Why I Don't Write Children's Literature

by Gary Soto

  I swung through a glass door bearing student and faculty fingerprints, all of us guilty of inaction. Why should we have cared about this wordsmith? We had things to do and, like Frost, miles to go before we slept.

  * * *

  Twenty-three years later I woke from a deep sleep, regretting my inaction. An unpleasant feeling had caught up with me, and it was breathing from exhaustion. Perhaps he had not been a great poet or even a nice person. But why hadn’t I done my duty in 1989 and, with a vigorous finger, scratched that gum off? I wasn’t happy with myself — hateful, so hateful!

  I padded to the kitchen, slightly hungover, and poured myself a mug of coffee. Then I returned to bed, propped two pillows against the headboard, and reviewed my failings. Shameful, I brooded. Shameful! Shamefully high-and-mighty!

  Birds scolded loudly in our yard while the neighbor’s dog barked — minor punishments at the start of a new day. I looked out the window: our cat was staring up a tree. I did my own scolding through the window, telling my cat to go away. He looked over at me, blinked indifferently, then continued staring up the tree.

  I closed the window, sipped my coffee, and began to wonder about the forgotten poet. I could imagine his personal history: twice married, twice loved, twice a widower. A blue blood, he survived on the legacy of a deceased great aunt from New England. No, he was a panhandler who worked the wharf . . . no, an architect who favored the oriental style at the turn of the century . . . no, a doctor who wrote his verse at night, by the trembling glow of candlelight. He published five slender books of poetry and two on his travels to Formosa and Siam — two countries that actually existed in his roving days. He also wrote a play, but this creation failed to attract an audience beyond family and friends. He once rode a buffalo for all of ten seconds, and managed to climb the coldest shadows of Mount Shasta. He died with both hands in his pockets, as if searching for a pencil.

  When these conjectures didn’t help, I returned to the kitchen.

  Fortified by a second cup of coffee, I remembered my particular shame when Sister Guadalupe caught me chewing gum in third grade, gliding up to my desk and scolding, “Let’s see!” I was so scared that I nearly wet my pants. I opened my mouth and displayed the wad — oh why hadn’t I spat it out after recess, when the sweetness was all gone?

  “I knew it!” the nun exclaimed. Her eyes grew huge, and her jaw set. She pushed at me with a long, veined finger, translucent as marble. She had skinny wrists, a skinny neck, and a skinny waist cinched by black beads. Prodded by her finger, I walked to the front of the class while my classmates watched in fright, some with crayons in their hands, ready to draw this humbling moment. None snickered at me. All knew well, I believe, that it could have been them. Catholic school was no fun. To entertain ourselves, we clapped erasers of chalk dust and pretended we were in limbo. That was all the fun we got.

  With everyone watching, I spat my gum into my palm and momentarily examined its ugly, wet shape. Then Sister Guadalupe made me stick that putty on my nose. When it dropped dishonorably to the floor, I had to pick it up and, like a punch, smash it on my nose again.

  This memory prompted me to get dressed and drive to UC Berkeley where, twenty years ago, I had boxed up my books, written a brief letter of resignation, and left to begin my happy life. I parked, strained up a hill, then descended into a valley of construction. The campus had grown. Even the students seemed bigger — or perhaps I, now in my sixties, was beginning to shrink.

  I went into Dwinelle Hall, climbed the steps, and pulled open the glass door. There I faced the poet, who was still in the corner. I kept my distance for a respectable moment before approaching him. This time, there was no defacing wad of gum stuck to his nose. Perhaps a historian with a bigger heart than mine had taken care of it. Or maybe a female professor of Portuguese had used a small stepladder, climbing carefully up to remove the gum with a dainty hanky.

  I approached the poet’s bust as if it were an altar, a place of worship, or a monument that no one else visits. Close up, I could see that he had been handsome, ruggedly so, with the face of a laborer more than a wordsmith. Maybe he had worked with wood or stone. For sure, he was marble now. With the gum gone, he looked dignified. The only honor I could pay him was to lift a hand and wipe the dust of neglect from his farseeing eyes. He was no Milton, no Blake, no Whitman. He had disappeared during the 1930s, overtaken by a new generation. Still, he was poet who had traveled his own poor journey. I cleaned him up as best I could, even ran my hand over his dusty marble hair. Then I took a few steps backward and saw a gum wrapper at the base of the pedestal. I picked it up and squeezed it with all my might.

  BUSINESS CALLS

  I picked up the phone on the third ring. Before I could say brightly, “Soto and Friends,” our company name, the boy on the other end said flatly, “I farted.” I held the phone away from my ear; as it was 8:40 a.m. Pacific time, the little stinker was probably calling from two time zones away. He would already have been in school for several periods, long enough to get sent to the principal’s office for spitting a mouthful of water at a classmate — or some such goofy behavior. I could hear laughter and the scrape of chairs: Tom Sawyer with a cell phone, pestering the world with juvenile pranks.

  But why call me? Because I’m a fairly well-known writer of poetry, short stories, and novels for kids; therefore, I am a phone target. Also, because kids can’t reach Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez. But for pennies on the minute, a boy can connect with me, or at least try. Perhaps he made the call on a dare, or to impress a girl standing at his side. And why is it always boys who annoy the public? Just because, just because . . .

  I slowly lowered the phone as the boy laughed and repeated that he had farted. I pictured him in an oversize Dallas Cowboy’s T-shirt, freckled, splay-eared, hair buzzed, smiling like a jack-o-lantern as he annoyed others anonymously. I also pictured him white. Black and Latino kids are beyond this sort of joke by the time they’re eleven, while Asians, invariably with better grades, ask, “Why do that?”

  I stared momentarily at the phone, our primary instrument of business, then gazed out my office window. On the lake below, the ducks formed a V-shape, gliding effortlessly across the surface. A bicyclist — and suddenly two more — whizzed dangerously along Wild Cat Canyon Road. A stand of eucalyptus moved in unison, as the wind moved through them. I reflected that I had no complaints in life — and then the phone rang again. This time my prankster was breathing like Darth Vader. When he laughed, a sidekick chimed in with, “Fuck.” The third time he called, I let the machine take it; he didn’t leave a message. It was boring without me on the other end, telling him to go jump off a bridge.

  So, dear reader, this is the sound of commerce in the middle of the week. I offer my books by Internet and by phone, and will sell to school districts by way of institutional purchase orders. When teachers call, I find them nice. They often want me to visit their schools and do some storytelling. Sometimes, for a modest fee, I tank up my Saturn and drive two or three hours, the sun climbing above the eastern horizon. I sign in at the front desk and wear a sticker on my chest that says “Visitor.” I visit with youth and smile from the time I arrive until the time I leave.

  I recall one school in the San Joaquin Valley, where the kids sat on the cafeteria floor. I was struggling to be heard over an ice machine in the corner and the huge industrial refrigerator in the kitchen. The janitor was mopping the hallway, whistling “Cielito Lindo.” I was shiny from embarrassment — these words of mine, golden on the page, sounded plain boring when recited over the low rumble of a mower cruising a distant lawn. I ad-libbed and stuttered, but like the mower, I kept going.

  Above all this noise, I heard a kid burp — loudly and without much shame. I stopped my reading, relieved that something had occurred beyond my failure to connect. The kid looked at me looking at him. His face was freckled, white, and plain as bread. We kept a long silence before he explained with some politeness, “Soda, not you.”

  THE S
EAL OF APPROVAL

  How was it possible for me to anger my first-grade teacher, Miss Yamamoto? I must have pushed her buttons somehow — or perhaps, with a dirty finger, I had actually pressed a button on her dress. In any event, she yanked my right arm, then my left arm, and began to haul me judiciously to the front of the class. I did my best to slow our wiggly scuffle up the aisle. When I grabbed the edge of a desk, however, she pried my fingers loose. I grabbed another desk, and again she unbuckled my fingers. I cried for her to stop, then dragged my shoes, drawing black marks on the wooden floor. At the front of the room, she lifted me up and swiftly turned me around to face my classmates, all twenty or so. Some of them I liked very much, like my best friend Darrell, and the ponytailed girl I’d chosen as my girlfriend. She had lost her front baby teeth the week before, and her smile was precious.

  Miss Yamamoto, I thought you were the nicest lady in the whole world — so tall and so pretty! Once a week you honored one student with the “Seal of Approval” for the tidiest desk. The seal was a stuffed one, black and white with a red bowtie — and fuzzy. Every Thursday morning we rushed into class and excitedly lifted the tops of our desks to see if we had earned the prize. The lucky winner would hug the seal and pet its fuzzy head.

  A sloppy boy, I would glare jealously, with the wings of my shoulders slouched. I yearned to spit on the winners and step on their shoes. My best friend got it, and my girlfriend got it, and a stupid boy on our block got it. By springtime, the seal had been hugged to death; after the bowtie fell off, it resembled a rat. Why wasn’t the Seal of Approval ever mine, Miss Yamamoto? I tried to arrange my books nice, one book facing this way, the other that way; I even blew all the eraser rubbings from the tub of my metal desk. Was my finger painting warped from erratic scrubbing? Were my pencils blunt and tooth-marked?

  Miss Yamamoto, I pressed the button that sparked your anger. At the front of the class you shook me, you held my struggling arms, you yelled at me to Stop it, stop it, stop it! Then, breathing hard, you brushed your hair behind your ears and asked, “How many want Gary to go the principal’s office?” I relaxed my arms and stood open-mouthed, watching the entire class raise their hands. I looked at Darrell with his hand up, then lowered halfway, and then pushed up again. And my girlfriend? Her hand was among the first to be raised, as if she knew the answer before the teacher had asked the question. She was even wiggling her fingers.

  Out the door I went. This was before recess, this was before lunch, this was a Wednesday — just one day before the Seal of Approval would be placed, so nicely, inside a tidy child’s desk. I walked myself down the hallway, stopping at a drinking fountain that offered only a dribble — was another nice teacher flushing the toilet on the other side of the brick wall? I continued down the hallway. Familiar with this routine, I sat in the office and placed my hands in my lap. I swung my legs, slowly at first and then fast and high, until the secretary behind her fortress of a desk told me to knock it off.

  Then I remembered: I had torn a page from a picture book. I stood up and took the page from my back pocket. I looked at it: Green Eggs and Ham. It meant nothing to me, but now it was another page in my big book of childhood mistakes. The week before, I’d thrown mud at a girl. The week before that, my error had involved a kickball — that’s right, I’d kicked it over the fence when the stupid boy on third didn’t score when he’d had the chance. I’d walked off the school grounds then, spent some time in an alley.

  The secretary stood up, came around the counter, and loomed over me. For a moment, I expected her to shake me — just like nice Miss Yamamoto. But when she saw that my shirt buttons were in the wrong holes, she re-buttoned them, combed my hair, then led me into the principal’s office. The door closed behind me with them click of a cocked rifle.

  I never got the Seal of Approval in all of first grade and I don’t expect it’s going to happen now, so to hell with that ugly thing anyway. Just last week, a radio reporter, noticing the list of ten favorite writers on my website, shook me herself, asking why not one black writer had been included. Was I going to stand in front of the class again, without defending myself? I kicked that question over the fence: let the arguing begin.

  MAN CAVE

  My wife and I were invited to a tennis buddy’s house for dinner, where we were greeted by smiles and kisses, all genuine. From the front door, we were escorted through the living room to a deck that faced the San Francisco Bay; on that day, it was bright as a nautical painting. My wife and I walked coolly to the railing and locked our eyes on the bay, pleased to know good people with a promontory upon which to reflect on life’s brief candle, etc.

  “Really nice,” Carolyn chimed after a minute of viewing. “And is that Alcatraz?”

  It was Alcatraz, the former federal prison known as “The Rock,” now a touristy destination. In the haze, we could see a ferry leaving the island.

  We settled ourselves into canvas chairs. The four of us — husbands and wives — soaked up the late afternoon sun, none of us whining about ailments or disappointments or children or the rot of getting old. We were in our sixties, yet without hearing aids the color of earwax, and with few troubles on the home front. From my chair, I absorbed the soft heat of the sun and enjoyed the mellow buzz of a second beer, along with the even nicer feeling of a rising stock market (I caught myself lifting my beer skyward). Next spring I could build my own deck and set pots of geraniums in all the corners.

  Overhead, the planes of Southwest Airlines appeared and disappeared, flying in all directions but west — west would take them to Hawaii, not a route for them as yet. From the deck, my buddy pointed out his tomatoes, which were now small and green but in a month would swell, redden, and be ready for healthy salads. He also told me of his lemon tree, which was short and bushy, and divulged his anger at a resident gopher, that little buck-toothed sojourner.

  Before dinner, my friend allowed me to view his man cave on the floor below. In fact, he said, “This is my man cave.” I had never heard the expression before. I eyed him slyly and, for a few dizzy seconds, he resembled a caveman — bearded, flat-nosed, big chomping teeth, slightly rolled shoulders. His eyebrows were bushy and his arms bristled with a blend of brown and black hairs. His legs, however, were not caveman squat, but longish. He had evolved somewhere along the line, possibly from the long strides necessary for running after woolly mammoths in the Valley of the Neander.

  This was the spot where he watched sports, read his morning newspaper, did his New York Times crossword puzzle, scrolled through e-mails, drank his coffee, savored his brewskies (when not on the deck), and pried slivers from his fingers. He is, after all, a hobby craftsman who works with wood. He’s also retired.

  “I like your chair,” I remarked. His large recliner was black like mine, but had doilies set on the arms.

  “It was my father’s,” he answered. “He died last year — no, the year before.”

  I knew enough not to ask about his father but, spying a thick book on a hassock, I did ask what he was reading. A biography on Jefferson, he said. The biography, I noted, was tagged with a slip of paper (parking ticket? two-for-one coupon?). I could imagine my buddy in his recliner with the book, dropping off to sleep in the late afternoon, the latch of his caveman jaw fallen open. That sort of sleep would be luxurious, like a good soak without water and the trouble of drying off.

  We were called to a dinner of Portuguese stew, over which we talked about travels (they like South America and we like Europe). After dinner, we spooned a custard dessert in the living room. The night was over when I pounded my fifth beer bottle on the table, like a gavel. My wife narrowed her eyes at me; later, she would lecture me about self-control.

  The next day, not unlike a museumgoer, I strayed through our own two-level house, stopping at several art pieces on the wall, particularly those by our favorite artist, DeLoss McGraw. What was I doing? Scrutinizing the place for a nook where I could build my own man cave. It couldn’t be located in any of the three bedroom
s, nor in the kitchen alcove — what kind of caveman faces a wall? That would be like getting sent to the principal’s office, with my snout facing the wall.

  I wandered into my wife’s sewing room. She gazed up, the light glinting on her reading glasses, and asked, “What?” Apparently, I was trespassing on her girl cave. I exited and returned to the living room.

  I paused ten feet from the recliner, which was positioned at an angle in the corner. Whenever I climbed into this plump recliner, I felt like I was sitting in Santa’s lap. True, the L-shaped couch was the centerpiece of the living room, while the two tansu hutches made the space stylish. The wool rug featured a Shakespearian sonnet (“The darling buds of May”) and the Shinto shrine, once belonging to a rice farmer, also commanded attention. The picture window, however, was too filled with outside light. Man caves demanded darkness, the better to hide the beer cans, dust, and grime.

  My corner space didn’t offer the sort of privacy where I could nod off without embarrassment. Plus, there was no TV, no wicker basket for magazines, and no proper end table for my empties. Otherwise, the space might have made a good man cave, with a recliner and a beer, possibly a middling novel or biography — or, hell, a copy of Playboy that I could stash under the seat when the wife appeared.

  A dog also could fit into the picture nicely, but not like the dog of another tennis friend. That pooch is named Peaches. Two or three times a day, Peaches scratches the front door and my buddy, sighing, gets off his couch to walk her around the block with a small plastic bag. Picking up the squishy dog business is mildly revolting, but he’s additionally sickened when a passerby remarks, “Cute dog. What’s its name?” No owner of a man cave should have to admit, “Peaches.”

  This other buddy, the owner of Peaches, actually does have a dark den where he pounds back beers, watches sports on an overly bright HDTV, and looks at his cell phone every few minutes. If he farts, it’s for his own pleasure. If he burps, the scent of pizza hangs in the air.