Do Bananas Chew Gum?

by Jamie Gilson

  “Sam Mott, you look me in the eye. I can’t imagine why you’re grinning like the Cheshire cat. Now, just what is it that’s wrong with you? I don’t want to make a big thing of it, but …”

  There didn’t seem much sense in putting it off. I wiped the grin off my face and shrugged. “I’m stupid, that’s all, and you don’t want me around.” Then I turned around to look for my jacket so I could leave.

  “You’re beginning to infuriate me,” she said. She flopped down in a living room chair, pointed at the sofa, and said, “Sit.” Rooster and me both sat at the same time.

  Mrs. G. giggled, I laughed out loud, and old Rooster, who knew he’d caused it all, got up and flashed his tail back and forth.

  “This is getting us nowhere fast,” Mrs. G. said, still laughing. “Clearly you’re not stupid. You seem reasonably well informed, have a finely honed sense of low humor, and, good grief, I’d almost forgotten, you added the digits of our phone number in your head.” She leaned forward. “You call that stupid? How did you do that? I had to do it on paper to check if you were right.”

  She made me sound pretty good. Nobody had ever made me sound like that before. I knew she was wrong, of course. I’d known I was dumb since at least the second grade. And the number thing was just a trick. It’s easy to do. “I’m stupid because I’ve got these problems,” I tried to explain to her.

  “Problems don’t make people stupid,” she said.

  “These do,” I told her. “I can’t read or write too good. I’ve got …” I looked down. If only I could just go back into my dark cocoon. “… In California they said I’ve got this thing called a learning disability.” I grabbed the cat, who was wandering by, and started to pet him so I wouldn’t have to look at Mrs. G.

  “They want to give me some more tests Monday,” I went on. The cat purred. “They want to see how dumb I really am. I’m not gonna let them. I’m not gonna take their tests.”

  “Ah,” she said, settling back in the chair. “I thought it must be something like that. I mean, all those excuses.” She picked up a little glass elephant from the table next to her and polished it on her sleeve. “My kid sister Marilyn used to make more excuses than anybody. Excuses were her life-style. She has a learning disability, too. Only it’s different from yours. She has an awful time remembering what she hears. I mean, it’s just the opposite of what you’re talking about. It’s hard on her. She’s in high school.”

  “Can she read?” I asked. I couldn’t see what Mrs. G. was getting at. I thought everybody remembered what they heard.

  “She’s a good reader. Reads all the time. Remembers what she reads, too. It’s only when she hears things that she has trouble remembering them. It’s crazy.”

  “She’s crazy?”

  “No, it’s crazy. I always thought a learning disability was when you had a tough time learning things you heard.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. But, listen, she took tests. She still goes to a tutor, who helps.”

  “I can’t even read as good as Alex,” I said.

  “Could you read my note today? I made it easy.”

  “Yeah, I could tell. You said to walk Rooster. We did. And to feed the kids. They fed themselves. And you wanted to talk to me. And about the book.”

  “You did read it, then.”

  “Yeah, well, but …”

  “And you can write some. I’ve seen words you’ve written, though, it’s true, they were wretchedly spelled.”

  “That’s what makes me stupid.”

  “Don’t be such an idiot,” she said, standing up.

  “See,” I said, “you called me an idiot.”

  Something shattered in the kitchen. “What was that?” she yelled.

  “Just a jelly jar,” Alex called. “Chuckie did it.”

  “Leave the area,” she shouted to them. “Bail out. Go to your room until I clear the kitchen.”

  The boys filed by on the way to their room.

  “Did you cut yourselves?” she asked them.

  “No,” Alex said.

  “He pushed me,” Chuck whimpered.

  They slammed the door and the living room pictures shook.

  “You want me to mop it up?” I asked her.

  “No,” she snapped. “I’m not finished with you. First of all, forget that ‘stupid’ stuff. I wouldn’t have asked you to sit with my kids if I’d thought you were stupid. That’s rubbish. You’re good with the kids. But I am worried about the reading.”

  “I can tell stories.”

  “Great,” she said, “a lost art. But that’s not what’s worrying me. What if Chuckie had cut his foot just then?” she asked, waving her arms frantic like it had really happened. “A big bloody gash.”

  “I’d wrap it with a towel or something and I’d call the doctor. If he was bleeding all over the place I’d dial 911 … or maybe call the operator.” She wasn’t gonna get me on that one. I’d thought about those things. Actually my mom had made me.

  “How would you find the doctor’s number?”

  “625-3252 (adds up to 25),” I said, showing off.

  “How do you know that’s the number?” she asked, like I’d made it up.

  “Can we come out now?” Chuck called, sniffling.

  “NO. In five minutes by your clock,” she called back.

  “I memorized them,” I said. “The panic numbers you left me—the doctor, the hospital, your number, your husband’s number. Numbers are easy.”

  “Sure,” she said sarcastically, “numbers are easy for all us dolts. Listen, I don’t know that doctor’s number even yet and I’ve called it a thousand times.” She looked up to the ceiling to think. “No, make that two thousand. OK, what about my notes? Can you really handle them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If they’re short and you print them clear I can, I guess. When I see a lot of words on a page I have a hard time reading each one. I don’t know.”

  “What if somebody calls with an important message. Can you write it down?”

  She had me. “Not too good. I’ll try,” I started. “I can’t … there are some words I just can’t …”

  “Four minutes!” Alex shouted.

  She gave me a long, very serious look. “You going to take those tests to find out what you can do about it?”

  The cat jumped off my lap and left me by myself. “No,” I said, “I’m not.”

  “Four minutes, thirty seconds,” Alex shouted louder.

  Mrs. G. and I ran for the kitchen. The jar was on its side with the jelly holding the pieces of glass together. She scooped the whole mess up bare-handed and tossed it into the garbage can. I rolled off a couple of paper towels and lifted up the goo that was left. She got a wet towel and wiped the rest off the floor just as Alex and Chuck appeared.

  “He put the forks on the right and the spoons on the left,” Alex said. The kitchen doorbell rang.

  “Get it, will you, Sam?” Mrs. Glass said. “I’m checking on my gracious table setting.”

  It was Wally. “Sam,” he said, “you OK?”

  I shrugged.

  “I didn’t know if you’d be here, for sure. I just wanted to give you my address,” he went on. “I was going to give it to you after the spelling bee, but …”

  “You mean I didn’t lose it?” I asked him.

  He looked at me funny. “You didn’t have it to lose. Here. 724 Forest. You still coming tomorrow? Eight-thirty. I mean, is it still OK?”

  “OK,” I said, wondering if he was feeling sorry for me. Or if maybe he felt guilty about siccing Alicia on me after school. Maybe he would be my friend. Maybe not. “See you,” I said, and closed the door.

  “Friend of yours?” Mrs. Glass said, coming back in from the dining room with dollar bills in her hand.

  “Wally Whiteside,” I told her.

  “Oh, well, then, here’s your eight dollars. You can go catch up with him if you like.”

  “I didn’t work tornado day.
That’s too much.”

  “Not true. You found the kids when I was just being hysterical. Go ahead, take it for pain and suffering.”

  “Is this it, then? Am I fired? If I am, it’s OK,” I said, but I couldn’t look at her when I said it.

  “I just can’t decide,” she told me. “If you’re not going to take those tests it’s as if you don’t care. If you don’t care about yourself, how do I know you’re going to care about my kids? Let me think about it, OK?”

  “OK. One more week?” I asked. “To give you time to find somebody else.”

  She smiled. “All right. One more week.”

  I did care. It wasn’t that. I grabbed the book Brenda had left me, not that I was ever going to read it, and stuffed the bills in my pocket.

  I started walking home slow, wondering if the Bird had called my folks to find out where I was. About halfway down the block, I heard Mrs. Glass yell, “Sam, oh, Sam,” so I shouted back to let her know I wasn’t too far to hear. “Sam, I made an appointment with your Dr. Reynolds today,” she went on. “Should I be scared?”

  I had to laugh out loud. I could see Mrs. G. sitting there in that tilted green chair looking up at the smile mobile and those kittens bobbing on strings.

  “Brace yourself,” I yelled back.

  10

  Do Bananas Chew Gum?

  MONDAY WAS ONE NUTTY DAY. Even breakfast was a lot of explosions, all of them louder than snap-crackle-pop. Mom said, “Yes, you will!” and I said, “That’s what you think!” and Dad said, “Don’t talk to your mother like that!”

  “I’ll strike,” I told Mom. “I’ll strike and just sit there and not answer anything they ask me.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” she boomed. “You do and they’ll think you’re bonkers. That’d just compound your problems.”

  By the time I slammed the door and left for school, I wondered why I was going at all. It would have been great just to stay home and watch old movies on TV. But my folks were still boiling about my skipping school on Friday. I’d told them I left to go to the orthodontist’s, that they’d forgotten I had an appointment. My freshly wired braces proved it. Except that they figured out that new brace wires hardly ever take four and a half hours to install. So if I cut a whole day now they’d probably hire a guard to walk me every morning.

  I tore down the front walk, growling to myself, and when I reached the sidewalk I looked up. There was Alicia, smiling broadly.

  “Sorry again about ‘cute,’” she said cheerfully. “I didn’t mean that to happen. I thought you could spell it.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have my head.” Maybe she hadn’t meant it. I wasn’t sure. How can you tell about people?

  “You want to help?” she asked, and shoved a big box at me. It smelled like a bakery. “There’s too much for me to carry.”

  I took it like an idiot.

  “Today’s my birthday,” she announced, walking backward in front of me. What could I do? I followed her. “I’m twelve. Daddy says I should write a book while I’m twelve and people will pay a lot of attention because I’m so young. But I can’t think of anything to write about. Got any ideas?”

  “What’s in this box?” I asked, holding it out to her. “I can’t carry it much longer. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Cupcakes. Birthday cupcakes. They have my initials on them. All except one.”

  “You going to a party or something?”

  “I’m giving them out after lunch. Mrs. Bird said I could. I have napkins, too, with red and blue cornflowers on them. The initials are in red. Want to look?”

  “No,” I told her, “I hate cupcakes.” We were only a couple of blocks from school and up ahead I could see kids I knew. I had to get away from Alicia fast, but first there was something I’d been thinking about. “Listen, those girls said you told them about me. Remember? Before class Friday? What did you tell them? Did you tell them I can’t spell and that I’m dumb and everything?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, looking shocked at the idea. “I told them you kissed me when we were in the trash room.”

  I stopped dead. “Geez, Alicia. I don’t believe you.”

  “Sure,” she went on. “They were very interested. Nobody had ever kissed them.”

  It was so nutty I could have smacked her over the head with the cupcake box.

  “Well, you just take it back,” I yelled. “It’s a lie. I didn’t even want to. Besides, it won’t do you any good to have me as your boyfriend. I’m a dumbhead and you know it and they want to give me tests today so pretty soon everybody else will know it, too.” I pushed the cupcake box back at her and she had to drop her books to grab it.

  “What kind of tests?” she asked, cocking her head at me.

  “Tests. I don’t know.”

  “I like to take tests.”

  “I don’t. I’m not going to, either.”

  “That would be silly. Do you think you’ll get to see the psychologist and take those tests with ink blots?”

  “I’m not going to see anybody. I’m not going to take any tests.” Suddenly I felt like I was Chuck sitting under the table saying, “I don’t take pills.” And I remembered how he closed his eyes and opened his mouth and did it anyway. I wondered if that was smart of him or not.

  “Well, if you’re not off taking tests, you can come to my party in class. I don’t care if you’re not smart.”

  I thought maybe Alicia wasn’t so bad after all. Or maybe she didn’t care because she thought she was smart enough for both of us. She opened up the box and showed me the rows of cupcakes.

  “I made them myself. From a mix.” They were iced white, with red icing letters on them that said AB, AB, AB, AB. All except one. It said SAM. I tried to take it out to pitch it, but she zapped the lid on my fingers.

  Two girls ran up to join her. “Hi, Alicia, hi, Cutes,” they said.

  I slunched over and stalked off to school. “Don’t leave because of uh-us,” one of them sang after me.

  On the playground Wally was showing his fossil to a whole huddle of guys. He’d found a great little fern that had been hiding in its rock for thousands of years.

  He was the only one who’d found anything. We’d had a good time looking, though. Really.

  But I was sure if I went over to talk to Wally, somebody was bound to call me names because of Friday. If I stayed where I was, Alicia and the girls would catch up with me. If I left the class to take tests, people would guess where I was. If I stayed in class, I’d have to get a cupcake with SAM on it and tell the Bird what I was going to do my science report on when I didn’t know from beans. Too many ifs. Ifs multiplied by ifs. I had to make up my mind.

  I dodged inside, away from both Wally and Alicia, hurried past the principal’s office, and dashed up the stairs. At least it was quiet up there so I could think and the Bird wasn’t going to call me names.

  I tossed my jacket in the locker and took a deep breath. I decided to close my eyes and let them throw in the pill. It had to be worse to stay in class than to leave.

  I opened the door and marched up to Mrs. Bird.

  “I’m sorry about Friday,” I told her, feeling like an apologizing machine. That made it two days in a row.

  “So am I,” she said. “Your parents said you went to the orthodontist?” she asked.

  “I’m going to do it,” I shouted at her. “I’m going to take the tests.”

  She looked totally confused. Maybe she thought I was going to all along. She didn’t even know about the ifs. “I know,” she said, “at nine-thirty.” She fussed around with the stuff on her desk and pointed to her calendar. Sammy, it said on it, 9:30.

  “You can scoot off to room 102 right after current events.”

  I sank down in my desk, opened the top, and tried to straighten up the mess inside. When people came in I guess I looked like I was busy and not interested in talking. They left me alone.

  By the time current events was over and kids had stood up and read their clipp
ings about the earthquake in Japan and the elections and energy problems and the guy who’d robbed the Laundromat downtown, my hands were sweating. I’d almost decided to change my mind. If only I could neither stay nor go.

  “So now let’s talk about how your science reports are progressing,” Mrs. Bird began. “How many plan to give them orally?” I raised my hand. No way I wanted to write it. “Oral reports must, of course, include a written bibliography and outline. And … oh, Sammy,” she went on, “it’s time for your appointment.” I got up and left the room. Nobody seemed to notice or care. (Is that worse than their calling me names? I wondered.)

  I trudged down to room 102. It looked like a closet from the outside, mostly because it didn’t have a window like the rest of the doors did. I knocked. Very lightly, so whoever was inside wouldn’t hear.

  “Come in. Come in,” a voice called out.

  I opened the door slowly and saw that it was a little room, not closet-sized, but little, painted green like the garbage room. There was a desk, a few chairs, and a crescent-shaped table, yellow-green like a slice of honeydew melon. The lady inside said hello. She was standing up and she was almost as tall as my dad. Her face was round and shiny and she had lots of curly dark hair.

  “I know you,” I told her, and without even checking my dragon ring, I stuck out my hand. She shook it with both of hers.

  “My name is Ms. Huggins,” she said.

  I did know her. She was always stopping in our room and talking to kids or to Mrs. Bird. I didn’t know she was the learning disabilities person, though. That really knocked me out. I mean, she was at school all the time. That had to mean there were a lot of dumb kids like me. She let me sit down at the crescent table.

  “Well, Sammy,” she said, smiling, like she was tickled to death I’d decided to come.

  “My name is Sam,” I told her. Somehow I didn’t want Ms. Huggins calling me the wrong name.

  “OK, Sam,” she said. “We’ve a job to do. I’m going to give you some tests today and again next Monday to find out how you learn best.”