by Jim Murphy
She blinked and looked baffled. “Iggy, Tom-Tom, and Squints?” I told her who they were. “Oh,” she said. “So do you think they might help us a little? And you, too?”
Now I had done it. To get out of being a target, I’d made them targets. And I hadn’t even escaped! “I don’t know. I guess I could ask them.”
“Tell them it would be a big help. It won’t start for a while, so they have time to think it over, and tell them it won’t take up much time. Fifteen or so minutes maybe twice a week. Mr. Bernie is going to try to get nets for those old hoops.”
“Um, okay.”
“Oh, and perhaps Philip might be able to join us. I think speaking English more might help him. I’ve been reading about . . .” She didn’t seem to want to say the word “stuttering.” “Well, some people say that more opportunities to speak can help. Could you ask him, too?”
“Um, well, I guess.” I am nothing if not a genius in conversation.
“Thank you, James.” She glanced at her watch. “Lunch period is almost over, so you might want to go inside and eat.”
I needed urgently to get to the auditorium, where the triggering device was being set up. I knew the guys would be disappointed, but now Sister Angelica had actually been nice to me and gotten me to volunteer to coach her basketball league. And then there was Kathy. I had to stop the flour-ball-in-the-stomach explosion.
I had intended to go in through the door closest to the auditorium, but with Sister Angelica still out in the courtyard, that was out of the question. A new route suddenly occurred to me. I headed back to the door I’d just come out of. I wouldn’t go to the cafeteria—I would take the long way around, past Sister Rose Mary’s office, down the hallway filled with windows and the long dark hallways, to the back stairs. I could run part of the way, so it might not take long.
I went inside, but instead of heading down toward the cafeteria, I took a step up toward the first floor and Sister Rose Mary’s office. Suddenly a giant dark shadow blocked the light and my path. I glanced up and up and up at what might have been a hundred-story black skyscraper named Sister Rose Vincent.
“And where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.
“Um . . .” This was one time I was thankful for my bulging red MURPHY folder. “I have to go to Sister Rose Mary’s,” I said with great confidence, maybe even pride. No one could possibly question this, not with my track record so carefully written down. I grabbed the handrail, pulled myself up a step, and tried to slither past her.
Sister Rose Vincent tossed a hip left to block my way. “Not so fast,” she said. “Sister Rose Mary isn’t in her office right now.”
“Oh. Well, I can go and wait for her.” Again, I made a move to get past her, but she didn’t budge.
“She won’t be back for some time. You should go to the cafeteria and wait for the bell. And no dawdling.”
“Yes, Sister.”
I turned and went downstairs, one slow, sad step at a time. My mind was racing, trying to work out a new plan. But all I heard inside my head was Now what?
22
Nella Bocca del Lupo
TWO HOURS LATER I was backstage with all the second graders. The first graders were singing and dancing their hearts out, which meant the second graders were on next. I would be on next.
Our group was standing to the side and unnaturally quiet, probably because everyone was nervous. The auditorium was packed with kids, all of them following every move taking place onstage. Bernie had tried to get the curtain to work, but it jammed, so it would stay open for today’s show. I heard one Yellow Banana say he wasn’t sure he would remember the dance steps. Another hoped she wouldn’t forget the words to the song. Which Sister Mary Brian finally had given them a few days before, saying she was sorry, but she was able to think up only one verse.
I was nervous too, not so much about remembering the words. I was nervous thinking about the exploding flour ball and wondering if it really had been hooked up. There had been a lot of last-minute clearing out and moving of things in the auditorium, plus setting up the folding chairs, so the guys hadn’t gotten back to class in time to tell me what had or had not happened.
After I put on my costume, I squinted to focus my eyes and stared hard at the alleys. This wasn’t easy to do through my costume porthole. The yellow police line and corner posts had been removed, so nothing blocked my vision. Still, I couldn’t see the fishing line, either at the beginning of the gleaming alleys or at the spot where the line was supposed to lead up to the hanging ball. I leaned over, stared so hard my eyes hurt, then looked up at the ball and tried to follow where the line should come down. If it was hooked up, the black paint had made it disappear.
I was about to give up when I noticed the slightest bit of a flash, a paper-thin two-inch-long line of reflected light hovering halfway between the floor and the ceiling. So it was hooked up and ready to go. Okay, now what was I going to do?
“Are you looking at something?” one of the Yellow Bananas asked in a whisper.
“No,” I replied softly, straightening up and trying to look innocent.
“I saw you too. You were looking at something,” said another Yellow Banana. “What is it?” He looked down the alley and said to a third banana, “The Green Banana saw something over there, but I can’t see it. Can you?”
Sister Mary Brian saved me from having the entire Victory-V of Yellow Bananas checking to see what I had been looking at. She quieted the chatter and told us to get ready. So much for my plausible deniability. “Break a leg, everybody,” she added as she left the stage for the piano. I knew from the back of the Language Arts book that that was a way to wish performers good luck before they went on, but it still seemed like a wish for bad luck.
The first grade finished up to lots of applause and several loud whistles. Patrolling nuns quickly silenced the whistling offenders. Then it was the second graders’ turn.
The Banana Boat group went first, followed by the Rhyming Bananas. This second song was pretty lively. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun performing, and they got the loudest applause—along with whistles from some foolishly brave kids, several of whom were escorted from the auditorium.
After the Rhyming Bananas had taken their bows and exited the stage, the Yellow Bananas and I went to our positions. I had to hop-waddle onto the stage, and even though I was as graceful as possible, there was still a smattering of laughter from the audience. By this time I was sweating like crazy and trying to suck in air. I was nervous about being in front of the entire school and also about the booby trap just behind me.
I could hear some of the Yellow Bananas still worrying out loud. I was worrying too, about everything. Especially whether I would survive the afternoon. All my nervousness disappeared when Sister Mary Brian called out, “And one . . . and two . . . and THREE!” And she hit those piano keys like a ton of bricks.
The plan for our routine was simple. Sister Mary Brian would play the first two—I think she called them bars—of music and we wouldn’t move at all. Then we would do two sets of box steps without singing. We would start singing during the next two sets of box steps while we all continued dancing. Because there was only one verse, we would sing that verse twice and then stop.
On cue, I stepped forward, my arms flapping this way and that to keep me balanced. I assumed that the Yellow Bananas, as instructed, were waving their arms a little bit so the audience would think my dancing style was planned. I heard a few kids in the audience start to laugh, and I began to sweat hard. I was afraid the entire mess would become a bad joke and Sister Mary Brian would be so embarrassed that she’d stop playing. But she thumped on in grand style.
I must have been distracted. As we finished our second non-singing box step, I leaned over too far and felt myself tipping off balance. To stop myself from toppling over, I had to fling my arms up, and I managed to do a complete one-footed spin. A second later the audience roared with laughter, and some even applauded, and I reali
zed that all the Yellow Bananas must have followed my lead.
No time to stop, since Sister Mary Brian sure wasn’t stopping. So, as directed, I stepped off into the next box step, and the Victory-V burst into song:
“Heeeee’s . . . a big green banana
and he’s sad, sad, sad.
He wants to go home
in your grocery bag.
Heeeeee . . . wants to be yellow,
he wants to be sweet.
He wants to be loved
just like your ground meat.”
I have to admit, I was glad Sister Mary Brian had run out of creative energy—who knows what a second verse would have said. We kept on dancing and repeating the lyrics until Sister Mary Brian—with gusto—came to a thunderous ending. And the auditorium went wild.
No, really. They were clapping and shouting and whistling. Our instructions were to stop, do a little bow, and then stand there quietly while Sister Angelica came onstage and delivered her message. Sister Mary Brian came bounding up first. “Excellent. Excellent,” she said with real enthusiasm. I couldn’t see her through my tiny porthole, but from the sound of her voice I figured that she turned to face the audience. “Everyone. Everyone. I need your attention, please.”
Patrolling nuns began hushing the audience, and soon the auditorium became deadly quiet. It happened so quickly it was actually a little spooky. Sister Mary Brian continued. “Sister Angelica Rose has a couple of very important announcements to make, and I hope we will all give her our full attention.”
A moment later Sister Angelica walked quickly past my line of vision, followed by someone a little shorter, obviously a student. I swiveled a tad and almost said something out loud when I saw Kathy Gathers standing beside Sister Angelica.
Sister Angelica began explaining about the bowling alleys and how Bernie had worked so hard to restore them. And Bernie got his own round of applause, which was nice. Then she continued her announcement. But I wasn’t really taking much of it in. My brain was churning through why Kathy Gathers was up on the stage with Sister Angelica Rose. I knew Kathy was one of the good-smart kids, but there were other good-smart kids, so why her?
“. . . a girls’ bowling league.” There were some cheers for this, mostly from girls. A few boys called out, “What about us?” The cheers won out. Sister Angelica continued: “We’ll be taking down names all next week, and we’ll start the league the week after that. You’ll be getting a note about this to show your parents.”
Sister Angelica let a few moments go by as the audience settled down. “We have an even more important announcement to make today.” She paused and put her hand on Kathy’s shoulder. “Kathy’s parents and all of us at St. Stephen’s are so proud of her. After a great deal of discussion and thought and prayer, Kathy has decided that after she graduates from high school, she is going to become a postulant to the order of Sisters of Charity. Kathy has . . .”
Postulant? I’d heard the word before, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. It sounded like a very bad, very gooey disease. Then it dawned on me, and my brain screamed: What?!?! Ten pages of exclamation points and question marks would not even begin to show you what I felt at that instant. One hundred pages wouldn’t do it. Plus my brain finally did short-circuit in a light show of colors and fireworks and internal screams and wails.
I was so stunned I stumbled back until some Yellow Bananas stopped me. Kathy Gathers—my Kathy Gathers—was going to become a nun. Forever. My dreams for the future—our future together—were shattered, over, dead, gone, destroyed, obliterated . . .
“. . . and as a special honor to Kathy, she will throw the first ball on our newly redone bowling alleys.”
This produced another What?!?! I was trying to organize my thoughts in some sort of rational way, and that was the best my brain could come up with. Meanwhile, Sister Mary Brian ghosted up from backstage and handed Kathy a shiny black bowling ball. Kathy took it, turned, and made a step toward the alley.
Having the exploding flour ball hit Sister Angelica would be bad enough, but if it hit Kathy . . . I couldn’t begin to imagine how bad things would be. So I did the only thing I could do. I went into action.
I threw myself into a spinning turn, pushed a Yellow Banana aside, and went fat duck hop-waddling toward the alley. I got there a few steps before Kathy, slid across the black foul line, and felt the tripwire jam my foot. I looked up.
There is slow. And there is slow motion. I felt as if I had been standing there for several minutes with nothing happening. The triggering device hadn’t worked, and I had just made a fool of myself for no—
And then it was there, the bag, sailing in the planned arc and headed directly for me. It happened so fast I couldn’t move before the bag hit me right square in the porthole.
All I knew was that the inside of the Green Banana costume filled with billowing flour dust, and I started coughing. Meanwhile, outside, there was another explosion—of gasps, shouts, cheers, a chorus of coughing (I assume from a spreading cloud of flour dust), and one voice from nearby—I think it was Al the Second Grader—proclaiming, “That was so cool!” I did what any right-thinking kid would do: I ran.
Or rather, I started hop-waddling to escape what would surely be the most horrible punishment since the Spanish Inquisition. I cut across the stage—hop-waddle, hop-waddle—headed for the door to the stairway. Through the door—hop-waddle, hop-waddle—to the stairs, then up.
This might sound easy, but it wasn’t, trust me. Hop-waddling up stairs doesn’t work. I had to grab both handrails and haul myself up two or three steps at a time. A moment later I burst out the side door, slid down the banister to the courtyard pavement, and hop-waddled my way up the side walkway of the convent to Beech Street. Then I hop-waddled toward the end of the street.
By this time, I had come up with a plan, a feeble one at best. Beech was a dead end, but there was an opening in the fence that led to what we called “the cut,” a dirt path that paralleled the train tracks and emptied onto Kearny Avenue. And freedom.
I had almost reached the end of the street when I realized my escape plan’s fatal flaw. The opening in the fence wasn’t very big, just big enough for a kid to squeeze through, and I still had on my seven-foot-tall banana costume, with no way to unzip and get out of it. So I stopped hop-waddling.
I was exhausted, and wisps of flour dust still clouded up the inside of the costume. I stood there panting like a dog in July and leaned over to see if that would help me breathe better. That’s when I noticed I was standing next to a bench, where Sister Immaculata was sitting, staring up at me.
“Good . . . afternoon . . . Sister,” I panted as politely as possible. I saw dust swirls drifting over Sister Immaculata.
And do you know what she did? She started laughing. I mean, everybody always laughed at me, but a nun! Her laugh was a cross between a cackle and a giggle, and it seemed to echo in the street.
Because I’d been laughed at before, I knew this wasn’t a mean cackle-giggle. In fact she seemed to be really enjoying herself. I could tell when she stopped saying her rosary, dropped the beads into her lap, and pointed at me, cackle-giggling even harder.
After a while she settled down and must have heard me wheezing. She patted the place next to her and suggested that I sit down. I plopped down beside her, which was not easy to do in a stiff, oddly shaped banana costume.
She chuckle-giggled a little more, then asked, “What’s your name?” Her voice was shaky and a little raspy.
Because of the costume, I was sitting straight up and facing forward, so I was looking directly across the street. To talk to her I had to lean over, and the top of my banana costume nearly hit her in the head.
“James Murphy,” I told her.
“James Murphy,” she said thoughtfully. She repeated the name softly a couple of times. “I had a James Murphy in class long ago. Are you related to him?”
“He’s my dad, Sister.”
She cackle-giggled a few times, then said, “Well, that explains it. He was quite a scamp, too, when he was here. Always up to something. Has he done okay? You know, we were all worried about him.”
“He’s done okay,” I said. I was puzzled because I’d never, ever heard that my father had a scamp side. I wondered if he and my mom had other secrets and how I could find out about them. “He’s a certified public accountant,” I added proudly.
“Good, good,” she said. “You tell him Sister Immaculata says hello. And tell him I still remember the eraser incident. That had us puzzled for days.”
“The eraser incident?” I wanted to know what he’d done that had stuck in Sister Immaculata’s memory for decades.
“It turned out to be very funny,” she said. “You should ask him. I think you and your father have a lot in common, judging by that costume.” She cackle-giggled some more.
Just then I heard my name called, and Vero and Philip came running up.
“You need to come back, Murph,” Vero said. “Now.”
Sister Immaculata patted my hand and said, “You run along now. And remember to say hello for me.”
“I will, Sister.”
Vero and Philip hauled me to my feet. I asked them to unzip me so I could walk back like a human, but the zipper was stuck and wouldn’t budge. So they walked and I hop-waddled.
“We’re cooked,” Vero said. “They know everything.”
“Everything?” I squeaked.
