by Alice Ozma
I had places to be. I was in the school play and had plans to meet some friends first thing after school to run lines before rehearsal. There was no sense of anticipation, because my report cards were never a surprise: As in the subjects I liked, Bs in the ones I didn’t. Sometimes I managed to pull out an A in math or science, but this hadn’t been my year so far, and I wasn’t expecting that. In fact, I didn’t even look at the report card when my teacher handed it to me. I folded it over a few times so that it would fit neatly in my Trapper Keeper, threw everything into my backpack, and headed to meet my friends.
No one else had made it out as quickly as I had, so I had to wait around for a bit. I slouched against some lockers and had started looking through my bag for some candy when I remembered the paper in my binder. I fished it out, flattened the creases, and placed it on my lap. I enjoyed reading the teacher comments. But something else caught my eye first. I saw the curve, like a snake uncoiling and preparing to attack. A small, black, spiteful C. In English.
In English! I had to look again to believe it. My grades certainly could have slipped in biology, or pre-algebra. I was probably scraping the bottom of the B barrel in the latter anyway. But English was, and always had been, my best subject. I loved it. English was just stories—you wrote stories, or you read stories, or discussed stories. Essentially, I got a C in story time.
I stood up quickly, thinking it must be an error and planning to see the teacher before she left the school. Then I pictured the teacher, this one particular woman, and I knew it was no mistake
She wasn’t exactly mean. Best described, she was cool. She never seemed particularly happy to be with her students or in her classroom. She had eyes that I always remember as being gray, but not the gray-blue of my eyes. They were silver, and cutting in their disinterest. She made sarcastic comments while she graded papers at her desk. She only smiled when she was making fun of something, and I don’t think she actually liked books. I didn’t like her, and she didn’t like me.
This teacher and I had butted heads on numerous occasions that marking period, mostly revisiting the same debate: did my creative interpretation of the assignment mean that I had not successfully completed it? She’d hand me a low grade because of something she thought I did wrong, like writing a poem as a reading response. I’d give reasons why I thought my work was acceptable, pointing out that I had met the required word length and reflected on the assigned reading. I’d talk, and she’d turn and walk away, and I usually assumed that I’d won the argument and she was going to change the grade in her book.
I guess that assumption was my big mistake. Those conversations hadn’t changed anything, and now I had a C, my first-ever C, in my very best subject. I, the daughter of The Streak, had a C in English. Worst of all, one of the papers she’d given me a low mark on was on The Giver—a book I was reading for the second time in her class because my father and I had already devoured it at home and had lengthy discussions about it. I could practically recite passages from it, and I could make comparisons to other books we’d read together, and often did. I wasn’t showing off—I was so excited about everything we’d read at home together, I couldn’t wait to get my classmates hooked on the books I loved. If nothing else, I think that enthusiasm would have amused most teachers. But not this one. My background, and my passion, were meaningless. My father read to me every night, and I got a C in English. In English.
Right in the middle of the busy hallway, I felt my jaw begin to slack, which meant one of two things: I was either going to cry or throw up. Luckily, I suppose, it was the former. I stuck my head into my bag to make it look like I was searching for something and keep my face hidden, but my breathing was loud and heavy. Finally a security guard, who also happened to be my friend’s mother, stopped to ask what was wrong. I showed her my report card. She handed it back.
“It’s not quite as pretty with that one guy on there, but it’s still a beautiful report card. Don’t worry about what your dad will say. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
It wasn’t that. Of course he would. I cried all the way through rehearsal, and when my father came to pick me up, I didn’t try to hide it.
“Look!” I sobbed, as I flopped into the backseat. I thrust the paper forward and leaned my head against the back of the passenger seat. He read for a few seconds, and then let out a little gasp.
“What the heck?” he said.
“I knoooooow!” I wailed.
“How did this happen?”
“She haaaates me!”
We had discussed this woman many times before.
“Well, I doubt she’s your biggest fan. I’m guessing you challenge her. But challenge can be a good thing, and any teacher worth her paycheck should know that.”
I shook my head, pulled at my hair.
“You don’t think I’m angry or anything, do you?” he said, before starting the car.
“Of course not. I’m just upset because it’s upsetting!”
“All right. Because if you want, I can show you my report cards. They’re in a box at home, and not a one of them is anywhere near this good.”
“I know, I know, I know you’re not mad. That’s not why I’m crying. I got a C in ENGLISH!”
My voice broke as I gave way to sobs once more, and I wrapped my arms around my face as we left the parking lot in case anyone happened to be looking in the windows.
“Well,” he said, “what can we do?”
“I don’t know, nothing. Nothing in the world will help. Not one thing.”
“What about Custard Corral?”
“That actually might be the one thing.”
Despite the use of not one but two c’s in its name, Custard Corral was the solution to many problems. An ice cream stand a mile or two from my house, it specializes in both custard and goats. The goats are kept in a pen near the stand, and sticky-faced children often push half-eaten ice cream cones through the slots in the fence. Because of this, the goats are very friendly and also very chubby. Custard Corral is one of my favorite places on Planet Earth.
We got my usual—a strawberry shortcake sundae made with warm biscuits—and sat on a bench facing the goats. It made me feel a little better, but I felt silly admitting that ice cream could essentially fix even my biggest problems, so I didn’t say anything.
“So do you want to tell me anything about the class?” my father asked.
“No,” I said.
But I had been waiting all day to tell someone who would really understand.
“Well, it’s just that her grading is so unfair. I always think I am doing extra work but she grades it like I am doing way less than everyone else. If it’s a yes-or-no question, the grades are fair. But if it’s a creative assignment or an essay, she can grade based on how much she likes you, and she doesn’t like me very much.”
“Yes,” my father said, as he took a big spoonful out of my sundae, “there are plenty of teachers who do that. I see it happen all the time at work. It’s a crying shame, but everybody plays favorites. Even the best of them—it almost can’t be helped. Sometimes I do it without even realizing it.”
I appreciated his honesty. I’ve never understood why parents try to convince their children that they’ve imagined a problem without even listening to the situation. Sometimes children feel ganged up on for no reason, but from my experience it’s almost just as likely that the teacher is simply human and capable of making major mistakes. Kids can be quite perceptive.
“You’re just used to being one of the favorites in English,” he added.
“I think that is fair! If anyone is going to be the favorite, I mean. I work hard and I try new things and I think I ask good questions. I love reading and writing. What more do you want in a favorite?”
I stopped to take a big, comforting spoonful of strawberry goop and swirl it around on my tongue before continuing with added gusto.
“And the stuff we read in class is way easier than the stuff we read at home. I try to talk to her s
ometimes after class about the books I’m reading with you. Like when we read Island of the Blue Dolphins, I suggested that she use it as assigned reading next year, because we’d liked it so much.”
It was neither a “girl book” nor a “boy book”—Karana, stranded on an island by herself for years on end, did things that would scare the manliest man. I offered to bring in our copy and read her some of it, and she didn’t even pretend to be interested.
“I think she thinks I’m weird. If I were a teacher and I had a student like me, I would be happy. At least I think I would. Even if the girl was a little weird, it would still be nice. And I’m no good at math or science, no good at all. So when I’m doing the one thing I’m good at, I want someone to notice.”
I realized that I’d risen up out of my seat as I’d explained, and I settled back down sulkily.
“I notice. You don’t have to defend yourself to me, Lovie.”
I had been done crying for almost half an hour, but when he said this, I started afresh. I had known he would believe me, but it was nice to know he believed in me. He couldn’t figure out why I’d started again, so he just gave me a quick pat on the back and said, “If you don’t gobble down that sundae in the next thirty seconds I’m going to eat the rest of it.”
I handed it to him, and he poured it into his mouth like water.
I can’t remember what we read that night, because I was still too upset to really concentrate on it. But I remember how comforting it was to lie there and let his words surround me, wrapping me up like a blanket and keeping out the cold. He believed me. He believed in me.
When I got to school the next day, my eyes still looked a little tired from crying. I took a seat next to my friend in homeroom and handed her the shameful document without even looking at it.
“Wow, a C, huh? What’d your dad do?”
“We went for ice cream. That’s not the point; it’s not about what he did.”
“What are you talking about? Girl, if this were mine, my dad would have let me have it.”
“Have what?”
“It’s a saying. I would have been grounded. Man, he’d have been furious. You went for ice cream?”
“Yeah, I was upset so we went for ice cream and talked.”
“I wish I had your dad.”
“You aren’t paying attention to the C, Shanelle. The C.”
“No, I’m paying attention, all right. I’m paying attention to the fact that your dad actually cares that you are upset about a bad grade. He’s upset that you’re upset. Shoot, want to trade families for a bit? My mom makes really good deviled eggs.”
She laughed, slapped me on the back, and handed me the report card.
“Count your blessings, girlfriend.”
I counted: A friend like Shanelle. Ice cream. The Streak. And Dad.
I looked down at the C. It got a little smaller.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Day 1,724
For animals and birds are like people, too, though they do not talk the same or do the same things. Without them the earth would be an unhappy place.
—Scott O’Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins
You can pet him, the way a normal human might,” I said, pushing Rabbi closer to my father.
“I am not touching that filthy creature with my hands.”
My father’s method of petting the cat did involve his hands, actually. But it was a sort of rough pinch—he grabbed a lump of the cat’s fur, shook it, then grabbed another lump. Sometimes he would give Rabbi a light push onto his belly, to get him to stay in one place while my father showed his strange brand of affection.
“Why don’t you try rubbing him, like this?”
I ran my hand over Rabb’s back, gliding it softly across his fur until I got to his tail and then starting over again. We’d had the cats since around the time The Streak began, and by the age of fourteen I had practically earned a pet-petting merit badge. I had technique. I let my father try again, but he resorted to his old technique. I shook my head in frustration.
“Lovie, if he didn’t like what I was doing, would he be purring as loudly as he is?”
I couldn’t deny the sound, a loud humming that made Rabbi sound more like a motorized machine than an overweight, cross-eyed, half-Siamese cat.
“And,” he added, “Would he come up every night if he wasn’t getting something out of the bargain?”
Once again, he had a point. If you didn’t count the Raggedy Ann doll my father had gotten me (despite my age she was still always in attendance, but she had no choice in the matter), Rabbi was the unofficial third participant in our reading streak. We usually read around the same time every night—between 9:00 and 9:30—so the pattern was predictable enough, even for a creature who didn’t understand clocks. Rabbi had adjusted his sleep schedule accordingly; between eating and The Streak, he managed to stay awake for an impressive forty-five minutes a day.
As dedicated as he was however, he wasn’t particularly interested in the reading itself. From Dickens to Shakespeare, we tried our best to come up with stimulating, appropriately challenging material, but Rabb still had trouble paying attention. Even when we read books involving cats, he simply could not make any personal connections with the text. He joined us, not out of a thirst for great literature, but because he needed his fix—what my father called his rubdown.
“You are miserable, Rabbi,” he said to him almost every night after we finished reading, “You are a miserable, freeloading leech!”
I always thought this assessment was unfair. Yes, Rabb expected to be rubbed from the moment we started reading until my father turned out his light for the evening, and he didn’t give anything in return. But as I pointed out to my father on many occasions, what could he have possibly done to show his gratitude? It was as though my father expected him to leap up after we’d finished petting him and go change his own litter before heading downstairs to organize the silverware and fix the leaky faucet.
The strangest thing about my father’s insults, though, was that he always said them in a soft, loving tone. “You are a selfish bum,” was said in the same way a normal person might say, “I’m so glad to see you, please join us!” Of course, we all assumed this was what he actually meant, even though he argued otherwise.
“I never wanted these cats,” he said, as he grabbed Rabbi’s fur and shook it, making the whole bed vibrate with Rabbi’s purring, “And now I have to pet them every night.”
Actually, since our other cat, Brian, rarely came in for our reading, Rabbi was getting most of the affection.
“First of all, what you are doing is not petting. It is harassment, and Rabbi is just brainwashed enough to think he enjoys it,” I said.
Here my father gave Rabb’s fur an especially hard squeeze, which made him crawl even closer, nuzzling his head against my father’s hand for more. No matter how nicely I petted him, Rabb still inched toward my father, waiting for his rubdown and knocking his head against the nearest body part as a reminder. I will never quite understand their relationship.
“And second,” I went on, “if you don’t want to pet him, don’t. I will take care of him. It is hard for you to pet him and concentrate on your reading at the same time, anyway.”
My father did not pick up on the translation (I am jealous that my cat prefers your manhandling to my loving, gentle affection which is generally accepted by cats everywhere), because he said “Now you are underestimating my abilities. Do you think my reading skills are really so poor that I can’t even run my hand over a flea-bitten rodent without being distracted?”
“He is not flea-bitten!”
“I noticed you didn’t deny that he is a rodent.”
Whenever I mention Rabbi to strangers, they always think they’ve misheard the name. Then I have to explain: Rabbi started out as Hansel before I got him, then became Frisbee when my sister’s friend suggested the name. But then my father started calling him Rabbi, or the Rabb, or just Rabb. He wrote a letter to my sis
ter, who was doing her exchange program in Germany at the time, explaining that the dark patch at the bottom of Rabb’s face looked like a beard, and that Rabb always seemed to be in deep thought. My father thought of the nickname as a high (and, in his eyes, mostly undeserved) compliment. The name he came up with for our other cat, Brian, however, never quite stuck. Though the cat’s irises are a distinctive and complex shade of yellow, I just couldn’t get behind the idea of calling something I loved Urine Eyes.
When I was fourteen my father announced that we had a cave cricket problem.
“A cave cricket? What is a cave cricket?”
“I don’t know—your sister is the one who looked it up. She said she saw some in her room the last time she was home.”
“What do they look like?”
“Big, and fast.”
“But insects are our friends?”
“Not these ones. Even I think they’re creepy looking. They’re not dangerous, but they’re still pretty nasty things. And they’re not something we can look at on the porch. They’re inside the house.”
My father had made it clear before that although any bug could be interesting outside, even he had very little sympathy for the ones who came inside, unless it was a spider.
“We should probably call an exterminator,” I said.
“I thought I’d give the cats a few days to scare them off. I saw Brian chasing one around the other day. I bet that cave cricket told his cave cricket friends.”
“The boys are great hunters.”
I called the cats the boys or the babies, while my father called them the miserables, or the girls, or, when feeding them, his lovely lady friends. The last two might have been flattering and even sweet, had either of the cats been female.
