The next day I tried not to look at Mrs. Plotkin at all. Every time I thought her eyes were on me, I looked away. I was the first one out the door after school. The day after that went the same. I couldn’t go not looking at her forever, though. I was already not looking at Patrick, and the crazy thing about not looking at somebody is that you are always looking at them to see if they’re not looking at you.
I lived for Wednesdays, when the patrols ate in Miss Cole’s room. I thought there was nothing in the world so wonderful as the perfume Miss Cole wore on her shoulders. When you walked in Mrs. Plotkin’s room, you smelled lunch sacks—bananas and baloney sandwiches. You smelled chalk and raincoats and Elmer’s glue. But when you walked in Miss Cole’s room, you smelled gardenias or something. I mean, just standing in Miss Cole’s doorway said that you were somewhere special.
It was on a Wednesday, when I got home from school, that I opened an envelope marked “Occupant.” I almost never get any mail. Lester gets things from the junior college, and Dad gets all the bills. Everything addressed to Occupant, they leave on the coffee table for me. Once I got a bar of free soap. Another time I got a packet of Tang and a free leaf bag. This time, it was a purple card in cellophane that said, Maharajas Magic—the only perfume you will ever need.
I ripped open the cellophane and pulled the card out. The perfume was really strong. I figured they must have dipped the card in Maharajas Magic and then let it dry overnight. I took it upstairs and stuck it in the drawer with my T-shirts so they would smell good when I went to school the next day.
On Thursday I put on my George Gershwin T-shirt and my Niagara Falls T-shirt over that.
“Whew!” said Lester, when I sat down at the table. “What smells?”
“Your feet, probably,” I told him. Lester wouldn’t know gardenias from garbage.
Around nine, as I approached the school, Elizabeth Price said, “Someone’s wearing perfume!”
“It’s me,” I said, before I realized it was no compliment. “It’s Maharajas Magic.”
“It’s so strong!” said Elizabeth, making a face. “You must have used a whole bottle.”
I should have gone home right then and changed. I should have taken a shower and hung all my T-shirts out to air. Instead, I walked on into the classroom.
The girl who sits behind me is almost as pretty as Elizabeth Price. Her name is Pamela Jones, and until this particular morning, I thought she was my friend.
“What stinks?” said Pamela.
I didn’t even have time to answer before somebody else said, “Euuyuk!”
One of the boys went over to the window and stuck his head out like he was going to be sick, and then all the boys started acting dumb. They’d take a couple steps toward me, then grab their throats and gag. The girls were giggling. I sat down at my desk and pretended I didn’t notice. Mrs. Plotkin noticed, though. I could tell she was watching.
“What happened?” Pamela whispered behind me. “Did you spill something on your clothes?”
I didn’t even answer.
It was probably the very worst day of my life. I couldn’t go home and change at noon because then everyone would know how embarrassed I was. I played soccer instead, in hopes that all that running around would air the T-shirts out. What it did was mix some sweat with Maharajas Magic so that, when I came in after lunch, I smelled like the Maharaja’s horse. I wanted to disappear. Mrs. Plotkin had opened a window, but the breeze just blew the perfume off me and carried it around the room.
When the bell rang at three and all the kids started for the door, I hung back. I wanted to wait until all the girls had left so I could walk home alone. I spilled my box of colored pencils on the floor on purpose and then slowly picked them up, one by one.
“Alice,” said Mrs. Plotkin when the others had gone, “I wonder if you’d be interested in helping me out occasionally after school—when you’re not on patrol duty, of course.”
I was so grateful for an excuse to stay that I would have even cleaned the gerbil cage.
“Sure,” I told her.
She said that her plants needed watering and the blackboard needed cleaning and that sometime, if I really felt like staying longer, I could rearrange the supply cupboard. I started in on the plants, then scrubbed the blackboard, and when I was pretty sure that the other girls were home, I left.
I threw the Maharaja in the garbage can and put all my T-shirts in the wash. Wore perfume to school, I had to write on my poster, under the “Backward” column. Then I sat out on the steps and wondered what I would be like when I was twenty. Most of the girls who were getting married and had their pictures in the paper were twenty. It told where they had gone to school and where they worked and how they were the granddaughters of the late Admiral and Mrs. Barker or somebody, and how the bride wore a gown with a scalloped neckline and tiny seed pearls. I figured that any granddaughter of a late admiral who knew about scalloped necklines was beyond doing stupid things. When I was twenty, if I kept on growing backward, I would be such an embarrassment to my family that Dad would have to put me away.
The next day in English, Mrs. Plotkin announced that each year she asked her sixth graders to keep a journal. She said that journals were different from diaries because they weren’t records of what happened to us so much as they were records of what we thought and felt about the things that happened. She said we were to start our journals right away, in black-and-white bound notebooks with lines, and turn them in at the end of May. We could write in them as often as we liked and say anything we wanted, but if we wrote something private, we should fasten those pages together with paper clips and she wouldn’t read them.
“I’ll bet!” said Lester at the table that night. “She probably reads those pages aloud in the teachers’ lounge.”
Somehow, I didn’t think so. I found an old black-and-white notebook I’d started in third grade with only two pages used, which I carefully pulled out. Then I took my ballpoint pen with MELODY INN printed on one side and carefully wrote, “The Agony of Alice, page 1.”
8
BRINGING UP THE REAR
I DECIDED THAT IF I WAS EVER GOING TO get Miss Cole to sort of take me on, I had to do something more than give her little presents wrapped in Kleenex and smear myself with perfume samples. So I opened my journal with an advertisement that I hoped Mrs. Plotkin would show the other teachers:
WANTED: Adopted Mother
Must be tall, smart, and beautiful
with the initials M—C—
SALARY: love forever
I figured that Miss Cole would know right away I was writing about her, and fantasied how her eyes would grow misty and she’d call me into her room and ask how would I like to spend Thanksgiving with her and did I need any help with Christmas shopping.
When I started on the second page, though, I knew that this was the page I would paper-clip, because I wrote down all the ridiculous things I had done that I wouldn’t have done if I’d had a mother. It took weeks to write all the details, the horrible humiliations, but I put down everything: Donald Sheavers, Patrick in his blue underwear, the Maharajas Magic, and what happened on Halloween. Especially what happened on Halloween.
Parkhaven School always had a parade before their big Halloween party. Pamela Jones told me all about it while we were washing out paintbrushes after art class. Pamela had just finished a six-foot mural to hang in the hall outside our door. It showed all the things you could do in autumn—apple-picking, nut-gathering, cider-making, leaf-raking—painted in red and rust and bronze and gold. I had drawn an 8 1/2 x 11 picture of a pumpkin.
“Everyone comes to school in costume,” Pamela told me, “even the principal.” Pamela has long yellow hair that has never been cut. It hangs all the way down her back, and she sits on it.
I stuck a brush under the running water and ran my thumb over the bristles the wrong way. Orange paint splattered my shirt. Pamela finished the brushes while I tried to clean myself off with a paper towel.
> “What are you going to wear?” I asked her.
“I’ve got a fantastic costume from my dance recital,” Pamela said. “It’s a horse, and it comes in two parts. You want to wear it with me?”
I knew right away which part of the horse Pamela wanted me to be, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have any ideas of my own, and when I’d asked Lester about it he said, “Just go to school without combing your hair. You can’t get more gruesome than that.”
“Sure,” I told Pamela.
For a week before Halloween, that’s all the girls talked about. Elizabeth Price’s mother was making her a gypsy costume. She’d been working on it since September, Elizabeth told me. The skirt had three ruffles around the bottom in purple, pink, and green; the blouse was red; and there was a purple satin vest with sequins on it. Elizabeth had even bought big clip-on hoop earrings to go with the costume.
Charlene Verona was going to come to the parade as a bottle of Heinz ketchup. She said that her father had built the frame over the summer, and her sister had painted it for her. I swallowed. The nice thing about being a horse’s rear end, I decided, was that no one would know who I was.
The day of the party, Dad said he would walk over to the school around one to watch our parade. I told him he didn’t really have to, but Dad always tries to do what he thinks Momma would do if she were alive. The past five years he even thought up a costume for me. In first grade I was Beethoven, in second grade I was Brahms, and in third, fourth, and fifth I was Schubert, Bach, and Mozart. Every year I wore the top of Dad’s old tuxedo and carried a baton. The kids thought I was trying to be a magician. That’s why I didn’t mind being a horse this time.
After lunch that day, we all changed into our costumes. Mrs. Plotkin dressed up like a farmer. She had on a checked shirt, a kerchief, and an enormous pair of overalls. Two boys came as a pair of dice. Someone else was a box of Rice Krispies, and there was even a girl dressed as a television set. I saw the principal in a cowboy costume, and Mr. Weber dressed as a vampire, with fangs on either side of his mouth. But it was Miss Cole I was waiting for, and at last I saw her coming out of the teachers’ lounge.
She was the most gorgeous sight I had ever seen. She was wearing a green-and-yellow kimono with a wide silk sash around her waist, white stockings, and little green slippers. Her hair was swept up on top of her head and held in place with a huge spray of carnations.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Even when Patrick went by in a Superman cape, with blue tights and his blue underwear on top of them, right out there in public, I hardly even looked at him. I wanted Miss Cole for my adopted mother more than I wanted anything else in the world. I wanted her to dress me in a green-and-yellow kimono and show me how to wear flowers in my hair. I wanted someone to make a fuss over me and teach me how to walk in tiny little steps and bow the way Miss Cole was bowing to some of her students.
“Come on,” someone said, pulling my arm, and I turned as Pamela Jones and her mother came through the entrance holding the horse costume. I followed them to the girls’ restroom. Pamela had on brown tights and tap shoes. She kept tap dancing all around the tiled floor.
Mrs. Jones smiled at me as she held out the second half of the costume, and I put my feet inside. I had to pull it up high so the legs wouldn’t wrinkle.
She laughed. “You girls are going to be a riot!” The wide top was shoulder high and had snaps around it. Holding on with both hands, I stood side by side with Pamela. We looked in the mirror and laughed. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, I thought. If I couldn’t wear a green-and-yellow kimono, it was better to be a horse’s rear end than it was to be some old composer that nobody knew.
Mrs. Jones kept watch at the door, and when she saw our class lining up in the hallway, she put the horse’s head over Pamela. Then I bent over and put my hands on Pamela’s waist, and Mrs. Jones snapped the two parts of the costume together.
“Have fun,” she said.
Gingerly, I followed Pamela out into the hall. I could hear the other kids laughing as we came. Pamela’s tap shoes clicked on the corridor like hoofs, and when we got up to where I figured Mrs. Plotkin was standing, Pamela did a little tap dance while I sort of weaved around behind her and tried to hang on.
“Good heavens!” said Mrs. Plotkin, laughing. “I hope whoever is behind you has enough air.”
“It’s Alice,” said Pamela. “She’s fine.”
I was fine except that I couldn’t see a thing but a small patch of floor beneath my face. The parade began to move, and I followed Pamela outside, up the sidewalk toward the street.
“Oh, look at the horse!” I heard people exclaim when we passed, and Pamela would break into her tap-dance routine while I hung on for dear life.
And then a funny thing happened. I started a little routine of my own. The fancier Pamela’s dancing got up front, the sillier I acted behind. Every time we came to a corner, we’d all wait while teachers scurried by on either side to stop traffic. Pamela would tap around in a circle, and I’d stand still scratching one hind leg with the other. At the next corner while Pamela did her shuffle-step, shuffle-step, tap heel, I’d stand with my toes pointed in, my knees bent, bouncing up and down in time with the rhythm. And when she did her Spanish number, I’d wriggle my bottom down lower and lower until I was almost sitting on the ground. People were laughing loudly, and it sounded good.
“What are you doing back there, Alice?” Pamela asked me.
“Just having fun,” I told her. I pretended I was in a Conga line. I’d take three steps and kick out my left leg. Then three steps and kick out my right.
The parade had turned around and was heading back to the school. I heard my dad’s chuckle when we passed where he was standing, and I decided to give the last two blocks everything I had. As we approached the next corner, I broke into my Conga step again, kicking as high as I possibly could. One … two…three, left leg; one…two…three, right—
My foot made contact with something soft. “Ouch!” a voice cried out in pain.
I knew that voice immediately, and my knees almost buckled. Skidding to a stop, I pulled at the snaps on my costume and stood up. Miss Cole was standing there rubbing her arm, her eyes smarting with the pain.
“Alice!” she said. “Why …?”
I tried to speak, but couldn’t. There was no excuse except that I liked the way people were laughing at us; I liked acting silly. Miss Cole turned and moved swiftly on down the line, her lips pressed tightly together. My father was looking at me from up the sidewalk.
“What’s happening?” Pamela kept saying.
I couldn’t possibly go on. I stepped out of my half of the costume and handed it to Pamela. Then I crossed the street and started home. Dad came running over.
“Al?” he said. “Where you going?”
I didn’t answer. He walked along beside me.
“I saw what happened,” he said. “You should have explained to the teacher. She would have understood.”
I wasn’t worried about Miss Cole understanding, though. What I wanted was for her to like me, to love me, even, and I had to go kick her in the arm.
Dad went back to work at the Melody Inn, and I went up to my room and spent the rest of the day with a pillow over my face.
If I had a mother, I wrote in my journal that night, I would have been a gypsy or a ballerina and none of this would have happened.
9
DINNER WITH MARILYN
IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT MISS COLE WASN’T going to invite me home for Thanksgiving. She had a big bruise on her arm to remember me by, for one thing. I was afraid she might not even let me in her room. She did, though, and when I explained what had happened, she just said I could have kicked some little kid in the teeth and I ought to be more careful. She talked to me and everything at patrol meetings, but her eyes didn’t seem to smile at me the way they smiled at the others. And once, when someone was teasing me, Miss Cole said jokingly, “Better watch out for Alice. She kicks.”
>
I worked twice as hard to make it up to her. I was as helpful as I could be at our weekly patrol meetings, but I didn’t get to go on duty much. Once Patrick went to a concert with his parents and I got to take his corner, and another time a patrol in Mr. Weber’s class threw up. But most afternoons, if I didn’t feel like walking home with Elizabeth Price and Charlene, I’d stick around Mrs. Plotkin’s room. Once, just before Thanksgiving, I stayed till four o’clock and straightened her supply cupboard. I threw out an old jar of dried-up paste and poured two bottles of glue together. I divided all the construction paper into separate colors, sharpened the pencils, washed the shelves, and didn’t stop until the whole cupboard was clean.
“Alice, I do believe this is the best this has ever looked,” Mrs. Plotkin said.
I beamed.
She was wearing a blue dress with a white collar, and I liked her in blue because it matched her eyes.
“I found a place for everything except this brown and orange paper that’s faded along one edge,” I told her. “I didn’t know if you wanted it mixed in with the rest or not.”
“Probably not,” Mrs. Plotkin said. “If you want it, it’s yours.”
I rolled up the paper and slipped a rubber band around it.
“I hope you’re going to do something nice on Thanksgiving,” she said, as I put on my coat.
“We usually go to a restaurant,” I told her. “My dad can’t roast a turkey.”
Mrs. Plotkin laughed. “Well, believe it or not, Alice, you can get through life without ever learning to roast one. Have a good time.”
“You too,” I said. All the way home, though, I wondered where Mrs. Plotkin was going to celebrate Thanksgiving. I hadn’t asked her. Maybe her husband was dead and she didn’t have any cousins or anything. Maybe she was going to spend Thanksgiving sitting in front of the TV with a frozen dinner on her lap.
When I got home, I cut the brown and orange paper into strips, made a huge chain, and strung it around the whole living room—over the lamps, the doorway, and the back of the sofa.