Shoebag

by M. E. Kerr

  “Say hello back,” Tuffy Buck commanded Shoebag.

  “Hello,” said Shoebag, and he felt something very strange happening in his eyes. They began to hurt and they began to fill with liquid. That morning when he had awakened with moisture on his forehead and under his arms, Mrs. Biddle had said he was sweating from too many blankets.

  “Crybaby!” said Tuffy Buck. “Now I know you’re a little girl, because you’re crying.”

  “I’m not crying,” Shoebag said. “My eyes are sweating a little, that’s all.”

  “Stuella with the sweating eyes!” said Tuffy Buck, and everyone laughed and laughed.

  After that, no one wanted to make friends with Shoebag. No one wanted to get on the bad side of Tuffy Buck.

  When the bell for lunch rang, Shoebag stayed at his desk while everyone filed out of the room.

  “Mama?” he whispered into his pencil box. “What am I going to do? Nobody in this school likes me.”

  When there was no answer, Shoebag opened his pencil box a crack, and saw that Drainboard was still sound asleep between the red and yellow pencils.

  He did not have the heart to wake her up, and in a way he was glad she had slept through everything, for she would only have felt like a helpless cockroach who had always known people were cruel.

  Shoebag put the pencil box inside the grocery bag with his lunch, and trudged down to the cafeteria. He had no appetite, and he had no wish to go into that big bright room with all the tables and chairs, and everyone finding friends to eat with. But what could he do?

  He stood in line to buy chocolate milk. He noticed that certain boys and girls pushed ahead of him, laughing, telling others, “Stuella doesn’t care if we go before her! Come on!”

  By the time he finally got his chocolate milk, nearly everyone had plates of food in front of them, or their sandwiches out of their baggies and bitten into. No one called him over to a table the way others had been invited to join groups. He finally found a table that was half full, at which sat others like him: the ones who weren’t liked. There was the boy they called Fatso, with his face in a sardine sandwich. There was the girl known as The Ghost, who was skeletal thin with skin the color of flour. Bark was there, the small boy who was terrified of all dogs. And so was Handles there, the boy with ears which stuck way out. The girl called Two Times sat there, so nervous she said everything twice.

  Shoebag sat down with them. No one said anything to him, and he did not try to start a conversation.

  When was it? Toward the end of lunch when the scream came out of The Ghost?

  What a scream it was! “YEEEEEEEEEEEE-OWWWWWWW! A ROACH!”

  Shoebag heard the scream before he caught a glimpse of his mother crawling near the bottom of the bag containing his salami sandwich.

  Salami had always been irresistible to Drainboard. She never got a taste of it, either, when Under The Toaster was around, for it was his most favorite choice morsel.

  The scent of it must have awakened her, and while Shoebag had not yet taken his sandwich out of the bag, she must have been sneaking in there for a taste.

  “YEEEEEEEEEEOWWWWWWW! A COCKROACH!” The Ghost cried again.

  Everyone at Shoebag’s table jumped out of their chairs, and soon the whole cafeteria was in an uproar.

  And there, of course, in the center of all the action, stood Tuffy Buck.

  “So Stuella, you have brought cockroaches from home!”

  By this time, Drainboard had disappeared.

  “There was only one!” Fatso said.

  “Only one?” Tuffy Buck exclaimed. “That’s one too many to suit the boss of the cafeteria! Where is it? Would you like to eat it, Fatso?”

  “Make him eat it,” Fatso pointed to Shoebag. “He brought it to school. I didn’t.”

  “Where is it?” Tuffy Buck said.

  Then a voice Shoebag had never heard before said, “I stepped on it. It’s gone.” At the same time this boy said those words, and just as Shoebag began to feel his eyes hurt again, and the moisture come, he looked down and saw a hand nudging him, with two fingers crossed. Shoebag happened to know that signal, from watching people over the years. That signal meant: I am fibbing.

  Tuffy Buck could not see the signal.

  He said, “Good for you, Gregor! We can always count on you to show up out of nowhere and save the day!”

  Shoebag looked up at this boy Gregor, and he knew then why Tuffy Buck’s voice was suddenly so polite.

  Gregor was taller than Tuffy, and he was huskier, too. He was also mysterious, for he wore very dark glasses, the kind with mirror lenses in which you saw your own reflection. And he had a strange long nose, with a twitch to it, as though he was catching the scent of something wild. His hair was so short it was almost like a beard on his head, a bristle, and it was blacker even than Tuffy’s, blacker than midnight. But the spookiest thing about him was his voice, which was not as loud as it was deep, like a grown man’s.

  “All right, the roach is gone!” said this peculiar fellow. “Everybody move away!”

  “You heard what Gregor said,” Tuffy told the other boys and girls. “Everybody move away!”

  And everybody did. They all went back to their tables and their food, except for The Ghost, who had long ago run from the cafeteria in hysterics.

  Gregor sat down in her chair. He put a Sony Watchman down on the table, and turned it on to the noon news. Then he stuck out a large, long-fingered hand. “I am Gregor Samsa,” he said.

  “I am Stuart Bagg.” Then Shoebag had to whisper and find out, “You didn’t really step on the roach?”

  “I don’t step on things,” Gregor Samsa answered.

  “Where did you come from?” Shoebag asked him.

  “I come from here and there. I go back and forth. I smelled your sandwich.”

  “Would you like half?” Shoebag asked him.

  “Would I!”

  Bark spoke up then. “Even though a roach was near it?”

  “Roaches have been around for 250 million years,” Gregor Samsa answered. “They were here 249 million years before people were.” He reached over and took the sandwich.

  “I know that, but how did you know that?” said Shoebag. “Not many people know that.”

  Fatso joined the conversation. “He knows that because he watches television all the time, and he never forgets a fact.”

  “He memorizes everything,” said Bark.

  “He learned the part in the new school play just like that,” said Handles, snapping his fingers.

  “He doesn’t have to come to regular rehearsals,” said Fatso. “Only dress rehearsal.”

  Gregor Samsa took an enormous bite from the sandwich half, and changed the TV channel to a movie.

  “Do you ever stop watching television?” Shoebag asked him.

  “Om uddyin me man mactor.”

  “What?” Shoebag asked.

  Bark answered for Gregor. “He says he’s studying to be an actor, Stu.”

  So for the first time, he heard a classmate call him by a boy’s name, and all because of Gregor Samsa.

  “I bet Tuffy would have made me eat the dirty cockroach if it wasn’t for you, Gregor,” said Fatso.

  Gregor was busy eating, and watching TV, his nose twitching, his forehead furrowed.

  “Too bad you’re not around more, Gregor,” Fatso said.

  Shoebag could not resist peeking into Gregor’s mirrored eyeglasses. What Shoebag saw in the lenses was his true self: the antennae, the six legs, the shiny brown shell.

  “Why isn’t Gregor around more?” he asked Fatso.

  Gregor himself answered. “When I’m here, I wish I was there, and when I’m there, I wish I was here. I keep going back and forth.

  “He keeps skipping school,” Two Times spoke up. “He keeps skipping school.”

  Then the bell rang and lunch was over.

  Shoebag threw his paper bag in the trash can on the way out of the cafeteria. He checked the inside of his pencil box. />
  There was Drainboard, straddling the metal compass.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Son, if I caused a commotion. Hard Italian salami is my downfall.”

  “I think I made a friend, Mama,” Shoebag said.

  “Remember, though, honey, people will turn on you. You can’t ever trust them.”

  “But one just saved your life, Mama!”

  “That was very unusual, Shoebag. I guess there’s an exception to every rule.”

  “Go back to sleep, Mama. Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “What bedbugs?” Drainboard hopped up on all sixes with her antennae quivering.

  Shoebag grinned. “It’s just an expression,” he said.

  At the end of the school day, when Shoebag went down to the cloakroom, took off his shoes, and stuck his feet into the white fur boots, he felt something in the left one.

  It was a piece of folded paper, which he took out, opened, and read.

  When Gregor is here, you have nothing to fear, But everyone knows that he comes and goes, So wait for the day when Gregor’s away, Then I’ll be nearby and Stuella will cry!

  Eight

  THAT FIRST MONDAY OF every month, when the Zap man came, Pretty Soft and Madam Grande de la Grande stayed in the park until The Beacon Hill Elementary School let out. Pretty Soft never swung on the swings or went down the slides, for she could not chance falling and getting a bruise or a black and blue mark.

  Just as the children came running toward the swings and the slides, Madam Grande de la Grande always said, “Oh, dear, dear, dear. Here they come. Here come the civilians! And you know what they might do.”

  “They might tell me bad things,” Pretty Soft would say, “or they might recognize me and feel jealous because they are not television stars. We had better hurry home!”

  “They might ask you for your autograph, too,” Madam G. de la G. would say. “My, how they pestered me for mine when I was Glorious Gloria de la Grande! I could not eat out anywhere, or walk my little bulldog, or shop, or sit in the sun, but one of them showed up, autograph book in hand, pen thrust into my face! Oh, dear, oh, dear, it was dreadful how they loved me!”

  That day, before any little civilians showed their faces, Madam was tutoring Pretty Soft in charm.

  “Never say what you think,” she said, “and never mean what you say…. And remember to give a compliment of some sort, one a conversation.”

  “What kind of compliment?” Pretty Soft asked.

  “Nothing serious, child. Say, ‘You have such good taste in clothes,’ or say, ‘You have the most interesting eyes.’ Say, ‘My, you’re amusing!’ or say, ‘This conversation has given me so much to think about.’”

  “Could I say, ‘I like your eyeglasses’?” Pretty Soft asked.

  “If they are unusual, yes. But phrase it with more flair, dear. Say, ‘I simply cannot take my eyes off your eyeglasses! They are simply splendid!’”

  After that suggestion, Pretty Soft’s mind wandered during the rest of the charm lesson. She was imagining herself complimenting a certain big boy with dark glasses and a long nose, who sometimes appeared in the park with the Beacon Hill Elementary School civilians.

  She did not know his name, or anything about him. She and Madam Grande de la Grande would be leaving the park just as he arrived. He never seemed to notice Pretty Soft, perhaps because she looked so young. She would hear him calling out in this very, very deep voice, “Let the little kids have the swings!” or “It’s Fatso’s turn on the slide!”

  He always carried a Sony Watchman in one hand, but what drew Pretty Soft to him was his eyeglasses, which were like mirrors.

  Whenever Pretty Soft passed him, she’d whisper to the lenses, “I see my own beauty, may it last forever.”

  So in her daydreams of him, there on the park bench that freezing cold afternoon in March, Pretty Soft gave him the compliment, and he said … and he said … And Pretty Soft was stuck.

  “Madam,” she said, just as three little girls her own age came skipping into the park, “how do young civilians talk?”

  “Come, child, it’s time to go home,” said Madam, gathering her black cape around her and tossing one end of her bright red scarf over her shoulder. “Don’t worry about how any civilians talk. They seldom say anything worth remembering…. Oh, to me, to me, of course, they were obsequious. That means they groveled and blushed, and they said things like ‘Gloria Glorious, you are a wonderful person,’ which is worth remembering, perhaps, but not well put. Not imaginative…. Come, child. We’ll finish your lesson in charm another time.”

  “I know how I can find out about young civilians,” said Pretty Soft, “I have Stuart Bagg to talk to now.”

  And sure enough, when they returned to the apartment house, which smelled of Fresh Meadow Scent to disguise the Zap fumes, there was Stuart Bagg.

  “Achoo!” sneezed Madam Grande de la Grande, who was allergic to Fresh Meadow Scent. “I would rather smell Zap than this sickly sweet odor your mother sprays everywhere!”

  “It smells like too many flowers,” said Stuart Bagg, who was trying on new clothes Mr. Biddle had left for him.

  “There can never be too many flowers,” Madam Grande de la Grande said into the handkerchief she held to her nose. “On my opening nights you could not find a place to stand in my dressing room, for all the floral tributes. The florists had to send to other cities for them, there were so many orders.”

  Pretty Soft watched Stuart Bagg prance around the dining room trying things on, and swinging his new schoolbag. She listened to him tell about buying chocolate milk for lunch and eating with five other children in the school cafeteria.

  “Achoo! Achoo!” Madam Grande de la Grande sneezed, then asked him if he’d learned arithmetic, or practiced writing, or read a poem?

  “There was a poem,” he said.

  “What was it about?” Madam asked him.

  Stuart Bagg looked at Pretty Soft, then back at Madam.

  He said, “Oh, it was just this happy poem about seeing someone again someday.”

  Pretty Soft said, “I like to eat alone, or with Madam. And I don’t like poems about seeing people again, so I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself at Beacon Hill Elementary School.”

  Now that they were upstairs in Pretty Soft’s pink bedroom, and Stuart Bagg was still downstairs, Madam Grande de la Grande spoke up.

  “You could have told Stuart Bagg his new brown boots were too divine for words, or that he looked dashing in his new brown earmuffs, new pigskin gloves, and new warm blue wool scarf…. Achoo! That would have been practicing charm. Also, a charming person never says she does not like things that her conversational partner has expressed an interest in—Achoo!”

  Madam was still in her black cape and fire red scarf, for she would be going home any minute.

  “He knows he looks good in his new clothes,” said Pretty Soft. “Look at the way he danced around the dining room table!”

  “But people, civilians in particular, like to hear they look good,” said Madam. “Heaven knows they don’t ever get any applause, camera close-ups, or critics’ raves.”

  “Then you should have complimented him,” said Pretty Soft.

  “Dear Girl, I am already charming. And I do not have to worry about shooting another Pretty Soft commercial next month…. Just remember that clever little Claudia Clapper is waiting in the wings for the day she can take your place.”

  “But I have Mildred, and she doesn’t have a cat,” said Pretty Soft.

  “Cats and actors are replaced as easily as light bulbs, child, and don’t forget it. You need to practice being charming. Achoo! You’re out-of-touch with charm!”

  She pulled the cape’s hood up over her orange-red hair, and said, “Adieu! Farewell! Until we meet again—Adios!”

  Pretty Soft settled down on her bed and reached for the television remote. She kept the sound down low, for she was not interested yet in what was on the screen. She did her eye exercises,
her arm exercises, and the ones for keeping her chin muscles strong.

  Then she stared into space and thought of the big boy with the dark glasses and the long nose.

  What if she had said to him, “I simply cannot take my eyes off your eyeglasses! They are splendid!”

  He might have walked right by her again, without answering, which could have hurt her feelings, and certainly would have caused her to frown.

  Pretty Soft jumped off her bed and went out into the hall. She crept up to the third floor, where another family lived. There was something up there which was as pretty and soft as she was. Often, late at night, when everyone was asleep, she went to get it. Now she felt like having it, because of all that Madam had said. She would rather not think about it. She needed something to take her mind off the April shoot of the Pretty Soft commercial, too.

  Pretty Soft opened the door to the apartment on the third floor and called, “Mildred! Mildred!”

  Of course, the Persian cat did not come running. Why run when you could sit right behind the door, and let someone call your name and call your name and wonder where you were?

  “Mildred? MIL-dred!”

  After a while the Persian cat peeked around the corner, but of course she did not look Pretty Soft in the eye. She looked beyond Pretty Soft as though whatever she was interested in seeing was off in the distance, not down on all fours begging her to come out.

  “There you are, Mildred!” Pretty Soft clapped her hands and smiled, reaching out for the soft, brown and gold fur.

  Pffft! The cat ran past her, down the stairs, full speed ahead, darting into the first open door, which led into Pretty Soft’s bedroom.

  Under the bed she went, waiting for Pretty Soft to try and find which piece of furniture she’d escaped under.

  Pretty Soft returned and shut the door.

  “Why were you downstairs in the hall all last night, Mildred?” Pretty Soft asked. “If you’d come up and scratched on my door, I would have put you back in your house.”

  Pretty Soft got up on her bed.

  “I know you’re in here somewhere, Mildred, and you’ll have to show yourself if you want to go home.”