I Kill the Mockingbird

by Paul Acampora

  My father looked down at our big dead teacher. Dad studied the bent and broken casket. Finally, he turned to the Clooney boy. “What Would Fat Bob Do?”

  It wasn’t really a question. It was more like a challenge or even a dare. And I knew exactly how to respond.

  Don’t be afraid! Be brave! Enjoy every sandwich!

  But I could not speak. I stared into the grave and said nothing.

  Now, the last bell of the school year interrupts my thoughts. Suddenly, my classmates are wide awake. In fact, we are all on our feet and moving toward the door. “Have fun this summer!” Miss Caridas calls after us. “Be safe! Don’t forget to read!”

  There’s excitement and yelling and laughter as we exit the classroom. There is also some mumbling and complaints.

  “Do you think she gave us enough to read?”

  “Are there movie versions of these books?”

  “School is over. I’m not doing homework.”

  I’m swept up in a crowd of kids heading toward the doors. “Mr. Nowak said that To Kill a Mockingbird was pretty good,” I remind my classmates.

  “I’m spending my summer at the beach,” a boy replies. “If you want to spend it at the library, go ahead.”

  I stop walking and the crowd flows past. “You know what,” I say. “Maybe I will.”

  3

  Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

  On the first day of summer vacation, my mother stands with her hands on her hips staring across our backyard at Elena and me. “Honey,” Mom calls to Elena, “the Virgin Mary’s head should not look like a portobello mushroom.”

  Elena grins. “Sorry, Mrs. Jordan.”

  Mom crosses the yard, grabs the blue bedsheet wrapped around Elena’s head, and gives the fabric a tug. Somehow the adjustment makes my friend look a lot more biblical. “Much better,” Mom says, then returns to her camera.

  Every year, right after school lets out, Mom sets up a life-size birth-of-Jesus scene beneath the pine trees in our backyard. She uses it to create photos that she’ll sell for church calendars and Christmas cards. Last year, Michael, Elena, and I posed as shepherds. The year before that we were the Three Wise Men. This year it’s just Elena and me. I’m dressed as Joseph, and Elena is pretending to be Mary.

  “Lucy,” Mom asks me, “why does Joseph look like somebody just died?”

  Beneath my Joseph costume—a tattered wool blanket, a gray thrift-store wig, and a fake beard taped to my face—I am a sweaty mess. “Joseph is about to pass out.”

  Mom stares at me through her camera lens. “You can blame Michael for that.”

  Michael is supposed to be the one wearing the Joseph get-up, but he’s playing baseball today. In fact, he’s supposed to have two games this morning. Dad says that Michael is good enough to play in college. Maybe he’ll even be in the pros one day. I just wish he was here with us now. It’s tradition. On the other hand, Mom would have kept Elena in the Mary outfit, Michael would have played Joseph, and I would have had to pose as a camel or a cow or something equally attractive. “Were there giraffes in Bethlehem?” I wonder out loud.

  “I’ve been thinking about that, too,” says Elena.

  “You have?”

  She rolls her eyes. “No. But there is something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Michael likes you.”

  I feel as if the star of Bethlehem has just fallen out of the tree branch above us and knocked me in the head. “You know,” I say, “a question is supposed to have a question mark in it.”

  “I think you like him, too.”

  “We’re friends.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I glance down at Elena. “Do you even know what a question is?”

  Mom leans away from her camera. “Tilt your heads up,” she tells us. “And pull your shoulders back.” She glances at a few bright rays of sunlight beaming through the trees. “Those are going to give me some angle of incidence issues,” she mutters.

  “You’re speaking math again,” I call out, but she ignores me. Her arms still look like twigs, and her skin is the color of vanilla ice cream. I don’t think she should be out in the sun yet, but it’s not like I can tell her what to do.

  “So?” says Elena.

  “So what?”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  I take a deep breath to try to slow down my pulse rate. “I’m going to try to avoid having heatstroke.”

  “I’m talking about Michael.”

  I lift the hem of my shawl and wipe it across my face. “I’m not.”

  Elena swivels her hips, reaches between her legs, and adjusts her costume. “If it makes you feel any better, this Virgin thing isn’t too comfortable either.”

  “What’s going on?” Mom calls from the other side of the yard.

  I rub a drop of sweat off my nose. “The Blessed Virgin has her shorts in a twist.”

  “I need the two of you to stand still.”

  Elena and I get back into our Joseph and Mary poses. “But seriously,” she whispers to me. “What are you going to do?”

  “Why do I have to do anything?”

  “You don’t.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you should.”

  “Like what?”

  Elena throws her hands up. “I’m the Virgin Mary! How am I supposed to know?”

  “Now what?” shouts Mom.

  “Nothing!” says Elena.

  “Sorry!” I say.

  “Can we get serious?” asks Mom.

  “Okay.” Elena sticks a somber drama club expression on her face. “I am serious.”

  “You look terrified,” I mutter.

  She nods toward a plastic baby doll that Mom’s placed on a bale of hay. “I am portraying a teenage girl with a baby here. Terrified is the appropriate emotion.”

  “I need you to look like you’re filled with wonder,” Mom calls to us.

  Elena considers the instruction then turns to inspect the plywood shed and the stuffed farm animals propped around us. “If I am the Mother of God, then I wonder why I just gave birth in a barn.” She turns to me. “Joe, you couldn’t do a little better with the accommodations?”

  “You fell for the first angel that came along,” I say. “This is what you get.”

  Elena gazes up at the sky and sighs. “He looked like Johnny Depp, and he promised he’d show me heaven.”

  A loud laugh interrupts us. It’s my father standing on the back porch.

  “Hey, Mr. Jordan!” calls Elena.

  Dad waves. He has a coffee cup in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Despite his black-rimmed glasses and the flecks of gray hair, Dad carries himself like the all-star athlete he used to be. He can still grab a glove, a stick, or a racquet and give just about anybody in West Glover a run for the money. Dad glances at Mom and gives her a quick once-over. “How are you feeling?” he asks her.

  Mom stands up straight. She runs a hand through her hair. “Fine.”

  Mom’s regained a lot of strength, but she’s not back to her old self yet. I want so badly for her to be well. Also, a guarantee that there will be no cancer in her future would be nice. Actually, I want to turn back time and stop her from getting sick at all. Since that’s not possible, maybe I could grab a gigantic megaphone and shout at God, the world, and everybody, “HOW DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN?”

  “Girls,” Dad calls to us, “can we get this done?”

  Elena pumps her hand in the air and shouts as if she is running for president. “Yes, we can!”

  Mom rubs her chin and smiles a little. “Elena,” she says, “it’s a good thing you’re cute.”

  The Virgin Mary squeals. “I’m cuuuuuuuuute!”

  Mom leans back toward the camera. I adjust my blanket. Elena fixes her sheet. From there, we settle down and do our best to look serious or wonderstruck or whatever. It must be working because Mom gets all the photos she needs in less than fifteen minutes.
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br />   “Stick a fork in us,” Mom says. “We’re done.”

  “Amen,” I say.

  “Merrrrrrrry Christmas!” Elena shouts.

  “Thanks, girls,” Mom says.

  Dad helps pack up the camera equipment and move it back into the house. I begin gathering plush sheep and cows and donkeys. “Lots of girls would like to go out with Michael,” Elena tells me.

  I stuff a load of felt snouts and furry tails into a plastic storage bin. “That’s nice.”

  “But not you?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Why not?”

  The pine branches above us, which are usually filled with birds and squirrels chirping and chattering, grow suddenly quiet as if even the wildlife wants to see what I have to say. “Michael is my friend. I don’t want to mess that up.”

  Elena nods thoughtfully. “You’re afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Everybody’s afraid of something. Personally, I struggle with hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.”

  “Very funny.”

  Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a word that Mr. Nowak used to put on our spelling tests. It means the fear of long words.

  Elena puts her hands on her hips. “If you’re not going to do anything, then I’m going to tell Michael that I have a crush on him.”

  I stop in my tracks. “You do?”

  Elena laughs. “Not really. I just wanted to see your reaction.”

  “That wasn’t funny.” I turn and consider my friend. “But why don’t you? I mean we’ve all been together forever. You know Michael as well as I do. Why do I feel this way and you don’t?”

  Elena shrugs. “This might sound silly, but when I have a boyfriend, I hope I can kiss him without using a step stool.”

  “That makes sense,” I admit.

  “It makes sense now,” says Elena. “But one day I’ll probably get swept off my feet by the Jolly Green Giant.”

  “Or somebody like Fat Bob,” I say.

  “I’m going to set the bar a little lower,” Elena tells me. “Literally. But you don’t have to.”

  I think about what Elena is saying. “Okay,” I finally reply. “I’ll talk to Michael.”

  Elena retrieves a pink pig from the grass. “That’s good.”

  I remember another one of the big words that Mr. Nowak taught us how to spell. “But I’ll do it chronogrammatically.”

  Elena looks perplexed. “You’re going to speak in Roman numerals?”

  Now it’s my turn to be confused. “I thought that chronogrammatically meant saying things in your own time.”

  “Chronograms are words or phrases that have letters like M or C or L or V. The letters tell a date written in Roman numerals.”

  “Why exactly do you know that?” I ask her.

  “I live in a bookstore,” she reminds me. Elena gathers the Virgin Mary sheet around her shoulders. “Saying what you mean is hard enough, Lucy. Then you go and add seven or twelve or fourteen extra syllables for no good reason. Pretty soon, we’re back to the Tower of Babel.” She shakes her head. “It’s a little scary.”

  “Elena,” I say, “you’re a little scary.”

  “That’s why you love me,” she says, “but don’t call me little.”

  4

  Jesus in a Bike Basket

  Once Elena and I finish gathering the stuffed animals, we drag the rest of the manger scene into the garage. We have a two-car garage, but my parents rarely squeeze more than one vehicle in here. Dad’s Jeep lives in the driveway, and Mom’s Volkswagen, which hasn’t left the garage in months, stays inside. Right now, the VW is surrounded by several old bikes, a rickety wooden stepladder, and a big red snowblower.

  Elena places our plastic baby Jesus inside a wicker basket that’s attached to the handlebars of an adult-sized tricycle near the Volkswagen’s back bumper. Somebody donated the three-wheeler to St. Brigid’s, so Dad brought it home in case Mom wants to use it while she’s recuperating. St. Brigid herself will come back from the dead on a skateboard before my mother chooses to pedal around West Glover on a tricycle.

  “Want to go for a ride?” Elena asks me.

  I shove the last box of Christmas decorations into a corner. “Sure,” I tell her.

  “Can I ride the tricycle?”

  I point to a big wire cargo bin that’s fastened behind the trike’s seat. “We’ll have to put something heavy in there or else it tips over really easily.”

  Elena moves the plastic doll from the basket to the bin.

  “Baby Jesus is not enough,” I warn her. “You’ve got to have a lower center of gravity.” I find a small, unopened bag of rock salt and place it into the bin next to the doll. “Now you should be okay.” I grab the pink princess three-speed that my parents got me when I turned ten. It’s too small for me now, but I still like it. “We’re going to the Green,” I shout into the kitchen.

  “Okay,” Dad calls back.

  “Michael is playing baseball at the Green,” says Elena.

  “So?”

  She shrugs. “I’m just saying.”

  Together, we pedal away from the garage and then down the driveway. I’m behind Elena, and I see one wheel of the tricycle lift slightly off the road when we turn onto the road. “Be careful!” I call after her.

  “Don’t worry!” She stands on the pedals and speeds away.

  We roll down my street, and Elena waves at my neighbors. Michael’s driveway is empty, which means that his mom is probably cruising around town in a West Glover police car. During the school year, she’s the police officer who makes classroom visits encouraging kids to read books, stay off drugs, pick up trash, learn how to swim, put out forest fires, and grow up to be president one day. When she’s not at work, Mrs. Buskirk is a coach for a bunch of different youth softball and baseball teams. As for Michael’s dad, neither Elena nor I have ever met him. Michael gets Christmas and birthday cards from his father now and then, but he’s not part of the family photo album.

  Elena and I stop at the signal light on Main Street. If we turn right, we’ll reach Uncle Mort’s bookshop. If we turn left, we’ll see the West Glover Public Library, which is just a block away. Instead, we cross Main Street then keep going straight. One more block brings us to the Federal Green, a wide, open park at the heart of our town.

  Back in Puritan days, West Glover’s Federal Green held a community sheep grazing pasture, an outdoor market, and a set of stocks and pillories for troublemakers to endure public humiliation. Now it’s home to tall gnarled sycamores, a brightly colored play structure, and a couple rough, mowed baseball fields. There’s a soccer field and a big, white bandstand, too.

  The metallic clank of an aluminum bat echoes across the park. Elena and I turn toward the baseball diamond and pedal through the grass. The baby Jesus bounces around the tricycle’s storage basket like a kangaroo on a trampoline until we finally stop at the wooden stands near the first-base line. That’s where we find Michael, all dressed up in his green-and-white Little League uniform. He’s sitting by himself in the bleacher’s first row.

  Elena cruises to a stop beside the bleachers. “What are you doing?” she says to Michael.

  Michael looks up from a worn copy of Fahrenheit 451. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It doesn’t look like baseball.”

  “I played in the first game. They asked me to sit this one out.”

  “Why?” I ask him.

  “I hit four home runs.”

  Elena remains in her tricycle seat. “So?”

  “And seven RBIs.”

  “Seven is a lot,” I say.

  “It might have been eight.” Michael scuffs his shoes in the dirt. “And then they kicked me off the team.”

  “Excuse me?” asks Elena.

  Michael shrugs. “After my last home run, the coach on the other team complained. He says I can’t be fourteen years old.”

  “But Michael,” I say, “you are fourteen years old.�
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  Michael nods toward the opposing team’s bench. “According to them, I’m sixteen or eighteen or thirty-seven.”

  Elena stands on the tricycle’s pedals. “That must have been some home run.”

  Michael points across the Green at the big white-steepled church in the distance. “It landed on the steps of First Congregational.”

  Elena stares at the church, which is across the street from the Green. It’s more than a football field away. “That’s a big league home run!”

  “Look where it got me,” Michael tells her.

  “That’s not fair,” I say to Michael.

  “You’ve got to call your mom,” Elena adds.

  Michael points to the opposite side of the Green where a couple tiny T-ball teams are running around. “She’s over there helping the little kids.”

  “Do you want me to get her?” I ask.

  “No.” Michael reaches into an old Star Wars backpack that’s sitting by his feet. He finds a water bottle, takes a long drink, and then sets the container on the bench. “The other coach was right.”

  Elena hops off the tricycle. “You’re thirty-seven?”

  Michael shakes his head. “I should be playing against tougher competition.”

  Just then, a batter sends a pop fly into shallow left field. The shortstop, the third baseman, and an outfielder all rush to make the catch. They collide and then collapse onto the ground.

  “You might be right,” I tell him.

  “I’m waiting for this game to finish,” Michael continues, “then I’m going to ask the coach if he’ll help me sign up for one of the senior leagues. That way, I can go up against high school and college players this summer. It’s the only way I’m going to get better.”

  “Fine then,” Elena says. She points toward Michael’s backpack. “What else did you bring to read?”

  “You don’t have to sit around too,” Michael tells her.

  “We’ll wait.” She leans back and gives me a wink.

  I try to give her a mean face, but it’s no use. Elena does what she wants. I don’t know how she manages it. In so many ways, she’s had no control over her life. She lost both her parents. Her body got all wrecked and then reassembled by strangers and she was passed off to an uncle who, luckily, is really nice. Her life has been a roll of the dice. And yet she is so strong and funny and sure about things.