“Maybe I shouldn’t even do the play,” Jane says and sighs.
“It’s only your third play. Don’t sweat it. You’ll get better parts,” you tell her. You think of what Ma said that day with Leah about keeping your head down. “Just keep your head up,” you say to Jane but also to yourself. “And don’t follow the rules. You’ll be all right.”
Jane looks at you and grins. “What do you mean?”
“Be the mayor’s wife your way.”
You can tell the wheels are turning in her head.
“I like that. Hmm, what would Elizabeth Taylor do?” she says and taps her finger on her lips. “I heard that she asked to be paid a million dollars for the movie Cleopatra, and that’s what she got. The most any lady in Hollywood had ever gotten.”
“So what would you ask for if you could ask for anything in the world?”
“I’d ask for money to write and star in my own play. And I’d want to do it in New York City. On Broadway.”
“Sounds like a million-dollar idea to me.”
Jane nods, turns toward the window, and loses herself in her own thoughts. You open your notebook and scratch out a short poem. You keep putting down a line and closing the notebook while you think so Jane won’t notice. You write it faster than you’ve ever written anything before.
What Would Elizabeth Taylor Do?
A girl on the bus,
covered in freckles,
her hair frizzing in the heat,
asks this question,
“What would Elizabeth Taylor do?”
as she gazes down the street,
not minding the bumps
or the smell of baloney sandwiches,
and dreams of New York City.
How long will it take the girl
to raise her head up
and figure out her answer?
You walk into your classroom, and Miss Field is arranging papers on her desk. You and Ma haven’t talked about what happened yesterday. Ma just took you home and made dinner. She said Daddy needed to stay late, restocking and doing inventory. Then he left this morning super early like he always did.
But restocking probably wasn’t the only thing he was doing. He was probably getting ready to sell the bakery. Were your parents going to tell you? There were suddenly so many secrets. Maybe they had always been there and you just hadn’t noticed.
You study Miss Field, her long hair, her long skirt, concentrating and putting things in piles. Is she a hippie?
Someone pushes you, and you stumble forward a little.
“Hey,” you say and see Chris Heaton slide into his desk chair. He doesn’t look at you.
“Don’t you say ‘excuse me’?” you say.
“Why should I?” he says. “You were in my way.”
Your face feels hot. Your lips are tingling. He starts unpacking his schoolbag.
“I want you to apologize,” you say and put your hands on your hips.
He stops taking out his schoolbooks, leans back his head, and laughs a big belly laugh. If you were a cartoon character, you would have flames shooting out of your eyeballs.
“I would never apologize to someone like you,” he says. Then he goes back to his stuff. You look at the stack of notebooks and textbooks on his desk. You see his name written in tiny letters on his black-and-white composition notebook. So small and neat and infuriating. A shaft of light comes through the window, showing all that dust.
“What do you mean, someone like me?” you ask. Other kids are starting to watch. He doesn’t reply. “Come on, what do you mean?” you say, louder.
“Oh, you know what I mean, reject!” he yells.
Everyone stops talking. All you can hear is your own breathing, and your body starts to act. You couldn’t even stop it if you wanted to, because Chris needs to be stopped before he says anything worse. You square your shoulders and sweep your hands over his desk, wiping the surface clean of stuff as it all tumbles to the floor. For a second, looking at the flat, empty surface of his desk, you are satisfied. It feels like you’ve squashed a big spider.
Chris’s mouth drops open, and your eyes meet. You’re as shocked as he is. The noises of the classroom come rushing back. Some boys near you are laughing. You hear Lisa Turner say, “Oh lordy!”
Then Chris yells out. “Miss Field! Miss Field! Ariel just pushed all my stuff onto the floor for no reason.”
People start saying all kinds of stuff, and Miss Field hurries over.
“Girls and boys,” Miss Field says. “Settle down. Please go over your spelling list. We’re having a quiz today.”
Voices still bounce off the walls.
“If I have to tell anyone again, you’ll find yourself in Mr. Wilson’s office and cleaning the blackboard after school for a month.”
There are a few groans and then silence. Mr. Wilson is the principal, but he reminds you of a police officer. He’s very tall, wears heavy black shoes, heavy black glasses, and walks around slowly, looking for trouble. He rarely smiles. His announcements usually include a threat: Good morning, Eastbrook Middle School. If I see one more student with a water gun, they will receive a two-day suspension. Good morning, Eastbrook Middle School. If I hear a student cussing in the hallways, they will receive a week of detention.
“First, I want both of you to put Chris’s stuff back on his desk.”
Chris points at you. You hate when people point at you. You control the urge to bat his hand away. “She was the one who did this. Why should I clean up?”
“Now, please,” Miss Field says in a deeper voice. You kneel down and start picking up Chris’s stuff, but once you start, he also kneels down and gathers most of it up, faster than you, and even grabs a notebook out of your hand. Once everything is back on his desk, you both stand up.
“Now, let’s step outside in the hallway and then both of you can explain.”
You follow Miss Field out, but Chris hangs back for a second. You don’t like him walking behind you, but you just keep following Miss Field. The other kids sneak glances at you as you walk past them. Your cheeks must look all blotchy.
Finally you’re out, and Miss Field gently closes the door behind her.
She looks both of you over. “So, what happened?”
Chris starts talking immediately.
“Miss Field, I was just minding my own business, sitting at my desk when, when she came out of nowhere and pushed all my books to the floor. Girls shouldn’t be bullies.”
Miss Field nodded. “No one should be a bully, Chris.”
“But especially not girls, and she’s a bully,” he said, pointing again.
“That’s quite enough, Chris,” Miss Field says and turns her face toward you. “Ariel, what’s your side of the story?”
You feel like you should choose your words carefully, but usually you find it easier to simply say what you think or stay quiet. You take a deep breath. Be careful.
“He pushed me out of the way first—”
“I did not,” Chris bellowed. “That’s a lie. See, she’s a bully.”
“Let her talk. I need to hear both sides.”
Chris crosses his arms and glares.
You stare at your feet. “He pushed me out of the way. I asked him to apologize, but he said that he would never apologize to someone like me, and it made me very angry. He called me a reject. So I shoved his books on the floor. I know I shouldn’t have.”
You look up now and see Billy Johnson through the glass window on the classroom door. He has a paper airplane raised above his shoulder and is about to throw it.
“Well, I agree with you, Ariel. You shouldn’t have done that,” says Miss Field.
“Yeah,” Chris says.
“But, Chris, you shouldn’t have shoved her or called her any names in the first place. That’s n
ot acceptable.”
“I didn’t shove her at all or call her any names. She’s a liar. They all are.”
“Who’s they?” Miss Field asks.
“You know what I mean,” Chris mumbles.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Miss Field says.
But you know what he means. He means Jewish people are liars, but this isn’t something you can say out loud, so you shove the feeling down into your body like you’re being made to swallow dirt.
“Just forget it,” Chris says. “So is she going to get detention?”
You look at your teacher and plead with your eyes: Don’t let him get away with it.
“You both were a part of this,” she says. “Ariel, can you apologize to Chris for pushing his books to the floor.”
“I’m sorry,” you say quickly. You just want to go back inside. Sometimes when you don’t want to be where you are, you start thinking of the bakery. You picture sitting on your favorite wooden stool, a cola in one hand, a cookie in the other, watching Daddy braid a challah, twisting the fat yellow dough into a thing of golden beauty.
“Okay,” Miss Field says. “Ariel, there are other ways to handle your feelings, even if someone provokes you first. Talking things out peacefully is best.”
You nod slowly and again wonder if this is true. You think about what Leah said in the beginning of the summer, when she and Raj were talking about the protests and race riots. What if people don’t change? What are you supposed to do if they keep putting you down, shoving you aside when you’ve done nothing to them? You look at the satisfied look on Chris’s face, his greasy brown hair falling into his small blue eyes. This is all wrong. Chris was the one who was supposed to apologize to you. But maybe if you had stayed calm while you asked for an apology, he would have given it to you.
“And, Chris, I don’t know if you shoved her or called her names, because I didn’t see that part, but if you did, that’s no way to treat your fellow student. Please apologize.”
“Why should I apologize if I didn’t do anything,” he says, crossing his arms again.
“But that’s a lie!” you say.
“See, now she’s calling me a stinking liar,” he says. “She’s bullying me again.”
“I’m waiting,” Miss Field says.
You all stand there, staring at one another. Chris holds you both hostage for a minute.
“I’m not apologizing for nothing.”
A spitball hits the window. More people are away from their desks, and the noise level is rising. Miss Field looks at the door and back at you. She turns to Chris.
“This isn’t over,” she says to him. “You still owe Ariel an apology.” Then she opens the door, and you see several people jump back into their seats and pretend to be working hard. You wanted her to force him to apologize right then and there. Why didn’t she just believe you? If she doesn’t trust you, how can you trust her? It’s like she’s letting Chris bully her, too.
You sit down at your desk and take out your spelling list, but you feel a dull pain in your chest again, like something is chipping away at pieces of your heart. You put a piece of notebook paper underneath the spelling list and start writing an answer to Miss Field’s question. You keep adding to it all day, and when the dismissal bell rings, the poem is done.
This Is What Chris Meant
When he said
“She’s a liar. They all are,”
he meant
that Jewish people are liars,
even though he lies all the time.
But are we?
Is my mother lying to me?
Is my father?
Is my sister?
I feel like
I’m the only one who tells the truth.
So what does that make me?
At the end of the day, as you leave the classroom and head for the bus, Miss Field is near the door, watching people leave and helping them gather their stuff. You take the poem out of your bag and stand there for a moment. Then you drop the paper folded in half right in the middle of her desk. You look back to see if she’s watching you. Are you really just going to leave the poem there on her desk? You think about the way Chris accused you of lying, the way he didn’t have to apologize. Miss Field told you she thought you had something to say. Well, you do.
How to Try Even Harder
You go to the bakery after school, almost wondering if this is the day you’ll find it dark and closed, a red for sale sign hanging on the door. But as you approach, there it is, lights on and bustling, as open and alive as any person.
As you walk inside, the smell of sugar, baking bread, and melting chocolate hits your nose. That’s what bakeries do: give people this moment even when nothing’s right at all. They should make a perfume out of that smell. That, you would wear.
People are walking around, choosing bread for their dinners and cakes and cookies for their desserts. Cake orders stand in white boxes waiting on the counter. Fresh challah loaves sit in a basket, waiting to be bought for Shabbat dinners, though most people who come into the bakery aren’t Jewish and the challah doesn’t always sell well. Daddy makes them every Friday anyway. It still makes you wonder why your parents didn’t open the bakery in a place where there were more people who are Jewish and would want the challah.
You sort of know the answer, though maybe not the whole answer. Every year on the anniversary of the day your parents bought the bakery, your father tells you the story. He took Ma on a surprise trip to tour the old mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, for their first anniversary. On the way back, they stopped off the Eastport exit because Ma said she was starving and might faint.
They drove into town to get some lunch, and there, across the street from the luncheonette, was a for sale sign. Above it on the awning was your father’s name, Max, and that’s when he knew his life was about to change.
It had been a butcher shop called Max’s Meats. When he called the number on the sign, the real estate agent told him the shop had been taken by the bank and that he could get it “for peanuts.” When you were little, you thought he really bought the bakery with a can of peanuts.
“When your dream knocks on the door, you have to answer,” he says every time he tells the story.
Gabby calls to you across the counter. “Hi, Ari.”
“Hi, is my mother here?” you ask.
“Where else would she be?” Gabby says, and her bright eyes question you. You wonder what Gabby knows. She’s been with the bakery for years. Gabby used to babysit you; that’s how Ma and Daddy found her. She would make you the most perfect chocolate-chip cookies as snacks. Ma tasted one and offered her a job on the spot. If the bakery was sold, what would happen to Gabby?
You go into the back, take off your jacket, put down your book bag, and get a cola out of the fridge. Ma is rolling out some pie dough. Daddy is way in the back, loading things into the freezer. As you watch your parents, you think of the poem you left Miss Field and wonder if she’ll call your parents again. Your stomach turns. You put the cool soda against your forehead.
“How was school?” Ma asks.
“Okay,” you say, opening the bottle and taking a long bubbly sip. You watch Ma bent over her work, her eyebrows knitted together. She has a brown-and-white dress on with her kitten heels. Her lipstick is bright, but her skin looks pale. There’s no color in her cheeks.
“Ma, do you like baking?”
Ma stops rolling. She wipes her hands on her apron and pats at her hair.
“Why are you asking?” she says.
“I don’t know.” You take another sip of soda.
She looks at you and then goes back to rolling. You watch her quietly and sip the soda.
“Haven’t I told you this?” she says after a minute.
You shrug. “What? Tell me again.”
She si
ghs. She stops rolling and holds the rolling pin by her side. “When we began dating, Daddy started teaching me how to bake. He said he wanted his own bakery one day. I wasn’t so sure if I liked that idea. My mother worked so hard in the kitchen for us. I didn’t want to be like her, putting meat and fish through grinders, always smelling like garlic and onions. But your father taught me another way. Baking is precise. It’s about lightness and beauty. And I fell in love with him and baking. But I still chop onions.” She smiled and went back to her pie dough. “And I spend more time in kitchens than my mother did. Go figure.”
You get up and butter a slice of sourdough. You think about Daddy teaching Ma how to bake. You think about them being young and in love, just like Leah and Raj. Did they ever share ice cream in a park? Then you shake your head. You don’t really want to think of your parents this way.
To distract yourself, you watch Ma place a circle of dough over the pie pan, push it in, and gently pull off the extra dough around the rim. You’ve done the same thing and can feel the metal rim on your own fingers as you watch her. After, she fills the crust with lemon custard and starts whipping the meringue. The meringue grows bigger and fluffier. It’s one of your favorite things to watch, how slimy-looking egg whites become a heavenly cloud before your very eyes. The meringue starts to form stiff peaks. Finally, she spoons it over the filling.
Could they really be selling the bakery? Wouldn’t that be selling Daddy’s dream? Maybe you didn’t understand those legal papers. Perhaps it’s not just your writing that’s the problem. Other things are hard for you, too. Keeping things organized is hard. Following lots of steps is hard. Paying attention for a long time is hard.
“Ma, do you think something is really wrong with me?”
She turns off the mixer. She looks serious but not mad.
“Are you asking because of the meeting?” she says.
“Yes, Ma. Because of all the meetings. Every year.”
“Listen,” she says and points at you with the wooden spoon she’s holding. A little meringue goes flying onto the floor. “Nothing is wrong with you. I’ve seen you work very hard, and you will overcome your writing problem. This trouble you have is not because of a disorder like your teacher says. Just don’t give in to laziness. School wasn’t easy for me, either, but maybe if I’d worked a little harder, I could have gone to college. Instead I’ll probably work in a kitchen until the day I die.”
How to Find What You're Not Looking For Page 8