The Big Shuffle

by Laura Pedersen

  All of a sudden I'm staring into the face of my old history teacher, Mr. Wright. He recognizes me and says, “Hello there, Hallie Palmer.” I go on autopilot and abruptly blurt out, “Plessy versus Ferguson, 1896.” This isn't a complete non sequitur, since Mr. Wright had spent the better part of a week drilling five landmark Supreme Court cases into our heads.

  Mr. Wright just laughs, as if I'm only one in a long line of old students to see him, panic, and start reeling off Supreme Court cases. We talk for a minute and as I'm walking away he shouts after me, “Miranda versus Arizona!”

  For a second I freeze but muscle memory kicks in. “Before questioning suspects police must inform them of their right to remain silent!” I call down the hall.

  Mr. Wright smiles back as if brainwashing young people is a good thing, and then becomes lost in a sea of pimply faces and brightly colored knapsacks.

  I walk into the front office and receive a warm greeting from Mrs. Hardy, the perpetually kind and sunny office secretary whose twenty-something daughter has been in drug rehab three times. Mrs. Hardy doesn't take it upon herself to judge others.

  “Well, if it isn't Hallie Palmer,” she cheerily announces.

  “Hi, Mrs. Hardy.”

  “We were all so sorry to hear that your father was called home.”

  She makes it sounds as if Dad's desk phone suddenly rang and a voice announced that his eternal bungalow was ready.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Mrs. Hardy comes out from behind her desk and gives me a hug. “You're so skinny, Hallie. I heard that the ladies’ auxiliary from church was coming by with some food.”

  “They are.” I try to sound reassuring. “We have plenty to eat. I guess I've just been getting a good workout from stress and X-treme vacuuming—it's a new sport I'm trying out.”

  “Well, do try and take care of yourself,” says Mrs. Hardy. “And what can we help you with today? Did you come to drop off a lunch or some gym shoes?”

  “I'm here to see Mr.—I mean, Dr. Collier,” I say.

  “Oh!” She looks surprised. I assume this is because my regular run-ins with the attendance office ended over two years ago and certainly she'd seen my name on the graduation list.

  Mrs. Hardy turns to another secretary and tells her that Hal-lie Palmer is here for an appointment with Dr. Collier. A woman who appears a decade too young to have gray hair briefly looks me up and down as if I should probably be strip-searched, and then tersely states, “I'll tell him you're coming.” She whirls around in her swivel chair and picks up a phone.

  Mrs. Hardy gives the impression that she's accustomed to a lack of courtesy from her office mate and points down the hall while explaining that Dr. Collier's office is now where the janitor's closet used to be. I give her a look that says, Janitor's closet? Only she just smiles and says, “That's right, we're absolutely desperate for space around here.” But from her eyes I can tell that the rest of the staff think he's an asshole, too, and probably no one would share an office with him. There's a reason that generations of kids have referred to Mr. Collier as Just Call Me Dick, and it's not just because that's what he says as soon as he meets a parent.

  As soon as I step outside the office door I spot Collier's beaky profile coming down the hallway. When he sees me standing there, he rubs his hands together as if they're the feelers of an insect contemplating some long-awaited prey.

  JCMD ushers me into his office, where he's done a fairly good job disguising the fact that his lair was recently a janitor's closet, except for the big industrial-sized drain that's still visible in the corner. And the air freshener on top of his J. Edgar Hoover file cabinet can't do anything to suppress the smell of damp mops from days gone by. Just as the black swirl of a dozen carefully placed hairs does little to conceal his balding head.

  “I'm sorry about your father,” says JCMD as he points to an uncomfortable metal chair.

  And I'm sure he is, seeing as my dad more or less sided with him in the fight to keep me in school. It was my mom who finally examined alternative solutions and then worked on my dad. Likewise, I'm prepared to fight for Louise. Even though I don't approve of what's she's done and want her back as well, there's no way I'm going to tell him that. I remove Louise's birth certificate from my folder and hand it across the desk.

  “Louise is going to be sixteen in two weeks, and after that she doesn't have to attend school,” I say. “She's planning to start in Boston as soon as she gets settled.” This may or may not be true, but it's intended to avoid the drama of trying to chase her down between now and her birthday.

  JCMD doesn't take the birth certificate from me or even try to look at it. Instead he slides a piece of paper with a calendar on it in my direction. “Theodore has been leaving school before lunch every day for the past week and not returning—which means he's missing math, science, and, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, physical education.”

  “Teddy? This is about Teddy?”

  “When I asked him about the situation, Theodore refused to give an explanation, other than to pose the hypothetical question: If I knew exactly what day I was going to die, would I do anything differently?”

  Dr. JCMD looks perturbed about this. And I have to keep myself from laughing. That definitely sounds like Teddy. When Mom sends him to his room as punishment, he usually mumbles something about Kierkegaard and trying to live spontaneously without being spontaneous. He's read that book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a hundred times.

  I look at the copy of Teddy's schedule and the red lines indicating where he's cut class. It's a chart very familiar to me. And it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on—he's found a way to go and visit Mom in the hospital. Still, I'm not about to tell Dr. JCMD that.

  “I understand there's been a death in the family and so I'm trying to be sensitive to his needs,” continues Dr. Collier. “I organized an appointment with a counselor, but he didn't show up. One of his friends offered some information that leads me to believe he's involved with a cult, which you know we have to take very seriously.”

  “He's not in a cult,” I inform JCMD somewhat angrily. “Teddy just likes—what do you call it—metaphysics. He says he's a monist—a person who believes that everything in the universe is connected, or something along those lines.” I have plenty to worry about without keeping track of Teddy's philosophical musings. But I know enough to be sure that he doesn't fit into any loner gunman profile.

  Dr. JCMD sits opposite me at his desk, stares directly into my eyes, and says, “I'm worried, Hallie.”

  It's safe to assume that homeschooling is definitely not an option at this point in our lives. “He won't skip any more school,” I promise.

  “I think that problems in the home are negatively impacting the education of your siblings.”

  Now I'm really steamed. Because it's none of his business what goes on in our home. “I don't really think it's your concern what's going on so long as the kids are in school,” I say sharply.

  “Quite the contrary,” says JCMD, his voice becoming more slippery than eel snot. “The state of Ohio depends on its public school system to alert the authorities about any family problems such as neglect or drug and alcohol abuse, just to cite a few possibilities.”

  It's like being on trial. “My mom will be home soon.”

  Dr. Collier trains his steely gaze on me as if he's made a few phone calls and knows otherwise. “And in the meantime what qualifies you to take care of so many children?”

  “I'm their sister!”

  Dr. Collier turns his head away and sighs as if this just isn't good enough.

  “What? Are you going to try and have all my brothers and sisters put into foster care?” My quivery voice betrays how upset I've become.

  “There's always the option that they could go and live with relatives.”

  “No one can take in seven kids!”

  “Well, of course they'd have to be split up,” continues Dr. JCMD, and I think I catch the slight glimps
e of a cruel smile.

  It was two years in the making, but finally his revenge is in sight.

  THIRTY-TWO

  UPON ARRIVING BACK AT THE HOUSE, I CAN'T HELP BUT THINK about when I would return from school in the old days. There were freshly baked cookies on the kitchen counter, or else cake and ice cream left over from a birthday party the night before. The good thing about having a mother who bakes and a large family is that there's a terrific birthday cake almost every few weeks. And no matter how much Mom scrimped and saved on meals, she always made huge cakes with lots of frosting, carefully decorated, and served with at least two flavors of ice cream.

  While changing the twins I study them intently for any sort of identifying marks. Nothing. Hopefully the hospital made fingerprints or footprints just in case we ever need to know for sure who they are. When I hoist them off the table, my shoulders ache a bit and I wonder if they're growing incredibly fast or I'm just getting incredibly old.

  Next I change Lillian's pull-ups. I promise myself that starting tomorrow there will be a major effort to resuscitate Lillian's potty training, which has seriously lapsed during the past few weeks. Mom has a foolproof six-week program to convert any child from diapers to underpants, only I'm not sure exactly how it works. Dad used to call it her Ministry of Potty Training.

  It seems as if the minute I've finished giving Lillian and the twins lunch and put them down for naps, the rest of the gang is coming off the bus and soon it will be dinnertime. How does the day go by so fast?

  After the younger kids have their snack, I take Teddy aside and spare him none of the details of my meeting with JCMD, and how his brothers and sisters are going to end up in different foster homes and it will be his fault. “You'd better shape up, mister.”

  He simply shrugs as if there are worse things in the world than our family being broken apart. I swear, I almost punch him. I call Eric at school and leave him a message saying, “You'd better read Teddy the riot act as soon as possible because he's cutting school and getting us all into big trouble.”

  By the time dinner is made and served, the last plate is in the dishwasher, and the twins have had their final feed, I'm not only bushed, but have a serious case of bottle fatigue. When I go to put clean sweaters in Francie and Lillian's room, I find all the kids huddled around Uncle Lenny as he's about to start a story. Deciding to relax for just a moment, I climb onto the bed next to where Darlene is curled up with Lillian and the kitten. The rest have elbows balanced on crossed legs with their chins resting on the palms of their hands, eyes fixed on Uncle Lenny. I wonder if he's going to read from a seafaring adventure such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. I mean, he must be telling some great stories for the whole gang, including Teddy, to give up Connect Four and video games.

  Uncle Lenny sits on the floor with his back against the closet door and shows the kids a trick in which he cuts a piece of rope and then magically restores it. He performs another by tying a knot that keeps switching places along a length of rope. There's a coin that Uncle Lenny claims is a Spanish doubloon, which he makes disappear and then pulls out of Francie's ear, much to her delight. Finally he glances at his big silver pocket watch and says it's just about bedtime. The kids all start yelling, “No, no, tell us a story!”

  Uncle Lenny gives a wonderful look of fake surprise and says, “A story? I told you that I don't know any stories.”

  “Yes, yes, you do!” they all shout back. And from the way everyone seems to know their lines so well, I surmise that this scene has been acted out before.

  “Oh, well, I suppose I could tell you about something that actually happened.” By the way he hesitates it's clear that he's only considering the idea.

  “Yes, yes!” The crowd goes wild.

  “Tell the one about the wicked witch of Tweety,” says Francie.

  “I think you mean Tahiti.” Uncle Lenny winks at me.

  “Yeah,” says Davy, “the witch with the tits likes a basset hound's ears.”

  The kids all giggle and put their hands up to their mouths. Standards are definitely dropping.

  Everyone settles in while Uncle Lenny furrows his brow and appears to dredge his memory. Finally he lowers his voice so that we all lean in just a little closer and begins, “Well, now, I was in Burma not too long after they gained independence from the British. We sailed into the port of Rangoon with a cargo ship that was supposed to take on a load of teak wood. It was during the wet season and so you had to watch out for snakes.”

  Uncle Lenny pauses for a second, and I look around to see all the kids wide-eyed and spellbound.

  “Yes, indeed, there were lots of big tricky snakes to watch out for,” continues Uncle Lenny. “Especially the Burmese python, which can grow to be more than twenty feet long and weigh over two hundred pounds. They're quiet fellows and good climbers. Excellent swimmers, too. Only if those serpents don't eat regularly they can get awfully cranky. But a python is a constrictor, which means it doesn't always slide over and start chomping on its prey.”

  Uncle Lenny uses his big hands to show us how a snake's mouth clamps down on a person and just narrowly misses Davy, making him jump.

  “No, the python wraps its body around you and constricts until you can't breathe and your eyeballs pop out.” Uncle Lenny demonstrates by squeezing his neck with his hands and all the kids inhale deeply as if they're also losing their breath.

  “Do they eat people?” asks a fascinated Teddy.

  “If they're hungry, they eat anything that has a heartbeat— a lion, a deer, even a harmless little pussycat.”

  Darlene shudders and hugs Kitty closer to her chest.

  “A Burmese python doesn't know from people—you're dinner just like a rabbit, rat, or goat. In fact, the locals always had to be careful to make sure the pythons didn't get in the cribs of the babies. They especially like small children.”

  Lillian squirms.

  “So the day after we docked in Rangoon most of the crew went ashore, except for a few down below sleeping off the wine, women, and song from the night before. I'm on the aft deck leaning over and working on the lines when I suddenly feel something bite into my leg and guess that it's probably a wharf rat. Looking down I see those diamond marks on that long bright yellow body—not the golden yellow of the sun, mind you, but the greenish yellow of the slick boogers you blow out when you have a cold.”

  “Yucky!”says Darlene.

  “And I see those two flat black eyes like piss holes in the snow.”

  Davy giggles while Francie gasps, because Mom would definitely consider this to be “bad language.” And Uncle Lenny would be branded as a “potty mouth.”

  “When I go to pry open his jaws, he starts wrapping that eighteen-foot body around my chest. And do you know what I said?”

  “Great Caesar's ghost!” the kids shout in unison.

  “Exactly!” Uncle Lenny smiles at them for making such a good guess. “So I grab a nearby machete that I've been using on some rope and hold it up against my chest with the blade pointed outward.” Uncle Lenny demonstrates by taking a comb from his back pocket.

  “Now I wait as the snake keeps coiling itself around me. I know that if I can only keep the blade from slipping to the side, when the devil is finished he's going to try and suffocate me by squeezing as hard as he can. Sure enough, that big old snake starts constricting and the blade cuts him in two and he falls right off me!”

  Uncle Lenny pops the comb forward and the kids jump as if they can feel the blade.

  “Two days later I sold him to be made into ladies’ shoes in Japan.”

  It's hard to tell if Uncle Lenny is the most fearless entrepreneur in the world, a nutcase, or totally full of shit.

  “Okay, crew, bedtime!” announces Uncle Lenny. “Let's do our group grace.”

  Mom and Dad used to run a police action around eight o'clock every evening to make sure the Lord's Prayer was being said, and so I assume Uncle Lenny is keeping up the tradition. The kids dutifully bow
their heads and along with Uncle Lenny recite in unison:

  “Now I lay me down to sleep,

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  Grant no other sailor take,

  My shoes and socks before I wake.

  Lord guard me in my slumber,

  And keep my hammock on its number.

  May no clues nor lashings break,

  And let me down before I wake.

  Keep me safely in thy sight,

  And grant no fire drill tonight.

  And in the morning let me wake,

  Breathing scents of sirloin steak.”

  “Aye-aye,” booms Uncle Lenny instead of the more traditional “Amen.”

  The kids raise their heads.

  “Any special intentions?” he asks the assembled crowd.

  Davy volunteers, “God bless Mommy in the hospital and Daddy in heaven and all my brothers and sisters except for Francie, who stole some of my soldiers.”

  “Did not!” shouts Francie and pounces on him.

  “Okay, off to your cabins before I send names to those Bar-bary pirates I told you about!”

  The kids miraculously scatter. I can only imagine what that story is about.

  THIRTY-THREE

  ON SUNDAY MORNING WHEN I GO TO CALL THE KIDS FOR BREAKFAST, they're not in their rooms. Or anywhere else in the house.

  Only Teddy is here, quietly reading a book on the couch.

  Frantically I ask him, “Where are Darlene, Davy, and Francie?”

  Without looking up from his reading Teddy says, “Outside waiting for the bus. They were bugging me, and so I told them it's a school day.”

  “That's it, Teddy. Eric and I talked about it and you're grounded except for school. And you'd better go to school or we're all going to be in a lot of trouble! I don't know who was driving you to see Mom after lunch, but there's going to be a guy stationed in the parking lot keeping an eye out for you from now on.”