Shoebag

by M. E. Kerr

  “I am sorry that I left school before you had the fight with Tuffy Buck,” said Gregor Samsa. He was holding the little Watchman TV on his lap, stealing glances at it as he talked. “Pretty Soft won’t come out, but she told me through the door of her bedroom about her accident, and that she saved the roach, and tried to kill the jumping spider.”

  “So you know now that she is not selfish or heartless,” Shoebag said. “She has a black eye and black-and-blue marks to prove it.”

  “And her career is over,” said Gregor. “That is the saddest part of that story. She is no longer a star.”

  Mildred had climbed up on Shoebag’s lap. Her teeth were chattering and she was drooling. Shoebag pushed her away.

  “I hear you have a new club,” Gregor Samsa said.

  “It’s just the rest of us. Do you want to join?”

  “I’m not the unpopular type,” he said, “except when I am back, when I am there, when I am In Bed. People scream at the very sight of me.”

  “That happens to the best of us,” said Shoebag.

  “It is what I hate most about that life.”

  “Not me,” Shoebag said. “I would give anything to be my old self again.”

  Now Mildred was focusing her attention on Gregor, sitting by his leg, cuffing him with her paw, her jaws trembling.

  Gregor said, “This cat picks up the traces of the old me. Cats are very clever animals, but soon she will leave my side, and go back to you.”

  “Mildred does as she pleases,” said Shoebag. “You can’t count on her to leave your side.”

  “She will,” said Gregor, “as soon as I give you this.”

  He put down the Watchman long enough to take out a slip of paper. “Do you mean it when you say you wish you were yourself again?”

  In Gregor’s glasses, Shoebag could see his own antennae quivering with happiness at the very thought.

  He told Gregor, “Oh, I do! I miss everything! I even miss hiding, and I used to complain when I had to hide every time a light went on.”

  “I hate hiding!” said Gregor. “I like to be noticed!”

  “I miss those old dark crevices, and I miss outwitting the Zap man,” Shoebag said, “and now my family is moving away on the next U.P. truck. How I wish I could go with them!”

  Gregor held the slip of paper in his hands. “I have been saving the secret formula written down here, thinking there might be another day when I would just as soon return to roachdom. But I know now I never will. If I want to be a star, I must concentrate all my energy on that. Look what happened to Pretty Soft when she let her attention stray to help you. You cannot have your mind in two places if you want to be a star!”

  Gregor handed the slip of paper to Shoebag. The moment he did, Mildred moved away and sat at Shoebag’s feet.

  “Now I no longer have the power to go back, and to be there,” said Gregor. “If you really, really mean that you would like to be your old self, this is what you must do.”

  Mildred began winding in and out of Shoebag’s legs, hissing up at him.

  Gregor said, “You wait until a Wednesday night. You go into a dark room by yourself. You take off all your clothes and shut your eyes. And then you say those words, written down on that paper. Don’t look at the words yet, and don’t say them until you are all ready.”

  Shoebag put the piece of paper in the pocket of his shirt. Then he reached up and turned on the table lamp, for it was dark outside now, and Gregor was speaking in a very mysterious tone.

  “Anyone who says those words on a Wednesday night, in a dark room all alone, naked with closed eyes,” said Gregor, “will be what he or she is meant to be.”

  Now Mildred was heading across the room, slowly, on tip-paw, stalking something that the lamplight had revealed.

  “Are you sure this will really work?” Shoebag asked Gregor, who had gotten to his feet.

  “Yes, it will really work, so long as you never share it with another. If you do that, it will lose its power for you, as it has for me now.”

  “What I don’t see,” said Shoebag, “is how you can turn your back on roachdom forever!”

  Gregor Samsa stuck his Watchman in his pocket and took off his glasses to clean them across the front of his shirt.

  “Even the light does not bother me anymore now, and I was a cockroach for a long, long time. I won’t miss it at all.”

  “If the light doesn’t bother you, maybe you would lend me those sunglasses until next Wednesday night,” said Shoebag, who could see his shiny shell in them, and Gregor’s human face.

  “I’m sorry, but I need them, Shoebag. Meeting Pretty Soft gave me the idea to be a TV star. I am going to the studio tomorrow to see about it, so I have to look like a star!”

  He put the glasses on again, and reached out to take Shoebag’s hand and wish him luck.

  Behind him, Mildred was crouched and staring at the table.

  “Thank you for everything,” Shoebag said. “You are a real person!”

  “Yes, I am a real person for once and for all!” Gregor Samsa said.

  Then, before he left the living room, he walked to where Mildred was watching the black jumping spider let itself down to the floor from a dragline off the table.

  And Gregor Samsa did what any real person would do next. He put his foot down and squashed seven black legs and the thin silk attached, giving Shoebag a two-fingered farewell salute.

  Nineteen

  THERE WAS ONE GLORIOUS party late that night in the dark Biddle kitchen! Every cockroach within crawling distance was there to celebrate the death of the black, seven-legged jumping spider! Crumbs and grease and meat shreds were shared generously, and all the old roach songs were sung.

  Hi de hi ho, we hunt high and low,

  In kitchens,

  Hey de hi ho, the parties we throw,

  In kitchens!

  No matter how vigorously Shoebag protested that he had not killed the spider, no one in his family believed him.

  “You said you were going to try and do it, and you did!” Drainboard had told him. “We are so glad you did, Son, but we are also afraid of you now.”

  Under The Toaster had added, “You have become enough of a person to step on things, so stay away from this evening’s celebration!”

  “I have good news, though….” But Shoebag could not get them to listen to him long enough to hear about the secret formula which would restore him to roachdom.

  “From now on we are going to hide when we hear you coming,” they had told him. “You can’t blame us, can you?”

  Right above the kitchen that night was another mood, and it was not one of celebration.

  “Now this is the story,” said Mr. Biddle as the family and Shoebag gathered in the living room. “Pretty Soft has been permanently replaced by Claudia Clapper, which means that we can no longer afford the services of Madam Grande de la Grande. Tomorrow, Pretty Soft will go to Beacon Hill Elementary School with Stuart Bagg.”

  “I cannot go anywhere with a face like this!” Pretty Soft cried out.

  “I’ll paint out your black eye,” her mother said. “And I’ll color your bruises with Peach Tone Acrylic Number Three. You’ll look like anyone else.”

  “I won’t feel like everyone else, though. I haven’t had enough practice being a civilian.”

  “You have been a civilian most of your life,” said Mr. Biddle, “and it is time to get back in touch with real people.”

  “I have to do it, too,” said Mrs. Biddle. “I must stop painting and get a job.”

  “We must go on a very rigid new budget,” said Mr. Biddle. “We are not going to touch one cent of Pretty Soft’s college money. We have to save for the day Stuart Bagg goes to college, too.”

  “We must call Pretty Soft Eunice from now on,” said Mrs. Biddle.

  “I don’t think I’ll be going to college,” Shoebag said.

  “Of course you’ll go to college!” said Mr. Biddle.

  “Oh, yes, Stuart, you have to
go to college,” said Mrs. Biddle.

  “I’m not going to college if you don’t,” Eunice told Shoebag.

  “We are not going to take our summer vacation,” said Mr. Biddle.

  “The new microwave oven has to go back to the store,” said Mrs. Biddle.

  “This is not good news at all,” said Shoebag.

  “It is not that bad, either,” said Mr. Biddle. “Now we are no different from any other family.”

  “We have definitely fallen on hard times,” Eunice said.

  Twenty

  “IF I WERE TO GO away,” Shoebag asked Eunice while they walked down Beacon Hill to school, “would you miss me?”

  “I have never played the part of anyone who misses someone,” she answered. “But I know what it is like to miss being Pretty Soft. I miss her mirrors, and I miss learning her lines, and I’m going to miss all the money she made.”

  “Missing a person is different than missing your old self,” Shoebag told her.

  “I’d need a script and cue cards to know what that’s like,” she said. “I’d need to feel the heat from the cameras to know what that’s like. Oh, Shoebag, don’t remind me of the days when I was loved so much for doing so little.”

  “I won’t,” Shoebag said, “but just remember I’d miss you.”

  “This is my sister, Eunice Biddle,” Shoebag told Mr. Doormatee.

  And he said, “Pleased to meet you, Eunice. Remember that I am your principal, and there’s a pal in principal.”

  Then Mr. Doormatee looked at her more closely and said, “Haven’t I seen you on television? Aren’t you the Pretty Soft girl?”

  “I was once,” said Eunice, “but now I am just another civilian.”

  She looked so forlorn that Shoebag hurried her down the hall. “Come and meet the rest of us,” he said. “I want to introduce you to Fatso, The Ghost, Bark, Handles, and Two Times.”

  Everyone said, “Pleased to meet you,” and Two Times said, “Pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you. But you’re Pretty Soft. Pretty Soft.”

  “I was once,” said Eunice, “but “now I’m like the rest of you.”

  It was a long, hard morning at Beacon Hill Elementary School. Madam Grande de la Grande had not tutored Eunice in geography, so when the teacher called on Eunice to name a river, Eunice said, “Old Man,” since she had often heard Madam sing a song called “Old Man River.”

  “I am dumb, and I never knew it before,” said Eunice to Shoebag, between classes.

  “You’re not dumb, you just haven’t been told everything,” Shoebag said.

  During recess, when everyone played “catch” with a rubber ball, Eunice kept dropping it when it was thrown to her. Times she ran with it, she stumbled and scraped her knees, for she was not used to playing.

  “I am clumsy, and I always thought I was graceful,” said Eunice to Shoebag.

  “Stop saying what you’re not and say what you are,” Shoebag said.

  “What am I?”

  “You’re Pretty Soft,” a familiar voice said. “You’re a famous TV spokesgirl, and I would like your autograph.”

  There stood Tuffy Buck, wearing his father’s red-and-black hunting cap, and a hunter’s vest with many pockets. He put a piece of paper and a pencil in Eunice’s hand.

  She wrote: Formerly Pretty Soft.

  “Formerly?” said Tuffy Buck. “If you were Pretty Soft formerly, who are you now?”

  “Now,” said Shoebag, “she’s my sister.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us you had a sister who was a TV star?” Tuffy Buck asked.

  He did not wait for Shoebag’s answer. He began to walk along beside Eunice and to ask her questions. What was it like to be a star? How much money did she make? What other stars did she meet?

  When she answered Tuffy Buck’s many questions, she began to sound like someone they both knew.

  “My name was on every lip, Tuffy Buck, every lip!”

  and

  “I could not eat out anywhere, or shop, or sit in the sun, or play on the slides and the swings in the park.”

  and

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear, it was dreadful how they loved me!”

  Tuffy Buck listened with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.

  When it was time for lunch, Tuffy Buck followed her through the cafeteria, offering to help carry her tray, do her homework, walk her home after school.

  “I am the boss of the cloakroom, the recess yard, all the blocks that surround this school, Beacon Hill Park, and this cafeteria!” he told her. “Naturally you will want to eat at my table.”

  All through lunch, Shoebag thought of what he would miss when he was back with his shell safely over him, his wings at his side, his legs and cerci in place.

  He would miss Fatso and The Ghost, Bark and Handles, and he would miss Two Times.

  He sat with them at the front table, and played the game with them that he’d invented.

  Here’s to The Rest of Us,

  Here’s to the Best of Us,

  Here’s to us one and all!

  Here’s to, here’s to, our power, our power,

  Here’s to lunch hour,

  Here’s to who’s able,

  To sit at this table!

  … for now there were others in the Beacon Hill Elementary School who pulled up chairs to join them, shouting out lines and rhyming them. Ones with big noses, and ones with little eyes, and ones afraid of the dark, and ones who stuttered, and ones who still wet their beds at night.

  They could hear Eunice from all the way across the cafeteria. “You have such good taste in clothes, Tuffy Buck!”

  “This is my father’s hat. This is my father’s vest. Say congratulations to my father.”

  “I’ve never congratulated a single soul but myself,” said Eunice, “because stars are the most unselfish of people. They give of themselves tirelessly … and no one has more heart.”

  We pick up for each other,

  We stick up for each other,

  The rest of us know what to do!

  What a, what a, crew, what a crew!

  “And Stuart Bagg sticks up for me!” Fatso called out at the end of another game.

  Shoebag said, “But if I am ever gone, what will happen then?”

  “The rest of us will handle it!” said Handles.

  Shoebag smiled.

  When Shoebag passed Mr. Doormatee in the hall, he said to him, “Thanks for being my pal,” even though Shoebag could not think of any way the principal had ever been his pal.

  “I’m a pal of those who need a pal,” said Mr. Doormatee, squashing an ant under his shoe.

  “Except that ant,” Shoebag said.

  “Ants don’t belong in school, Stuart Bagg. I’m not a pal of those who don’t belong in school. I’m a principal pal.”

  When Shoebag went to the cloakroom at two-thirty that afternoon, there was this note in his jacket pocket.

  Just because I like your sister,

  Do not get your hopes up, Mister,

  You’ll be hearing your own moans,

  When I come to break your bones!

  Shoebag would not miss the poems, or the boy who wrote them.

  Late that night, when the house was very quiet, when no one in roachdom dared come out for fear that Shoebag would step on him, Shoebag opened the slip of paper with the secret formula written on it. After he memorized it, he went into the kitchen.

  He did not turn on the light. He did take off all his clothes. He did close his eyes.

  “Flit, flutter, quiver, quaver, totter, stagger, trumble, warble, wobble, wiggle, swing, and sway.”

  And then he heard his mother’s voice call out, “Get your cerci moving! Hurry up, Shoebag!”

  Shoebag moved his cerci.

  He moved his two back legs.

  He moved his two middle legs.

  He moved his two front legs.

  And his antennae.

  “The cat from upstairs is two inches away from you, Shoebag!” cried Drai
nboard.

  “I’m only half an inch away from you now,” said Mildred, “and being out of a job has given me a ferocious appetite.”

  Twenty-one

  THE NEXT MORNING THERE were two notes, side by side on the kitchen table.

  From Stuart Bagg,

  Mr. and Mrs. Biddle: Thank you for everything. Do not worry about me for I have found my way home.

  From Shoebag:

  Eunice: It is all right not to miss me. Good-bye is good-bye. If you ever want to remember me, though, save some crawling insect as you did the roach that night.

  Mr. and Mrs. Biddle had overslept and were hurrying to finish breakfast and get on with their day.

  “We will miss Stuart Bagg,” said Mr. Biddle, “but I am glad his amnesia is over. Now I must get to my store. The customers will be waiting.”

  “And I must get to my first job interview of the day,” said Mrs. Biddle clearing away the dirty dishes from the. table. “I will miss Stuart, too … Eunice? Why are you just sitting there. Get ready for school!”

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” said Eunice.

  “Honey, there are things to be done now, don’t mope,” said her father. “Get Mildred back upstairs. Ever since I came into this kitchen this morning, that cat’s been crouched by the microwave. I think she’s spent the night stalking something, maybe a spider or some other bug.”

  “The microwave!” said Mrs. Biddle. “I’m glad you reminded me. That has to be put in its box to go back to the store.”

  Eunice was staring at the note Shoebag had left, going over and over the words, as though they were lines she had to memorize.

  Mr. Biddle said, “Shoo, Mildred!” as he got up and lifted the microwave into its box.

  Mildred jumped from the counter to the table where Mr. Biddle placed the box.

  “I’ll just leave these dishes in the sink,” said Mrs. Biddle. “I’m going to be late.”

  “I’ll walk with you, dear,” said Mr. Biddle. “We’ll leave this box outside the door for Universal Parcel…. Don’t be late for school, Eunice!”

  Mildred tried to follow them, but Mr. Biddle lifted his shoe and pushed her back gently. “You go back upstairs!”