by Jamie Gilson
The idea of dancing the Virginia reel seemed to please her even more. And who do you suppose she chose to be her partner? No contest. Good old trustworthy Hobie Dear. Everybody scrunched up their shoulders, bent over, and laughed behind their hands when she clapped and said, “I’ll take Hobie.” If I had been Molly I would have moaned, “Oosick, cootie shot,” and refused to dance with her, holding my hands behind my back. I couldn’t do that, but my face was red all the way under my hair, making my scalp prickle, and it was all I could do to keep from running away.
In the Virginia reel you meet in the middle between these two lines of people and swing somebody around by the elbow. There are two ways to swing. Either you barely touch the other person like they have chicken pox and you don’t want to catch it or you whirl the other person around like you’re trying to orbit them around the moon.
R.X. was the first one up and he did OK with the first three, treating them kind of germy, but when he got to Jenny, he tried the orbit trick. Swinging her totally hard, he lost his grip and let her go spinning like a top as she slid off his elbow. She careened through the couples and flew head first into an amazed Miss Ivanovitch, who doubled up and skidded off backward on her bottom across the waxed gym floor. The blue origami bird blew out of her hair and hid in a safe spot on the sidelines.
Jenny yowled.
Miss Ivanovitch, the breath knocked out of her by Jenny’s head, sat on the floor heaving for air. She’d caught the fall partly with her elbow, which was skinned and already starting to get red.
Jenny, who was flattened, too, buried her head in her arms and sobbed. She didn’t look skinned.
“No fair,” Molly said under her breath to R.X. “Violence is no fair.” She edged around in front of Miss Ivanovitch to see if she was crying. The two of them stared at each other. We all gathered round.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, watching the blood rise to the surface of her skinned elbow.
She sucked in a load of air. “I haven’t had a skinned anything since I learned to ride a bike,” she said, taking another breath. “Makes me feel young again.”
Ms. Lucid helped her up and told her to go down to the nurse to get a bandage. Then she looked us all over in disgust before focusing on R.X. “R.X. Shea,” she said, practically leveling him with her voice, “you sit by that wall as still as a stone and remember that you are not and never will be The Hulk. Nor should you wish to be. People are not meant for hurling. What’s more—”
At the door, Miss Ivanovitch cleared her throat and said, “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
Ms. Lucid continued on as though our sub wasn’t there, which didn’t seem polite to me. “What’s more, R.X., tomorrow we’re going to parachute and you are going to sit that one out, too. As will any of the rest of you,” and she scanned the class, “who feel like pulling cute little tricks.” She stalked toward the record player. “If you want to parachute tomorrow, then be on your best behavior today.”
Listening to the threats of a real teacher, Miss Ivanovitch’s eyes got big, and I wondered if she was picturing us—all but poor R.X.—jumping off the roof of the school into thick drifts of snow, little white parachutes over our heads. No matter what she thought parachuting was, I guess she was sorry she couldn’t promise it to us to make us behave. Subs don’t have anything to promise. They’re not going to be around long enough to deliver. She picked up her boots and started, stocking-footed, down the hall.
Maybe she just wished, as she walked toward the nurse’s office with a bleeding elbow, that she’d stuck to kindergarten with its cute kids with big eyes who sat on her lap and sucked their thumbs. I guess she hadn’t come across those little kids who scream for their mothers and bite and wet their pants like Toby, Nick’s little brother. He’s only four, but his mother’s afraid he’s going to flunk nursery school. Twenty-five Tobys in one room. I couldn’t even think about it.
We do-si-doed and bowed our way through the rest of the period until a smiling and still shoeless Miss Ivanovitch appeared at the gym door to pick us up and take us home.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” R.X. said, running up to her in the hall. Nobody had even told him to say it. She murmured something to him I couldn’t hear. Before long he dropped back to walk with me and whispered, “I did something I wish I hadn’t.”
“You didn’t hit the sub with Jenny on purpose did you?” I asked him. I couldn’t imagine his aim was that good.
“No,” he said, “that’s not it. I think Jenny’s hands were all sweaty, or, you know…”
“You weren’t even holding her hands,” I told him, “you were swinging her by the elbow.”
“Well, whatever it was, I was just turning her high speed. I didn’t know she was going to be so slippery. What I did, though, that I’m sorry about, isn’t that. I mean, I’m sorry about that, too, but…” He turned around to make sure nobody was listening. “…Before we left, Trevor and I were back in the corner fooling around at the sink, you know. And maybe nothing has happened at all, but before we left I stuffed a paper towel in the drain and turned the water on.” He looked scared. “It’s been on all through Gym.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not either. I thought it would be funny to come back to Niagara Falls. Now I’m afraid to go back. I thought maybe she’d see it and cry, and we could stop this dumb game. I hate it.”
“Me, too,” I told him, glad somebody else had said it first.
“Trevor had found these two balloons in his pocket,” R.X. explained, “and during Math we went back to the sink to make water balloons out of them.”
As we walked, I could imagine the waves washing across the floor of our room, down the steps in a water-fall, and out the door to the playground.
“So after we’d filled these two fat water balloons, I just decided, I don’t know, just to let the faucet run.” He grabbed the sleeve of my red-splotched T-shirt. “What can I do?” He stopped, scared, and started to turn back. “If I go straight to the office and say I have the flu, they’ll believe me. Everybody else has it.” He put his hand to his forehead to see if maybe he had a fever.
“That’s a dumb idea,” I said, pulling him along. “It won’t stop the water.”
“Yeah, but, listen, I practically break her arm in Gym, and now what if she finds out I’m—”
“Somebody’s got to stop it,” I said, starting to run, picturing Miss Ivanovitch opening the classroom door and being swept away in high tide.
We took the steps by twos, but Miss Ivanovitch had made it there before us.
Rushing into the room, we saw her fling herself at the faucet to stop the flow. Just as she turned off the water, one of the balloons floated lazily over the edge of the sink and burst splat in the lake that used to be our floor.
“I should have made boats instead of planes,” Marshall said, shaking his head and leaning against the bulletin board for support.
She turned. “Your English is improving remarkably,” she told him. “Tell me, how do you say, ‘Where are the paper towels’ in Japanese?” He just stared at her, not sure how to answer.
She took a deep breath and eyed us all. “This is too much, you know. This is really too much. You are…awful…undisciplined…downright vicious brats. And you,” she said, looking straight at me, “you came running in here like you knew it was happening. I just can’t believe it.” There was maybe a half inch of water underfoot. She sloshed through it to the desk and picked up Mr. Star’s seating chart.
“I am on my way to the office,” she said, waving it in the air, “and I am going to explain to Miss Hutter, who must certainly know without my telling her, that you are impossible children. You are absolutely out of control.” She banged her fist on the desk so hard you could tell it hurt.
“Oh, no, we’re not,” Molly said from where the girls had gathered away from the deep part, “we’re not out of control at all. You are.”
Nobody said things like that to a teacher and got away wit
h it. Ever. The room was quiet except for the sound of water squishing.
I wanted to say something like, “Don’t be mad at us, please.” Or, maybe even, “I’m sorry.” But I didn’t.
Molly kept looking at Miss Ivanovitch’s eyes. I hoped she wasn’t going to cry, but it looked possible.
“If you go to the office and tell them you can’t control us,” Molly went on, “they won’t let you come back here to sub again.” Suddenly I felt like I was going to cry.
“I don’t know that I want to come back,” Miss Ivanovitch told her, her voice getting steadier. “Maybe I’ll go someplace else where the boys and girls are nicer.”
“Kids are kids,” Molly said, shrugging. She waded over to the pencil sharpener for the fifty-third time.
We listened to the steady grinding as we watched Miss Ivanovitch move slowly to the door. Her soggy red-and-black stockings would leave wet footprints all the way down to the office. “And I don’t want to hear another peep out of you,” she said, slamming the door behind her.
There was a long silence and then a few kids started doing the old “peep-peep-peep” like baby chicks routine, but it wasn’t funny this time.
Marshall opened the supply cabinet door and took out handfuls of the paper towels Miss Ivanovitch had asked him about, and tossed them to people around the room.
“Try sweeping some of the water into the wastebasket with them,” he said. “We can squeeze the towels out into the sink. It’s not stopped up anymore.”
Nick got down on the floor with his bundle, but they soaked through so fast it looked hopeless, so he stood up again. “What idiot was it who did this dumb, stupid thing, anyway?” he asked, looking at Molly and Lisa, like he knew who.
“Not me,” Molly answered, sweet as jelly beans. “None of us did it.” All the girls shook their heads. “We’re not vandals,” Molly told him, though I bet she wished she’d thought of it herself. “This is the work of some sick juvenile delinquent.”
“I did it,” R.X. said, his voice low, but loud enough so that everybody heard. He stared down at the water shimmering at the base of the sink. “Before Gym I turned it on low. I mean, everybody was doing something. Somehow I didn’t think about its being so…wet. I just thought it would be…funny, kind of.” He sat down heavily at the nearest desk.
Some of the girls looked prim. The others looked scared. They will tell, I thought, as soon as Miss Hutter gets here. Some things are bigger than the silent treatment.
“We said sink her, R.X., not drown her!” Nick gathered a great wet wad of towels, weighed it in his hand for a minute, and then, like he wanted to wipe out the whole stupid mess, flung it hard at the ceiling.
It stuck like glue.
9
FAIR’S FAIR
When the door swung open Marshall was wringing out paper towels at the sink, watching them fall apart in his hands. Michelle had made a cardboard scoop and was pushing water toward a little plastic bucket. Lisa was standing on her chair. Half of the class was on the floor, trying, without much luck, to sop up water. The other half shifted their feet, not knowing what to do. The second we heard the doorknob turn, those of us on the floor had scrunched down as far as we could. The ones standing up had pushed back against the wall. Some people closed their eyes so they would be invisible. There was very little breathing.
When the door swung open, we thought it would be the end of the world. Instead, it was Miss Ivanovitch, three mops tucked under her arms, two buckets in her hands.
“Listen,” she said, matter of fact, “I decided that my telling on you isn’t going to clean up this deluge.” Holding out the mops, she went on, “I borrowed these from the custodian. I told him we’d had a little flood but that we didn’t need his help. I didn’t think it fair to ask him to do it. Neither did he.”
R.X. reached for one at once, but Miss Ivanovitch turned first to Molly.
“Here’s one for you, Molly,” she said, looking straight at her. I guess she must have thought it was Molly’s flood, which wasn’t fair, of course, because it wasn’t.
Molly shook her head and motioned to Lisa up on the chair. “That’s Molly,” she said. “You must have forgotten.”
Lisa’s lip quivered. “But, I’m, like…” she whispered, “…not…”
Miss Ivanovitch and Lisa both searched the class, waiting to see if somebody would tell, but Molly stood up so straight and looked so sure of herself that nobody did.
Giving Molly one last pleading look, Lisa jumped down from the chair and took the mop in two fingers like it might, at any time, turn into a hissing rattlesnake. She stood there with it, pouting.
“Move!” Miss Ivanovitch ordered. And Lisa moved.
I didn’t feel sorry for her, either. She’s the one who wanted to change names and make people promise not to tell.
“Please, let me,” R.X. called, grabbing a mop and attacking the water under the sink like he planned to soak it up in two seconds. He looked guilty as anything, but I guess he couldn’t force himself to say it.
Aretha reached for the last mop and that made me sure she was the girl who hadn’t thrown a snowball.
“The rest of you move the desks back from the deepest part near the sink to high land near my desk,” Miss Ivanovitch told us. The room was on a slant. We’d never noticed it before. “Hobie, you and Nick man the wringers.” Nick took one bucket and I took the other and every time a mop got full we stuck it in the wringer attached to the top of the bucket and turned the crank. Then we got somebody else to empty the water in the sink.
“Did you ever hear about the Sorcerer’s Apprentice?” Miss Ivanovitch asked us, but nobody was sure they had. “I’ll tell you about him tomorrow—if there is a tomorrow,” she said, not sounding sure there would be. “Of course, he had magic to help clean up his flood, and all you’ve got is elbow grease.”
Molly was back by the chalkboard fooling around again. Her score now read “Girls II, Boys I, Sub III.” Nobody was paying much attention, though. Nobody was playing that particular game but her.
Miss Ivanovitch had taken over with one of the mops and when her back was turned, Trevor took a running start and skidded six feet across the slick floor, crashing into the radiator, and falling flat on his bottom.
“Here,” she said, handing him the mop. “It’s time you put all that energy into doing something useful.”
With all the desks pushed to the front of the class where the water had barely reached, it looked like we were getting the floor ready for folk dancing or a wrestling match. At least it didn’t, any more, look like we were clearing the lanes for a swim meet. Some of the classrooms have rugs. It’s a good thing ours doesn’t. If we’d hung it out the window to dry, it would have frozen to the brick. But it wouldn’t have turned white overnight. The snow had stopped falling and we could see big patches of blue sky.
Kids whose notebooks were wet stood around by the radiator arranging them open so the pages would dry. Trevor, Lisa, and Miss Ivanovitch were still mopping. Rolf and Marshall were wringing. Some kids were sitting on top of desks, watching. And that’s the way we were when the door banged open and Molly’s grandmother came storming in, carrying a grocery bag over her raccoon-draped arm. This time she was wearing a hat that matched her coat.
“Hello, hello!” she boomed. “Or, as they say in China, ‘Ni hao, ni hao!’”Her eyes searched the room for a teacher, a tall person in charge. When she spotted Miss Ivanovitch, mopping away in her striped stocking feet, like Cinderella on a bad day, she asked, almost speechless, “Pardon me, are you—”
“I am,” our sub said, “Miss Ivanovitch. We have had a mishap, which we are correcting.” She shifted the mop to her left hand and held out her right.
Mrs. Bosco shifted the grocery bag to her left arm, and they shook hands.
“I,” she said grandly, “am Lucinda Bosco, Molly’s grandmother,” and she gestured to the front of the room where Molly stood just behind Mr. Star’s desk. “The snowplows have clear
ed the streets, and it’s a winter wonderland out there. I’ve brought a little treat in for the class. Fortune cookies and Hawaiian Punch. Being here yesterday was such a treat for me.”
Miss Ivanovitch looked blank. She didn’t know about yesterday. A sub is just today.
“Molly,” Mrs. Bosco boomed, going over the teacher’s head, “come here and get the treats!” Then she addressed us all. “I would have brought some hot Chinese tea, but I don’t expect any of you drink it.”
Drawing herself up as tall as she could, Miss Ivanovitch said, “You must be mistaken, this is Molly.” She put her hand on Lisa’s shoulder and guided her firmly over to Mrs. Bosco.
“You’re the one who’s mistaken, lady,” Mrs. Bosco shouted. “What makes you think I don’t know my own granddaughter? I’ve known her for ten years, and this child isn’t my little dumpling.” But she gave the bag to Lisa anyway. Hawaiian Punch is heavy.
“Class,” Miss Ivanovitch said, not giving up that easy, “what is this girl’s name?” She had not let go of Lisa’s shoulder.
We didn’t know what to do. If we said, “Lisa,” that would be telling, and Molly made us all promise not to tell. If we said, “Molly,” Mrs. Bosco would think we were all bananas.
I didn’t mind sounding bananas. “Molly,” I said. “Molly,” Nick said. “Molly,” Aretha said, grinning. “Molly,” Lisa said, and she started giggling like crazy.
Mrs. Bosco pulled her hat down tightly on her head to make that, at least, secure. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t like it.” Turning on her heel, she stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
Lisa was doubled over with giggles. “You want to use the mop, Lisa?” she asked, holding it out to Molly. Everybody was laughing by now. We knew Mrs. Bosco might be headed down to tell Miss Hutter, but we still couldn’t stop. Everybody laughed but Molly, who stood in front of the room with her teeth clenched in anger. Even Miss Ivanovitch was smiling. If Molly was still keeping points, Sub would have one added to it.