by Wally Lamb
“Aplomb” was one of our vocabulary words that week, and after lunch, when we had to use all our vocab words in sentences, I wrote, “Madame took down all of Rosalie’s posters with aplomb.” The next day, when I got my paper back, Madame had written beside that sentence, “Monsieur, vous êtes un fripon!” Later, I looked up fripon in the big French-English dictionary in the bookcase and it said, “A rascal or rapscallion; one who is playfully mischievous.”
Out on the playground at recess that day, Rosalie began organizing a grade-wide game of Octopus, Octopus, Cross My Sea. But Zhenya, who’d played Octopus once before, said, “Thet stoopit game for stoopit pipples. C’mun, Fillix. Go beck to clissroom and get bezbull gluff and I throw some grounders end flyink bulls for you ken prictiss.” Lonny was absent that day, which was probably why Zhenya wanted me and her to hang around. I told her nah, I didn’t really feel like it. The truth was, I liked playing Octopus, Octopus and was pretty good at it, too. Laughing, Zhenya reached over and jabbed me in the ribs. “C’mun, Fillix Foony Jello. You need prictiss. You throw and ketch bezbull just like leetle geuhl.” To demonstrate, she did a comical version of the way I threw and caught. I tried not to laugh but couldn’t help it; her imitation was pretty funny. “C’mun, Fillix, pliss. I titch you gooder than Meeky Mentels of New H’York H’Yinkees.”
I told her okay, but when I asked Sister Scholastica, the teacher on playground duty, if I could go back in the building for my glove, she said no. So Zhenya and I ended up just walking around the school yard and talking.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“There is saying in Soviet Union,” she said. “Esk me no kestyuns, I tell you no lice.” Then she said she was only kidding. What did I want to ask her?
“Are you an atheist?”
“Ateist? No beleef in Gud? Nyet. I em Russian Ortodux.” Which, she said, was close to “Rummin Catoleek.” She made the sign of the cross and shrugged. “No Ortodux skool here, so I comes to Catoleek skool. H’okay?”
I nodded. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Ya ya, Meester Kestyun Man,” she said. “Vut ilse you need to know?”
“How come you and your parents picked here to live?”
They hadn’t at first, she said. When they’d first moved to America, they’d lived in Washington, D.C. “Just for month or so. Then we come to Kennedekett. We come for my mama’s verk.”
I asked her, didn’t she mean for her father’s work?
“Nyet. My fodder ees writer. He can verk ennyvares. But not my mama.”
“What does she do?” I asked.
“She engineer. H’okay?”
I shrugged. “Sure.” Why was she asking me?
“So why did you guys leave Russia, anyways?” I asked.
To which Zhenya responded, once again, this time not grinning, “Esk me no kestyuns, I tell you no lice.” Recovering her smile, she said, “Come on, Fillix, I change mind. Let’s play dumb end stupit Octopus gemm.” But when we walked over there, Rosalie said the game was already well underway and we couldn’t just jump in—it wasn’t fair.
“H’okay,” Zhenya said. “No beeg dill, Rosalie blyad’ geuhl.” Turdski wanted to know what that was supposed to mean, to which Zhenya answered, “For me to know, for you note to know. And thees for you, too.” Turning her back on Turdski, she bent over and wiggled her fanny at her. In response, Rosalie halted the game and ran to inform Sister Scholastica. While she was gone, Zhenya cupped her hand at the side of her mouth and whispered, “Just now? I call her slut geuhl.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Geuhl who, you knows, Fillix, opens hair legs for boyzes. Like, how you say? Prusteetoot.”
“Oh,” I said. “A chicky-boom boom.”
She laughed. “Ya, ya. Cheeky-bum bum geuhl.”
Sister Scholastica told Rosalie she could do nothing about what Zhenya had done because she hadn’t witnessed the act herself, and that Rosalie should just go back and play. Poor Sister had better watch it, I thought. Next thing she knew, she’d be sitting in some stupid meeting with the Twerskis.
The next morning, while I was eating my Cheerios and finishing my homework sheet on gerunds, I glanced over at the newspaper. Only eight more shopping days till Christmas, it said. Later that morning, in social studies, we finished the Middle Ages. Madame said we would not move on to la Renaissance until after vacation. During arithmetic, we took our chapter test on fractions and in reading we finished The Yearling. (Flag croaked at the end, same as my purple Easter chick, Popeye, only at least I didn’t have to shoot Popeye in the head the way Jody had to shoot his deer so’s he could both put him out of his misery and become a man.) With all these pre-vacation wrap-ups, and only a week left before the big Christmas program, we started spending less and less time on schoolwork and more and more time on our tableaux vivants.
Via a letter each of us carried home the week before, Madame had assigned our parents homework: they were supposed to buy or make us our costumes if they could (except for the angels, whose costumes would be on loan from Careen of Careen’s Costume Shop, who was friends with MaryAnn Vocatura’s mother.) Because Chino Molinaro had come down with the flu, Ma was pinch-hitting for him at the lunch counter with Pop, so she handed over the costuming assignment to Simone, who was the most theatrically inclined of any of us Funicellos anyways, not counting Annette. And since Lonny had been assigned the pivotal role of Joseph and his mother, as usual, had shirked her responsibility, Simone agreed to outfit him as well.
In my opinion, Simone was not that successful in costuming me as the little drummer boy. With my shorts, knee socks, and tricorn hat, I looked more like Johnny Tremain than a boy from Bethlehem. For my drum, Simone covered one of Ma’s hat boxes with contact paper, poked holes in the sides, and threaded it with yarn so’s it could hang down in front of me. My souvenir chopsticks from China Village, where we’d gone after Frances’s eighth grade graduation, would do as drumsticks, Simone said.
As for her dressing Lonny as Joseph of Nazareth, the summer before, Simone had caught the bouquet at our cousin Anna Ianuzzi’s wedding and then had had to sit on a folding chair while Anna’s creepy cousin Frido stretched this blue garter over her foot and halfway up her leg. Now she stretched that very same garter over Lonny’s head, which she had covered with one of our striped dish towels. My blue terrycloth bathrobe, which went down past my knees, looked more like a tunic on Lonny. Simone had me go out to our garage and get the pushbroom. Then she had Lonny unscrew the broom part. After he’d done it, she handed him the handle and told him that was his staff. Lonny was good to go as Joseph, Simone said, except for his feet. On the day of the tableaux, she said, he would have to wear sandals or flip-flops, not his high-top Keds. Lonny said he thought there were some flip-flops in his father’s closet from before he left to go to work in Florida as a fisherman. I didn’t say anything when he said that, and neither did Simone, but we both kinda looked at each other for a second. We knew from our Uncle Bruno that Lonny’s father was in prison in New York, not in Florida on some fishing boat.
On the Wednesday before the big Christmas program, we all got copies of Rosalie’s play whether we wanted one or not. Her father had printed them on fancy paper at Twerski Impressions. After Rosalie passed them out, she made Ernie, Geraldine, and Marion read their parts. It was raining that morning, which meant indoor recess—unsupervised, for the most part, while Madame went off to the teachers’ room. This was Rosalie’s stupid play.
Jesus Is the Reason
for the Season
by Rosalie Elaine Twerski
CAST
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga……Ernest Overturf
Saint Teresa of Lisieux…Geraldine Balchunas
Saint Martin de Porres……Marion Pemberton
Narrator…….. Miss Rosalie Elaine Twerski
The narrator comes out first. She is dressed in a pretty gown and wears lipstick, eye shadow, and a crown. She is very beautiful.
; NARRATOR:
Hello. I am your narrator and this is a play about the true meaning of Christmas. We are up in Heaven where it is always beautiful and peaceful for the people who were good when they were alive. Hey, look. Here come some saints. Shhh. Let’s listen.
SAINT ALOYSIUS:
Hello. I am Aloysius Gonzaga. I lived in Venice Italy when I was alive, but I died from the plague. Before I died, though, I was nice to children and lepers, and whenever I climbed up or down a set of stairs, I said the “Hail Mary” on every step. So God made me the patron saint of youth. And someday in the United States, which hasn’t even been discovered yet except for the Indians, a wonderful Catholic school will be named after me because I was so nice and helpful to everyone. Hey, look. Here comes Saint Teresa of Lisieux. That’s in France.
SAINT TERESA:
Hi, my name is Saint Teresa of Lisieux, but lots of people call me Teresa the Little Flower because I am very fragile—as delicate as a little wildflower in the forest. I loved God so much that to show Him my love, I would sleep under a heavy blanket in summer and not use any blanket in the winter when it was freezing cold, and if a fly or mosquito landed on me, I would not shoo it away because I wanted to offer my suffering to God. I was born in 1873 and died from tuberculosis in 1897. If you subtract 1873 from 1897, you get 24, which was pretty young for me to die. By the way, I am the patron saint of florists and airplane pilots. Oh, look who’s coming. It’s Martin de Porres, the only colored person to ever become a saint.
SAINT MARTIN:
Yes, it is me, Martin de Porres, the patron saint of mulattos and hairdressers. I can cure people with miracles. I heal them just by shaking their hand. And when I pray for poor people, my prayers are so strong that they make me glow in the dark. And I love animals so much that I even like rats and feel sorry for them when they can’t get enough to eat. I wasn’t made a saint until last year, 1963. And when I became a saint, I was so happy. But today I am very, very sad. Oh, I forgot to tell you. I was born in Peru, which is in South America.
NARRATOR:
So the saints start talking to each other.
SAINT TERESA:
Why are you so sad even though you’re in Heaven, Saint Martin de Porres? Is it because prejudiced people are so mean to colored people?
SAINT MARTIN:
No, that’s not it.
SAINT ALOYSIUS:
Are you sad because you like animals so much, and if dogs have to go to the dog pound and nobody claims them, they get put to sleep?
SAINT MARTIN:
No, that’s not it either.
SAINT TERESA:
Oh, I think I know. You are unhappy because Jewish people think Jesus was a very nice man but not God. Is that it?
SAINT MARTIN:
No, that is not the reason why I am so unhappy.
NARRATOR:
Saint Martin de Porres puts his hands over his face and starts to cry.
SAINT TERESA:
Then tell us, Martin de Porres, why are you so sad that you are crying? Maybe we can help you.
SAINT MARTIN:
I am sad because all the children around the world have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. All they care about is leaving cookies and milk for Santa so they can get presents under their tree and get their stockings stuffed with treats. They have forgotten that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Baby Jesus, the Son of God. It is not about candy canes and wanting stuff from the store and having a big Christmas dinner with all your relatives. It is not about Christmas vacation where you don’t have to do any homework for over a week. Christmas is about Jesus in the manger.
SAINT TERESA AND SAINT ALOYSIUS TOGETHER:
You are right, Martin de Porres. Jesus is the reason for the season.
SAINT ALOYSIUS:
Hey, I have an idea. Let’s travel all around the world and remind all the kids that Christmas is about the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem.
SAINT MARTIN:
But how will we travel around the world, Saint Aloysius? We live in olden times before jet planes and airlines like TWA were invented. Oh, oh, what shall we do?
SAINT TERESA:
Hey, I know. Let’s get a ride with Santa and his reindeer. When they go around delivering presents to children all over the world, we can go down the chimney, too, and deliver our message about Baby Jesus being the real reason why we celebrate Christmas.
SAINT ALOYSIUS:
That is a great idea, Saint Teresa!
SAINT MARTIN:
Yes, let us go get ready. It is almost Christmas Eve.
NARRATOR:
And so the three saints rode all night long with Santa in his sleigh, delivering their important message. And on Christmas morning, all the kids in the whole wide world, before they went downstairs and opened their presents, knelt and said their prayers and thanked God the Father for sending His only son down to Earth so that he could be born in Bethlehem with Mary as his mother and Joseph as his stepfather, even though the inn keeper was so mean to them that he made them sleep in a stable. And everyone was happy, except for atheists and Jewish people who don’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God and so they only get to have Hanukkah where they light candles and get just small presents like shampoo and yo-yos and things like that, and they can’t have a Christmas tree either.
The End.
After the read-through, I raised my hand. “Felix?” Rosalie said, her eyes squinting with suspicion. I told her I liked her play okay, but that the end didn’t make sense.
“Yes, it does,” she said. “Why doesn’t it?”
“Because nobody in fifth grade still believes in Santa. How can they ride around the world with someone who doesn’t really exist?”
Geraldine intervened. “Because they’re saints, stupid. So they can fly.”
“Angels can fly,” I retorted. “No one ever said saints can.”
Several classmates entered into the argument about whether or not saints could fly, and then MaryAnn Haywood pointed out, reasonably enough, I thought, that the younger kids in our school still believed in Santa, and so for their sake, Rosalie could have the three saints travel with him in his sleigh on Christmas Eve so’s it wouldn’t wreck their innocence.
“Okay,” I said. “But I still think it’s kind of a dumb ending.”
“Not as dumb as you are,” Rosalie noted.
Then Marion Pemberton said he was quitting Rosalie’s play. “You can’t quit,” Rosalie informed him. “You’re the only one in our class who can play Martin de Porres.”
“Why?” he shot back. “Because I’m black?” He made the point that Rosalie was playing one of the Three Kings in the tableaux. So if a female could play a male, why couldn’t some white kid play a black saint? In return, Rosalie pointed out that Marion was also the black Wise Man in the tableaux and that that didn’t bother him. “Yeah,” he said, “but in your play, I have to cry, and I ain’t crying in front of my father and my brothers Marvin and Roscoe and a whole bunch of other people that I don’t even know.” Rosalie made a big show of counting to ten with just her lips, no sound, and then she blew out this long, slow breath and said okay, all right already, he didn’t have to cry. He could just look real, real sad. “Okay?” Reluctantly, Marion agreed.
When Madame returned, she let us get drinks and go to the toilet. Coming out of the boys’ room, Lonny and I ran into Zhenya coming out of the girls’ room. I asked them both what they thought of Rosalie’s play.
“I think it’s cornier than corn on the cob,” Lonny said.
“I theenk eese sheetier than sheet,” Zhenya said. “And I theenk, too, Rosalie ees zhopalís.”
“What’s that?” Lonny and I both asked.
“Zhopalís? Means peerson who gets nose brown from…how you say here sheet vit plinty vauter?”
“Diarrhea,” I volunteered, thinking of poor Ma at the big Bake-Off.
“Ya, ya. Gets nose brown from direeya so det everyone theenk she good, good geuhl when s
he rilly just, how you say? I heered on TV last night: funny blunny.” Lonny and I looked at each other and shrugged.
It wasn’t until we were back in the classroom, starting science, that I realized Zhenya had called Rosalie exactly what she was: a brown-noser and a phony baloney.
After the Christmas program, Madame explained, each grade was going to invite their guests back to their own classrooms for refreshments. So all of us were supposed to go home and, for homework, find out what our mothers were making. The next day, she called us each by name and, when we told her what our mothers had said, she wrote it down.
The Kubiaks were bringing milk from their farm: five gallons, plus paper cups. Arthur Coté was bringing three cans of Hawaiian Punch and a can opener. Pauline Papelbon said she’d be bringing cupcakes with sprinkles if her mother felt good enough to make them or, if she didn’t, either Hostess Twinkies or Hostess Sno Balls. Eugene Bowen was bringing potato chips on account of his father was a driver for State Line. “Aw, crap,” Lonny said. “I was gonna bring potato chips. Okay, I’ll bring napkins then.”