Language Arts

by Stephanie Kallos

  His parents shrieked with disgust and horror.

  Realizing that his mother and father were incapable of loving him in his flawed condition, Kennedy ran away from home and had a series of adventures set in exotic locales like Transylvania, Antarctica, and Havana.

  Finally, in Japan, Kennedy met a large family of rice farmers who were suffering from the disfiguring effects of mercury poisoning. They took young Kennedy in. They cherished him in spite of his horrific deformities.

  The force of their communal love, combined with the intervention of a beautiful fairy—modeled, in countenance only, on the September 1962 Playgirl of the Month—resulted in the miraculous straightening and regeneration of young Kennedy’s limbs.

  Kennedy grew up to be a fabulously wealthy, benevolent doctor who married all his nurses and invented cures for cancer, leprosy, thalidomide babies, and the flu.

  And then, one day, Kennedy’s parents showed up at his clinic as patients. They were blind, infected with leprosy, monstrous to behold.

  Kennedy cured them, not revealing his identity.

  But when their sight was restored and they saw the gold crucifix Kennedy wore at all times around his neck, they recognized him as the long-lost son they had wronged so terribly all those many years ago.

  All wrongs were forgiven. They fell weeping into one another’s arms and lived happily ever after.

  •♦•

  “‘The End,’” Mrs. Braxton said. She reached into the sleeve of her shirtwaist dress, produced a balled-up handkerchief, and began dabbing at her eyes.

  Except for the sound of her intermittent sniffles, the room was completely still. The self-designated emcee seemed utterly drained of her leadership abilities, and no one was quite sure how to proceed.

  It was Dana McGucken (who had listened intently the entire time, not fidgeting, not punctuating Mrs. Braxton’s reading with a single vocal or flatulent outburst) who finally took charge and initiated the applause.

  “Yay, Char-Lee!” he yelled. “Yay! Yay! Yay! I like that story!” The rest of the class joined in, the pretty photographer snapped pictures, and Mrs. Braxton, still rendered mute by emotion, indicated to Charles that he should stand.

  It was then, with a hopeful heart, that he turned around to see his parents’ reaction.

  Because they were both seated and clapping politely in near perfect synchronization, Charles’s first thought was that at least they were unified in their response. If his unconscious intent had been to shore up and strengthen the bonds of his parents’ marriage, to lead them to whatever common ground they’d occupied before becoming combatants, antagonists, in a brutal civil war, then he had succeeded, brilliantly.

  Their expressions—soon to be captured by the camera and published in the Seattle Times as part of the article titled “Fourth-Graders Predict the Future” and subtitled “Nellie Goodhue Students Earn Attention Thanks to Controversial Prize-Winning Story”—did not reflect jubilation, pride, or even moderate approval.

  Garrett and Rita Marlow’s faces looked exactly as Charles imagined Kennedy Hefner’s parents’ did when they first beheld their grotesquely transfigured son:

  Perfect expressions of unadulterated horror.

  That Arrow Grinding

  Over the years, a few people have dared to puzzle over some of Mr. Palmer’s recommendations. For a man who was allegedly concerned with speed and efficiency, some of his letter forms require time-consuming care. A few are nearly indecipherable because of their resemblance to other letters. Others are frankly difficult, even awkward, to execute, in some cases downright counterintuitive.

  For example: a capital X.

  It’s a powerful letter, one that often has unpleasant and/or illicit connotations: X-rated movies; X marks the spot; exile; excommunication.

  Because the pharmaceutical industry relies heavily on the letter in its brand names (Sominex, Ex-Lax, Xanax, Lexapro), it is associated with ill health.

  Teddy Roosevelt marked his diary with a slashing, irrevocable X to articulate darkness, unspeakable grief.

  Mr. Palmer’s uppercase X consists of two C-shaped curves that touch, just barely, but do not cross.

  And yet, what could be simpler or quicker than two intersecting diagonal slashes?

  It’s as if Mr. Palmer’s variants are inside jokes, put there for his personal amusement. He couldn’t really have believed, could he, that these variations were timesaving? They are flouncing, fancy choices.

  Perhaps Mr. Palmer wanted to demonstrate that he too, like his predecessor Mr. Spencer, had an appreciation for the finer things in life; beauty for beauty’s sake, flourishes that serve no purpose beyond loveliness.

  The most baffling example of these odd lapses occurs in three letters when they appear in a terminal position.

  A Palmer t is uncrossed;

  the up-swinging curve of a w is severed (this being the variant present in my father’s signature);

  and the tail of a g is reduced to a single stroke, a pessimistic downward slash, an animal’s tail stripped of feathers or fur.

  •♦•

  Sister Giorgia Maria Fiducia D’Amati knows better than to try teaching her boys these complex refinements. At the island convent school, they celebrate small successes; for the majority, the execution of a single loop constitutes reason for rejoicing.

  That it often takes months or even years for one of Giorgia’s boys to take up a writing implement is fine. Sometimes they never do, and that is all right too.

  But there was one boy.

  He’d come to the island long ago, in the 1960s, but when Giorgia remembers him—

  (and she remembers him frequently now, whenever she’s in the presence of the silent boy who tears magazines during his lessons)

  —it is as if it were yesterday: his odd way of dressing; his shining, pale face; his gregarious, joyful spirit; his pure heart.

  Before he was put into their care—after whatever trauma or tragedy sent his parents in search of an alternative school—someone had taught him to write, and taught him well. The joy he took in that simple skill! He inspired all the sisters. He inspired the other boys too.

  His presence was proof of what Giorgia had known since childhood:

  Even a backward girl

  (dummy was what Papa called her: manichino),

  an unloved girl

  (who’d killed her mother in childbirth, forever depriving Papa of a son),

  but strong, like a man, almost

  (raped by soldiers, sent away to bear her baby in shame),

  such a girl can survive, learn, pray, forgive, serve, receive love, give thanks.

  Such a girl can grow to be a bride of Christ, a friend, a teacher.

  Such a girl knows that God cherishes the backward no less than the genius.

  •♦•

  The playground of the Nellie Goodhue School was a large, flat rectangle of land that tilted sharply at its far end, where it sloped up to abut an odd convergence of dead-end streets. What vegetation there was had a weedy, wild, untended look; the northern border was dotted by several large, dense, shapeless shrubs that stood a few feet from a chainlink fence.

  In the winter, the bare branches of these shrubs and their white, BB-size berries provided a tangled cage and a ready food supply for small, overwintering birds. In the spring, they leafed out, forming a dense, inscrutable barrier, giving rise to terrifying rumors of bees, wasps, and hornets lying in wait within and inciting stern warnings from Miss Vanderkolk.

  The school year was almost over. The fuss over “Flipper Boy” had died down. Charles wrote another story, “The Sad Donkey,” but—as is often the case with second novels—it was not received with the same acclaim; furthermore, his sophomore effort shared the spotlight with a debut story by Astrida Pukis entitled “The Wonderful Dove.”

  Penmanship lessons had shortened in length; however, Mrs. Braxton still set aside five minutes every day for some form of Palmer practice. “Next year, when you are fifth-grad
ers,” she cautioned, “you will not have the time that we have enjoyed this year to further your penmanship skills.”

  Charles remained her unofficial teacher’s assistant, and whenever she required a demonstration, she merely nodded, signaling him to rise and take his place.

  “Today we will review the three special letters that are executed in a different manner when occurring in the terminal, meaning final, position of a word. Who remembers what those letters are?”

  Astrida Pukis shot her hand up.

  “T! W! G!” Dana shouted.

  “That’s correct,” Mrs. Braxton replied, “but please raise your hand if you wish to respond to a question.”

  Dana thrust his hand skyward and repeated, “T! W! G!”

  Mrs. Braxton sighed.

  “Astrida, can you list the words that we use when practicing these variations?”

  Astrida rattled off the three words, snippily.

  Mrs. Braxton said, “Exactly right. Let us all inscribe this phrase ten times.”

  On the blackboard, Charles wrote that arrow grinding, that arrow grinding, that arrow grinding, demonstrating the atypical endings that were the focus of the lesson.

  What arrow? What did it grind?

  It’s a savage image, really, one Charles has pondered through the years. Why couldn’t Mr. Austin Norman Palmer have come up with some gentler phrase to demonstrate those three letter variants?

  Why not

  that swallow singing or

  what callow rejoicing or

  that sorrow abating?

  •♦•

  By the end of the year, Charles’s friendship with Dana had undergone a change.

  They still ate together, but Dana now joined Bradley and Mitchell for lunch recess.

  “Come play with us!” Dana yelled on his way out the door. “Come on, Char-Lee! Come play with me and Brad and Mitch! We make loops too!”

  Charles had no idea what that meant—and he might never have learned had he not been hustled out to the playground one day by Miss Vanderkolk.

  “Charles,” she said, appearing with terrifying suddenness after the lunchroom had emptied, “I appreciate your diligence, but it is a beautiful day. Leave your reading for now and join the other children.”

  Charles looked for Dana among the thronging, giddy hordes of kids. He looked for Bradley and Mitchell too, but didn’t see any of them.

  Miss Vanderkolk had already issued her seasonal warning about the bushes on the far end of the property, but when Charles spotted a flicker of white behind them, he headed out that way. He soon heard Mitchell speaking in an exaggerated, falsetto parody of Mrs. Braxton:

  “Up and down and around again, up and down and around again!”

  Peering behind bushes, Charles saw Brad, Mitch, and Dana, flies open, penises out, inscribing loops of pee against the concrete retaining wall.

  “Hey, spaz!” Mitchell called out. “Come make Palmer loops with us.”

  “Hi, Char-Lee!”

  Charles looked down the corridor that was formed between the bushes and the retaining wall; at the opposite end was Astrida Pukis, staring.

  “Dana. Come on,” Charles said. “Come out of there now.”

  “No, Char-Lee. It’s fun!”

  The next day, Charles tried to keep Dana from going outside. “Stay in here with me today,” he said. “We could practice, we could have a cupcake race …”

  “Awwww, the faggot is jealous,” Mitchell said.

  “The faggot misses his girlfriend,” Bradley added.

  “Come on, Char-Lee!” Dana said, and so Charles went outside, but when he tried to get Dana to play a game of foursquare or tetherball, Dana said, “No! Too many kids there. I like the other place,” and there was no changing his mind.

  The next time Charles ventured to look behind the bushes, Dana was the only one with his penis on display. Mitchell and Bradley were flanking him, looking on. Bradley was sniggering as usual, but Mitchell’s face was deadpan.

  “That’s it, faggot,” Mitchell’s voice was no longer a parody of Mrs. Braxton’s; it was flat and joyless. “Up and down and around, that’s it. Up and down and around. Now do some push-pulls. Good. Now do some bedspring ovals …”

  “Dana!” Charles called. “Come out of there.”

  “Hi, Char-Lee! No! You come in! Come make loops with me!”

  Mitchell perked up. “Yeah, come on, Char-Lee Mar-Low,” he echoed. “Don’t you want to do some Pah-mer looooooopuzzz?”

  Dana laughed.

  Charles realized then that he had lost Dana McGucken; their two-boy club was no longer enough. Dana had achieved and embraced membership in a new club—except he was too much of a spaz to realize that he wasn’t really a member, he was a pawn, a fool, a sacrificial lamb.

  He hated Dana McGucken for going with those boys, those bullies.

  Let him get what he deserves, Charles thought, walking away, that ree-tard.

  A week went by.

  Charles kept an eye on the three of them. They didn’t always disappear behind the bushes, and when they did, it was for short periods only. They reemerged after what Charles calculated to be the length of an average piss, with Dana trailing in Brad and Mitchell’s wake, bounding and uncoordinated and always happy, an oversize white puppy.

  It was clear that Bradley and Mitchell had come to regard Dana as an embarrassment, a pest, and they began trying to ditch him, flat-out ignoring him, rolling their eyes and exchanging frustrated looks as he stood too close and babbled loudly into their averted faces, his energetic, penetrating cries—

  Miss-Shel! Bra-Deee! Less play! Less make loops!

  —cutting through the chorus of playground voices, making Mitchell and Bradley even more mortified by the awkward social situation they’d brought upon themselves.

  Now you know what it’s like to have a ree-tard for a friend, Charles thought. Ha-ha, creeps; the joke’s on you.

  Dana was undaunted, though; the only time he didn’t cling to them was when they ventured into the middle of the playground. At those times, he remained on the perimeter, massaging that web of skin between his thumb and forefinger, his expression anxious and forlorn.

  •♦•

  During the final two weeks of that school year, the ranks of room 104 began to diminish.

  This kind of attrition was common as summer neared. The assumption was that the absent children were lucky ducks whose parents had already whisked them away on fun-filled family vacations.

  The next-to-last Friday of every school year was Field Day, a free-for-all of outdoor activities for the entire school, with every child on the playground from nine o’clock until two, drinking pop for once instead of milk, eating hot dogs and hamburgers and potato chips and cookies supplied by the PTA. The thinking was probably that if the students were given this last hurrah, they’d tolerate one more week filled with sedate, end-of-year chores—emptying out cubbies, lockers, and desks; taking down bulletin-board displays; all the joyless but necessary labors involved when the circus leaves town.

  On that morning, Mrs. Braxton noted several absences in her attendance book, including that of Mitchell Rudd. Charles didn’t care where Mitchell was; he was just hopeful that he didn’t plan to return before the end of the year.

  Out on the playground, Dana was easy to spot—especially so that day, since it was warm outside; the girls were bare-legged and sleeveless, and many of the boys wore shorts. He was following Bradley around. Brad looked smaller and less threatening without Mitchell by his side, and he didn’t seem to have the energy to deflect Dana’s attentions in the usual forceful way; he kept looking around as if he didn’t quite know what to do.

  Charles participated, a little, in the festivities. There were ringtosses and races, fun challenges that were organized, run, and supervised by the dozens of parents who were volunteering their time.

  There is some horrifying statistic about children drowning during parties, how—incredibly—the odds of such a thing happenin
g increase in direct proportion to the number of adults present.

  When Charles couldn’t locate Dana, he knew where to look, so he started to make his way through the throngs of happy children and oblivious adults to the far, quiet end of the playground where the bushes were, where the hornets nested.

  Miss Vanderkolk had ordered the bushes cordoned off; a makeshift fence of caution cones and rope had been erected, and a sign reading DANGER OF BEES HORNETS YELLOW JACKETS AND WASPS! STAY AWAY! had successfully kept everyone at a distance.

  There was no one close enough to see or hear anything of interest; there was nothing to give a single clue as to what Charles would find when he finally came around the corner.

  Mitchell Rudd had come to school that day after all; there he was, with Bradley and Dana—whose hands and feet were bound with the fabric strips Mrs. Braxton had used earlier in the year in service of the immobilizing technique.

  “Hi, Char-Lee!” Dana cried with exuberance. “We’re playing a new game!”

  Before Charles could register what was happening, Mitch trapped him within the vise grip of his arms. Bradley went to work binding his hands and feet while Mitchell slapped a hand over his mouth. But then, realizing that Charles’s screams wouldn’t attract any special attention, he let go.

  “We’re playing cowboys and Indians,” he said.

  “I thought we were playing dam-sell in this-dress!”

  “Yeah,” Mitch said, considering. “I suppose we could keep playing that …”

  Charles realized that Mitchell didn’t really have a plan beyond luring him here. If he kept his mouth shut, things might be all right.

  Then Mitchell noticed Charles’s police-detective notebook.

  “What’s this?” he asked, withdrawing the notebook from Charles’s shirt pocket. Charles’s favorite pencil, sharpened to a fine point, was wedged into the spiral coils; Mitchell pushed it out and flipped the notebook open.