by Aimee Bender
The lump under his shirt was medium-sized, and from what I could tell it was fat enough to be double digits but not fat enough to be in the twenties. I guessed his old favorite.
15? I said, pointing.
He smiled a little, face soft and tired. And nodded. Very good, he said. Very good.
He had the paper in his hand.
Nobody likes makeup tests, and I was still nursing a stomachache from walking through the hallways, but the truth is I ended up being very grateful for that day. Not because of the shelter it provided, even though I was glad for that, and not because I needed to learn more about algebra, a subject I knew well already, but because it was during that makeup test that the first and only person ever noticed and commented on my knocking. Until that moment, I’d been living in my own little universe of good-luck hell. I was subtle about knocking, usually doing it before falling asleep, like prayer time, but I was still surprised that the people I knew well weren’t more aware. My parents didn’t notice, my lunchtime friends didn’t notice, and later on, even that one boyfriend didn’t notice (although he did say once, in the middle of sex, Mona, MONA, what are you doing with the bedframe?). It was only Mr. Jones, the hypocrite of my childhood, who observed and remarked on my engine of a hand.
He handed over the paper and a pencil.
Go to it, he said. You have twenty-five minutes. I’ll be right up here if you have any questions.
I nestled into my chair. In general, I find math tests soothing; all those numbers on the page nervous and undone, waiting for me to come over and settle them into their right spots.
But the first word problem made me uncomfortable immediately and it just got worse from there.
Janet can run 50 yards in 30 seconds on Tuesday. She runs 15 percent faster on Wednesday, but on Thursday she runs 5 percent slower than that. How fast does she run on Thursday?
I skipped Question One, which made my hand pull into a fist, knocking briefly on the test paper.
Question Two was worse.
Janet is the fastest runner on the team until Lydia moves in from Kentucky. Lydia runs twice as fast as Janet on Monday, but then four times slower on Tuesday. How fast does Janet run on Tuesday?
I knocked again. Mr. Jones looked up.
Is someone at the door? he asked. His eyes looked tired, bagged, underlined with arcs from endless correcting. I could see the 15 sinking. His change when he drove home, the quick swap for 12, for 7, for 4.
Oh no no, I said. I think they just left.
Eyes on your own paper, he said, out of habit. I smiled. The classroom was empty aside from the two of us.
Outside, lockers were being opened and slammed and students were talking loud, glowing with three o’clock, everyone hungry for everything.
I read Question Three: Janet wins another race. Question Four: Janet in training. Question Five: Janet goes to the Olympics.
I could feel the ache growing in my stomach, and put my fist down to the paper and knocked again. Dragged my knuckles over the white space. Slow Janet down. The only class I’ve ever failed was driver’s training, because I spent the whole time touring the town with my foot slammed against the brake.
Question Six: Janet in the prelims at the Olympics held in Slovenia. Question Seven: Janet as the anchor in a four-way race with two variables.
Knock knock knock. I rubbed my knuckles against the words. I tried to concentrate just on the numbers. But there was even a drawing at the bottom of the page of a girl with muscular thighs running, lines whisking off her back to indicate the immensity of her speed. Hurrying to another page, that busy beaming Janet.
I knocked again and this time he caught me.
Mona Gray? he said. He stood up.
I think it’s some pipes banging, I said, indicating outside.
Oh no, he said. I saw you just then. I saw that.
I’m almost done, I said.
Question Eight: Janet racing a train and winning.
I pretended to look at the page and concentrate but I had to knock again. I tried to imagine her dead on the ground: a snail, a robot, a corpse in running shorts. I glued Janet to the bleachers and chained her with a metal ring to the bench leg. I deliberately broke my pencil lead.
Oops, I said. Look at that.
Mr. Jones was standing right by me now, looking down with curiosity. He perched himself on the neighboring desk, the one where Greg Fitzpatrick usually sat and flung his eyes back like a fishing line to cheat.
Question Nine: Janet running in outer space, beating two comets and an asteroid.
Mona Gray, he said, what exactly are you doing with that paper there?
I faced him. I pulled in my lips.
What do you mean? I asked.
He indicated with his chin. I mean, he said, why do you insist on knocking on this piece of paper? He picked up the test and put it back down.
I don’t know, I said. I’m knocking on wood, I said.
He blinked at me over the desk. He was wearing a shirt that said Minehead over the pocket. I wondered if that was his first name.
Knocking on wood, he echoed.
Yes, I said.
Why? he asked.
What?
Why are you knocking on wood?
I stared at him. The question itself bothered me enough that I had to knock, and I reached down to the paper again. We both watched my hand go. I felt like a zoo animal.
Well if you don’t stop I’m going to have to deduct from your grade, he said. You’re giving me a headache.
I’m sorry, Mr. Minehead, I said. I mean Mr. Jones.
He breathed in and shrugged. Knocking on wood, he murmured.
Question Ten: Janet on the high school track in a race against Death, Death wearing a black fashionable running outfit, quick and ruthless, sweaty and swift; Death loses by thirty seconds.
I finished reading and held up the paper. I’m done now, I said. I fluttered it in his face. I wanted to get the page away from me. I didn’t even like having my hand close to those words.
He raised his eyebrows and plucked it like a kerchief from my fingers.
I looked away, out the two open doors of the classroom. I could still see people walking to the stairways, readying to leave school for the day and do teenager things, like sit in closets together, reaching out tentative hands until they crossed the air and hit skin. There were so many colors and sounds that happened when the classes dismissed. They overwhelmed me. The reds and the blues alone were so rich I could’ve stared at them for hours.
Mr. Jones was turning over my paper. There’s nothing on here, he said.
I needed to knock again. But he had the paper now, and the desk, although grainy and brown, was definitely not wood. I zipped open my backpack and stuck my hand in there, near my notebook, near the stacks of paper, the dead leaflets from trees all stuffed inside to save me.
I couldn’t do it, I said.
He peered at me over his glasses. You? he said. You couldn’t do it? You?
I felt like I might start to cry.
No, I said, small.
Why not? he said. And my hand was rummaging around now in the backpack for a loose piece of paper, and finally I spotted my pencil in the elongated pencil dish on the desk and pulled out my hand and knocked that, the slim curved wood back, number two lead, gentle and subtle, so slight a knock he couldn’t possibly notice.
But he did. He was Mr. Jones. He watched my hand knock the pencil.
Knocking on wood, he said, pointing.
My throat was closing, and my eyes were getting glassy. I finished up and moved my hand away.
That’s right, I said. That’s right.
He smiled a short smile, trying to be encouraging. I looked down at my hand, right hand, knocking hand, and for one shattering second felt known. I loved him right then, a love fiercer in balance against the hate I still felt since he’d never commented on my father. He was the only one who’d ever noticed the knocking. Or maybe more likely: the only one wh
o was brave enough to ask.
Why didn’t you do the test? he asked again.
I have a problem with running, I said.
He continued to stare at me for a minute. I blinked back the glass from my eyes as best as I could. Like riverbanks just under flood level, the water rose to the surface, voluptuous at the edge, and then, blessedly, receded.
I’ve seen you run, he said then. You’re good.
I concentrated on clearing my eyes without using my hands. I had nothing to say to that.
Mr. Jones put the webbing between his thumb and forefinger at his lips and held it there for a minute. We were both quiet and four locker doors slammed outside. Some girl let out a big laugh, off the top of her head, that had no joy in it at all. The boy she was with made some more jokes.
Did you know, said Mr. Jones, speaking into his hand, that some woman in Texas typed out all the numbers from one to a million? He rubbed the webbing over his lips.
That would fill a lot of paper, I said.
Took her a few years, he said. He pressed his cheeks down with his fingers. Knocking on wood, he repeated.
I listened politely. I had, at that point, been knocking since my dad got sick, so that was six years of knocking. Maybe a million knocks on a million papers by now.
Finally, Mr. Jones removed his hand from his mouth. I wondered if he was going to give me some advice but he just said, You may go now Mona Gray. We bent heads gently at each other. I stood, and exited his classroom. The afternoon was still light and bright, and I followed the footprints of the world of teenagers back to my parents’ house, into the ashen living room, turned on the lead TV, slept a sleep about stones and storm clouds and rats and forks.
A few days later, Mr. Jones gave me a retake, where all the running words had been fully crossed out with black marker and replaced by swimming words. The girl at the bottom, Janet, now had a pool built around her fast muscled body, a cap over her hair, and a towel drawn by her feet. I did it in about ten minutes and got an A.
Two years later he quit the school and opened the hardware store. Opening day was a mob scene, flooded with townspeople, shoving each other aside to pick the choicest hammers and pliers off the walls. The school tried to woo him back, but Jones told everyone he was tired of correcting tests and explaining exponents and now wanted more than anything to sell every kind of nail. Tools, he announced, are the wave of the future. I hadn’t seen him in a while, and wandered the aisles, anonymous; I did not say hello or reintroduce myself, but instead checked the size of the shape under his shirt: double digits, fat enough across to be in the 20’s or even 30’s. He seemed happy. I watched as the bins emptied of supplies. I didn’t buy anything myself, and when the people started to clear out, bags full, brimming with the particular happiness that comes from purchasing tools, I left the store and walked home. Usually Jones’s good moods uplifted me, but that afternoon I was subdued and slow, and our numbers were different.
15
I visited my father the morning after Back-to-School Night. I forgot to bring the plant food and said I would soon; he thanked me anyway, folding the wax paper that held the cereal into an envelope. I said, Do you feel all right? He said sure, didn’t he look all right? He was awaiting the results from his Shape of Health. I put a hand on his forehead. He felt regular temperature. I asked him how his heart was. He lay his fingers on his beating neck and listened. I asked him if he felt weaker than usual. I could see his eyes fade off, measuring.
The thing about 51 is it’s the first number in all the numbers that has nothing going on. It’s not a prime, or a special semiperfect number, or a sum of any factors; 51 is the smallest digit with no magic inside of it. This in itself makes it interesting, but interesting in the way a cement block in the middle of a field of poppies is interesting. I have a book called Your Favorite Numbers and on 51 it just says: If this is your favorite number you are the type of person who is drawn to the most bland, banal dog at the pound simply because no one is paying any attention to it at all.
This was the number it looked like my father might not turn.
On the way out, I made my mother promise to call if anything ever happened. Mona, she said, worrying doesn’t do anything.
So then don’t worry about me worrying, I said back.
At school, I avoided the science teacher the best I could. I ate lunch in my classroom and exited school through the side door. On Friday, listening to the now-familiar sound of retching in his room, I taught more subtraction to the second grade using word problems about the kids in the class: Ann DiLanno grew five heads in September and by October had only two heads. How many heads did she lose?
I have one head, Ann interrupted. I am not losing a single head.
I was fidgety because it was Friday, which meant tomorrow was Saturday, and after Saturday was Sunday, and that was two days of no work and all worry.
In fact, no one seemed to be in a very good mood.
Every morning now, Danny walked in and thanked the flag; he made sure to do this when Lisa was in the room. Today, Lisa went to the bathroom and returned to the front of the class with the I.V. on her head again.
Oh look, said Ann, Intra.
Sitting with a finger up inside each curl, Mimi said: Lisa, it’s me today for Numbers and Materials, you’re not up again.
I know, said Lisa.
I dusted chalk off my shirt. Mimi kept her fingers inside her curls the way some kids eat olives. I told Lisa to sit down. She walked by, and let out a lung-splitting cough right in my face.
Spit sprinkled my cheeks and nose.
Cover your mouth, said Mimi, disgusted.
I thought you didn’t get colds, I said, wiping my eyes.
Lisa fell to the floor and had a coughing fit, dark clouds caught in her ribs. I crouched down, about to hit her on the back, when Ann called from her chair: Ms. Gray, can’t you tell by now? She’s just doing science class again.
Lisa’s cough stopped, cleanly. I held my hand in midair.
I never get colds, Lisa said, then sat back in her chair.
I felt like walking out.
The class blinked: fourteen eyes, fringed bees.
Thank you Ann, I said slowly.
I’m tired of all the other choices, Lisa said from her seat. Show me how to do your dad.
I cleared my own throat and turned away from her. Wrote 20 − 11 on the board.
So class, I said. What do you do if you have a zero in the ones place?
Lisa had a small epileptic seizure in her chair.
Like that? she asked.
John raised his hand. You borrow, he said.
That’s right, I said. Borrow what? I kept my voice steady.
Lisa slumped on her desk and her eyes sagged and mouth drooped. Or this, she slurred.
Take the two to one, John said. I slashed the two on the board and wrote a small one above it. John nodded.
Lisa was now wheezing shallowly. Or maybe this, she panted. I could hardly stand to look at her.
When do I get to go for Numbers and Materials? asked Mimi.
I turned to Mimi brightly. How about right now, I said. Lisa lolled her head off her chair and groaned.
Since the parents’ enthusiasm on Back-to-School Night, I’d made Numbers and Materials a bigger focus of the week. Even Ann seemed to be coming around, bringing in a 100 made from rhinestones, on a stickpin, which she’d said was a gift. Terrific! I’d said, pinning it to my blouse. I will live forever, I’d thought. But I have to get it back by the end of the day, Ann had said. It’s a day-long gift. Sure enough, at the end of the day she’d approached me with palm out. I took it off, but I wasn’t really bothered until I saw that she didn’t put the stickpin away but instead brought it over to another teacher, the art teacher, who then put it on with equal happiness. I was annoyed simply because I am the math teacher and I didn’t understand why it was appropriate for anyone but me to get a stickpin with 100 on it.
Once called on, Mimi went to her pu
rple backpack and removed a plastic bag. Lisa raised her head to watch. But when Mimi opened the bag, before I saw a thing, I smelled it first, wham, transport, and the taste of acid sizzled in my throat.
Wait, Mimi, I said suddenly. On second thought, I said, let’s do something else.
What? Mimi said.
I wondered if I might vomit all over the carpet.
Word problems, I said. Mimi, share that at lunch. Ann had seven heads—
Mimi’s face froze. I want to share my Number and Material! she said. I’ve spent all week on it!
Bring out your workbooks, I said.
The whole class started talking all at once. You can’t stop in the middle! they said. This is Numbers and Materials! This is NUMBERS and MATERIALS! Danny stood. I walked to the back of the room. Elmer dove under his chair. Lisa stared at me.
Mimi’s eyelashes were birthing tears.
The smell in the room was so thick I had to plug my nose. Which helped a little.
It took hours and hours! said Mimi. Her voice snagged on the words.
I put my other hand on my stomach. Kept my nose closed. Danny had grabbed up a handful of rubber bands, and was finding the heaviest and thickest, the one that had once held broccoli together, and Lisa Lisa Lisa now had her own hand pinching her own nose, and when I saw that I wanted to burn down the school so I took another step back and nodded at Mimi. Said Go. Now.
Two tears dripped down her face.
Lisa kept staring at me. I didn’t look at her, but took my hand off my nose and opened up the throat. Within seconds, Lisa had dropped her hand too. I felt an unexpected whale of loathing for her.
With utmost care, Mimi reached down into her backpack and brought out a huge 9 made of soap. I don’t know where she possibly could’ve found such an enormous piece of soap, but the 9 was as tall as my forearm. Just the sight of it made my stomach seize.
Danny put down the rubber bands. Mimi brushed her cheeks dry.
