To hide: esconder. To escape: escapar.
To forget: olvidar.
JOB DAY
Just in case we forget that “weareheretogetagoodfoundation sowecangotocollegeliveuptoourpotentialgetagoodjoblivehap pilyeverafterandgotoDisneyWorld,” we have a Job Day.
Like all things Hi!School, it starts with a test, a test of my desires and my dreams. Do I (a) prefer to spend time with a large group of people? (b) prefer to spend time with a small group of close friends? (c) prefer to spend time with family? (d) prefer to spend time alone?
Am I (a) a helper? (b) a doer? (c) a planner? (d) a dreamer?
If I were tied to railroad tracks and the 3:15 train to Rochester was ready to cut a path across my middle, would I (a) scream for help? (b) ask my little mice friends to chew through the ropes? (c) remember that my favorite jeans were in the dryer and were hopelessly wrinkled? (d) close my eyes and pretend nothing was wrong?
Two hundred questions later, I get my results. I should consider a career in (a) forestry (b) firefighting (c) communications (d) mortuary science. Heather’s results are clearer. She should be a nurse. It makes her jump up and down.
Heather: “This is the best! I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll be a candy striper at the hospital this summer. Why don’t you do it with me? I’ll study real hard in biology and go to S.U. and get my R.N. What a great plan!”
How could she know this? I don’t know what I’m doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I’ll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I’ll think about a career path.
FIRST AMENDMENT
Mr. Neck storms into class, a bull chasing thirty-three red flags. We slide into our seats. I think for sure he’s going to explode. Which he does, but in an unpredictable, faintly educational way.
IMMIGRATION. He writes it on the board. I’m pretty sure he spelled it right.
Mr. Neck: “My family has been in this country for over two hundred years. We built this place, fought in every war from the first one to the last one, paid taxes, and voted.”
A cartoon thought bubble forms over the heads of everyone in the class. (“WILL THIS BE ON THE TEST?”)
Mr. Neck: “So tell me why my son can’t get a job.”
A few hands creep skyward. Mr. Neck ignores them. It is a pretend question, one he asked so he could give the answer. I relax. This is like when my father complains about his boss. The best thing to do is to stay awake and blink sympathetically.
His son wanted to be a firefighter, but didn’t get the job. Mr. Neck is convinced that this is some kind of reverse discrimination. He says we should close our borders so that real Americans can get the jobs they deserve. The job test said that I would be a good firefighter. I wonder if I could take a job away from Mr. Neck’s son.
I tune out and focus on my doodle, a pine tree. I’ve been trying to carve a linoleum block in art class. The problem with the block is that there is no way to correct mistakes. Every mistake I make is frozen in the picture. So I have to think ahead.
Mr. Neck writes on the board again: “DEBATE: America should have closed her borders in 1900.” That strikes a nerve. Several nerves. I can see kids counting backward on their fingers, trying to figure when their grandparents or great-grandparents were born, when they came to America, if they would have made the Neck Cut. When they figure out they would have been stuck in a country that hated them, or a place with no schools, or a place with no future, their hands shoot up. They beg to differ with Mr. Neck’s learned opinion.
I don’t know where my family came from. Someplace cold, where they eat beans on Thursday and hang their wash on the line on Monday. I don’t know how long we’ve been in America. We’ve been in this school district since I was in first grade; that must count for something. I start an apple tree.
The arguments jump back and forth across the room. A few suck-ups quickly figure out which side Mr. Neck is squatting on, so they fight to throw out the “foreigners.” Anyone whose family immigrated in the last century has a story to tell about how hard their relatives have worked, the contributions they make to the country, the taxes they pay. A member of the Archery Club tries to say that we are all foreigners and we should give the country back to the Native Americans, but she’s buried under disagreement. Mr. Neck enjoys the noise, until one kid challenges him directly.
Brave Kid: “Maybe your son didn’t get that job because he’s not good enough. Or he’s lazy. Or the other guy was better than him, no matter what his skin color. I think the white people who have been here for two hundred years are the ones pulling down the country. They don’t know how to work—they’ve had it too easy.”
The pro-immigration forces erupt in applause and hooting.
Mr. Neck. “You watch your mouth, mister. You are talking about my son. I don’t want to hear any more from you. That’s enough debate—get your books out.”
The Neck is back in control. Show time is over. I try to draw a branch coming out of a tree trunk for the 315th time. It looks so flat, a cheap, cruddy drawing. I have no idea how to make it come alive. I am so focused I don’t notice at first that David Petrakis My Lab Partner has stood up. The class stops talking. I put my pencil down.
Mr. Neck: “Mr. Petrakis, take your seat.”
David Petrakis is never, ever in trouble. He is the kid who wins perfect attendance records, who helps the staff chase down bugs in the computer files of report cards. I chew a hangnail on my pinkie. What is he thinking? Has he flipped, finally cracked under the pressure of being smarter than everyone?
David: “If the class is debating, then each student has the right to say what’s on his mind.”
Mr. Neck: “I decide who talks in here.”
David: “You opened a debate. You can’t close it just because it is not going your way.”
Mr. Neck: “Watch me. Take your seat, Mr. Petrakis.”
David: “The Constitution does not recognize different classes of citizenship based on time spent living in the country. I am a citizen, with the same rights as your son, or you. As a citizen, and as a student, I am protesting the tone of this lesson as racist, intolerant, and xenophobic.”
Mr. Neck: “Sit your butt in that chair, Petrakis, and watch your mouth! I try to get a debate going in here and you people turn it into a race thing. Sit down or you’re going to the principal.”
David stares at Mr. Neck, looks at the flag for a minute, then picks up his books and walks out of the room. He says a million things without saying a word. I make a note to study David Petrakis. I have never heard a more eloquent silence.
GIVING THANKS
The Pilgrims gave thanks at Thanksgiving because the Native Americans saved their sorry butts from starving. I give thanks at Thanksgiving because my mother finally goes to work and my father orders pizza.
My normally harried, rushed mother always turns into a strung-out retail junkie just before Turkey Day. It’s because of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the start of the Christmas shopping season. If she doesn’t sell a billion shirts and twelve million belts on Black Friday, the world will end. She lives on cigarettes and black coffee, swearing like a rap star and calculating spreadsheets in her head. The goals she sets for her store are totally unrealistic and she knows it. She can’t help herself. It’s like watching someone caught in an electric fence, twitching and squirming and very stuck. Every year, just when she’s stressed to the snapping point, she cooks Thanksgiving dinner. We beg her not to. We plead with her, send anonymous notes. She doesn’t listen.
I go to bed the night before Thanksgiving at 10 p.m. She’s pounding on her laptop at the dining-room table. When I come downstairs Thanksgiving morning, she’s still there. I don’t think she slept.
She looks up at me in my robe and bunny slippers. “Oh, damn,” she says. “The turkey.”
I peel potatoes while she gives the frozen turkey a hot bath. The windows fog up, separating us from the outside. I want to suggest that we have something else
for dinner, spaghetti maybe, or sandwiches, but I know she wouldn’t take it the right way. She hacks at the guts of the turkey with an ice pick to get out the bag of body parts. I’m impressed. Last year she cooked the bird with the bag inside.
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner means something to her. It’s like a holy obligation, part of what makes her a wife and mother. My family doesn’t talk much and we have nothing in common, but if my mother cooks a proper Thanksgiving dinner, it says we’ll be a family for one more year. Kodak logic. Only in film commercials does stuff like that work.
I finish the potatoes. She sends me to the TV to watch the parades. Dad stumbles downstairs. “How is she?” he asks before he goes in the kitchen. “It’s Thanksgiving,” I say. Dad puts on his coat. “Doughnuts?” he asks. I nod.
The phone rings. Mom answers. It’s the store. Emergency #1. I go into the kitchen for a soda. She pours me orange juice, which I can’t drink because it burns my scabby lips. The turkey floats in the sink, a ten-pound turkey iceberg. A turkeyberg. I feel very much like the Titanic.
Mom hangs up and chases me out with instructions to take a shower and clean my room. I soak in the bathtub. I fill my lungs with air and float on top of the water, then blow out all my breath and sink to the bottom. I put my head underwater to listen to my heart beat. The phone rings again. Emergency #2.
By the time I’m dressed, the parades are over and Dad is watching football. Confectioner’s sugar dusts the stubble on his face. I don’t like it when he bums around the house on holidays. I like my Dad clean-shaven and wearing a suit. He motions for me to get out of the way so he can see the screen.
Mom is on the phone. Emergency #3. The long curly cord snakes around and around her thin body, like a rope tying her to the stake. Two drumstick tips poke out of an enormous pot of boiling water. She is boiling the frozen turkey. “It’s too big for the microwave,” she explains. “It will be thawed soon.” She puts a finger in her free ear to concentrate on what the phone is telling her. I take a plain doughnut from the bag and go back to my room.
Three magazines later, my parents are arguing. Not a riproarer. A simmering argument, a few bubbles splashing on the stove. I want another doughnut, but don’t feel like wading through the fight to get it. They retreat to their corners when the phone rings again. Here’s my chance.
Mom has the phone to her ear when I walk in the kitchen, but she isn’t listening to it. She rubs the steam from the window and stares into the back yard. I join her at the sink.
Dad strides across the back yard, wearing an oven mitt and carrying the steaming turkey by one leg. “He said it would take hours to thaw,” mutters Mom. A tiny voice squeaks from the receiver. “No, not you, Ted,” she tells the phone. Dad lays the turkey on the chopping block and picks up his hatchet. Whack. The hatchet sticks in the frozen turkey flesh. He saws back and forth. Whack. A slice of frozen turkey slides to the ground. He picks it up and waves it at the window. Mom turns her back to him and tells Ted she’s on her way.
After Mom leaves for the store, Dad takes over the dinner. It’s the principle of the thing. If he gripes about the way she handled Thanksgiving, then he has to prove he can do a better job. He brings in the butchered dirty meat and washes it in the sink with detergent and hot water. He rinses off his hatchet.
Dad: “Just like the old days, right, Mellie? Fellow goes out into the woods and brings home dinner. This isn’t so difficult. Cooking just requires some organization and the ability to read. Now get me the bread. I’m going to make real stuffing, the way my mother used to. You don’t need to help. Why don’t you do some homework, maybe some extra-credit work to pull those grades up. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”
I think about studying, but it’s a holiday, so I park myself on the living-room couch and watch an old movie instead. I smell smoke twice, wince when glass shatters on the floor, and listen in on the other phone to his conversation with the turkey hot-line lady. She says turkey soup is the best part of Thanksgiving anyway. He calls me into the kitchen an hour later, with the fake enthusiasm of a father who has screwed up big-time. Bones are heaped on the cutting board. A pot of glue boils on the stove. Bits of gray, green, and yellow roll in the burping white paste.
Dad: “It’s supposed to be soup.”
Me:
Dad: “It tasted a bit watery, so I kept adding thickener. I put in some corn and peas.”
Me:
Dad: [pulling wallet from his back pocket] “Call for pizza. I’ll get rid of this.”
I order double cheese, double mushroom. Dad buries the soup in the back yard next to our dead beagle, Ariel.
WISHBONE
I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner. I dig the bones out of the trash and bring them to art class. Mr. Freeman is thrilled. He tells me to work on the bird but keep thinking tree.
Mr. Freeman: “You are on fire, Melinda, I can see it in your eyes. You are caught up in the meaning, in the subjectivity of the effect of commercialism on this holiday. This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values and canned yams.”
Whatever.
At first, I want to glue the bones together in a heap like firewood (get it?—tree—firewood), but Mr. Freeman sighs. I can do better, he says. I arrange the bones on a black piece of paper and try to draw a turkey around it. I don’t need Mr. Freeman to tell me it stinks. By this point, he has thrown himself back into his own painting and has forgotten we exist.
He is working on a huge canvas. It started out bleak—a gutted building along a gray road on a rainy day. He spent a week painting dirty coins on the sidewalk, sweating to get them just right. He painted the faces of school board members peering out the windows of the building, then he put bars on the windows and turned the building into a prison. His canvas is better than TV because you never know what is going to happen next.
I crumple the paper and lay out the bones on the table. Melinda Sordino—Anthropologist. I have unearthed the remains of a hideous sacrifice. The bell rings and I look at Mr. Freeman with puppy-dog eyes. He says he’ll call my Spanish teacher with some kind of excuse. I can stay for another class period. When Ivy hears this, she begs permission to stay late, too. She’s trying to conquer her fear of clowns. She’s constructing some weird sculpture—a mask behind a clown’s face. Mr. Freeman says yes to Ivy, too. She waggles her eyebrows at me and grins. By the time I figure out that this might be a good time to say something friendly to her, she is back at work.
I glue the bones to a block of wood, arranging the skeleton like a museum exhibit. I find knives and forks in the odds-’n’-ends bin and glue them so it looks like they are attacking the bones.
I take a step back. It isn’t quite done. I rummage in the bin again and find a half-melted palm tree from a Lego set. It’ll do. Mr. Freeman hangs on to everything a normal person would throw out: Happy Meal toys, lost playing cards, grocery-store receipts, keys, dolls, a saltshaker, trains … how does he know this stuff could be art?
I pop the head off a Barbie doll and set it inside the turkey’s body. That feels right. Ivy walks past and looks. She arches her left eyebrow and nods. I wave my hand and Mr. Freeman comes over to inspect. He almost faints with delight.
Mr. Freeman: “Excellent, excellent. What does this say to you?”
Darn. I didn’t know there would be a quiz. I clear my throat. I can’t get any words out, it is too dry. I try again, with a little cough.
Mr. Freeman: “Sore throat? Don’t worry, it’s going around. Want me to tell you what I see?”
I nod in relief.
“I see a girl caught in the remains of a holiday gone bad, with her flesh picked off day after day as the carcass dries out. The knife and fork are obviously middle-class sensibilities. The palm tree is a nice touch. A broken dream, perhaps? Plastic honeymoon, deserted island? Oh, if you put it in a slice of pumpkin pie, it could be a desserted island!”<
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I laugh in spite of myself. I’m getting the hang of this. While Ivy and Mr. Freeman watch, I reach in and pluck out the Barbie head. I set it on top of the bony carcass. There is no place for the palm tree—I toss that aside. I move the knife and fork so they look like legs. I place a piece of tape over Barbie’s mouth.
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