Hi,” he said. “Nice party?”

  “The pits,” I told him, and went on up to my room.

  I could tell there weren’t a whole lot of valentines in my box, but at least it wasn’t empty. I took off the lid and dumped them on my bed. There was the usual one from Mrs. Plotkin to all her students and some from kids I hardly knew. There wasn’t one from Pamela Jones. But under all the others was one that just said ALICE M. on the envelope and was decorated with little drawings of hearts and roses and airplanes with red stripes on their wings.

  I opened the envelope. It was one of those misty-looking photographs of a man and woman walking through the woods holding hands and you can’t see their faces. At the top, in curly letters, the words said, A SPE CIAL FEELING WHEN I THINK OF YOU. I sat down on the bed.

  There weren’t any printed words on the inside of the card, but someone had taken a blue pen and written, “I like you a lot.”

  I dropped the card on the floor as though it were alive or something. When my heart stopped pounding, I gingerly picked it up by one corner and turned it over. There was no signature anywhere.

  I looked at the envelope again. It had to be a boy who sent it. I didn’t understand the airplanes; I figured he drew them because he wasn’t so good at hearts and roses but wanted me to know there were some things he could draw. I looked at the card again, at the “special feeling when I think of you.”

  In spite of all the dumb things I’d done at Parkhaven Elementary, somebody still liked me, somebody besides Mrs. Plotkin.

  It made going to school really creepy. I found myself looking at every boy in my class, wondering if he was the one. And then, because I was looking at him, he looked at me back, and by lunchtime half the boys in the room were shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

  Every time I got up to sharpen a pencil or turn in a workbook, I’d take a long look at all the artwork above the blackboard to see if anyone had drawn airplanes. There were some pictures of boats and a racing car and a few Mack trucks, but no airplanes. When Mrs. Plotkin asked me to return the spelling papers, I checked to see which boy was using a pen with blue ink. Eight boys were using blue ink.

  I began to carry a comb to school so I could untangle my hair at recess. I separated all my shirts with holes and buttons missing from the others and started wearing only the nicer ones to school. At recess I’d stand back by the fence and turn my face up to the sun the way I’d seen Miss Cole do and sort of let my hair tumble down my back, except that Dad keeps it cut short, so even when I tipped my head back all the way, my hair only reached my shoulder blades. Sometimes I’d stand at the fence the whole period, but no boys ever came over.

  “Hey, McKinley, get out of the way!” somebody yelled during a soccer game, so I gave up posing by the fence and went back to talk to Charlene and Elizabeth.

  Pamela Jones still wasn’t speaking to me, however, and I decided I was going to have to make the first move. One Thursday, when I saw she wasn’t going to stick around Mrs. Plotkin’s room after school, I decided to leave with her and tried to start a conversation all the way to the corner.

  “Did you do your book report yet?” I asked her.

  Pamela just turned her head the other way.

  “I’m reading The Outsiders,” I told her. “It’s a pretty good book.”

  Pamela kept walking.

  We got to the corner and stood waiting for Patrick to give us the signal to cross.

  “Pamela,” I said, “are we going to go the rest of the year without speaking?”

  Pamela just lifted her head a little higher and said, “Come on, Patrick, let us cross.”

  Patrick motioned us across the street, and I followed glumly along beside Pamela.

  “Hey, Alice,” Patrick said when I reached the other side. I turned just in time to see a Milky Way fly through the air, and I caught it.

  “You can have it,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I told him, wondering. Maybe he was allergic to chocolate or something. I caught up with Pamela. “You want half?” I said. She looked down at it and didn’t answer. I broke it in two and handed a piece to her. She started walking a little slower while she unwrapped it. A block later, she was listening to me. Two blocks later, we were talking. Three blocks later we were friends again, sort of.

  The next day at school Miss Cole’s class was decorating the hall for the sixth-grade unit on communication. The class had done a mural that stretched all the way from the boys’ restroom to the drinking fountain.

  They had drawn all the ways that people communicate with each other. There were people talking on telephones and postmen delivering letters. There were pictures of trains carrying people to cities, airplanes carrying them coast to coast, and satellites in outer space. I bent over to get a drink of water, then suddenly straightened up. I looked at the airplanes again, and my heart thumped. They each had red stripes on the wings.

  I stopped Charlene as she was going to class.

  “Who drew the airplanes?” I asked her.

  “Patrick,” she said, and went on inside.

  I knew that I could never cross his corner again without my hands starting to sweat. It was easier when I didn’t know who had sent the valentine. Now that I did, what did I do next?

  12

  EATING SQUID

  ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL THE NEXT MORNING, Patrick threw another candy bar toward me, a Three Musketeers. This time I was so nervous I dropped it, and then I saw Patrick smiling and I smiled back; and after that, I guess, we were going together.

  I really don’t know what he saw in me. Patrick could have had almost anybody in sixth grade for a girlfriend, even gorgeous Elizabeth Price or Pamela Jones with her long blond hair. But then, how do you explain that Mrs. Plotkin is married and Miss Cole isn’t? It doesn’t make one bit of sense.

  Patrick and I were about as different as two people could possibly be. Nothing embarrasses Patrick very much, and everything embarrasses me. Just being alive embarrasses me. After all the agony I went through over seeing Patrick in his underpants, I believe he never thought much more about it. It’s strange now to think that he was one of the people I wanted to disappear or something because I’d seen him in his underpants, and what did he do? He wore them as part of his Superman costume at Halloween.

  The day I dropped the Three Musketeers and we started going together, Patrick came over to my table at lunchtime and sat down beside me. While Elizabeth Price and Charlene and all the other kids stared, he just unwrapped his sandwich, asked me where I lived, and wanted to know if he could ride over sometime on his bike. Just like that.

  “Al-ice, how’s Pa-trick?” the girls would say every day.

  “Fine,” I’d answer, just like Patrick said it when they teased him about me. If you don’t get all embarrassed and die over something, I discovered, teasing wears out after a while.

  Sometimes, though, when Patrick sat on our porch railing, it was hard for me to think up things to talk about. Patrick always had something to talk about. Patrick had lived overseas. He’d lived in Germany and Spain and Japan, and every summer he flew out to Oregon by himself to spend vacation with his grandparents. The farthest I’d ever been was Tennessee. I’d never been on an airplane. I’d never even been on a train! Patrick could speak Spanish and count in Japanese. All I knew was pig latin. While he told me about eating squid in Hawaii, I told him about eating strained beets in Chicago. It was really pitiful.

  One night at dinner, just after Dad had plunked a pork chop on my plate, all I could think of was how Patrick’s family ate squid.

  “Why don’t we ever have squid?” I grumbled, flopping my pork chop around on my plate
like a dead chicken.

  Dad paused between the stove and the table.

  “Squid!” said Lester.

  They both stared at me. I glared back.

  “Why haven’t I even been on a train?” I demanded.

  Dad put down the frying pan. “Al, what the heck is eating you?”

  I knew I wasn’t making the least bit of sense. I swallowed.

  “Patrick’s been everywhere,” I mumbled.

  “Who’s Patrick?” asked Lester, still staring, and then his eyes lit up. “The new boyfriend, huh?”

  I nodded. In order to have a new boyfriend you have to have had an old one; if Donald Sheavers counted as the old boyfriend, then I guess Patrick was number two.

  “Well!” said Dad. “I see!”

  “I’ve never done anything. I’ve never gone anywhere. I’ve never eaten squid, and I can’t count in Japanese,” I said in despair. “I am the most boring person in the whole world.”

  I mean, I really know how to ruin a mealtime. I felt guilty about it afterward, too, and stayed in the kitchen to do the dishes. Then I went up to my room and pulled Saint Agnes out from under my mattress. It seemed perfectly dreadful that I should go around squalling about squid when little Saint Agnes had lost her head. I stuffed the card back under the mattress.

  Pamela and I had been taking turns helping Mrs. Plotkin after school. Mrs. Plotkin said she really didn’t need two girls helping out at once, so I came in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday one week, and Tuesday and Thursday the next. Then one of the patrols resigned and Pamela was made a regular so she stopped helping out at all, and I had Mrs. Plotkin to myself again.

  It’s strange about Mrs. Plotkin, but she seemed to be changing. Sometimes, when I was cleaning the blackboard with my back to her, I realized that she had one of the most beautiful voices I’d ever heard. If you heard such a voice over the telephone, you would imagine a beautiful, slender woman in a long purple gown with orchids in her hair. Then I’d turn around and I’d see this large woman with the heavy legs … only somehow she looked prettier than she did that first day outside on the playground.