NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

by Rebecca Stowe

  “She’s lying,” Mr. Diller told my parents after the trouble. “She’s making it up.”

  My parents were sitting in the two naugahyde chairs in front of Mr. Diller’s desk; I sat behind them on a low, plastic seated bench. I stared at the photograph of President Kennedy on the wall behind Mr. Diller and wondered if they’d take me in the Peace Corps. Probably not; they’d take one look at my record and say, “This is the Peace Corps, we don’t want troublemakers like you.”

  Daddy was furious. “I want him fired!” he shouted. “I want him out of the school district.”

  Mother was white, whiter than Mrs. Moore, whiter than Miss Nolan’s nose. She sat there, ladylike, legs crossed at the ankles and with a corsage pinned to the lapel of her navy blue suit, as if she were going to a Mother-Daughter tea rather than my execution.

  Mr. Diller sat behind his desk, with his fat, round face, which normally looked so jolly and un-principal-like, scrunched in like a rotten grapefruit.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Pittsfield,” he said, “but I’m afraid it’s Maggie’s word against his and I believe him. Maggie’s … well, Maggie exaggerates.”

  Maggie exaggerates. Maggie’s got quite an imagination. In other words, Maggie’s crazy.

  Mother hung her head and Daddy fumed. “I can’t believe she’d make something like this up,” he shouted. “I think he’s lying and I want him fired!”

  Firing wasn’t good enough for him, as far as I was concerned. I wanted him dead. I wanted him branded and flogged; I wanted him to be tied to the flagpole and kept there for a month, to be jeered at and pelted with rotten eggs. I wanted him to disappear and never be seen on the face of the earth again.

  “The matter is closed,” Mr. Diller said, getting up from his chair and dismissing my parents like naughty children. “Thank you for your time.”

  That was in April. From the Accelerated Program to Summer Detention, in two short months. Grandmother was delighted when she got up here and heard the news. “I guess that will take the wind out of your sails, Miss First-Woman-Governor-of-Michigan,” she said gleefully, and I wished a tornado would hit and suck her right out the window and drop her on Alcatraz.

  I cut through the Donaldsons’ woods and then across St. Joseph Avenue, into Edison Woods. I sneaked through the Tuckers’ yard and I could hear Cindy and her gang in the garage, shrieking and yelling and having a good time while they made toilet-paper flowers for her float. I wondered whether Ginger Moore was there and that hurt, thinking about her sitting cross-legged on the floor with a roll of yellow toilet paper, giggling and telling jokes, and totally lost to me.

  It was a stupid float, anyway. She did the same thing every year—there was a tepee and a big chair, decorated to look like a throne, where Cindy sat being an Indian princess while her squaws stood around her, dressed in brown sacks and looking as drab as possible, fanning her with cardboard palm leaves. It was disgusting.

  It was really her grandfather’s float, but he had a sporting-goods store and I didn’t know what that had to do with Indians. There wasn’t an Indian within a hundred miles of North Bay and nobody even knew what kind of Indians had been here, even though the local museum did some excavations to try to find out. Mr. Hilliard told me about it, before he got booted out of North Bay. All they knew was that they were either Potawatomis or Ottawas or Chippewas, but the French either murdered them all or sent them packing out West. I thought it was insulting to have a float full of white girls pretending to be Indians and if I were a Chippewa, I’d scalp ’em.

  I made my way through the woods, towards the fort, wondering what the Pervert was like when he wasn’t being a Pervert. He could be anything—a doctor or a salesman or a garbage man or an auto mechanic. He could be a she: a mother or a teacher or a beautician. “What makes a person a Pervert?” I asked Goob, and I wished Ginger didn’t hate me so we could talk about it. My theory was this: something very bad happened to the Pervert when he was little and he’d blocked it out, but every once in a while, when the moonrays hit him, he’d have this overwhelming need to act it out, even though he didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t even know that he was doing to someone else what was done to him, because he’d forgotten. So he’d hate himself afterwards, but when he was in his Pervert state, there wasn’t anything he could do about it—he had to find someone to hurt, to pass it along, kind of.

  I almost felt sorry for him, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want him tarred and feathered and hung upside down outside the County Jail by his thumbnails. It was his responsibility, when he felt himself turning all ugly and anxious and perverse, to lock himself in the bathroom until it was over and if he couldn’t control it, then he should just take it out on himself. It wasn’t fair to take it out on some kid who couldn’t protect herself, it wasn’t fair, she should keep her perversion to herself instead of spreading it around like leprosy, creating potential Perverts out of her victims, it wasn’t fair and he should be punished, he should be made to see what he was doing because the only person who could stop him was himself.

  I wondered if Mr. Howard was a Pervert. I couldn’t be sure, but I’d come as close to finding out as I wanted and at least I’d escaped, even if it did mean getting kicked out of the Accelerated Program. I didn’t care; being in the Accelerated Program was no big deal, it just meant I got to take Journalism and Spanish instead of reading.

  I hated him. I hated him. I’d close my eyes and see him, sitting on the edge of his desk with his legs spread open and his thing bulging in his pants for all the world to see. “Mr. Howard puts a banana in his pants,” Cindy had declared, but I knew it was real. I hated it; I hated it and I hated him and I wondered why nobody made him stop—why didn’t he sit behind his desk like a regular teacher, why didn’t he stand up at the blackboard with his back to us, why didn’t he close his stupid legs or at least cross them? Why did he have to sit there, making us look at his stupid thing for a whole hour—how could anyone concentrate on the five W’s when he was sitting there displaying himself?

  I hated him with an uncontrollable passion: I wanted God to strike him dead, I wanted him to fall through the floor and descend straight to hell, I wanted him to sizzle and fry like a pig at a luau, I wanted his eyes to fall out and his arms to drop off and his thing to shrivel up into a sickly worm and then what would he have to show off?

  Cindy couldn’t understand why I was getting so upset. She thought it was hilarious and drew little pictures of him, a bunch of sticks and a big banana, and passed them to Ginger and me and they’d both be giggling and Mr. Howard would get mad and that’s how I got into the trouble at school. He’d been perched up on the edge of his desk, as usual, his tight trousers pulling as if they’d split and that damn thing of his bulging like crazy. Cindy leaned over and started singing, “Yes, we have no bananas,” and I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing and Mr. Howard jumped off his desk and pointed his finger at me and said, “YOU!”

  Cindy’s eyes started popping out of her head and she kept whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and Mr. Howard pounded on his desk and told me to stay after class. “I’m sorry,” Cindy said again, but it was too late. I was too terrified to think about her—what would he do to me, out there in the Quonset hut, cut off from the rest of the school—he could do anything and no one could see!

  The bell rang and the good kids filed out, staring at me, some with pity and some with glee. “Don’t go!” I wanted to shout. “Don’t leave me here with him!” but I didn’t, I just hung my head in shame and tried to swallow the panic rising up inside me—what would he do to me? After everyone left, he closed the door and sat on the edge of his desk, with his legs spread as usual, holding his pointer in his hand and tapping it against his thigh. I sat at the back, petrified, trying to think of some way out. I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. I needed time, I needed time to think, to figure it out, to talk my way out of it, but I couldn’t think of any words and there was no time and I was like an animal, frozen
in fear—if I ran for the door, he’d catch me. What would happen if I started screaming, if I fainted, no, not that, I wasn’t blacking out ever again.

  “Come here, Maggie,” he said, but I refused to budge.

  “Maggie!” he shouted and I crossed my arms over my chest and clenched my teeth and glared at him. He couldn’t make me, I told myself over and over again. I longed to flee; everything inside me was going crazy and the voices were shouting and a voice louder than the others, louder even than Margaret’s, a voice like a child’s hopeless cry, screamed, Don’t let him touch you!

  He started coming towards me, with that sharp pointer, with his face all twisted and mean, and for an instant I truly thought he was a monster, some horrible fiend come to suck my blood, to take over my body and mind and make me into a zombie. He slapped the pointer on his thigh as he kept coming towards me and it was all I could see, that pointer, coming closer and closer and no, he wasn’t going to touch me, no, I wouldn’t let him, I didn’t have to, nobody can make me, I wasn’t going to learn a lesson, and I could feel that crazy feeling coming, sweeping over me like Niagara Falls, and I could feel my control crashing onto the rocks below. Margaret was coming and that meant trouble.

  Mr. Howard whacked his pointer on the desk in front of me and growled, “I said, come here!”

  Margaret went berserk. She started screeching, calling him names and telling him he couldn’t make her do anything. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” she shouted as she backed behind her desk, getting ready to make a run for it. ‘Don’t you TOUCH me!’

  Mr. Howard leaped over and grabbed for me and I tried to get out of his grasp, but I fell down and hit my arm against the sharp metal foot of a desk, cutting it and making it bleed all over.

  “You pushed me!” I screamed hysterically. “You pushed me! You’re trying to kill me!”

  “Maggie,” he said, nice now, now that the blood was gushing out of my arm like a river. Wasn’t that always the way, they’d do something ghastly to you and they wouldn’t stop no matter how much you protested, but once the blood started they got scared and tried to be all nice and comforting so you wouldn’t tell. I wasn’t falling for it. I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t want to hear his soft, oozing words, his I’m sorrys. Sure he was sorry, now that I was bleeding all over his classroom, but if it was all inside he wouldn’t be one bit sorry.

  “Maggie, please …” he said and I covered my ears and ran from the Quonset hut, into the main building, past Mrs. Sherman’s room where I was supposed to be speaking Spanish, past Mr. Peacock in his janitor’s closet, around the corner and towards the elementary section, down the steps and past Ruthie’s room, into the little kids’ bathroom. I locked myself in a stall and sat on a tiny toilet, sobbing and wondering what I would do.

  My life was over. This was it, something too terrible for even Daddy to forgive me. I went back and forth in my head, thinking, It wasn’t my fault, and then, It was! It was your fault! I didn’t know, it was all too fast. Maybe I shouldn’t have laughed at his thing. Maybe I did something to make him want to sit there with his legs open like a gate, showing off and making me sick, maybe there was something wrong with me; nobody else got hysterical, they all thought it was funny.

  The only thing to do was escape. I could steal Rick Keller’s boat and flee to Canada. I could take my savings bonds and cash them in, take a train to Detroit or Chicago and get lost in the crowd. I could go down to the railroad tracks and hide with the hoboes and have them teach me how to jump a train.

  I felt sad, because if I quit school at twelve I’d never get into college and never get to be the first woman governor of Michigan, but it was probably too late anyway, no one would vote for me when they heard about my past. I’d be campaigning and suddenly Mr. Howard would appear, like a bad conscience, and he’d go on television and tell everyone I was a hysteric and a liar and a troublemaker and I would be disgraced and I’d have to run away. I’d become an alcoholic and live in a run-down boarding house in Lansing and every once in a while, someone would walk by the porch and see me rocking and say, “See that old drunk? She thought she was going to be the first woman governor of Michigan!” and they’d all laugh their heads off.

  I was sorry. So, so sorry. “Sorry, hell!” Margaret said. “That man’s a maniac!” “You brought it on yourself,” Cotton Mather said. “You must have done something to provoke him. People don’t attack nice girls without a reason.” Katrina wanted to be a stowaway on the next freighter heading for Holland and Sarah wrung her hands and whined and Trixie didn’t even show up. I just sat there, with all of them shouting like a mob, and I don’t even remember who came and got me, who pulled me out of the bathroom and up the steps back into the old section, through the hall to Mr. Diller’s office.

  I don’t remember talking to him. I don’t remember anything more about that day, except walking home, alone, and feeling this strange pain in my tail-bone, as if I’d fallen off the trampoline, right onto the hard gym floor.

  Mother knew. She was sitting at the breakfast-room table, pale and shaken, staring at me as I walked in. She was waiting for me to tell her, but I just said “Hi” and went to the refrigerator for something sweet to eat.

  “Mr. Diller called,” she said and I shrugged and said I figured he would.

  “We’ll discuss this at dinner,” she said and I panicked—I didn’t want them talking about this in front of Donald and Ruthie, telling everybody how bad I was, humiliating me in front of the whole world.

  I shrugged again and took my Coke and my cinnamon bun and ran to the Sisks’ beach, with Goober flying at my heels, to hide and try to figure a way out.

  I was interrogated, with and without my parents, but I never had to confront Mr. Howard.

  “He pushed me,” I resolutely lied. I hated myself, but I couldn’t tell the truth.

  “I want the man fired,” Daddy kept bellowing and Mother cried, not believing me for an instant, knowing I was lying. She didn’t want to ruin the poor man’s life, she said to Daddy one night in the sunroom, but what about mine?

  “Why would Maggie lie?” Daddy wanted to know. “Why would she make up a thing like that?” but Mother wouldn’t answer. I guess she thought Grandmother was right, I was nothing but a devil, evil through and through, so bad there didn’t need to be a reason for it.

  I had to sit outside Mr. Diller’s office while he talked to my parents in private, and I wanted to die, sitting out there behind the glass windows, swinging my legs and awaiting my sentence. The bell would ring and all the good kids flocked past and stared at me, sitting there like some criminal on display, and I wanted to shrink into a piece of dust.

  But the worst was when Mr. Howard was called in and he walked past me, ignoring me like a flea. He was dressed in new clothes—grey trousers that were baggy enough to cover him up—and even though I could never say anything, I felt vindicated. He must feel guilty, why else would he buy himself a new pair of pants?

  I knew what he was going to say. He’d say I was “disruptive” and nobody would quarrel with that. He’d say I’d fallen and that he was nowhere near me. He was scared, even though he tried not to act it. I could tell—he was as scared as I was, but for different reasons. We were both lying, and it was just a matter of luck who they’d end up believing; a hysterical girl or a shaken teacher.

  “They’ll believe me,” I told Ginger with certainty. “They have to. I have scars.”

  I trusted completely in Daddy’s power to get Mr. Howard fired, to have him run out of town. I wanted him simply to evaporate, to not exist any more and I was sure Daddy would protect me from him, get him out of my life forever, not because of what he did or didn’t do, but because of what he reminded me of.

  Mr. Howard came out of the office, grim and pale, and I was called back in. I wished my parents didn’t have to be there, listening as my verdict was revealed. In the event that Mr. Diller sided with Mr. Howard, I didn’t want my parents to see me humiliated.

  “You
will no longer be in the Accelerated Program,” Mr. Diller informed me. “You will remain with your regular class from now on.”

  “But what about him?” I cried. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  Mr. Diller shook his head and said it was none of my business.

  “It is my business!” I insisted. “It is! Why do I have to be punished and he doesn’t?”

  Mr. Diller just stared at me and I said, “It’s not fair!” I could feel my throat tightening up and I was terrified I’d cry, right there with all of them watching. Mother and Daddy were just sitting there, silent, and I felt horrible, ghastly, despicable for having dragged them into this; how could I have hurt them so, how could I have embarrassed them like this, how could I have been such a disappointment to them? I wanted to die for having shamed them, but it was too late now and I wasn’t going to lie down and whimper like a kicked dog.

  “Maggie,” Mr. Diller said, “he didn’t do anything to you. You’re making it up.”

  “Don’t SAY that!” I shouted, wanting to cover my ears, wanting to fly away and sail into the blue of the little flag in the holder on Mr. Diller’s desk, wanting to abandon myself to Margaret or whoever wanted to take over, even Sarah—I’d fly away and let her stand there, sobbing like a lost waif; even that would be better than being there myself. But no one came out; I was on my own and there was nothing I could do but defend myself.

  “I’m not! I’m not making it up!”

  I pulled up my shirt sleeve and shoved my scarred arm in Mr. Diller’s face. “Do you think I made this up?”

  “No,” Mr. Diller said, pushing my arm away, “no one doubts you were hurt, Maggie. But it’s your word against Mr. Howard’s and I’m afraid we have to believe him.”

  We? We?! I looked over at my parents but they were hanging their heads, as if they were the ones in trouble. Their refusal to look at me was worse than the humiliation of being called a liar, worse than having to look at Mr. Howard’s thing, worse than having him come at me with that pointer ready to jab me. It was the pointer’s fault, I wanted to explain, if he hadn’t come at me with that pointer, I could have stood it, I could have taken my licks like a good soldier, I could have handled it; it was the pointer that made me crazy, but who would believe that? “What a bunch of nonsense!” they’d say and send me off to Lapeer.