Mighty Monty

by Johanna Hurwitz

  “It sounds mean, but they really are wishing the actors good luck.”

  One of his classmates poked Monty. “Break a leg,” he said.

  Monty turned to the three flowers who were standing nearby. “Break a leg,” he told them. “Break three legs. Break six legs.”

  “Shhh,” Mrs. Meaney told the students. “The play is about to begin.”

  Monty’s friend Joey Thomas was the narrator. He didn’t have a paper costume. Instead, he was wearing a shirt with a necktie and a jacket. It made him look important, but Monty was glad he had a paper tree trunk to hide behind. Joey began: “The environment is very important. We must all work to keep it clean and . . .”

  Monty stopped listening. He had heard all these words too many times. Instead, he peeked through his tree holes and smiled when he saw his parents. He recognized some of the other parents in the back of the room too.

  The rain spoke and so did the wind. Monty watched for the land. Cora moved toward the front of the stage. “The land provides a home for plants,” she said.

  She didn’t say anything about trees. Monty listened. He didn’t hear the word trees, so he didn’t speak. He stood holding his paper tree trunk with one hand and put his other hand in his pocket to feel the inhaler. “Go on, go on,” the flowers urged Monty.

  “I can’t,” Monty whispered as he clutched the inhaler. “She didn’t say trees.”

  “Say trees,” someone whispered to Cora.

  Cora had moved to the rear of the stage.

  With prodding from her classmates, she ran forward and called out, “Trees!” in a loud voice. Then she ran to the rear of the stage again.

  Now Monty knew it was time for him to begin.

  “Trees are important,” he shouted to the audience from behind his paper tree trunk. “They give us shade; they give us wood; they give us fruit. Their roots hold water in the soil.”

  Monty sighed with relief. He had said his lines. The only problem was, like Cora before him, he had forgotten the line with the cue word for the next actor. He didn’t say the word birds, and Todd, who was waiting to say his part, couldn’t go on. For the second time, the play came to a halt.

  “Say birds,” Mrs. Meaney called softly to Monty.

  Monty stood in the center of the stage. He couldn’t remember what he was supposed to say about birds. He began his little speech again. “Trees are important. They give us shade; they give us wood; they give us fruit. Their roots hold water in the soil, and their limbs provide homes for birds.” He shouted the last word extra loudly and with relief. At last he was finished and he could move to the back of the stage.

  Todd, who was a blue jay, could begin to recite his part.

  As the play progressed, some of the other students forgot to give the cue words just as Cora and Monty had done. The play wasn’t turning out exactly the way Mrs. Meaney had planned it.

  At the very end of the performance, the teacher came forward. She hadn’t given herself a part in the play, but she spoke anyhow. “Just as some of the parts were forgotten, that is how we have been treating our environment. We must not forget to conserve our resources. The environment is important for all of us and for our children too,” she said. Then she began clapping, which was a signal for the audience to join in too.

  “I think Mrs. Meaney’s going to have a baby,” Monty whispered, above the sound of the applause, to Todd, who was standing next to him. “Did you hear what she said about ‘our children’?”

  “So’s my mom,” Todd said.

  “Mrs. Meaney’s going to be a mom,” said someone else.

  “When are you going to have your baby?” Ilene Kelly asked the teacher.

  Mrs. Meaney looked surprised. “Who said I’m going to have a baby?” she asked.

  The students looked around to see who had started the rumor. “You said we need to take care of the environment for our children,” Monty remembered.

  “I meant everybody’s children,” Mrs. Meaney explained. “I’m not having a baby,” she said. “But you are all my children. Now we’re going to go back to the classroom and have a little party to celebrate the great job you did with this play.”

  Everyone in the class had the same reaction. “Great!”

  “You know what else is great?” asked Monty.

  “What?” asked Mrs. Meaney.

  “Even if we forgot some of our words, nobody broke a leg.”

  “That is great. I think I have a class full of budding actors,” said Mrs. Meaney, smiling at them all.

  Monty knew he was not a budding actor. Neither was he a budding athlete or a budding singer. But he thought that if he took some sort of special after-school class, like most of the other kids in the first grade, he might develop some new skills. Maybe he would become something besides just plain Monty.

  For example, Joey Thomas and Paul Freeman were on a soccer team, and Cora Rose took a ballet class. Monty could go on and on thinking of all the after-school activities in which his classmates participated.

  “Can’t I take a special class after school?” Monty asked his mother. “I’d like to be on the soccer team with Joey.”

  “I don’t want you to overexert yourself,” said Mrs. Morris. “You’ve been doing so well. You haven’t had a bad asthma attack in months. Let’s see if we can keep this up.”

  “It’s not fair,” said Monty. “I bet I could do something.”

  “Piano lessons wouldn’t tire you out,” said Mrs. Morris. “But we don’t have a piano. I think you’d need one for practicing.”

  “I don’t want to take piano lessons,” said Monty. “I want to take a class with other kids.”

  “That eliminates all sorts of music lessons,” said his mother.

  “I want a sport,” said Monty.

  “Absolutely not. I told you. Soccer is out. Little League baseball is out. Ice hockey, lacrosse — those are all sports that you just can’t do. Maybe when you get older,” she added to make Monty feel better.

  It didn’t work. Monty didn’t feel better thinking that when he was older he could do things like other kids. He wanted to do something now. Then one day, the twins Arlene and Ilene, who lived on his street, told him about their karate lessons.

  “Karate?” asked Monty, impressed. “Isn’t that when you learn how to throw people to the ground so they won’t beat you up?”

  “It does teach us self-defense,” said Ilene, “but we don’t spend all our time throwing each other down. It’s lots of fun, and we’re learning all sorts of good things.”

  “Like what?” asked Monty. He was getting curious.

  The two sisters began listing all they’d learned. “Respect, love, peace, joy,” Arlene recited.

  “Don’t forget self-control, discipline, trust, integrity . . .” Ilene added.

  “How can you learn so much?” asked Monty. “There won’t be any time left for self-defense.”

  “There’s time for everything,” said Ilene. “We’ve only gone for a few months and already we know lots of movements.”

  “And it’s lots of fun. We get to wear this special white uniform. And we have yellow belts already,” said Arlene.

  “The color of your belt changes the better you get,” Ilene explained.

  The more the girls told him about their after-school karate class, the more it interested Monty.

  “You could come and be in our class,” Arlene told Monty. “It has boys and girls.”

  Monty thought about it. He wanted to take karate lessons, but he was a bit scared of doing it too. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the other students.

  “Arlene and Ilene take karate lessons,” he told his parents that evening when they were eating supper. “Can I?”

  “Karate? I’m not sure that’s something you could do,” said Mrs. Morris. “It’s probably much too strenuous.”

  “Arlene and Ilene don’t look very athletic to me,” commented Mr. Morris thoughtfully. “I remember when their father was teaching them
how to ride their bikes. I thought it would be easier to teach a pair of dogs than to teach those girls.”

  Monty giggled. He remembered how the sisters had fallen off their bikes so many times. Their father was the one who did the strenuous part until they finally learned to balance themselves.

  “Could you take me to watch?” suggested Monty. “Maybe I won’t even like it. But maybe I would. And maybe it would be okay for me. Ilene said the kids in the class are all ages, from five to ten.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” agreed Mr. Morris, looking at his wife. “We shouldn’t rule it out until we’ve actually seen what it’s all about.”

  So the following Tuesday, Mrs. Morris took Monty to the karate school and Mr. Morris met them there. The three of them sat in the back of the large practice room with some of the parents of class members. Arlene and Ilene and about eight other students took their places. The children all had white outfits on, and most of them had yellow belts tied around their waists like the twins. But one small boy had a white belt and one tall girl had an orange belt. Their teacher stood in front wearing a black belt.

  “Good afternoon,” he called out to the children. He bowed toward them.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” they responded in unison. They bowed to the teacher.

  “Ten jumping jacks,” he called out.

  “Yes, sir!” the students shouted. Then the boys and girls all began jumping up and down and waving their arms.

  “I could do that,” Monty whispered to his parents. “It’s easy. We do that at school too.”

  “If ten was too many, they’d probably let him stop at half a dozen,” Mr. Morris told his wife.

  “Ten push-ups,” called the teacher when the students had completed their jumping.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Monty and his parents watched all the activities. “I could do that,” Monty whispered over and over again. It really looked like fun, and he hoped his parents would agree that he could join the class. Sometimes the students shouted out as they moved. It sounded like they were saying “Kee-yi!” Monty thought he’d have to ask Arlene and Ilene to tell him what it meant.

  “Those kicks are just like ballet steps,” commented Monty’s mother when the students were instructed to point their toes out and lift their feet.

  When the class was over, Monty’s parents went to speak with the teacher. The twins had told Monty that he was called Sensei Jack. “Sensei means ‘teacher,’” Ilene had explained to him. Monty stood nearby listening as his parents talked about his interest and their concern. “We don’t want to endanger his health,” said Mrs. Morris.

  “But we don’t want him to be deprived of activities,” Mr. Morris said.

  The sensei nodded. Then he pointed to all the goals of karate that were listed on signs around the room. “Just as the students strive to learn all of these attributes, so must I obey them too. I must respect my students and their limitations. I must honor their needs with sincerity and love. And you must trust me,” he said, smiling at Monty’s parents.

  The teacher turned to look at Monty.

  “What do you think, young man? Would you like to join our class?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Monty eagerly.

  “What?” demanded the sensei.

  For a moment, Monty wondered if the karate teacher was hard of hearing. Then he remembered how the students spoke to him.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, standing up very straight and looking the teacher in the eye.

  “This boy is a fast learner,” said the sensei. “That’s good.”

  “Let’s give it a try,” suggested Mr. Morris. “Can we sign up for a limited trial period? Say two or three months?”

  “A good plan,” the teacher agreed. “Come,” he directed Monty. He walked over to a cabinet and opened it. He measured Monty with his eyes and then pulled out a white karate outfit of cotton pants and a matching jacket. Next he handed Monty a white belt.

  “You will start with this belt,” he told Monty.

  “Yes, sir,” Monty responded to the sensei.

  Afterward, at home, Monty said to his parents, “I don’t care if I don’t have a yellow belt like Arlene and Ilene. White is my favorite color.”

  “It is?” asked his mother. “That’s news to me.”

  “Sure,” said Monty. “White is the color of snow. And it’s the color of vanilla ice cream, and mashed potatoes, and marshmallows. Those are all great things. I love white.”

  Monty’s father smiled at his son. “Yes, sir.”

  Monty was excited to start studying karate. He looked forward to Thursday, when he would accompany Arlene and Ilene to the class. Before he went to bed, he tried on his white outfit in front of the mirror and admired himself. He looked just like all the students. He practiced tying his white belt the special way that Sensei had shown him.

  But at four thirty on Thursday afternoon, when Monty stood with the other students waiting for the karate teacher, he began to feel nervous. It had seemed like such a good idea to take karate lessons when he was at home. Now he wondered why he had been so eager. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the other kids. Maybe they would laugh at him when he tried to do what they did.

  Monty wiggled his toes on the bare wood floor. He looked down at them. They looked as if they belonged at the beach or in the bathtub. His toes were not used to being exposed in a class situation. They seemed to miss their socks and shoes. Monty moved his hand in search of a pocket. There were no pockets in his uniform. That meant that he didn’t have his inhaler close at hand because there was nowhere for it to stay. Monty shuddered slightly. He was not used to being without his special breathing device.

  “Are you cold?” Arlene whispered to him. She was standing nearby. “You’ll warm up in a minute when we start doing the jumping jacks.”

  Monty nodded. It was too complicated to explain that he wasn’t cold. He was scared.

  Just then the teacher walked to the front of the room.

  “Good afternoon,” he called out to the students. He bowed toward them.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” everyone responded. They bowed back to their instructor.

  “Ten jumping jacks,” he told them.

  “Yes, sir,” Monty and the other students called out. Then they began the jumping. Monty kept count: one, two, three . . . He was pleased to see that he could reach ten just like the others.

  Push-ups were harder. By the third one, he was out of breath.

  He sat on the floor, watching the students. He worried that the teacher would throw him out of the class, but Sensei did not seem to notice him.

  “All the way down, Mike,” the teacher called out to one of the boys.

  “Yes, sir,” a boy’s voice rang out.

  “If you don’t do a real push-up, I’ll have to assign more,” the teacher warned.

  One or two voices called out, “Aww.”

  “What did I hear?” asked the teacher.

  “Yes, sir,” the students shouted.

  “Sir, that boy isn’t doing his push-ups,” a voice called out.

  Monty blushed with embarrassment. He didn’t know who had told on him, but he knew he was the boy not doing the push-ups.

  “That’s no concern of yours,” the teacher said sharply. “Do an extra five push-ups for calling out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Monty managed to do a couple more push-ups, he was sure that whoever had told on him, and was assigned the extra ones, was going to hate him.

  “First position,” the sensei called out when the students had completed the push-ups.

  Monty watched and copied the students around him.

  “Eyes forward. Arms outstretched,” the sensei commanded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Monty began to realize that although the sensei seemed very strict when he shouted his commands, he was teasing and joking with his students at the same time.

  Sometimes the students and teacher let out loud cries. When they were doing
a forefist punch, the students called out, “Kee-yi!”

  Monty was startled by the loud cries around him.

  “Again!” shouted Sensei Jack.

  Again the students extended their arms and, with fists down, called out, “Kee-yi!”

  Monty’s cry came out as a little squeak, and he blushed. He was not used to shouting in a classroom. However, by his fourth attempt at the forefist punch, he heard himself shout just as loudly as his classmates.

  By the end of the class, Monty discovered that he had forgotten about his inhaler. He hadn’t really needed it at all. His bare toes skipped into the changing room to put on his socks and shoes.

  Monty’s mom was waiting to pick up Arlene and Ilene and him. She looked at Monty and pushed the hair from his eyes. “How are you feeling?” she asked as he got into the car.

  “Fine,” he assured her. And he really was fine.

  And so a new routine was set up: Every Tuesday and Thursday, Monty and the twins went off to karate class. Mrs. Kelly, the twins’ mother, drove them to the class. Monty’s mother brought them back home. After a few weeks, the karate teacher took Monty aside and tested him. Monty showed how he had quickly learned the basic karate positions.

  “Good work,” said Sensei Jack. He presented Monty with a yellow belt.

  “Look,” Monty showed his mother with pride when she came to pick the kids up. “I don’t have a white belt anymore. I’ve been promoted to yellow.”

  “But white is your favorite color,” said Mrs. Morris.

  “Oh, no,” Monty said, shaking his head. “Yellow is my favorite color.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure. Yellow is the color of sunshine and daffodils and lemon meringue pie and the covers of the magazines that I got from Mrs. Carlton.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Mrs. Morris. “Those things are all yellow.”

  “It gets harder and harder to move on to the next color belt,” Arlene warned Monty. “We’ve been yellow a long time. But we keep practicing so we’ll get the next color.”