by Jim Murphy
Bernie had Mayor, Iggy, Vero, and Tom-Tom haul some boxes into the empty room. Then he didn’t so much dawdle as dither. He suddenly remembered that Sister Rose Mary had mentioned that they might need the room for another class in the fall, and he went off upstairs to see if there might be another room or a big closet where stuff could be left, so he wouldn’t have to move it all again later. This gave Iggy lots of time to study the bowling lanes and refine the Plan.
“There are no free rides in this world,” my mom said whenever I asked for something that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Which was most of the things I wanted. This also meant that I couldn’t, say, just get on a bus and not pay the fare. If I was going for a ride, I had to have money. Now Mayor and Iggy informed me that I had to pay the fare for this ride.
“If we’re going ahead with this, we’ll need money,” Mayor said. He was in his organizational mode. “We have to lay in supplies.” Three five-pound bags of flour, one hundred feet of ten-pound fishing line, eye hooks, and a can of flat black paint.
“For starters,” Iggy added. He warned me that there might be more expenses as the Plan evolved and was perfected. For instance, the cords that held up the scenery were just in front of the bowling alleys, so he’d have to devise a way to hang a cord over the middle of an alley. And this might require more hardware.
“Do we really need three bags of flour?”
“We have to test this out in Vero’s garage first.” Mayor was trying to be patient with me. “Probably a couple of times at least. We only get one shot at her, and we want this to work perfectly, don’t we?”
The “we” was interesting. It was clear that “we” were all in this together, but I was expected to pay for it. I was about to ask how much money the others would be chipping in, when I remembered that Philip’s father had lost his job around the same time as Erin’s (Margaret’s) father had. So it didn’t seem fair to want money from him. Instead, I asked how much might be needed to start, and Mayor told me. It was, like, a year’s worth of salty potato sticks! I must have groaned as I dug into my pocket for the small wad of dollar bills Dad had paid me for ripping up and bagging the kitchen tiles. This revenge stuff was expensive.
Later in the afternoon I felt a lot different about paying the money. Sister Angelica suddenly told us to take out a piece of paper. This usually meant a quiz, so there was a lot of moaning and grumbling. “No quiz today,” she told us. “I want you to write a brief thank-you letter. Remember to set it up like the example on page seventy-six of the Language Arts book. You can use your book, but I want the text to be your own.”
I opened the book and checked out the sample letter, which was very neat-looking. The writer was thanking his grandmother for the new tie she gave him for his birthday. A tie for a present is not cause for thanks in my book, but I guess you have to give grandmothers a break on this sort of thing. What was I supposed to write about?
Not to thank someone for coming to my birthday party or even for a gift (birthday, Christmas, or whenever). I wanted to stay clear of anything that hinted that I’d cribbed from the letter in the Language Arts book. And no mention of grandmas, or even grandpas, I assumed. I could thank Mom and Dad for putting up with me, which seemed original but also odd. I mean, don’t all parents put up with their annoying kids (besides the really good-smart kids who never seem to do anything wrong)? I wasn’t sure what to do, but time was running out, so I wrote the date at the top of the page. The correct date this time, as ordered.
I stared at the paper.
Then inspiration struck. I’m not saying it was genius, but it was unusual, especially coming from a boy. Unusual in a good way, I hoped.
I wrote my name and address at the top in the center, as page 76 showed. Then I wrote Kathy Gathers’s name and address below that on the left. “Dear Kathy,” I began. “I want to thank you for inviting me to your pajama party last Friday night.” There was more, and I worked really hard not to say anything even remotely bad about Kathy or her party. The party was great, according to my thank-you letter, which included a compliment about her pink teddy bear PJs.
Yes, I know, I said I wouldn’t write any more stories about Kathy, but this wasn’t really a story. It was a letter about a party. So, technically, I wasn’t breaking my promise. I was probably “skating on thin ice,” as Mom always said when I was being annoying, but I knew that and, as Mayor might have advised, planned accordingly. I didn’t tell any of my friends what my letter was about, because they might spread the word around the class and make it a bigger deal than it was.
This particular plan worked until Sister Angelica studied our letters and called us up one by one to talk about them. When I got to her desk, she was holding my letter in both hands, head bent over, reading it very, very carefully. She looked up at me. “Did this actually happen?” she asked in a quiet but demanding voice.
“Well, Sister,” I began, then paused a beat or two to consider my answer. “I think she had a”—I didn’t want to say “pajama party” out loud because there were a lot of kids milling around. I pointed to my letter—“one a few weeks ago.” Another pause to consider what to say next, and then I rushed to add, “But I wasn’t invited or anything. That would be too, you know, weird and all”—my voice became so soft it was hard even for me to hear what I was saying—“for a boy, um, to be there.”
“I’m glad you realize that,” she mumbled. She put my letter flat on her desk and pointed to a sentence. “It needs a comma here,” she said. She took up her red ballpoint pen, clicked it so the point appeared, and inserted the comma. Then she circled it and said, “You need to rewrite the entire letter.” She handed me my letter, implying that I had been dismissed.
She told me that when I was finished, I should come up and stand in line (quietly) while she went through other people’s letters. So I went back to my desk and wrote a new letter, adding the comma. I was back at her desk five minutes later. No one was in front of me, so she looked at my letter right away, scowled, then took her red pen and added another comma in another sentence, circling it as before. “You need to correct all the punctuation in the letter,” she said, accenting the word “all” and giving her head a little shake. “Please redo it again correctly.”
I went back to my desk, wondering why she couldn’t have pointed out this additional comma earlier to save me some time. I rewrote the letter, adding the comma. I might have mumbled something under my breath, because Vero asked what was the matter. I told him about the commas, and he mumbled something. Mumbled togetherness felt nice right then, I have to tell you. “Let me see that,” he ordered, taking my letter. He studied my paper and began to chuckle. “Did you really go to her pajama party? Sounds like fun.” After I told him I’d made up the whole thing, he pointed out a couple of other punctuation errors. He handed it back to me. “There. That should shut her up!”
I fixed the punctuation, then went up to show Sister Angelica. There were two kids in front of me.
Here is where it all turned really sour. I mean, having to rewrite a silly thank-you letter again and again was bad enough. Now it got bad —with exclamation points!!!!!
Mary Claire Danes was at the front of the line. She handed her letter to Sister Angelica, who took it and looked it over. “See here, Mary Claire.” Sister Angelica pointed to the paper and said, “It needs a comma there. Go back and put it in, and you’ll be finished.”
What?! She leaves a comma out and gets to stick it in and DOESN’T HAVE TO REWRITE THE ENTIRE LETTER? I knew my brain was screaming too loud, but this wasn’t right. Mary Claire was one of the good-smart kids (and I clearly wasn’t), but shouldn’t justice be meted out evenly? (That last part was something I heard Uncle Arthur say once or twice, though I can’t remember why he said it. But it did sound right.)
Joey Spano was next. He showed his paper to Angelica.
“You have very nice handwriting, Joey. Beautiful, really. There are two words spelled incorrectly”—she pointed to the
paper—“cross them out and write in the correct spelling just above. You can use the spelling book to check them.”
Joey was not what I’d ever call a good or a smart kid (though he was better than I was in both categories). He was a perfectly nice kid who also happened to be wide enough to help me hide from Sister Angelica. It was obvious that Angelica had targeted me for special treatment.
I gave her my paper and waited for the guillotine blade to fall. Because I knew it would. And she didn’t disappoint.
“The punctuation is fine,” she said coolly—not, I noticed, ever using my first name as she’d done with Mary Claire and Joey. “But . . .”
Yes, there was a “but.” I’d spelled a word incorrectly, and the red pen did its thing on my paper. I was sick of rewriting this dumb letter and actually wished Sister Angelica would just stab me in my left arm with her red ballpoint pen and get it over with.
Back at my desk, I was able to get Vero, Mayor, and Iggy involved in finding all the misspelled words. Sister Angelica was busy looking at other kids’ papers, so we were able to pass my letter back and forth without much trouble. All of them, by the way, liked the letter and thought it was very unusual, not at all insulting to Kathy Gathers.
I was back at Sister Angelica’s desk a few minutes later, waiting for the verdict. “The punctuation and spelling are fine,” Sister Angelica said. I felt my shoulders and back relax just a little. I was seconds away from being free of this torture. “But this didn’t really happen, did it? This party.”
“No, Sister.”
She pointed to Kathy’s name. “Then I think you should change the name and address.”
“Yes, Sister.” By that I meant I would never use a real kid’s name in any future assignment, letter, or story, but that wasn’t what she meant.
“Good. Rewrite it with a different name and address and you’ll be finished.”
“Yes, Sister,” I said very quietly through clenched teeth.
By the time I got back to my desk, my head was throbbing, my thoughts were white-hot and madly, blindingly flashing. This is not fair, I told myself. Not that I needed telling. I could feel the second hand of the clock in Sister Rose Mary’s office moving forward a click at a time. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. This. Is. Not. Fair. This. Is. Not. Fair. I thought my head might explode at any tick. I glared at Sister Angelica and wanted to scream, If it’s a war you want, Sister, you’ve got it.
17
My Fat Duck Hop-Waddle Jig
MY ANGER WAS like a roller-coaster ride. I know that doesn’t sound very smart, but after all, I was only a sixth grader. Most of the time I wasn’t very angry, just always simmering annoyed. But then I’d feel the anger building a little at a time. Like a roller-coaster car slowly going up a steep hill. Clack, clack, clack. Then something would push me over the top—like writing a stupid, stupid . . . did I mention stupid? . . . thank-you letter a thousand, million times!—and it would all go downhill from there, without brakes, to crash at the bottom and explode into pieces while every rider with me was screaming.
I went back to my desk. My anger must have been showing on my face. Vero leaned over and whispered, “What’s the matter?”
I murmured, “Everything.” Though I think I said another word before “everything.”
I redid my letter. Since this was war, I decided I had to make it almost the same, though different enough so she couldn’t complain. I addressed my letter to Ken Gabler and wrote the K and the G extra big so she couldn’t miss it. I thanked Ken for the great pajama party and changed the pink teddy bear PJs to Pittsburgh Pirates PJs. Still, I felt a little victorious when she grudgingly said it was okay. But clearly, she didn’t love my letter. She gave me a crummy 73 percent.
I was still so angry when school was out that I stalked away from my friends, didn’t buy any salty potato sticks, and even walked on the opposite side of Kearny Avenue so I wouldn’t meet the three high school girls in their short plaid skirts and tight sweaters. They spotted me, though, and Mr. MacGullion’s daughter yelled across the street, “Hey, Jim Murphy Jr. How’re you doing?” I’d been seen, and I didn’t want to seem rude, so I waved and said “Hi,” but even this little encounter was ruined by what Sister Angelica Rose had done.
Dad came home early and made bacon-wrapped hot dogs with melted cheese. Plus Boston baked beans with a lot of bacon in them. Usually anything with bacon put me in a good mood, but not that night. After I grunted some answers to the standard “how was your day” questions, Mom said, “You seem a bit peckish tonight, Jimmy. Any reason?”
I muttered “No” quietly, but by then Dad had said, “He’s hardly touched his dinner. I’m not sure he’s peckish.”
My brother laughed and added, “Peckish, shmeckish, wreckage,” and laughed some more.
“What does peckish have to do with his dinner?” Mom asked.
“Peckish means hungry,” Dad explained.
“Peckish means grumpy,” Mom countered. She seemed pretty sure about the definition.
“When I’m hungry,” Jerry said, “I’m usually grumpy, too.”
“Hungry,” Dad said to Mom. “Grumpy isn’t a primary definition. But we can look it up after dinner.”
“If he ate his hot dog in one angry gulp,” Jerry offered, “he could be peckish in every way possible.”
Usually this kind of odd circular conversation was a distraction and sort of fun, but it just made me even more annoyed. Or should I say more peckish? I even grunted my answers when Ellen called, which didn’t make me feel any better, in case you’re wondering.
I was so out of sorts at school the next day that I didn’t pay any attention to what Sister Angelica was trying to teach us. Why bother, I figured, when I’m destined to be criticized, get low grades, and have additional comments added to my red MURPHY folder. Then things got even worse.
Yes, worse.
It was Thursday, so that afternoon my second-grade escort arrived to take me to the banana rehearsal. There were some chuckles from a few kids in my class (Roger seemed particularly pleased at what I was going through), but when I stood up, Sister Angelica gave me a hard, nasty look that suggested I was disrupting her class of good-smart kids. I couldn’t figure out why she was scowling at me, though I did wonder if they had run out of cherry Jell-O on Wednesday night before she got any. What I did know was that her being angry wasn’t fair. I didn’t actually volunteer to be the Green Banana, now, did I?
When I got to the auditorium, I found that all the Yellow Bananas were in costume. Here’s the thing. Sister Mary Brian had mentioned costumes during other rehearsals, but for some reason I thought the Yellow Bananas would be wearing yellow rain slickers with those silly, floppy yellow rain hats. Every kid had one, even me. But here they all were in real banana costumes. I shivered at what might follow.
Sister Mary Brian was fussing with some kid’s costume, making sure that it fit and the kid could breathe. She was having trouble getting some of the bigger kids into their banana peels, and she seemed distracted and frustrated. Besides, a bunch of kids had discovered that if they lowered their banana heads, they could have a banana-head duel, while others danced around and bumped into each other like bumper cars at an amusement park. “Children,” she said impatiently, “please settle down while I get Charles here into his costume.” She noticed me and pointed stage right. “James, your costume is over there. Could you climb into it so we can get started?”
My spine went numb when I saw my costume. It was gigantic. Sister Rose Vincent gigantic, maybe seven feet tall. There was a huge zipper down the back. The inside of the costume looked like the interior of a zeppelin, with all sorts of wooden braces, struts, and cross frames, plus a padded harness to hold it upright on my shoulders. And it was heavy. I could barely lift it. The Yellow Banana costumes looked very light. You don’t have banana-head duels in a heavy costume.
I must have seemed confused, so Sister Mary Brian called over to me, “Mr. Danes said you should wear it t
he way you wear football shoulder pads.” She finally got Charles into his yellow banana and zipped him up. “Children, please. We need to practice with our costumes on so we can do our dance. The first show is in three weeks. And don’t run into each other or the costumes might break.” I was still looking into my costume and wishing I could disappear. “James, just climb in, put your feet through the holes at the bottom, put your arms out the side holes, and slide the harness over your shoulders.”
She really didn’t have to tell me how to put it on. Just looking at it made it obvious what I had to do. But thinking about getting into it told me something else. Once I was in, I would have—I’m not sure how to say this without committing some sort of major sin—I would have a large part of the green banana sticking out between my legs. I gave Sister Mary Brian a pleading look, which she ignored. “James, just get inside so I can zip you up. We’ve already wasted a lot of time.”
I put it on as directed. The leg holes were so tight that my pants rolled up inside. Once I had the harness over my shoulders, I heard the big zipper locking me in. “Okay,” she said with a weary cheerfulness. “Everyone into our Victory-V, and we’ll begin.”
I discovered a number of things about my costume as Sister Mary Brian hurried to the piano. The inside smelled like pine wood, glue, and paint because the thick green paint covering the outside had seeped through the fabric. It was also hard to see much through the little porthole opening where my eyes were, so I had to lean forward to locate the front of the Victory-V. Mr. Danes (Mary Claire’s father) was an engineer of some sort, and he had built wooden frames that met at each end but widened out in the middle, just like the peel sections of a banana. This meant that my (now bare) legs were not able to come together. Walking meant waddling like a fat duck. Despite all obstacles, I managed to hop-waddle to my spot.
