by M. E. Kerr
His legs were pointed at the sky, and he threw back his head and felt the sun warm on his face, as he sang to himself a favorite old cockroach song:
We lurk around and on our mark, we
come out in the dark,
Hey de hi ho, we don’t need a coach
To get there!
Hey de hi ho, if you are a roach,
You’ll get there!
We creep around and find the crumbs, happy to be chums,
Hey de hi ho, we hunt high and low,
In kitchens,
Hey de hi ho, the parties we throw,
In kitchens!
Shoebag opened his eyes to enjoy his ride up toward the treetops, telling himself it was not so bad being a person, because the song had made him a little homesick.
What did he care that he was not snug as a bug napping with his new brothers in the warm dark, when there was a blue sky overhead, and off in the distance children playing in the sandboxes and … and … look, over there on that bench!
There they were! Madam Grande de la Grande and Pretty Soft!
He slowed himself down and began thinking of the date. Yes. The third. Monday … the first Monday in April.
He had forgotten that it was the very day the Zap man came.
“Hel-lo!” he called out to them. “Hellll-lo!”
Madam Grande de la Grande waved her red scarf at Shoebag and pointed him out to Pretty Soft.
Pretty Soft, naturally, did not let her mouth stretch in too wide a smile, for that would not be good for her face, but Shoebag could see all the way from the swings that she was watching him with interest.
He made himself go higher to show off, and then he let the swing lose momentum, twisting himself around as it slowed, winding himself in a half circle cleverly.
This was a glorious time, wasn’t it? There were his friends over there, and here he was making the swing do graceful and funky things in the late afternoon sun.
“Hey de hi ho, we hunt high and low, In kitchens,” he sang aloud.
He felt his feet scuff along in the dirt, worrying only a little that it might ruin his new shoes.
“Hey de hi ho, the parties we throw,” he sang, and then he did a fantastic little leap from the swing, knowing that Madam and Pretty Soft were watching him.
Next, a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders.
And next, a voice said, “Stuella! You didn’t offer any congratulations to my father today, did you?”
Twelve
POW! WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP! POW! “Oh, no!” said Pretty Soft. “Stuart Bagg is in a fight! And he said he was popular with everyone!”
“There must be a policeman we can call to stop this!” Madam Grande de la Grande cried out. She got up from the park bench and looked up and down Beacon Hill Park.
“Let’s go closer,” said Pretty Soft. “They are kicking up so much dust rolling around over there on the ground, I can’t see anything!”
“Dust is not good for your nasal passages, child. And it is not good for the eyes!”
“I’ve never seen a fight except on television.”
“It could spill over on us, pet. I am going to look for a policeman!” And with that, Madam trotted away in her black cape, crying, “PO-LICE! PO-LICE! Come quickly!”
Pretty Soft started over toward the swings, where Shoebag was rolling around on the ground with a boy on top of him.
So this is a fight, live from Beacon Hill Park, Pretty Soft thought, and she was glad it had nothing to do with her.
Then as she was almost all the way to the slides, from out of nowhere, he appeared.
The tall one with dark glasses and a long nose.
“Break it up!” he was shouting as he ran in the direction of the fight.
Pretty Soft hurried after him. “Be careful. Dust is not good for the nasal passages, and it is not good for the eyes!”
Now the boy on top of Shoebag gave him a hard punch.
“This is for bringing a cockroach to school,” and another, “and this is for not saying ‘Congratulations to your father,’” and still another. “And this is what I’d give to Fatso, since he says you are sticking up for him now!”
The boy with the sunglasses stood over the pair. He put one hand on the boy holding Shoebag down in the dirt.
“Get off him, Tuffy Buck!” he said.
Tuffy Buck looked up, his eyes as wide as though he had seen something ghastly. “I’m s-s-sorry, Gregor.”
Then he got off of Shoebag, and began slouching away, backward.
Gregor helped Shoebag to his feet.
“Are you all right, Bagg?”
“Yes,” but Shoebag had a nosebleed.
Gregor got a wad of Kleenex from his pocket and passed it to Shoebag.
“Thanks,” said Shoebag. “I am not a good fighter, and you are a pal. You are the only real pal I have!”
“That isn’t what you told me,” Pretty Soft stepped forward. “You lied to me, Stuart Bagg. You told me you were very popular, and better than anyone at everything!”
“I tried to keep you happy because of the rule,” said Shoebag.
Gregor said, “What rule?”
“We have a rule that she can only hear and see things that are positive. We cannot let her become unhappy.”
Pretty Soft said, “But I wouldn’t have been unhappy if you’d told me you weren’t popular, Stuart Bagg. Why would that have made me unhappy?”
Shoebag’s face was suddenly scrunched up that awful way which made wrinkles and lines, and the Kleenex he held to his nose was bloody. “You aren’t unhappy to know I’m not popular at school?” he asked Pretty Soft. “Are you unhappy to see the shape I’m in now?”
“I can’t afford to be unhappy,” she said.
“I know who you are,” Gregor said. “You are the little girl on television who sells toilet paper.”
“I’m not as little as I look,” said Pretty Soft. “I’m seven years old.”
“You’re Pretty Soft,” he said. “I am Gregor Samsa.”
While all of this was happening, Tuffy Buck was heading away from them on tiptoe, sneaking off unnoticed.
Gregor Samsa asked Pretty Soft, “Don’t you feel badly that Stuart Bagg was just beat up?”
“I feel glad it’s not happening to me,” she said. “I have a new commercial to shoot very soon, and I must look my best and also be charming.”
“But I’m your new brother,” Shoebag said.
“I know you are,” Pretty Soft said.
Gregor Samsa leaned down so his mirrored glasses were pointed right at Pretty Soft’s sky-blue eyes. He spoke in his very, very deep voice. “I have thought of becoming a star myself, Pretty Soft, but now that I have met you, I know I could never be like you.”
“You could practice,” said Pretty Soft as she looked at the two mirrors that were his eyes.
“Even if I practiced I could never be so selfish. Even if I practiced I could never be so heartless,” said Gregor Samsa. “No, I will have to be something else.”
Then a most peculiar thing happened after he said that to Pretty Soft. She saw her reflection, but not her face: just its outline, not the eyes or nose, not the forehead or the mouth. It was an empty face.
Desperately, she said the words, “I see my own beauty, may it last forever.”
“She says that when she’s handling a crisis,” Shoebag told Gregor Samsa.
“I don’t see beauty,” Gregor Samsa said. “I don’t see anything.”
“Don’t say that to her!” Shoebag told him, and he went close to Pretty Soft, and put his arm around her.
“Please don’t get blood on me, Shoebag.” She said his real name, for she was rattled now. She put her hands to her face to feel her eyes and nose and mouth and forehead.
“I see my own beauty,” she started to try again, but Gregor Samsa turned to face Shoebag.
“What did she just call you, Stuart Bagg?” he asked.
“I called him Shoebag. It’s his nickname,�
� said Pretty Soft. “Turn around and face me again.”
Gregor ignored her. “That’s not a nickname,” he told Shoebag.
Pretty Soft knew then and there he did not know what he was talking about.
Down at the other end of the park, Madam appeared with a tall, uniformed policeman.
Pretty Soft hurried toward them, to announce that the fight was over, and to see her reflection in the mirror Madam always carried.
Yes! There she was again: everything in place on her beautiful face.
After the policeman had gone, and after Madam had put back the mirror in her bag, they strolled toward home.
“Is Shoebag a nickname or isn’t it?” Pretty Soft asked.
“It is. A most unpleasant nickname,” said Madam G. de la G.
“Am I selfish, Madam? Am I heartless?”
“Stars are the most unselfish of people,” said Madam Grande de la Grande. “They give of themselves tirelessly. And no one has more heart than a star, child, for it is a star’s responsibility to uncover the innermost secrets of the heart, and put them on display for all to see and applaud…. Oh, how I miss the applause! The shouts of Brava! Even the shrill whistles from the balcony!”
Pretty Soft decided not to ask the next question on her mind: how a nose, mouth, ears, and forehead could momentarily disappear from a face.
She must have imagined that.
Thirteen
“I KNOW A ROACH name when I hear one,” said Gregor Samsa. He slung one arm around Shoebag’s shoulder as they walked through the park.
“How come?” Shoebag asked.
“Oh, I go back and forth. I must have told you that. I go here and there … and when I am back, and when I am there, my own name is not Gregor Samsa. I am called In Bed…. Do you know what I am telling you?”
He gave Shoebag a long look, so long that Shoebag saw in the mirrored glasses the tiny black hairs on all six of his own legs, and his cerci.
“That means we were both born in warm, snug places,” Shoebag said.
“And it is why we cannot step on things, too. We are neither of this world nor of that. But I plan to be in one place all the time, as soon as I decide which one.”
He removed his arm from Shoebag’s shoulder, reached into his pocket and took out his Sony Watchman. “I watch the soaps in the afternoon,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“Go right ahead.”
“I cannot be without my TV, Shoebag. Do you know why?”
“Because you have your own little Watchman?”
“No, it’s because I’m star struck. It’s because I think there is no business like show business … or I did think that until a moment ago. Now I can see I may have to change my plans. Now I can see that even with practice I could not be that selfish or that heartless.”
“But you are going to star in the school play, aren’t you?”
“It may well be my last performance.”
Shoebag felt sorry for his only real pal, because he sounded so downcast. Shoebag wanted to ask him more about when he was not Gregor Samsa, about when he was back and when he was there, and where exactly he was called In Bed. But first, Shoebag wanted to thank Gregor for saving him from Tuffy Buck again, and that was what Shoebag did.
Then Shoebag added, “You’re lucky, too. You only have to look at him to make him stop being a bully. You never have to fight him.”
“It’s a good thing I don’t. Our kind do not excel in fighting. We are a peaceable lot, satisfied with warm, dark places and our crumbs.”
“You are lucky!” Shoebag said. “If Tuffy Buck knew you could not fight, he’d beat you up, too.”
“It isn’t luck I have. It’s these glasses. People never see what their faces look like when they are being mean or petty. I come along when they are, and so they do. They can’t believe they are seeing themselves. What they see stops them in their tracks.
“I should get glasses like that,” said Shoebag.
“Only if you go back and forth and here and there,” Gregor told him. “Dark glasses help your eyes adjust.”
“When I go back, when I go there, I am still a little person,” Shoebag told him.
“You must have dreamed very hard of being bigger.”
“I did dream of being bigger.”
“And something must have awakened you in the middle of that dream.”
“The seven-legged, black jumping spider was letting down his dragline, right in the middle of my dream.”
“Aha!” said Gregor. “You were not given the formula for going back. That comes at the end of the dream.”
“And you? Were you given the formula?”
Gregor shook his head. “Do not ask me for it, though, even though I am your only real pal. If I tell it to you, it loses its power for me.”
Gregor was playing with the Watchman, channel-hopping as they ambled through the park.
“I would give anything to see my old familiar self again,” said Shoebag, “somewhere besides in mirrors.”
“Maybe you will. You’ll see. You’ll see.”
“What will I see, Gregor? The Persian cat staring at me with her jaws moving, drooling? Because she knows something, Mildred does. She is not fooled.”
“You’ll see. You’ll see,” said Gregor Samsa.
“What will I see? Tuffy Buck waiting for me tomorrow in the cloakroom? My own father complaining that I am too dirty to bear? Let me tell you, Gregor, let me tell you, In Bed, my life is not easy. There is the black jumping spider to worry about, too, and—” Shoebag stopped in mid-sentence, for suddenly he realized that he was walking through Beacon Hill Park talking to himself.
His only real pal had vanished.
Fourteen
MRS. BIDDLE COOKED A roast chicken for dinner that night, telling Shoebag that it was Pretty Soft’s favorite meal.
While Shoebag set the table, he watched Mrs. Biddle taste the potatoes as she mashed them, and he thought of how Drainboard loved potatoes that way, particularly ones left in the pan and crusted over.
Stopping in the park had made him late getting home from school, so he had not seen his family that day.
“Tonight is a special occasion,” said Mrs. Biddle, popping a spoonful of lima beans into her mouth. “We always celebrate the night before Pretty Soft goes to the television studio to make a new commercial. That makes her wake up happy, and when she is happy she looks her best.”
“When will she have enough money saved so she doesn’t have to work anymore?” Shoebag asked.
“She likes to work, Stuart, and college is very expensive. Every year it costs more money to go to college. My parents never had enough money to send me.”
“I guess I won’t go, either,” said Shoebag.
“Oh, there are always ways to get there if you’re determined to go. Pretty Soft’s just lucky she won’t have to worry about all that.”
“I will have to worry, I guess,” said Shoebag.
“What you have to worry about right now is how to stay out of fights, and after dinner Mr. Biddle will help you.”
When Pretty Soft came down to eat, she had adhesive tape near her mouth and near her eyes.
“How did you hurt your face?” Shoebag said, surprised.
Mr. Biddle said, “She didn’t get hurt. She’s just delighted about tomorrow, so she has to be careful not to smile too hard and leave lines.”
“A big long white limousine is picking Mildred and me up tomorrow morning at seven-thirty, Stuart Bagg,” said Pretty Soft as she helped herself to chicken with mashed potatoes and lima beans. “Madam Grande de la Grande will go to the studio with us and drill me in spelling, while I sit on the set waiting for them to shoot my commercial.”
“She is wearing her new red-and-white polka dot dress,” said Mrs. Biddle.
“They take an hour to put on her makeup,” Mr. Biddle said.
“I have a director’s chair with my name on it,” said Pretty Soft, “and Mildred has a cat case with hers on it.” She smiled a
cross at Shoebag, then said, “Ouch! I’ve got to stop smiling this way. I just get so excited the night before a shoot!”
“She always has trouble getting to sleep on these nights, too,” said Mrs. Biddle, “so you must be very quiet tonight, Stuart.”
“I have lines to learn,” Pretty Soft said. “I have to say to Mildred, ‘Purrfection! That’s Pretty Soft! The purrfect toilet tissue!’”
“You’ve already learned your lines then,” said Mr. Biddle.
“But I say them over and over the night before,” said Pretty Soft. “It is a star’s responsibility to uncover the innermost secrets of the heart, and put them on display for all to see and applaud.”
While Shoebag waited for the house to become quiet, so he could sneak down to visit his family, he wrote in his journal.
Mr. Biddle taught me some judo, to defend myself. “When anyone makes a grab for you,” he said, “instead of ducking back, go forward to meet him.” And he showed me a secret move to do. I am very homesick and wish I could go back and wish I could be there and wish I was me again.
The rain began just after the eleven o’clock news, when all the lights were off and everyone was in their bedrooms.
As Shoebag went downstairs, he could hear the distant thunder, and see the lightning through a window.
Drainboard always said nights like this were bad for late night picnics. People often got up to close windows, and to tell little children not to be afraid. Lights were turned on suddenly and bad storms made people too alert and active.
Was that why no one seemed to be around when Shoebag called out to them?
He felt his way in the dark, then stopped when he came to the kitchen stool.
He listened.
Since the Zap man had been there that day, Shoebag knew that all of roachdom was walking carefully to avoid cracks and crevices where the insecticide had been sprayed.
Very faintly he could hear a rustling and a murmur. Then what any roach most dreaded hearing, he heard: The Cockroach Prayer for The Dead.
“Go to a better life. Amen.”
It was Under The Toaster’s voice.
“Papa? Papa? It’s me. Your son, Shoebag. Who died?”