Do Bananas Chew Gum?

by Jamie Gilson

  They looked at my map, looked at me, looked at the map again, tossed it on the floor, and started to search any old place. I sat and watched, thinking about how my mom was probably right that I was really a retard.

  After about five minutes of crawling around on his belly, searching under lamps and plants and stuff, Chuck thought about bouncing me and lifting the cushions.

  “I found it, I think,” Chuck yelled. “I think I found it.”

  Alex ran over and they both looked at the four scruffy marshmallows. Rooster, tail wagging low, sniffed them and walked away. “Is this supposed to be it?” Alex asked, sneering. “The treasure?”

  “Well,’ I said, picking one up very, very carefully like it was made of thin glass. “You’ve got to understand that this is fabulous treasure. These are petrified dinosaur eggs.” I held it up high over their heads. “They’re worth a million dollars each. The reason you don’t see them very often is they’re sweet, see, and little kids sometimes by mistake eat them—petrified shell and all.”

  Chuck started to pick one up, but Alex batted his hand. “What kind of dinosaur?” he asked me, testing.

  “Brontosaurus,” I told him. My dad used to read me books about prehistoric stuff when he was on a dinosaur kick. We even went to a museum once to see dinosaur skeletons. I bet I knew almost as much as Alex did. “Brontosaurus,” I told him, “the guy with the long spiked tail.”

  Alex liked this game. It was his kind of game. He gave me a big wink and glanced over at Chuck. “Will they hatch?” he asked.

  “Hatch? Maybe. But they’re petrified, see. And at least one of them has a petrified baby dinosaur inside.”

  Chuck grabbed one and stuck it in his mouth, whole.

  “Give it!” Alex yelled, furious, poking him in both cheeks. “You can’t eat dinosaur eggs.”

  Keeping his mouth clamped shut, Chuck’s bottom lip jutted out and he began to cry.

  “Give me the egg. Give it,” Alex was yelling when the front door swung open and Mrs. Glass walked in.

  “I’m home early,” she called brightly. “I jogged all the way in the rain. Anybody glad to see me?” She took off her dripping raincoat and hung it on a hook in the hall. Rooster danced around her feet, yipping. “Were you a bad boy?” she asked him, scratching his ears. “I was worried about you.”

  “Make Chuckie give the dinosaur egg,” Alex wailed. Chuck stood there, mouth shut, huge tears rolling down his marshmallow-fat cheeks. His pirate hat sagged over his ear.

  Mrs. Glass sat down on the living room rug and pulled the boys down with her. “Now tell me the whole story,” she said to them, frowning at me like it was all my fault. She hugged Chuck, who started crunching away again on the petrified marshmallow, though you could still see the tear streaks on his cheeks. “Did you take your pill?” she asked him. He wrinkled his nose and nodded his head.

  Alex gave Chuck a punch and told her about the treasure hunt.

  “But that sounds like fun. Honestly, sweetie pie,” she said to Alex, “it’s just a game.”

  “He was cheating,” Alex grumbled. “You don’t eat games.”

  “But there are still three marshmallows left,” she said, clearly irritated.

  “The one he’s eating,” Alex said, looking Chuck straight in the eye, “is the one with the baby dinosaur in it.”

  Chuck stopped chewing and started crying again.

  I smiled at her very big like “Aren’t they cute little rascals?” She stared at my teeth. “You like your orthodontist OK, Sam?” she asked me.

  I stopped smiling. “I guess,” I told her, shrugging my shoulders. “Dr. Reynolds is all right. But I think Alex and Chuck are a little young. I mean, they don’t usually give you braces until you’re much older—like me.”

  “I was thinking of much, much older—like me.” She giggled. “I want to do something about my front teeth,” she said. “Do you think that’s silly? My husband thinks it’s silly.” She smiled and ran her fingers through her long blonde hair to show me she was pretty, I think. Her front teeth were crooked. Not like a hag or anything, just crooked.

  “It looks to me like you’ve got a severe malocclusion of the upper mandibular palate,” I told her.

  “No kidding?” she said, frowning.

  “You want your teeth to look like Sam’s?” Alex asked, astonished, forgetting all about the missing egg.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. She looked closer at my braces. “They don’t look exactly gorgeous, do they? I wonder how long I’d have to wear them? Well, I want to talk to an orthodontist anyway.” She ran her tongue across her teeth. “Severe malo—Look, write his name down for me, will you, sweetie? My hands are covered with marshmallow from weepy Chuckie.” She gave him another hug.

  “It’s Dr. Reynolds,” I told her. “You know, his office is where Wally and me met you Friday.”

  “Oh, in the Professional Building. Sure. That’s nice and convenient. Well, for heaven’s sakes, write his name down,” she said. “I won’t call him right away. I’ll have to think about it. Use the pad in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, listen, that reminds me,” I told her. I had to let her know about tomorrow. “I’ve got this three o’clock appointment with Dr. Reynolds tomorrow afternoon. See, I get out of school a little early for it—at two-forty-five. And it’s just a fifteen-minute appointment. I should get here by three-thirty at the very latest. Is that OK? Can the kids walk home by themselves? I mean, I could get another kid to come stay until I get here or something.”

  She bit her lip, thinking. “I don’t know. Look,” she said, “I’m just not sure you’re up to this at all,” and her eyes swept the room. The sofa pillows were on the floor. Rooster stood there wagging his tail. “I mean, you’re …” She looked down like she didn’t want to say it. “I was going to tell you…. When you didn’t even read my note …”

  “Please,” I begged, stopping her before she finished. “I know I can do it. It was just a mistake. We were busy.” I tried to tuck in my shirttail and smooth my hair.

  “We’re not babies,” Alex told her. He thought we were just talking about tomorrow. “We’ll get home at three-fifteen. So what’s going to happen in fifteen minutes?”

  “I could eat a dinosaur egg in fifteen minutes,” Chuck said. He grabbed one and disappeared out of the room.

  “I’ll cancel the appointment,” I told her, desperately. “First thing in the morning, I will.”

  “No. No, it’s OK,” she said finally. “OK, it’s fine, I guess. For the time being. Now where’s the name of that tooth straightener?”

  I grabbed my book and then my raincoat from the hall, rescued my shoes from their hiding places in the boys’ room, went into the kitchen, and, as slowly and neatly as I could, printed on the pad,

  I ran into the living room and handed the paper to her, folded.

  “Good-bye, you guys,” I said, and dashed out into the rain as fast as I could, fast enough that she didn’t have time enough to fire me for being stupid.

  3

  Twister

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON I ran all the way from school just to sit and wait in Dr. Reynolds’ office. He was supposed to see me at three, but it was already three-ten on the tooth-shaped clock behind the receptionist. Alex and Chuck would be home soon.

  “Am I next?” I asked the receptionist.

  “You are,” she said brightly, “but ‘next’ isn’t for a while.”

  I picked up one of Dr. Reynolds’ cards from the counter and stuck it in my pocket to take to Mrs. Glass. I’ll tell her I was playing a joke with the note I wrote her, I thought. Sam the Clown.

  Then I grabbed a Seventeen, sat down on the bench, took a pencil out of my pocket, and started erasing the eyes from the models in shampoo ads. It made them look like zombies. If you erase very, very carefully, it looks like the eyes are supposed to be blank. With totally white eyes, this glurpy girl looked like the walking dead. Turning the pencil around, I drew her eyeballs back in—black dots st
aring in opposite directions. It was a masterpiece. I felt wonderful. Best art I’d ever done. Holding the picture out, I smiled at it with pure pleasure.

  I was still rubbing away, almost to the back of the magazine, when the hall door opened and a kid walked into the waiting room. He lifted the magazine out of my hand and sat down next to me, running his fingers through his curly red hair and showering me with water.

  “Hey, Tinsel Teeth,” he said, “I thought you sat on babies after school today.” Wally’s yellow slicker drooled water on the bench, the rug, the magazine, and me. “It’s raining like crazy out there. Again! I just saw two elephants walking down Willow Street. And behind them were two skunks and two snails.”

  “What are you and your naked teeth doing here?” I asked him, grabbing the wet magazine back.

  “Yeah, naked,” he said, taking the pencil from me and drawing lines like wires across the crazy-eyed model’s teeth. He stood up, hung his coat on a hook, and shook his head like a dog does to dry itself. “Listen,” he whispered as he sat down on the wet puddle his coat had made. “I’m getting my dumb retainer today.”

  “Geez, those things are a pain,” I moaned. “What’s it really like?” I asked him. “Does it hurt?”

  “Got me. It’s this pink plastic thing with wires that fits on the roof of your mouth.” He poked his thumb up onto his palate. “Ike iss,” he explained, tilting his head back. “My sister’s got a retainer and she’s always taking it out at the dinner table. It’s gross. Anyway, it’s supposed to keep your teeth from going crooked again. I’ve got to wear it a year or something.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeah, but I can take it out at least and eat caramels.” He took a caramel out of his pocket, slowly unwrapped it, and popped it in his mouth. It was golden brown and nutty. “Want one?” he said with an evil laugh. “Speaking of torture, how’d you do on the Viking test?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t think I totally blew it. I did pretty good on the true-false and the multiple guess. It was the essay part, though. I really did blow that. How about you?”

  Wally shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t remember all that junk about Eric the Red in Iceland and wherever else he went,” he said.

  “Sam,” the dental assistant called, and I jumped.

  The minute I sat down in the green reclining chair I thought about calling Chuck and Alex. It was black as night outside and raining like mad. Maybe the kids were scared.

  “I’ve got to get out of here fast,” I told the dental assistant as she clamped the pink paper bib around my neck. She left just as Dr. Reynolds came in.

  “Shall we just tighten these up a bit?” he asked, tilting the chair back and picking up the mirror. He flipped the light on and tipped it down from my eyes to my mouth. Moving in fast, he unfastened the wires, drew them out, snipped three new lengths of shiny wire from a big wooden spool, and then threaded them zip-zap through the holes. The ends of the wires stuck way out—about three inches—on both sides of my mouth. I felt like a wire-whiskered cat.

  “Telephone, Doctor,” the receptionist called. “Can you take it?”

  “Sure,” Dr. Reynolds said, patting me on the shoulder. “It’s all right with you, isn’t it, young man?”

  “Og,” I said, my mouth filling up with saliva.

  I wondered what it would be like if Dr. Reynolds by mistake laced my top and bottom teeth together. That’s what they do to fat people so they can’t eat french fries and double chocolate brownies. I put my hands up to feel the edges of my antennas, and hissed like a black-eyebrowed panther.

  The dental assistant breezed in and over to the window. “Well, would you look at that sky!” she said, and I looked. Even with the bright light in my eyes I could see it wasn’t just plain dark anymore. It was weird dark—a yellow-green like split pea soup. “I don’t like the way that looks at all,” she said, hurrying out.

  I could see into another office across the street where the lights were on and two women stood at the window pointing up at the strange sky. The linden trees that grew out of round holes in the sidewalk were whipping around in circles. Hailstones began to pelt the windows like BBs.

  Alex and Chuck are scared, I thought, squirming around in the chair. I should have waited at school and brought them to the office with me.

  “Wowooooooowooooooowoooooowoooooo,” the sirens outside began to howl over the wind.

  “Oh, darn,” the dental assistant sighed, coming in again to check the sky. “Tornado warning. Just when we’re running so far behind. I always feel like such a fool,” she said, “hiding in the hall when those things go off. It’s one chance in a million a tornado would hit. Maybe a billion. Well, we better move it.”

  “Wooooooooooowoooooooooowoooooooowooooooo,” the siren blasted again. A dark cloud dipped down from the pea-green sky and a thin gray film broke away and swirled off toward the north. I leaned forward to see the trees across the street bend low. The window shivered like it was as scared as me. I leaped out of the chair, wires flapping, and ran like crazy for the hall.

  “Wowooooooowooooooowooooowooooo,” the sound of the siren outside followed me.

  The small gray sirens on the hall ceiling looked like toy horns, but they blasted like trumpets. “Wahwahwahwahwahwahwah!” People rushed out of all the doctors’ offices along the hall, holding their ears, not sure what to do or where to go.

  “Sit on the floor,” Wally yelled, but nobody listened.

  “What’s it about?” a little kid asked Wally.

  “Tornado warning,” he shouted back, pulling the kid down, “like at school.”

  I was huddled in a small knot across from them and I could see the little boy was scared. His face was the color of concrete. “It’ll be all right,” I shouted to him. He looked up to say something, but his eyes opened wide. He caught his breath and coughed back a laugh. Shaking his head, he grabbed Wally’s arm and pointed at my mouth. My pink bib was tucked over my knees and my wires were bent up into a curly moustache. Wally laughed so hard he couldn’t stop.

  “Sam,” he howled, cupping his hands around his mouth, “you look straight out of space.”

  “Wahwowahwowahwow,” the siren outside echoed the blasts from the ones in the hall. It did feel like we were in a spaceship, waiting for the bad guys to explode us. If we had been on TV, it would have been time for the commercial. I grabbed my knees tighter and made a face at the little kid.

  Suddenly the lights went out. And the hall sirens stopped. The dark was all at once, but the sound wound down slowly to a thin shriek. Everyone sat quiet and scared, taking deep breaths of the medicine air that doctors’ and dentists’ offices always smell like. Outside we could hear the wind roar like a train rushing through a tunnel—and then, from Dr. Reynolds’ office, we heard the crash of glass.

  We sat quiet, just feeling our hearts beat for maybe five minutes. I imagined that my house had been blown away and that Alex and Chuck had gone running outside and been blasted away up into the sky because I wasn’t there to hide them. My hands were sweating and my ears felt like they were going to explode. I had to yawn to make them stop vibrating.

  It was still dark in the hall when the all-clear sounded outside. Everybody scrambled up, feeling their way down the rough stucco walls of the hall and back into offices where there were windows. I was afraid I’d knock somebody down if I ran, so I crawled to the end of the hall where the steps were and skidded down them like a seal at the zoo.

  I guess everybody else wanted to be super safe because I was the first one outside. There weren’t any buildings down, but the street was a bathtub of water and the windows of the travel agency next door had blown in.

  I ran like a rocket toward the Glasses’ house. Branches were scattered everywhere like pick-up sticks. The telephone in front of the grocery store was swinging back and forth off its hook. Up ahead a light pole tilted, though the wind had died down and nothing was blowing it. I ran fast, panicked about the kids.
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  “Hey, son, watch it,” somebody shouted. I turned to see the pole bending down closer to the ground, aiming itself at me.

  “Over here!” It was a policeman, his car up to its hubcaps in water. As I dashed toward the squad car I could hear a long low crack, and when I looked again I saw the pole scrunch the top of a parked car, blocking the street. A shower of sparks flew up like fireworks. I turned to run again and tripped over the lid of a trash can that had blown like a flying saucer into the middle of the sidewalk. It sent me sailing, too. The concrete sandpapered the skin off my hands. My pants and shirt were soaked.

  “You OK?” the policeman in the squad car yelled. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “How bad is it?” I asked him.

  “Dunno. Two funnels dropped down. Some damage over on Euclid Avenue, I hear. More wires down over there, too. Stay away from Euclid now, and go right home.”

  “Euclid is home!” I shouted back and started running again. The Glasses lived just two blocks away from my house on Euclid Avenue. What if …

  My skinned hands hurt. No Band-Aid was going to be big enough to cover those scrapes. But I ran like crazy.

  What kind of damage was there? Why didn’t I ask the policeman? Were the houses blown to toothpicks? The closer I got to Euclid, the worse it looked. More wires dangled from tilted poles, sparks showering each time they touched the wet ground. A fat limb blocked off the street and a police car trying to get through had to turn around to look for another way. I could hear the siren of a fire truck in the distance. But I kept running.

  The street was blocked again with a car lying on its side. I ran over to look, afraid somebody might be inside, bloody or dead or something, but it was empty.

  An old guy with a cane came out on his front porch. “Is it safe now?” he shouted, waving his cane at me. I didn’t have any breath to call back so I nodded my head yes. After I passed him, I thought, You stoop, that’s a lie. All those wires down. It’s not half safe. Stuff had been scattered around near Dr. Reynolds’ office, but nothing like my street. It looked like it had been caught in a blender. A big pine tree was blown over, a smashed-up doll carriage in its branches like a Christmas tree decoration.