The Cat Ate My Gymsuit

by Paula Danziger

  So he said, “O.K. . . .for a little while.”

  Mom and I cleared off the dishes, and then we went into the living room, where my father was watching television. Stuart was sitting on the floor, stuffing pits into the hole in Wolf, his teddy bear. Stuart watches a lot of commercials, and he once saw that oranges are supposed to keep you healthy. He used to try to put whole oranges in Wolf, but things got pretty sticky, so we convinced him that pits are best for bears.

  My father frowned and said, “No, let the kid stay here. He’s part of the family too. And anyway, I want to talk to him about his stupid thumbsucking and that idiot teddy bear.”

  Stuart held Wolf in his arms and started to suck his thumb. “I love Wolf. He’s my friend. He never yells at me.”

  “Look, kid. You’re four years old . . .What are you going to be? Forty, hugging that bear and sucking your thumb? You’ll never get a job that way.”

  Stuart started to cry.

  I was scared, but I said, “Daddy. Please don’t yell at him. He’s just a little kid.”

  He started to yell. “Don’t you start. First I have problems at work. And then I have to come home to all this. All I want is a little peace and quiet. I was an only child. I’m not used to all the noise in the house. Your mother is always busy with you two. She never has enough time for me.”

  My mother said, “Martin. Please calm down.” He kept it up. Stuart started to cough really hard. I started to shake. I didn’t want to show him that I was upset, but then I yelled, “You don’t want to talk because you think I’ll say that I hate you.”

  “I don’t care if you hate me. Don’t you ever talk to me that way, young lady. Go up to your room.”

  “Martin. Give her a chance to talk. You don’t give anyone a chance to say anything.”

  “You just keep quiet. What do you mean, I don’t give anyone a chance to talk?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  My father stood up and yelled, “Marcy! This is all your fault. You and that stupid group-dynamics crap. Why can’t you leave well enough alone.”

  I screamed, “I hate you! Just leave me alone,” and ran up to my room. I could still hear them fighting. Crying, I heard the door open. It was Stuart, with Wolf.

  “Can I come in?”

  “O.K.” I tried to stop crying.

  He sat on the bed. “Marcy. I love you. Wolf loves you. Don’t cry. Please.”

  “Stuart. I love you too.”

  “Why is everybody always yelling? Why can’t we be happy?”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t like yelling.”

  We just held on to each other. My mother came in and said, “Daddy doesn’t mean anything when he yells. That’s just his way. Don’t be frightened. He loves you very much. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”

  I could see that she had been crying. I felt so bad. Nothing that I ever did turned out right.

  “Your father says that he’s sorry and that we should go shopping Saturday and buy you some new clothes. He thought you’d like that.”

  “I don’t want his dumb money for clothes.”

  “Please, Marcy. Be reasonable. He’s sorry.”

  “I hate him.”

  “Please don’t say that. You’re upsetting me.”

  So we stopped talking about it. Stuart and I went downstairs, and Mom gave us large bowls of ice cream. My father walked into the kitchen. Stuart started sucking his thumb. I finished up my ice cream and asked for more.

  “Marcy. Did your mother tell you that you are both going shopping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Buy anything you want.” Then he walked out of the room.

  When I went to bed that night, I thought about how bad it was in my house, how much I loved Stuart, and how glad I was that Smedley and Ms. Finney were at school.

  CHAPTER 6

  English class was really good. We worked hard, but it was fun.

  Certain things were always the same. Every Monday we had to hand in compositions. Wednesday we took our spelling tests, and then there were “The Finney Friday Flicks.” We could bring in popcorn while we watched the movies. After seeing the films, we discussed them.

  Book-report times were great. Once we had to come to school as a character in the book that we’d read. It was like the thing in Smedley, only we were the characters, not ourselves. Getting into small groups, we talked about who we were and what happened in our lives. Then we joined with the other groups and introduced one another. It seemed as if the characters from the books were real people.

  Another time, after studying what propaganda is all about, we made up one-minute television commercials to “sell” our book. We videotaped each one with the school’s equipment, and after watching all of them we talked about how they worked or didn’t work.

  Writing a children’s book was another assignment. First we talked about what kinds of things were important, like plot, theme, time, place, and stuff like that. Then we each wrote a story and gave it to Ms. Finney to be typed up. After that we illustrated them. She taught us how to bind them into books. When we finished, she tried to get school time off to use our books in a special project. But Stone wouldn’t give it to us, so we met on a Saturday at our town hospital. We visited little kids who were sick, read our stories to them, and then left the books there so that the hospital would always have books for the kids to read. Some of the class even asked for and got permission to visit every Saturday.

  Another time, we talked about humor, satire, and parody. We decided to write our own television show, and called it Dr. Sickbee at Your Service. It was the story of an orthodontist who moonlights in a rock band, lives next door to a weird family, has a younger sister who ran away to join the roller derby, and solves mysteries in his spare time. We put it on videotape and picked out the best of the book commercials to use with it, and some of the other English teachers let their classes see it.

  Once we had to learn a list of literary terms, vocabulary and spelling words, and parts of speech. I spent a whole weekend studying because I figured that the test was going to be a killer. Getting to class, we saw that Ms. Finney had made up a large game board that read “This Way to Tenth Grade.” Each row was a team. We rolled a die and landed on one of the categories. If we answered correctly, we got to stay there. If not, we had to go back. There were all sorts of penalty cards, like “Missed the bus,” “Wait one turn,” “Your locker is messy. Lose two turns cleaning it,” “Talking during assembly. Go back three steps.” The first team to make it to the end graduated to tenth grade.

  Another time, we walked in and there was a weird-looking guy standing with Ms. Finney. He wore a trenchcoat and a cap, and had a pipe.

  “Class. I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Sherlock Houses, the defective detective.”

  “Hi, kids. I have a problem, and Ms. Finney says that you’re pretty smart and can help me. You see, I’m working on The Case of the Missing Drummer.”

  “I’d rather work on The Case of the Missing Beer.”

  “Cool it, Robert,” said Ms. Finney with a smile.

  Sherlock continued. “The kidnappers left a ransom note. But I accidentally spilled coffee on it, and some of the words are blurred. Could you help me figure it out?”

  We groaned but agreed to play their game, and Sherlock and Ms. Finney handed out copies of the note with certain words messed up. We spent the rest of the period trying to figure out the missing words.

  At the end of the period, Ms. Finney told us that Sherlock was really a friend of hers from graduate school and that what we had done was an exercise in understanding words in context.

  It was fun.

  CHAPTER 7

  We should have guessed that Smedley and Ms. Finney were too good to last. There were all sorts of clues. We noticed that the principal came in to observe quite often. But they sometimes do that with new teachers. We were extra good when he was there. After all, it was Ms. Finney’s
first year as a teacher, and we saw that she got kind of nervous when someone came in to check her out. So we tried to remember to raise our hands and wait to be called on. Ms. Finney always said hand raising wasn’t necessary if we all respected one another.

  One day Mr. Stone walked in, sat down in the back, and put his clipboard down on the desk.

  We had been working when he came in, but everyone stopped.

  Ms. Finney said, “Let’s continue. Who knows what images are used in this story?”

  Seven hands were raised. Robert Alexander waved his.

  “All right. Give one example, Robert.”

  “He’s stubborn as a mule. That’s metaphor.”

  Thomas Shaw yelled, “No, that’s a simile.”

  Ms. Finney said, “Who’s right? Joel, do you know?”

  “It’s a simile,” Joel answered. “A comparison of two dissimilar things using like or as.”

  “Very good. Now, Robert. Try to find a metaphor.”

  “O.K. . . .How about ‘The room is a pigsty’?”

  “Very good,” said Ms. Finney.

  We were real careful to do our best. We didn’t answer more questions than we would have, but we didn’t laugh as much, and it just wasn’t as much fun. But we all knew that things like that are important to principals. I think that at Principals’ School they are taught to look for things like raising hands, checking hall passes, making sure that the window shades are at a certain level, and making announcements over the loudspeaker that begin “This is your principal speaking. I must have your attention please.” Anyway, Mr. Stone must have gotten A’s in all these areas.

  So we tried hard that day. When Ms. Finney asked Robert Alexander to use “philosophy” in a sentence, he said, “The derivation of that philosophy obviously was influenced by a group of loquacious siblings.” It made no sense, but it sounded erudite (another word that Ms. Finney had us look up).

  When Mr. Stone left, Ms. Finney laughed and said, “Look, don’t try so hard. Just be yourself.”

  Robert said, “I thought Mr. Stone would be impressed. That’s how he sounds at school assemblies.”

  “But your sentence didn’t make much sense.”

  “That’s why he’d like it.”

  Then Ms. Finney picked up a piece of chalk and wrote a quote from Shakespeare, something about sound and fury signifying nothing. Sometimes she got into stuff that’s hard to understand, but maybe someday I’ll put it all together.

  Two weeks later, we came into class and found a substitute.

  CHAPTER 8

  We figured that Ms. Finney must be sick or taking a mental-health day to recuperate from teaching us.

  The substitute made us diagram sentences on the blackboard. Halfway through the period, Mr. Stone walked into the class, stood in front of us, cleared his throat, and said, “Miss Finney will probably not be returning to this school. Mrs. Richards will be here until we find a new full-time English teacher. Now get back to work.”

  Get back to work, he said. How could we do that?

  Alice Carson raised her hand and asked, “Mr. Stone. Is Ms. Finney all right? Is she sick . . .or in an accident . . .What happened?”

  Mr. Stone looked at us. “Miss Finney will no longer be a teacher in my school. I want all of you to forget everything she taught you.”

  The room was very still for a minute. Then Joel stood up and said, “Ms. Finney taught me the proper methods of punctuation. Should I forget that?”

  Mr. Stone got even madder. Turning to Joel and glaring, he said, “Joel Anderson, you’re a trouble-maker. Detention for the rest of the month.”

  Before I even realized what I was doing, I stood up and said, “Ms. Finney is the best teacher in the whole dumb school, and I want her back again.”

  Mr. Stone looked shocked. “Marcy Lewis! This isn’t at all like you. Now sit down and keep quiet.”

  I was sick of hearing that. First my father and now Mr. Stone. So I kept standing there, and said, “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” That was a quotation that Ms. Finney had had us write about.

  The whole class applauded.

  Mr. Stone said, “You all have detention, and Marcy, this is not like you. Your mother is president of the PTA. She will be very upset when she hears about this.”

  The bell rang. He told us to go to our next class. We didn’t move.

  “I said, go to your next class. You will be very sorry. I will put this on your school records.”

  He stormed out of the room, and we heard him screaming at some kid who was at his locker at an unassigned time.

  We still hadn’t moved. Some of the kids started to cry. I did. My whole world seemed upside down.

  Joel finally spoke. “Come on. Let’s go. We’re not helping ourselves or Ms. Finney. Let’s find out what’s happening.”

  Everyone got up to leave. Joel came over to me and said, “Marcy. You were great. You really told that fool off. I’ll see you in detention, and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.” Then he left.

  I didn’t believe it. Joel spoke to me and said that he liked what I did!

  Nancy stood there and said, “You really did it. I’m glad.”

  We had to run to the gym. Nancy didn’t want to be late. I didn’t care. When we got to gym, I went up to the gym teacher and told her that I had been mugged on the way to school by a syndicate specializing in stolen gymsuits. Then I sat down and watched another thrilling volleyball game.

  The day went quickly. I called up my mother and told her that I was staying after to do something extra with my English class. I didn’t mention that the something extra was detention. That would have been tranquilizer territory. She was pleased, and said, “Marcy, I’m so glad that you are getting involved in school activities.”

  After the last class, Nancy and I rushed to the bathroom. She combed her hair and I checked for pimples. Then we headed for detention.

  Joel was standing by the door. He smiled when he saw us, and said, “We’d better hurry up. They give added time if we’re late.”

  So the three of us sat down in the back.

  Nancy whispered, “What do you think is happening?”

  Joel said, “I don’t know, but my Dad is on the Board of Education. I’ll try to find out.”

  I whispered, “It must be something awful. They usually let teachers at least finish out the year.”

  “Maybe she starred in an X-rated film and Mr. Stone saw it.” That was Nancy’s idea.

  The detention teacher kept looking at us. Joel told us that we had to quiet down or else we would have to stay later. He and Nancy had had detention before, but this was all new to me.

  I sat there and pretended to read. Usually it’s easy for me to read, but this time I was so upset that I couldn’t do anything.

  The teacher finally told us that time was up and we could go. Everyone rushed out of the room.

  “Marcy, I’m going to ask my father what’s happening. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out. Then you can call Nancy and she can let some other kids know.”

  “O.K. Please find out. Joel, do you think it’s really bad? I’m scared.”

  Joel shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know,” and then he walked away.

  Nancy and I headed home.

  “Hey, Marcy, what are we going to do if she can’t come back? What happens to English class and to Smedley? They won’t let us have Smedley without a teacher.”

  I could feel the tears coming down my face. I couldn’t say anything.

  Nancy stopped and grabbed my hand. “Don’t cry. It’ll be all right.” She thought for a minute. “I take that back. Ms. Finney says it’s good to show emotions. Marcy, go ahead. Cry if it makes you feel better.”

  That’s why it was all so important to me. The kids from Smedley and Ms. Finney still cared about me even if I showed my feelings. I felt as if someone had taken a vacuum cleaner and cleaned all my insides out and left me with only my blimp outside.
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br />   “Marcy, I think Joel likes you. He said he was going to call you tonight, not me, and he’s been talking to you a lot lately.”

  I guess Nancy told me that because she thought it would make me feel better. But it didn’t.

  CHAPTER 9

  When I got home, my mother was waiting for me at the door.

  “Honey, what happened at school today? Mr. Stone called and was very upset.”

  “Did you have to take a tranquilizer?”

  “Oh, Marcy, don’t be mean. I can’t help it. You know things aren’t easy for me.”

  I knew that. I mean, her husband is related to me too. And she also worried about me and Stuart.

  “Mom, I get scared that you use them too much. In school they say that prescriptions shouldn’t be abused.”

  “I’m careful. Look, Marcy, what happened?”

  So I told her about what had happened. I started to cry when I got to the part about Ms. Finney and Smedley. She held me.

  “Honey, do you love Miss Finney more than me?”

  “No . . .It’s different. She’s not afraid, and she’s helping me not to be afraid. And she teaches good stuff in class. It’s not fair. Mr. Stone is an idiot.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t talk like that.”

  “It’s true. He’s an idiot, a dope. He’s just rotten.”

  “Marcy, he’s a human being. Remember that.”

  “Nothing you say can make me believe that. Stone’s not human. There’s not one nice thing about him.”

  “You know, Marcy, life’s not like that. No one is all bad or all good—not Mr. Stone, not your father, not me, no one. You’ve got to learn that.”

  I just shook my head. “Stone’s a fool.”

  Just then, Stuart came running into the house. He’d been riding his bike, and had fallen. We ran over to him.

  “Stuart, where does it hurt?”

  He just kept crying.

  My mother looked for broken bones and blood. Finding none, she said, “I think you’ll live. Did you break the sidewalk?”

  Stuart shook his head.

  “Would you two like some ice cream?”