“Well, Lou, I see some improvement,” Mrs. Gordon said. “Now, who’s next, let’s see….”
Lou sat down and I glared at him.
And then, Mrs. C, I just couldn’t stand it. I stood up with my legs pressed together and said, “Mrs. Gordon, I really gotta go. I mean, I’m sorry I always have to go before my turn, and sometimes you’re right, I really don’t have to go, but the spiders want me to get up and do something, and if I don’t, they just spin around, and they won’t leave me alone unless I do what they want, so that’s why sometimes I ask to go when I don’t really need to go, but I really do!”
Everyone laughed.
“Well, I can certainly see why your parents named you Gaby!” Mrs. Gordon said.
Everyone laughed again, and she held up the hall pass.
Mrs. C, before lunch I opened the dictionary.
Gabby means “inclined to chatter, talkative.” It also means garrulous, and garrulous means “excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner, especially about trivial matters,” and trivial means “of very little importance or significance.”
So, in English my nickname means, “someone who rambles about stuff that doesn’t matter.”
I didn’t like that.
At lunch my day got worse. Roman was filling holes in the dodgeball court with gooey black tar, so I got in line behind Lou at tetherball, my third favorite sport.
And Sam was there, winning as usual.
Mrs. C, Sam was in a grade above me, and she had lots of freckles and tumbleweed hair and a really big mouth, and she was big and she wore flannel shirts and hung out with Bully Jim, and she was kind of a bully, too.
And she was impossible to beat in tetherball. Once she took a court, a couple of her friends would be her fan club and laugh at all the mean things that came out of her big mouth.
First she beat Lou. She could have beat him in ten seconds but she tortured him. She kept singing, “Louie, Louie, oh, no, you gotta go,” then she let the ball go around once or twice after Lou’s punch, and then with one super punch she would spin it all back, and I could tell Lou was getting mad because Lou’s super into sports even though he’s short like me.
I guess Sam got bored because all of a sudden she got quiet and crushed the ball twice and it wrapped around the pole until there was no more rope.
Lou walked away and Sam looked around and said, “Who’s next?”
I was standing right there.
“Me,” I said.
“Where? I don’t see anybody?”
Mrs. C, Sam was making fun of me because I’m so short. I just stood there and waited for her joke to end.
“Oh…there you are, Gaby, I didn’t see you! Here you go,” she handed me the ball. “I’ll let you take a free hit. I’ll even turn around!”
I took the hit and the ball went around twice before Sam spun and smashed it with a two-handed smash, and I tried to hit back but I roped it.
“Illegal hit! Ropey!” Sam said, then she spun the ball back three times around the pole and punched it hard and then she just stood there and watched and pretended to yawn.
The thing is, I wanted the game to be over, and I wanted to find Lou and talk about Movie of the Week or watch Roman fill in the dodgeball court, but just before the ball touched the pole, Sam did a two-handed stop.
“Whoops. Illegal two-handy! Here you go, Gaby. Free hit!”
She was about to hand me the ball, but then she pulled it back.
“Hey,” she said. “Now wait a minute! I thought I was playing a boy!”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Isn’t Gaby a girl’s name?”
Her friends laughed, and I kind of laughed, too. The problem is sometimes you pretend to feel one way but your face tells the truth.
“Aw,” Sam said, “I think I hurt poor Gaby’s feelings. Here you go, Gaby girl, you go ahead and hit the ball as hard as you want.”
I hit the ball as hard as I could and she hit it back and I hit it again, and she hit it back and kept calling me Gaby girl.
Then I started wheezing and told Sam I had to go to the nurse for my asthma pill.
Mrs. C, when the bus dropped me and Lou off, I climbed super fast up the hill, and Lou kept asking me what’s wrong and I said I had to pee, and he asked why I was peeing so much today, and I said I don’t know, and he asked if I wanted to go swimming, and I said maybe later, and then I went to the backyard and sat under Sigmund.
Like I said before, Sigmund’s where I go to hide. I crawl inside him and he gives me shade and nobody bothers me there.
The thing is, I was super mad.
I was mad at Mrs. Gordon for being so boring and mean, and I was mad at Lou for taking so long on the math problem, and I was mad at Sam for being such a jerk, and I was mad at my mom and dad for calling me Gaby when it’s a girl’s name and it also means “someone who rambles about stuff that doesn’t matter.”
Mrs. C, right then I decided I wouldn’t be called Gaby anymore.
The spiders liked that.
Then they had another idea.
Hey, Gaby, they said.
“What?”
Why don’t you make up your own name?
Mrs. C, it was the coolest idea in the world! I didn’t care how long it would take. I would sit under Sigmund until I discovered a new name.
I sat and thought for a long time, and then I heard my mom calling for me, and then I heard her on the phone with Betsy, asking if I was at her house. Then I heard her calling for me again.
“¿Gaby? Gaby, ¿dónde estás?”
I didn’t know who she was talking about. There was no one named Gaby around here.
The thing is, even though there was no one named Gaby, the kid under Sigmund was getting hungry. He thought of trying to eat one of Sigmund’s leaves, but first he checked his lunch pail.
All the food was gone except for one purple grape still attached to the stem.
I can’t explain it, Mrs. C, but I knew it was my name!
I was Grape!
I didn’t care that it doesn’t make sense or that people will ask me a million questions about it. I will tell them my new name and ignore them until they get used to it.
I ran straight up the street to Lou’s, and I knocked on the door, and Lou’s mom, Betsy, opened it.
“Well, hello, Gaby,” she said, “does your mom know you’re here? She’s been calling—”
I just stood there, and the thing is, Betsy’s eyes got kind of big.
“What’s wrong, Gaby?”
“From now on my name is Grape,” I said.
“Well, okay, then. Let’s see, Grape, does your mom know you’re here?”
“No.”
“All right, then, I’ll just call her and let her know. Lou’s up in his room, Gab—I mean, Grape.”
When I got to Lou’s room, I blurted it out. “My new name is Grape,” I said, “and if you call me anything else I won’t answer you, even though you’re my best friend.”
“That’s cool, Gaby. Wanna swim?”
Silence.
“Hey, Gaby. You wanna swim?”
Silence.
“Oh, yeah. Hey, Grape, you wanna swim?”
“Sure. I’ll run home and grab my suit.”
“You can borrow one of mine.”
Well, this is where the trouble started.
At school the next morning, Mrs. Gordon took roll.
She called my old name.
“Mrs. Gordon,” I said, “my new name is Grape.”
A bunch of kids laughed, and it was kind of weird because Mrs. Gordon just nodded and rolled her eyes and marked me here.
But the next day it wasn’t so easy.
“Norman,” Mrs. Gordon mumbled.
“Here,” Norman said.
“Patty.”
“Here,” Patty said.
“Gaby.”
Silence.
“Gaby?”
Silence.
“Don’t tell me,” Mrs. Gordon mumbled, “today your name is Pomegranate?”
A bunch of kids laughed.
Lou raised his hand.
“Yes, Lou?”
“Mrs. Gordon, his new name really is Grape.”
“That’s not what I see on the attendance sheet, Lou.”
“But Grape is his new name. I swear! He won’t answer if you call him anything else. He won’t even answer his parents!”
Mrs. Gordon just shook her head and continued. “All right,” she mumbled, “Grape? Is Grape here?”
“Here,” I said.
But she wasn’t marking in the attendance book. She was scribbling a pink disobedience sheet.
“Okay, then, Grape,” she said, “here’s something for you.”
That’s how I ended up sitting across from Principal Kelly for a super long time.
In silence.
He wouldn’t call me Grape, and so I wouldn’t talk to him.
Mrs. C, I bet if you were principal back then you would have called me Grape and let me go back to class. I don’t understand why Principal Kelly was so mad, and the longer he tried to get me to talk, the madder he got and the wetter I got, because the thing is, when Principal Kelly screams, spit flies out of his mouth.
Finally, he gave up.
“All right, Gaby! Have it your way! Since there’s no one named Grape in our system, we’ll just have to send you home!”
That’s how I ended up in my mom’s car eating Mentos. Mrs. C, my mom always has Mentos in her purse, and sometimes Mike and Ike’s, too, and sometimes Junior Mints, and it’s also how I ended up skipping the next day of school so my mom could drive me to Doctor Vecchi’s office, where I learned how to play dice baseball, the stupidest game ever invented.
“Grape,” my mom said, “Doctor Vecchi is a nice man to talk to.”
He sat behind a big wooden desk and he wore glasses and a vest but no tie, and he also had pens in his shirt pocket like my dad, and his hair was combed back with some kind of goo. My mom sat next to me and he didn’t say anything about me being called Grape, but he did ask if I liked baseball.
I told him baseball was my second favorite sport.
And then my mom left.
Doctor Vecchi pulled out a game board from behind his desk. It was a baseball diamond. Then he brought out a bag with two plastic baseball players and two dice, and then he handed me a piece of paper that looked like math.
“Okay, Gaby, see how this works?”
“My name is Grape,” I said to him. “If you call me Gaby, I will never answer you. I don’t care if we stay here an hour like with Principal Kelly.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “So, you roll the dice, and whatever combination comes up tells you if it’s an out, single, double, triple, homer, or double play. Here, I’ll take a practice roll.”
He rolled a 2-1.
“Now look on your paper. What do you see?”
I told him 2-1 is an out.
“Now you try, Grape.”
I rolled the dice. I got a 3-3.
“Very good,” he said. “That’s a triple. How about we play a few innings?”
Mrs. C, I swear that’s all we did, and then my mom came in and sat next to me.
“Grape,” Doctor Vecchi said, “I need some time alone with your mom.”
I sat in the waiting room. A girl around my age was touching the aquarium, following the fish with her finger. I wondered if Doctor Vecchi played dice baseball with her, too.
After a while my mom came out with an envelope, and when we got in the car, I peeked and saw it had Principal Kelly’s name on it.
The next day, Mrs. Gordon called me Grape, and so did Principal Kelly when I saw him in the hallway.
But Roman didn’t.
I heard his keychain, and he high-fived me and said, “What’s up, Gaby?”
“Nothing. But my name is not Gaby.”
“What? I’ve been calling you Gaby for years now.”
“I know, but I have a new name now.”
“Okay,” Roman said, “spill it.”
“Grape.”
“Grape?”
“Yes, it’s my adopted name.”
Mrs. C, the thing is, I meant to say, “It’s the name I adopted,” but when I said, “It’s my adopted name,” Roman got kind of quiet and then he swung his giant keychain and said, “Sounds like a great name to me!”
Now, whenever anyone asks, I always answer the same way.
“It’s my adopted name,” I say.
And the person gets kind of quiet and doesn’t ask any more questions.
THE TROUBLE WITH MRS. GORDON
June 3, 1976
Mrs. C, even though I was Grape, I still had spiders, and I still had Mrs. Gordon, and Mrs. Gordon didn’t like Grape.
She kicked him out of class all the time.
He was kicked out for talking without raising his hand, and for laughing, and for not returning the scissors to the right basket, and for twirling his pencil, and for talking to Lou and for talking to Sherman, and for falling asleep, and for forgetting to stand in line to get into class, and for forgetting to stand in line to leave class.
Mrs. Gordon never even had to say anything. She just pointed to the door.
And the thing is, out in the hallway there was a yellow chair. Mrs. Gordon left it there for me.
“Since you spend so much time outside the classroom,” she said, “at least you don’t have to sit on the filthy walkway.”
Mrs. C, I kind of liked being sent out. I mean, I could see the hills behind the playing field. You know them, right, Mrs. C? The turkey vultures glide over in circles, and when they fly low I can see their red turkey faces, and when I’m super lucky I see a red-tailed hawk, and if there are no birds, I follow the clouds, and if there are no clouds, I just watch the hills.
Mrs. Gordon never allowed me to take anything to the yellow chair, so it was just me and the walkways and the hills and the sky, and the walkways were usually empty unless there was an aide or a kid with a hall pass or a kid on the way to the nurse or the principal, or unless a teacher walked by, and then I said hi, but the teacher usually frowned.
Well, here comes the trouble part.
Remember how I said Mrs. Gordon has to have everything perfect, and that’s why she loves math? Well, it’s also why she hates arts and crafts.
We would all gather at the long art table along one side of the classroom and we were allowed to talk, but she didn’t like talking, and she kept telling us to wash our hands, and she walked by the timer on her desk and picked it up and looked at it, and then a minute later picked it up and looked again, and then she would say, “No, no, no, you’ll get paint all over the floor” or “That’s the wrong basket for the scissors!” and the thing is, Mrs. C, I could tell by the way she moved around like a pinball that it was super hard for her.
I wanted to tell her it was okay and that I understood because, the thing is, I also hate arts and crafts! I mean, it’s super boring and it takes forever and we have to follow all the rules and whatever I make comes out wrong, and we usually make dumb things like sand paintings and igloos out of sugar cubes and stupid lanyards.
Mrs. C, I hate lanyards!
But I don’t think Mrs. Gordon would have cared what I said. She would have pointed to the door.
Well, this one day we were making gingerbread men and the air conditioning was broken, so it was super hot. Mrs. Gordon was running around checking the baskets and the timer and sweating, and the thing is, when she got close she smelled weird because her sweat mixed with her super strong perfume, and when sh
e got close her big eyeballs looked like they were sweating, too.
It was an easy project. We just pushed our cookie cutter shapes into the dough, then put our gingerbread men on the cookie sheet, and then added chocolate chips for eyes and a line of frosting for a mouth, and once they were done the cafeteria lady would collect them and bake them for us. And even though it was super hot, everyone was having fun.
Then the timer went off.
“Clean up!” Mrs. Gordon said.
I never heard her talk so loud.
I looked at my gingerbread man. His eyes were crooked and his arms bulged out too high.
“Hey, Lou,” I said, “check out my gingerbread man.”
But Lou wasn’t listening. He was still trying to make his man perfect.
Mrs. Gordon grabbed him by the arm and told him it was cleanup time. Lou huffed and said okay, but it was hard for him because he always wants to do things right.
I patted him on the shoulder, and then, because I was super hot and thirsty, I walked over to the drinking fountain at the back of the classroom.
At least I tried to.
Mrs. Gordon stood right in front of me. She smelled super weird.
“Grape,” she said, “where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m getting a drink,” I said. “I’m thirsty.”
“No, you’re not getting a drink! Don’t you see everyone else cleaning up? It’s not time for a drink! After everyone cleans up, then you can drink.”
Mrs. C, I was super thirsty, but I did what she said, and when everyone was done and Mrs. Gordon stood in front of the class, I raised my hand.
“What do you want, Grape?”
“A drink.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “you’ll have to wait until class is over.”
Grape! Page 2