Do Bananas Chew Gum?

by Jamie Gilson

  “Oh,” she said, catching on that we didn’t know why she was pleased. “Listen, I’m not putting it down by calling it garbage. You can learn a lot about people from what they throw away.”

  I thought about how I’d pawed through all those french fries and unopened peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and how we’d even found money thrown away at school. I wondered what an archeologist would make of that.

  “Alex,” Mrs. Glass said, “go fill the bucket with some clean water. I want to wash my hands.” She started cleaning the mud off her pink polished toenails. “What’s garbage about this bunch of rocks?” she asked.

  “Well,” Brenda said, sitting cross-legged like she was going to tell us a long story, “it looks like the kind of leftover, broken things that Indians threw away, perhaps before the settlers moved in. The Potawatomies used to live around here.”

  “What’s Potawatomi?” Chuck asked.

  “An Indian,” I told him. “Potawatomi was his tribe.” I knew that from television. “Potawatomi and Iroquois and Apache and other guys like that.”

  “Right. Well, anyway,” Brenda went on, “the Potawatomies had their winter quarters here at the tip of Lake Michigan. When they didn’t need something anymore, they threw it in a hole they’d made for garbage.” She picked up the piece Alicia had said looked like a pot.

  “This,” she said, “is a broken piece of pottery. They must have tossed it in the garbage pit because it was broken. Here,” and she shoved a few pieces aside to leave one by itself. “This is a broken flint—a chip left over from making points. There are lots of them in your pile.”

  “Like arrowheads?” Alex asked, setting down the bucket of water. “A kid in my class brought arrowheads for Show and Tell.”

  “Sure, arrowheads and scrapers and knives and spearheads. They’re all points.”

  “Somebody sitting in our backyard making arrowheads,” Mrs. G. said, washing her hands in the bucket. “Fancy that, Chuckie, an Indian sitting under our maple tree.”

  “Mother,” Alex sighed. “The maple tree grew on top of the Indian stuff. The garbage was here before the tree was.”

  “Is this a dinosaur bone, at least?” Chuck asked, holding up the biggest piece of garbage.

  “Nope. Probably deer.”

  “But when?” I asked her. “When was all this?”

  “Got me,” Brenda said. “I can’t read it.”

  “What do you mean, read it? Nobody can read rocks and bones.”

  “Oh, sure they can. Somebody who knows a whole lot more than I do can tell you for sure what Indians made that pot just from looking at the pieces, and they might even be able to tell you what the pot was used for. And they could solve the mystery of the bones. If you know what you’re doing you can read the dirt, too, and even tell how long people lived here.”

  Chuck slid down into the hole. “I’ve lived here five years,” he said, “and I found this hole first.”

  “What I’m going to do,” Alex said, picking up the shovel, “is to dig up the rest of the yard. Maybe I’ll find a skeleton.”

  “Yeah, a skeleton,” Chuck yelled from the hole. He jumped out and yanked the shovel away from Alex, who howled.

  “Oh, cut it out,” Brenda called. “Look, friends, the only reason you found this stuff is that the tree was over it. The rest of your yard has been plowed and planted and dug up for years. Nothing’s there anymore. The tree saved this one small pocket of treasure for you.”

  “Poor tree,” Mrs. Glass said. She grabbed the shovel from the boys and started off for the house with it.

  Chuck and Alex burrowed under the branches.

  “You have to read a lot to be an archeologist?” I asked Brenda. “Books, I mean, not dirt and bones. Do you have to be smart?”

  “I don’t know. You want to see one of my books?” She reached in her pack and pulled out one that had a skeleton on the cover. It was a big book, bigger than anything I was sure I could ever read. Even after she told me what the title was, it took me awhile to read all the words.

  So finding stuff wasn’t enough. Knowing a few Indian names from TV sure wasn’t enough. You had to be able to read the rocks and the dirt and you couldn’t do that unless you could read books harder than second grade. And I couldn’t. Imagine Sam Mott, big deal archeologist, bringing his father along to read to him every night.

  I looked up and saw Brenda staring at me, puzzled. I guess I was crying or something. So I just got up and left her there. I walked down the driveway as fast as I could. It wasn’t fair. All those things I wanted to do. It just wasn’t fair.

  7

  A Little Talk About Sammy

  THE WARM SMELL of morning coffee drifted into the bathroom and I could hear Mom and Dad in the kitchen arguing. About me. It had to be about me. They wouldn’t have anything else to argue about. If they got a divorce because of me, I wondered which one I would live with.

  “Breakfast! Get your hot breakfast here!” Mom called. I finished brushing my bracey teeth, rinsed my mouth out, and smiled into the mirror. My face still had smudges of maple tree dirt on it from last night. I rubbed at them with a towel.

  “Now, Samuel!” she called. “It’s getting late.” Tossing the towel into the bathtub, I glanced at the sink. It was ringed with dirt and the blue toothpaste had wormed out of its tube. The cap was on the floor. Mom would hate all that. But she’d said “now.” So I pushed down on my hair and hurried, shoeless, into the kitchen.

  Dad was reading the paper. “You’ll be certain to apologize to Mrs. Bird about yesterday,” he said, without looking up. I’d already promised him the night before I would. Why did he have to start off like that?

  “Good morning,” I said, and he looked up and smiled. Everybody says I look just like him. I can’t see it much, but it’s true his hair and eyebrows are bushy like mine. He can separate his toes like I can, too. Except now he had on shoes. Loafers. I wish they’d let me wear loafers. You don’t have to tie them so they aren’t all the time coming untied. And he was wearing this suit with a vest.

  “Do we bug you, Sam?” he asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I said and sat down in front of my powdered sugar doughnut.

  “Nonsense,” my mom told him. “It’s our duty to see he’s disciplined.” She shook her head and her hair sort of scooted from side to side. When it finally fell still, it looked like a small brown cap. She was wearing a suit, too, only hers didn’t have a vest. They both looked important, like they gave orders and people did what they said to do. “Ernie, he’s got to understand that what he did was wrong.” She turned to me. “Right?”

  I was looking at the pearls she was wearing. They were just like the ones I’d dreamed of finding on the beach. Shiny white pearls. “Right?” I heard her ask me again.

  “I guess,” I answered.

  “‘I guess’ doesn’t cut it, Sam. Explain to me,” she said, “why you didn’t just tell Mrs. Bird you had to baby-sit instead of running away like that.” She cracked the breakfast eggs into a blue and white bowl and went at them with a fork like she’d show them a thing or two.

  “I didn’t have time,” I told her. “I was already late for Chuck and Alex and I didn’t want them to leave without me.” That wasn’t the pure truth. I wasn’t late, but it sounded like I’d been very trustworthy. “Besides,” I barked at them, “it couldn’t have been all that important that she had to call Dad up last night and yell about me.”

  “Oh, cut it out,” Dad said mildly, pouring us all some coffee. “She was actually very nice. All she said was that she wanted to have a little talk about Sammy.”

  “Do I look like a Sammy?” I asked him. “No kidding, do I look like a Sammy?” I dunked my doughnut in the coffee and watched the powdered sugar melt. I always get coffee when we have doughnuts. Ever since I was little I’ve liked the way it tastes and the way it makes the doughnut warm and crumbly so it just melts in your mouth. I stirred it around and took a bite. It was delicious.<
br />
  Dad glanced at Mom with a worried look that scared me. She rolled her eyes up at him, dashed the scrambled eggs onto our plates, and sat down.

  “Sam,” she said, “sit up and eat your breakfast.”

  I picked up the pepper grinder and started grinding.

  “Well,” she went on, “Mrs. Bird told your father the reason she wanted you to stay after school yesterday was so she could tell you about the testing program that’s been arranged for you.”

  “Testing?” I asked. Although I’d heard them talking about it a few mornings ago, I’d hoped it would go away by itself. I didn’t remember hearing Dad say anything about testing when he was on the phone last night. The Bird did most of the talking, though, and mostly I remember Dad saying, “Well, no,” and “I see,” and “He must have had a very good reason,” and “We feel he’s adjusting very well to the new school environment,” and “I’m sure everything is going to be all right,” and “Oh, fine, oh, fine,” “Splendid,” “Fine,” “We’ll tell him then….” Of course, that was it. “We’ll tell him then.” And they were telling me. Well, I’d tell them, too.

  “You remember, Sam, like the tests in California. They were kind of fun, weren’t they? Like games?” Mom stared down at her plate and pushed the eggs around on it with her fork.

  “Why should I do that all over again? Couldn’t they just send for last year’s tests? That’ll tell them how dumb I am. That’s what tests are for, aren’t they?”

  “Enough of that, Sam,” Dad said. “Look, your mother and I thought that if you started out with a whole new battery of tests, different from those in California, they’d find something new. You’re a year older now and a year smarter.”

  I stared at him like he wasn’t putting anything over on me. He’d heard me read and read to me. He’d written stuff for me, guiding my hand. Since I was a little kid. He looked down at his eggs and half-eaten doughnut. I knew he wouldn’t be able to look me in the eye.

  “Mrs. Bird said,” Mom went on, taking over for him, “we should tell you that these tests will tell her how it is easiest for you to learn. That’s simple enough.”

  “Well, I won’t do it. They’ll just ask me all kinds of stuff I don’t know. I won’t do it.”

  “You’ll do it. Your mother signed the permission slip last week,” Dad said. He pulled out the sports section of the newspaper and started to look at the baseball scores.

  “Sam?” Mom asked, scooting her chair round to mine at the table. “Look, can you read this?” She leafed through the paper to the comics and pointed at a balloon of words over somebody’s head.

  I took a deep breath. “Do I have to?”

  “Come on,” she said, pointing and squinting at the print as though she was figuring out how hard it was going to be.

  I narrowed my eyes, too, and knew. There were some long words and those were always killers.

  “Good …” I read, and that was right. I knew it was. I looked up at her to say hooray, but she just kept pointing. “Good … after … noon … Lie … Lie … Lie …”

  “Lieutenant,” she said. “That’s a hard one, granted. ‘Good afternoon, Lieutenant.’ “ And she kept her finger on the spot. “From here on it’s as easy as instant breakfast. Sam, sit up. You’ll grow a hump the size of a watermelon.”

  “This is stupid,” I groaned, shutting the newspaper on top of her hand. “What’s this got to do with tests?” This was an old thing with us, a routine we’d set up a long time ago. Mom would say, “Read this, it’s really easy,” and then I’d try and fail and usually she’d shout at me. I’d end up feeling like a rotten onion.

  She gave me her no-nonsense look. “I just wanted to show you why you have to take the tests. You can only read the easy words. And you don’t read those well enough. Somehow the schools haven’t taught you to read properly, and we’re going to find out why.”

  My dad took a deep breath. “Mrs. Bird said to tell you there’ll be two tests, one this Monday and another the next Monday, and altogether they’ll take about seven hours.”

  “Seven hours! Geez! That’s a marathon! Everybody’ll say, ‘There goes old Dumbhead Sam, taking the dumbhead tests.’ Forget it.” I cocked my head, stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth, and gave them my idiot kid look.

  “Forget your ‘forget it,’” Mom said, rinsing off her plate and putting it in the dishwasher. “And I’m going to be late for the train if I don’t blast out of here pretty soon.”

  I scraped my uneaten eggs into the garbage disposal, put my plate in the dishwasher, and said, “Seven hours! They can’t make me do it.”

  “Sam,” she said, rubbing my neck like she does sometimes, “I love you dearly. Notwithstanding the mess in your room and your crazy reading, you are a joy and a delight. I just want you to be able to read and write as well as any other kid. I don’t want you to go down the drain.”

  I turned on the water and started the garbage disposal. (Glub, glub, glub, I was halfway down the drain already.)

  “We’re going to get your eyes tested again,” Dad said weakly, like he thought I’d complain about that, too. They’d never found anything wrong with my eyes before. I didn’t see how they’d start now.

  Mom pushed the button on her digital watch. “Gotta run,” she said. “Seven-forty.” She grabbed her briefcase and hurried out the kitchen door.

  Dad gulped down some more coffee and followed after to catch the 7:55. The screen door slammed after him and I watched him kick a chimney brick out into the street. “Don’t forget your homework,” he called back.

  “I don’t have any,” I snapped, and hunched over the sink. I didn’t have the storm paper because I’d torn it up into very, very, very small pieces and flushed it. I hadn’t asked Dad to help me with a new one last night, either. I’d watched TV instead. A movie about two crazy old ladies who were killers. It was pretty funny.

  Leaving the rest of the dishes on the table, I went into my folks’ bedroom and turned on the color TV. There was a black and white Tarzan movie on.

  “Jane say Boy sick?” Tarzan asked her. He put his hand on Boy’s forehead. “Boy has bubonic plague. Tarzan cure.” And he did. I love old movies.

  At eight-thirty I had to turn it off without knowing if Tarzan broke his neck when the vine got shot through and he fell into the deep ravine. I had to get to school early to say I was sorry. I’d promised.

  8

  Losers Weepers

  ON PURPOSE I was the first one in the room. I didn’t want anybody hanging around that conversation. Mrs. Bird peered at me over her little half-moon glasses. “Well?” she asked.

  So like a good boy I told her what a bad boy I was. You know. I told her how I’d just remembered at three o’clock about my baby-sitting job and the little tiny kids waiting for me and how scared they would have been if I was late and how they might have run out in the street and gotten smashed by a speeding car. She got tired of listening and waved her hand back and forth to make me stop.

  “Next time, Sammy, make your explanations ahead of time.” She shoved a few papers around on her desk and then looked up at me again. “Did your parents explain to you about the tests on Monday, Sammy?” People were starting to drift into the room.

  “Um,” I said, shrugging.

  “Don’t you worry about them for a minute,” she oozed like maple syrup. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Worry? Worry? Why should I worry about two days of gruesome questions? Could Mom sign my life away like that? Could she? I was sure if I did take them, they’d be worse than the ones in California where the man kept making me try to spell words I knew I didn’t know how to spell. I got cramps in my stomach then and the guy giving the test didn’t smile or frown. He just sat there firing words at me with his face looking like a piece of gray cardboard. I already knew that if I did take those tests (which I wasn’t going to), they’d say I belonged back in fifth grade. Or maybe even in second with Alex. And wouldn’t that be a riot.

&n
bsp; I wandered around the room, waiting for the bell to ring, kicking desks out of their lines. On the bulletin board there was a terrific newspaper picture of the two funnel clouds. Four twister stories were already tacked up. Alicia’s was one of them. I could tell by the neat handwriting. It figured. Mine wasn’t. It was down the john.

  “Careful,” a kid called out, and a couple of girls came backing into the room, helping Alicia carry her huge science project. It was something about solar energy that you had to read a thousand books about before you could do it. I didn’t even know what to do mine on.

  “Oh, hi, Sammy,” Alicia called sweetly.

  “Hi, Sammy,” one of the other girls said. “Alicia told us you and her were digging up somebody’s backyard yesterday looking for Vikings.” She laughed mysteriously, like that was supposed to be some big secret.

  “She told us a lot about you-ou,” the other one sang out. Alicia had already told them I was a dumbhead. Didn’t waste any time. I guess I knew she wouldn’t keep it a secret.

  They all laughed. It was an inside joke. My insides.

  Wally came in, flicking a yo-yo in front of him.

  The girls laughed, but it didn’t sound like the same kind of laugh.

  He let me use the yo-yo and I walked the dog with it and did around-the-world, but the girls had already gone away.

  “Sam,” he said to me, “no kidding, I’m sorry I told Alicia where you were after school yesterday. Did she find you?”

  I rolled my eyes to let him know she sure did.

  “I hope she didn’t bug you too much. But she was following me home. She said if I didn’t tell her where you were she’d tell my mother about my tossing the retainer in the trash. Can you believe that?”

  “That’s blackmail,” I said. “This guy on the late show the other night told a lady who had these pictures of him, ‘I won’t pay you ten grand because that’s blackmail pure and simple!’”

  “Yeah, well, I paid. Or, anyway, you did. I’m sorry.”

  He tried to walk the dog with his yo-yo, but it just hung there at the end of the string. “Dead dog,” he said and rolled it up. “Hey, look, you want to come over tomorrow? My mom’s taking me and my sister fossil hunting in Coal City, and she said we could each ask somebody. We take hammers and everything for busting open the rocks. It’s really cool.”