Facts of Life (12 page)

Rebecca tiptoed backward, hid behind a car, and, when it was safe, leaped across the street. She took a new route home.

It was a scary odyssey. Large dogs behind chain-link fences snorted and showed their teeth, slobber hanging from the corners of their mouths. There were car parts on almost every yellowish lawn, and if not car parts, old couches, rusty swings, parts of refrigerators, dismantled bicycles, deflated blow-up swimming pools, and broken toys. There were men on porch steps, their eyes cloudy. None of them smiled at her, although one man waved a flyswatter in her direction. Rebecca didn't understand why he was doing that, and she didn't hang around to find out.

She hurried away, skipped even, hoping to look carefree. But she soon slowed to a walk and played a game: Step on a crack and break your mother's back. She treaded carefully, heel to toe, but froze when she again spied Sylvia with her friends. They were dragging sticks in the gutter, gathering leaves wet as paper towels.

Rebecca turned and ran. Two blocks later she was forced sit on the curb and rest. She recalled the singsong phrase "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." But she didn't believe it. Words do hurt, and so do songs with bad words. She knew nasty people walked the earth doing bad. There were wars, famines, and earthquakes that destroyed villages in remote fog-shrouded valleys. Rebecca felt stranded in one of those valleys, crying, "Help, help, help me!"

"You're too sensitive," her grandmother had once scolded. "That's your problem." Her grandmother made this remark after Rebecca had cried at the scene of a hippopotamus bellowing for her hippo child that had been eaten by a lion. They had been watching a show on Animal Planet about how animals, like humans, could feel grief.

What had the mother hippo done to make her grandmother resent it's grief?
Poor hippo,
Rebecca thought.
Poor, poor hippo.

At home, Rebecca reveled in an Animal Planet special about a kindly veterinarian who helped chimpanzees in the wilds of Zimbabwe. They exuded happiness. They beat their chests with pleasure, jumped up and down, and showed their large teeth. The chimpanzees shared what they had and groomed each other, pulling crawly things from their matted hair. The program soothed her, and some cold lemonade made her feel better, too.

"Animals are a lot nicer than people," she concluded.

Rebecca planned to watch the next program about a giraffe until she remembered her chore: make a green salad to go with leftover creamy chicken from dinner the night before. Afterward, she took out a large binder that held her extra-credit project about saving the world. To Rebecca it was all so obvious. If adults and kids did a few simple things, they could save the world for future generations.

On butcher paper Rebecca drew the Ideal City. She placed parks every five blocks. She colored the parks blue because she couldn't find the green crayon, but she figured that blue was the color of the sky (when not smoggy) and the sea (when not dirty with oil spills). She dotted her made-up world with trees, also blue, and made a note in the margin explaining that these were fruit trees. She predicted that people would give up candy and turn to eating fruit because such trees would be everywhere in the city. They could look up at any time, say, "Oh, an apple," and pluck it for free.

"No police or soldiers!" she demanded. She took out a pencil and scrawled this directive in the margin. The people would be polite because they would have lots to eat and places to live. But if people weren't nice, flying drones would zap them with bolts of electricity.
It's going to hurt,
she told herself,
but the drones won't kill them, just zap them to make them behave.

"We'll need to have swimming pools," she pledged. She began to make little blue squares and then a long blue line: a river, clean, sparkly, and filled with fish. Citizens would fish when the fruit trees became bare in late fall. Rebecca felt guilty that some of the fish would have to die. But it couldn't be helped, she figured. The citizens of the Ideal City had to eat.

The phone rang. When Rebecca picked it up, the caller—Rebecca was certain it was Sylvia—hung up.

After they washed the dishes, Rebecca and her mother watched
Jeopardy,
a program they relished because they would get wild and scream out their questions, each pushing a make-believe button. It gave them joy, competing in a nice way. Rebecca made a mental note: In the Ideal City people would watch Animal Planet or
Jeopardy,
or something new, like the Star Planet channel or a game show based on Candyland.

"What is Wyoming!" they screamed at the same time.

"No, I said it first," Rebecca claimed.

The answer was a state where Yellowstone National Park is located.

The previous summer they had visited the park and had been dazzled by the depth of the night sky and it's pulsating stars. They had a decal from Yellowstone on the back window of their Toyota Corolla. It was starting to peel, but the memory was still there. A bear had sauntered up to their car and laid it's heavy paws on the hood, rolled it's large petallike tongue over it's mouth, and demanded something to eat.

When
Jeopardy
was over, Rebecca revealed her problem at school. "This girl, she's, like, mean but the president of our class. She wants me to get you to fix a ticket or her dad won't buy her a new jacket."

Her mother picked up her soda from the TV tray and drank it's strawberry sweetness, but she didn't pick up the thread of the conversation. She just looked at her daughter, expecting more.

"This girl is mean, Mom. I know she beat up at least three girls this year and made a boy cry when she took his lunch."

"Narrow-minded," her mother finally added. "People think I can do that—everyone, even your aunt." Rebecca's mother recounted how Aunt Norma had called her to ask if she could fix a parking ticket for her new boyfriend. Absently she added, "Everyone wants something for free."

The two had been full of laughter, but now their mood had changed. Rebecca got up to turn on the lamp on the end table, but the light didn't brighten the tone.

"What should I do?" Rebecca asked.

"'Bout what?"

"The girl at school. She's bothering me."

"Ignore her," Rebecca's mother advised. She turned off the television and a smiling face selling toothpaste disappeared. "Did you do your homework?"

"I don't have any homework." Rebecca was going to reveal her school project—the Ideal City—when the phone rang. She gripped the arm of the couch, not unlike their cat when she tried to put it outside, then got up and answered the phone.

"Hello," Rebecca greeted. "Hello, hello?"

Silence, two clicks, a faraway sort of silence—was Sylvia trying to play with her head? Right then Rebecca considered another possibility: no telephones in the Ideal City. If a person wanted to talk to another person, he or she would have to knock on his or her door.

"As president of the class, I would like to thank you for your visit." Sylvia smiled at Dr. Sharon Dietz, who was only a little taller than the average sixth grader. Her hair was bushy red and her face looked orange against her white lab coat. The doctor had been invited to talk to the fifth and sixth graders about good eating habits. "As a token of our appreciation, we hope that you will accept our school T-shirt."

Dr. Dietz accepted the T-shirt from the beaming Sylvia and held it in front of her like a matador's cape. She waved the T-shirt and jumped to the side as if a bull were rushing toward her.

Sylvia's so fake,
Rebecca surmised.
Isn't it obvious?

The program over, the students rose noisily from the benches, and the teachers began to escort them from the cafeteria. But Sylvia stayed behind for a photo op with the doctor and the dental hygienist, who had brought a huge set of teeth that opened and closed like a clam. The hygienist had used them to demonstrate how to floss. He had warned them about the harmfulness of sugar and the gunk that gets trapped between teeth. With a large toothbrush he had demonstrated how to brush with an up-and-down action.

Rebecca was mildly upset that this person didn't receive a T-shirt. The poor guy stood to the side, the huge set of teeth in his arms. The teeth seemed to smile at the students shuffling away, and a few of the nastier boys bared their teeth at the man.

"They're awful." Rebecca sighed. She vowed they would be the first to get zapped by the flying drones in the Ideal City.

When Rebecca filed past, she waved vigorously to the man. He didn't see her at first, but then he rigged a big smile on his face. Right then she decided that if she could really build the Ideal City, he would be mayor. He seemed nice and was young enough to remember what it felt like in school. If he were mayor—no, she'd make him governor or even president of the Ideal City—the citizens would be assured of sparkling teeth and healthy gums.

After the assembly the sixth graders had silent reading, but the silence was broken when the speaker next to the clock crackled, buzzed, and seemed to belch. The entire class looked up.

"Sixth graders, the freezer has broken." The voice belonged to Mr. Rafferty, the vice principal.

There was a roar of excitement. It was only 10:34 in morning, and for the second time that day they got to leave the classroom. This was way better than a talk about health: The broken freezer meant they got to help eat the school's supply of ice cream before it melted.

They lined up with Sylvia first—as president, she assumed she would lead. She elbowed the boy behind her, barking, "Get off me, stupid! You're standing too close." Then, like a centipede, the students left the classroom boisterously yelling like it was Christmas.

In the cafeteria they were each presented with an ice cream—Drumsticks and Push-ups, Popsicles and Eskimo Pies—and a single napkin.

"Goof off and you're back in the classroom," warned Mr. Rafferty, a skinny man with a twig for a neck. He didn't look like he could have enough strength to back up his words.

The students knew they had to be quiet just for the time it took to devour a frosty concoction. They formed a circle as he had instructed and ate the icy treats, the only sound the slobber of ice cream being devoured.

But Rebecca didn't indulge in the ice cream feed. She was determined to follow the wise instruction of the dental hygienist.
Excess sugar is bad for you,
she told herself.

"How come you're not eating?" Carolina asked.

"I'm not hungry," she answered.

Rebecca waited and tried to avoid staring at Sylvia gobbling nastily on a green Popsicle. She had higher concerns and tinkered in her mind with the finer details of the Ideal City. She figured that in the future people would eat less, not more, so there would be hardly any deaths. Everyone would live for something close to forever. True, they would get old and move slower, but they would go on and on.

Provided they ate less and flossed weekly.

A week passed, and Rebecca was continually bullied by Sylvia, who would cut her down with icy stares, hiss dirty words, toss balled-up napkins at her in the cafeteria, and threaten her with a good ol' school yard whipping.

One day mean Sylvia chased her around the school yard, her cheeks filled with water from the drinking fountain.

"Don't!" Rebecca pleaded. She was cornered near the baseball backstop, jumping left, then right as she attempted to avoid the inevitable. "Don't! I'll tell! I really will!" Rebecca was grossed out—they had just eaten lunch and most likely there were loose food particles in Sylvia's fat cheek.
Yuck, that water is dirty. I might even get a disease
—all this and more entered Rebecca's mind.

Sylvia let the stream fly from her mouth, and it splashed on Rebecca's leg.

"That was really mean!" Rebecca cried. She limped in a circle, and pouted because her sock was wet.

But when Rebecca reported what Sylvia had done, Mr. Rafferty had a greater concern than a girl who'd been spit on—a boy had climbed up to the roof in an effort to fetch a kickball and now couldn't get down.

On the way home Rebecca would chant in her heart, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

For the next few days, Rebecca avoided Sylvia. She hung with her friend Carolina, playing two-square with a nearly deflated ball. Carolina was quicker, more competitive, and just plain better.

Rebecca realized that competition made her sullen—and sweaty! At home, she added another improvement in the margins of the map of the Ideal City: no competition. She rationalized that competitive sports made people go crazy—just look at professional football, a sport that made people dress up in weird clothes and cuss at the ref. Was that civilized?

In the Ideal City people would just play catch or they could swim. Yes, they would swim laps. She mulled over other activities.

"We can juggle," she said to herself. She wrote in the margins
juggle, hula hoop, ride ponies, run through sprinklers,
and that thing called
yoga:
non-competitive stuff.

That night, with the television muted and her mother seated in her recliner, Rebecca practiced her presentation of the Ideal City. For ten minutes she outlined her major points and explained the rules for living in peace and love.

"What would you think if there were no litter and stuff?" Rebecca asked.

"But, honey, is there really a place like—" Rebeccas mother started to discount this magical place, then reigned in her opinion. Every day she rode around and saw gutters filled with garbage.

Mom's a doubter,
Rebecca figured,
but that's okay because the Ideal City is still only on paper.
Rebecca was convinced that once her plans became a reality everyone would start to act nicer. Everyone would change. Then her mother would see.

The next day she walked to school clutching her report and the butcher paper on which she had drawn the map.

After the first recess Rebecca began her presentation by showing the class pictures of the Hawaiian Islands.