by Wally Lamb
He squashed his pillow over his own head. “Jesus Christ, Felix, how many times I gotta tell you that it’s just your imagination? Go back to sleep.”
“I can’t. Unless—”
“Look, I’ve sat up with you for three nights now. I need my sleep, Felix. You’re turning me into a zombie.”
I’d seen a zombie movie on Channel 8 Shock Theater a while back and they scared me, too. “Please, Poppa. Pleeease.”
Pop came up with a new solution. For that night and the next—the last two nights of Ma’s absence—he let me sleep in my sleeping bag on the floor in his and Ma’s bedroom. And when Frances snuck in the second night and rolled that cantaloupe at me, chanting, “Ooooo, Felix, it’s the head! Oooooo,” and I started screaming? It woke Pop up again, and he got so mad at Fran that he chased her all around the house, and when he caught her, he kicked her in the fanny, kind of like Zhenya’s father did to Zhenya in the schoolyard, except not kidding around like Mr. Kabakov. Not hard, though, either. And the next day? For her punishment? Frances had to come right home after school instead of going to field hockey practice and wash all the downstairs windows in our house, inside and out, plus the storm windows, too, even though they weren’t even that dirty, except for the two where I stuck my fingers in the peanut butter jar and wrote on the glass FF was here and Hi Frances Ha Ha.
After Ma arrived home from California, she kept getting all these consolation prizes in the mail: cases of Nestlé cocoa and quilted Kaiser aluminum foil, a big basket of jams from Knott’s Berry Farm, a spice rack, a G.E. electric mixer, and this other new G.E. thing, an electric knife. Oh, and along with all her consolation prizes, Ma also got a copy of the judges’ comments about her Shepherd’s Pie Italiano. (The judges had judged all the food the day before the TV show, so they didn’t judge Ma’s burnt Shepherd’s Pie Italiano; they judged the one she made the day before.) One judge said Ma’s recipe was “quite good, quite inventive” and another judge called it “scrumptious.” The third judge was snotty, though. Ma figured it was probably the stuck-up lady judge who’d worn a pillbox hat and a jacket with a mink collar and had acted all full of herself. She’d written, “To my mind, the ground lamb & Niblets mixture combined with tomato sauce does not make for a happy marriage.”
Simone was setting her hair with juice-can rollers while Ma read her the snotty judge’s comment. “Oh, I know that type,” she said. Then she mimicked her. “The marriage of ground lamb and tomahto sauce should get a divorce.”
For a while, it became a family joke. “Would you care for orange juice or tomahto juice?” Or at Sunday dinner, “This marriage of tomahto sauce and Marie’s macaroni and meatballs is simply exquisite, is it not?”
“Indeed it is, Mrs. La Di Da. Now be a dahling and pahss me the cahviar.”
Zhenya Kabakova won over Madame Frechette first, perhaps because of what they had in common: both were weird; both were foreigners; both were inexplicably cheerful despite having been assigned second-class status by their respective majorities—in Zhenya’s case, her “clissmates,” and in Madame’s case, the Sisters of Charity. (Carrying a note to the office one afternoon for Madame, I’d passed Sister Cecelia and Sister Godberta kibitzing in the hallway and overheard one of them whisper something not very charitable about “the Canadian in her tight sweaters.”)
Lonny Flood was the next to fall to Zhenya’s curious charms, possibly because they were close to the same age, or because Zhenya had had a considerable head-start over her female peers with regard to bazoom-boom development, or both. In class, Zhenya was sweet, but out on the playground, she was salty—as salty as Lonny, even. No, saltier. Lonny took it upon himself to teach her dirty American slang and she was all-aboard for his tutorial.
“Say this,” he’d say. “Go shit in your hat.”
“Go sheet een you het,” Zhenya would repeat. But the mentoring went both ways. “H’okay, Lunny, now you say thees: Ya zhópay chuvstuyu, chto menya sevod-nya vyzovyet directora shkoly.”
Lonny did his best to repeat what he’d just heard. “What’d I say? What’d I say?” he demanded.
“You sed yode ess says you gunna hef to go to principal’s offees today!”
Lonny turned to me. “What’s yode ess?” he asked. In response, I kicked him in his. “Oh! My ass!” he said, laughing. Then, to Zhenya, he said. “Come on! Give me another one!”
“H’okay. Ripit ifter me, Lunny. Ón igráyet s Dúnkăy Kulakóvăy.”
Lonny imitated his tutor and asked again what dirty thing he’d just spoken. In her broken English, Zhenya told him he’d said he was playing with Dick McFist. Lonny doubled over with laughter, as did Zhenya. “I don’t get it,” I said. “Who’s Dick McFist?”
“She just taught me how to say, like, ‘He’s playing with Mrs. Palm and her five daughters,’” Lonny explained—or tried to.
I shrugged “I still don’t get—” Lonny dropped his hand down there and made a gesture as if he were doing what Chino Molinaro referred to as “diddling yourself.” “Oh,” I said. “Okay. Now I get it.”
At which point, Zhenya shrieked in comic horror. “Lunny, ha ha, you a pizdăstradátil!” she declared. I followed her pointing finger to his you-know-what, which was poking out the same way it had that morning when Simone had sat on Lonny’s whoopie cushion and then pretended to choke him. I looked away and asked Zhenya what a pizda-whatever-it-was was. “How you say it? A hoorny boy. A pooh, pooh boy who has prublem like Meek Jagguh in Rulling Stuns: he kent git no satisfacting, he kent git no geuhl reacting.”
Embarrassed by Zhenya’s pointing and her remarks, Lonny turned his back to us and ran doubled-over to the edge of the school yard. With his fingers gripping the chain-link fence, he looked out at the passing cars. And when the bell rang, he was the last to reenter the building. “Lunny, you noty, noty boy!” Zhenya called over her shoulder with a laugh as she climbed the stairs. “Where go’d thet feeshing pole eenside you paints?” Yeah, she was definitely the saltier one.
If Zhenya’s sexual awareness was what had piqued Lonny’s interest, it was her athletic prowess that won over the rest of us fifth grade boys. She could fire a dodge ball with such force and precision that the Kubiak twins’ reign as “ends” was over. Uninterested in jumping rope like the other girls, and uninvited by them to do so, she played baseball with us boys instead. Bezbull, she pronounced it. Zhenya could field, she could hit, and, man oh man, could she pitch. “I peecher today, h’okay, fellas?” she’d ask. It got so, when we chose up, whichever captain got “first picks” picked Zhenya. “I good bezbull player, eh, Fillix?” she asked me. “Mebbey I gooder player then Meeky Moose, ya?”
“Mickey Mouse, you mean?”
“Ya, ya. Meeky Mouse. He good bezbull player, ya?”
“I guess so,” I said, shrugging. “For a cartoon.”
“Nyet, Fillix. He no cartun. He play for H’Yinkees in Bronx, Noo H’Yoke.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “You mean Mickey Mantle.”
She laughed at her error. “Oh! H’okay, Fillix! I mek meestake. Meeky Mantle eez bezbull player. Mickey Moose eez cartun.”
One day Zhenya brought to school, inside a blue cloth bag, her father’s “shout poot.” I was happy for Lonny, who, at recess that day, threw the shot put the farthest of anyone. Franz Duzio and Ernie Overturf came in second and third, respectively. But Zhenya’s throw landed further than any of the other boys in class, myself included. At the end of recess, Sister Godberta, who had playground duty that day, confiscated Zhenya’s father’s shot put and told Zhenya she could have it back at the end of the day but should not bring it back to school again. And sure enough, at closing announcements, Mother Filomina came on the P.A. to inform all St. Aloysius Gonzaga students that shot-putting had been added to the list of forbidden activities, along with wearing makeup, writing hurtful things about others in opinion books, getting a Beatles haircut, and girls pulling the “fruit loops” off the backs of the boys’ blue uniform shirts. From my desk to the left of her, I he
ard Zhenya mumble, “No shout poot? Thet eez boolshit. Thees boolshit skool.”
Rosalie Twerski led the girls’ campaign against Zhenya. She was critical of her boyish play, her indestructible cheerfulness, her mangling of grammar and pronunciation, and her pierced ears. (Unlike makeup and shot-putting, pierced ears were allowable by the rules of the St. Aloysius Gonzaga Code of Conduct, possibly because of their connection to saintly self-mutilation.) One morning, Rosalie came to school armed with a new poster. It was titled What You Should Know About Communism—AND WHY!!!!! Beneath the numbered, hand-lettered charges Rosalie had made against the evil Soviets, she’d drawn and colored a picture of the Kremlin and, in front of that, had glued magazine pictures of the new Russian leaders, Aleksei Kosygin and bushy-eyebrowed Leonid Brezhnev. Cartoon bubbles hovered over each. “We will conquer the world!” Kosygin declared. Brezhnev warned, “We will atom-bomb the U.S.A. and take over your country and turn it COMMUNIST!!” It had yet to be established whether or not our newest “clissmate” and her family were members of the Communist party, but given Zhenya’s playground prowess, it had come to seem irrelevant to us boys. It was apparently irrelevant to Madame as well, because when she took Rosalie’s poster from her, she told her she would give her extra credit for it and then exiled it to the closet.
“Aren’t you going to hang it up?” Rosalie wanted to know.
“At some later date, peut-être,” Madame told her.
“Well, I hope so. Because I worked really, really, really hard on it.”
“Oui, mademoiselle. So noted. Now please take your seat.”
Rosalie heaved a disgusted sigh and walked to her desk, rolling her eyes and mumbling about the number of hours she’d spent on her stupid poster.
On the Monday morning before Thanksgiving vacation, during Current Events, kids’ reports included the news that President Kennedy’s perpetual flame had drawn thousands of people to his grave at Arlington National Cemetery on the first anniversary of him getting assassinated. And that Mariner 4 had been launched successfully toward Mars. And that South Vietnam had destroyed a bunch of secret underground Viet Cong tunnels. Kitty Callahan, who was our class’s biggest Beatlemaniac, said that, according to something called Variety, the Beatles were the Entertainers of the Year on account of their 45s had hit #1 for seventeen different weeks and A Hard Day’s Night was the second most popular movie of the year after Mary Poppins.
During the part where you got to ask the speaker a question about their Current Event, Marion Pemberton raised his hand and Kitty nodded. “Are you sure it’s the Beatles and not the Four Tops or the Supremes?”
“Uh uh,” Kitty said, shaking her head. “It’s definitely the Beatles.”
“Oh, man,” Marion exclaimed. And three or four of us boys said it along with him. “Wait’ll the NAACP hears about this!”
Geraldine Balchunas was the last Current Events person. Her report was about some experiment up in Hartford called “subscription television” where you had to pay for TV instead of getting it for free. During the part where you got to ask the speaker a question about their Current Event, I raised my hand. Geraldine pulled her mouth to the side of her face, none too pleased. “Felix?”
“That would be like going to a store and buying water instead of just getting it out of the sink,” I said.
“Yeah? So?”
“So why would anyone pay for something they were already getting for free?” Geraldine shrugged and said how should she know? When no one else had questions, she returned to her seat.
Instead of having us move on from Current Events to religion the way we usually did on Monday mornings, Madame Frechette rose, caressed her front, and told us to écoutez, s’il vous plaît, because she had two important Current Event items of her own. Turning to the blackboard, she picked up a stick of chalk and wrote the words remplaçante and tableaux vivants.
“Remplaçante,” she said, turning back to face us. “Any guesses?”
“Replacement?” someone said.
“Oui. Très bien. Replacement, or substitute.” Madame explained that she would be taking the train home to Québec over the Thanksgiving holiday and so would not be in class on Wednesday for our half-day session. We would therefore have a remplaçante. Jackie Burnham reminded her that she was the remplaçante.
“D’accord,” Madame agreed. “And so, on Wednesday, you shall have a remplaçante for your remplaçante, heh heh heh. And, mes élèves, the Good Lord willing, I shall rejoin you all next Monday, one week from aujourd’hui.” Her saying it that way—“the Good Lord willing”—made me think of that movie we’d been watching when Sister Dymphna went cuckoo, The Miracle of Marcelino. One day you could be walking around like normal, and the next day your bed would be empty and God the Father’s voice would be telling your family or whoever, “Sorry. I needed him in Heaven.” Still, I wasn’t too worried. Unless Madame’s train got derailed near a cliff or something on her way back from Canada, I figured she’d be back after Thanksgiving like she said.
MaryAnn H. (not MaryAnn S. or MaryAnn V., the other two MaryAnns in our class) asked Madame who our sub was going to be, and Madame said she was quite sure it would be Sister Mary Agrippina. The entire class, minus Zhenya, who had yet to be ruler-slapped or skin-twistered, groaned. Madame shook a scolding finger at us, but she was smiling as she did so. “And now,” she said, pointing to the other thing she’d written on the board. “Who can tell me what tableau vivant might mean?”
I recognized the term from Madame’s report card and raised my hand. “Is it a tablecloth?” I asked.
“A tablecloth?” Madame Frechette looked puzzled. “Non, non.”
When nobody else said anything, Madame explained that tableau vivant meant a “living picture,” and that our fifth grade class had been given a very special role in the upcoming Christmas program. Our class would present a series of four tableaux vivants, which would complement the musical interludes of St. Aloysius Gonzaga’s eighth grade orchestra, seventh grade choir, sixth grade chorus, and fourth grade glee club. “But you, mes amis, will be the stars of the show!”
Madame assured us that she had had considerable experience as a director of theatricals back in her native province and even un petit peu of experience in the big city of Montreal, and that now she had been called upon to direct St. Aloysius Gonzaga’s first-ever Christmas tableaux. Recalling Mother Filomina’s “additional remarks” on Madame’s report card, I thought I remembered not that she’d been “called upon” but that Madame had asked for this assignment and Mother Fil was thinking about it. “It will be very exciting,” she promised now. “When the curtains part to reveal you all, en costume and as still as statues, depicting the various scenes of l’histoire de la Nativité, you will hear gasps of wonder from the audience!” There would be much to talk about, and much to do, upon our return from Thanksgiving break, but for now she could tell us that the four “living pictures” in which we would star would be the Annunciation, the shepherds’ spotting of the Star of Bethlehem, the Wise Men’s journey to see Baby Jesus, and the grand finale: a nativity which would include shepherds, angels, Magi, the Holy Family, of course, and last but not least, the little drummer boy, heh heh heh. (Here, Madame looked right at me.)
Hands flew up even before Madame stopped talking. “Oui, monsieur?”
“What about Santa Claus?” Monte Montoya asked.
“Non, non. Father Christmas was not in Bethlehem that night, heh heh heh, and so he will not be a part of our tableaux.” Madame acknowledged Susan Ekizian. “Oui, mademoiselle?”
“Will there be animals?”
“Well, we shall have to see about that. Live animals? Most likely not. But put on your thinking caps, mes amis. How might we represent cows, sheep, donkeys, and camels?” Ernie Overturf said his father could maybe cut out some plywood animals with his table saw and Ernie could paint them. Madame clapped her hands and said that would be magnifique.
When Rosalie Twerski’s hand went up, I knew
what was coming “Can I be Mary?” she asked. Madame said she had made no decisions about casting yet, but that she would think about this over vacation and get back to us.
“What are we going to do for Baby Jesus?” Margaret Elizabeth McCormick wanted to know. She volunteered her three-month-old nephew.
Madame said she thought using an actual infant might present complications and that we would probably use a prop—a baby doll. Margaret Elizabeth said she had one of those, too. “Et bien. But more about our tableaux vivants later,” Madame said. “For now, please take out your livres mathématiques so that we can see how successfully you have borrowed your fractions, heh heh.”
Just as Madame had said, on the Wednesday half-day before Thanksgiving vacation, she was gone and there in her place sat the Enforcer, Sister Mary Agrippina, her hands folded in front of her, her scowl saying, Just try something, anything and the pain I will inflict in return will make you wish you hadn’t.
Of course, none of this was obvious to Zhenya Kabakova who, midway through that morning, rose from behind her desk and, pencil in hand, walked toward the pencil sharpener on the other side of the room—a perfectly legal act in the classroom that Madame Frechette superintended, which, of course, was neither apparent nor acceptable to Sister Mary Agrippina. “Young lady!” she called out. “Just where do you think you’re going?” In response, Zhenya held up her pencil.
Sister Mary Agrippina informed Zhenya that she did not read sign language and invited her to say what she thought she was doing.
Zhenya shrugged, looked around at the rest of us, and then turned back to Madame’s substitute. “Pincil sharpenter,” she said. “My pincil point ees dull.” Sister Mary Ag rose from behind her desk and walked toward Zhenya. The rest of us geared up for the showdown.
Height-wise, Zhenya had Sister Mary Agrippina by at least three inches, and whereas our classmate was robust and muscular, her opponent had jowls and a considerable paunch. But if this was a match between David and Goliath, it was difficult to decide who was who.