The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet (5 page)

Dad seemed both hopeful and relieved. “Can you talk to her about the self-possession needed to attend junior high school? Your mother comes home at nine.” He said the last part with a tone that meant: “I’m supposed to be doing this and she will kill me if she sees you doing so. Be finished by then.”

I shrugged. “No problem.” (Unlike Mom and her contractions, Dad lets us get away with using slang occasionally).

Dad disappeared in the direction of his office, and Iago lay down on his purple pillow in the corner of the kitchen.

“So how’d it go with your socialization lessons?” I asked. I giggled at the memory.

Dezzie rolled her eyes. “You heard that? I know that our parents share a heavy burden of anxiety regarding my well-being at Howard Hoffer, but truly, Hamlet, you would think that I didn’t know any better . . . that I was . . .” She searched for the word.

“Average?” I offered.

“Precisely,” she replied.

“Okay,” I told her. “But if you really want to survive HoHo, you need to know how to act normal.”

“But I am not what one would consider ‘normal,’ due to my age and intellect,” Dezzie pointed out. “It would be contradictory for me to act in the way of a standard student.”

“True,” I said, frustrated. For a smart kid, you’d think my sister would be able to understand everyday life better. “But junior high is not about standing out. It’s about fitting in.”

“Why?”

A bunch of answers came to mind: a.) Because that’s how it
is
. b.) Because no one wants to stand out. c.) Because it’s easier that way.

“I don’t know.” Even my average brain knew none of those responses were good ones.

“Although I cannot fully comprehend the necessity of compromising myself for the sake of assimilating to the group, I trust your experience in the matter.

“I am ready for my lessons,” she said. “Teach away.”

 

We moved upstairs into my bedroom, where, for the next hour and a half, I taught Dezzie everything I could possibly think of regarding the social rules and regulations of HoHo Junior High. Some of the highlights:

I mentioned that one specifically because Dezzie would “blend in” around HoHo about as easily as a squash blends in with motorcycles—without answering every question that she heard walking through the halls.

As I listed the rules, her eyes sparkled. She was getting her “intellectually engaged” look: furrowed brow, lips in a smirk, eyebrow cocked—an expression that I’d seen more often on teachers and my parents and their friends than anyone under the age of forty . . . except Dezzie.

“What are the consequences to behaving outside of the norm?” she asked.

I tried to find an answer that was better than the “I don’t know” I’d given her earlier. “People might tease you, or you might not have someone to sit with at lunch or during activities. Sometimes, depending on what you do, people can be mean,” I tried. Hearing it out loud made it sound a lot lamer than it was in real life, and it did nothing to capture the feeling of being ignored, or the coldness that could creep around your heart when you realized that you were being shut out.

“It’s the preadolescent sociological phenomenon at work, isn’t it? Queen bees on the playground?” she asked. “Fascinating. I’ve read about it, of course, but to experience it firsthand will be a treat.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but she was probably right . . . although I’m not sure I would classify experiencing junior high as “a treat.” But her excitement helped me feel a little less guilty about what I was doing: asking her to hide everything that made Dezzie, Dezzie.

Then we got practical: open classroom seating situations, how to carry a backpack without looking like a dork (
never
clip the waist belt), and never mentioning “immersion projects” or outside HoHo academics.

Through it all, Dezzie took notes and nodded in the right places. Just before nine, I suggested that we wrap it up. Mom would be home soon, and I didn’t want to have to answer any uncomfortable questions. Dezzie nodded, but her brow was knitted as tightly as one of Mom’s loom sweaters.

“Do you think I can do it, Ham?” she asked, gray eyes searching mine. “There are a lot of things to remember.”

A funny pulling sensation happened around my heart. I pushed it away. I was doing what was best for her, wasn’t I?

“Of course I do. You’re the best student ever.” I gave her a big fake smile.

Her eyebrows relaxed. “Not ever, but close to it,” she said. “This is a different kind of learning, though.” She shrugged. “I’ve gotta take my bath . . . How did that sound?”

For a minute, I didn’t understand what she meant. Then I got it.

“Rockin’,” I said, then grinned.

She tucked her notes under one arm and slipped out of my room, clicking the door closed. I flopped back on my bed, hoping it would work, hoping Dezzie would become part of the HoHo fabric, hoping that eighth grade would be okay.

I turned my computer on. The IM tone blinged right away.

Pretty much.

vii

That first week, my parents wanted daily updates of the classes at HoHo. I let Dezzie do all the talking at the dinner table.
Big
mistake.

“In art, we are making abstract expressionist paintings, like Jackson Pollock’s. Saber and Mauri, with whom we sit, do not like them very much, but they are looking forward to the Salute to Shakespeare project in English and history.”

I could have fallen off my chair. I hadn’t told my parents anything about our exploration of the Bard.

“Do tell!” My mother put down her fork and pushed back the sleeves of her nubby hand-loomed sweater. It was Sunday, which was seventeenth-century chicken stew night . . . which was
way
better than “potage of mutton” night. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what a “potage” was, even though I had to eat it.

“What is this about?” my father said, giving us his full attention. He’d been skimming student sonnets while we ate.

I glared at Dezzie.

“Do not give your sister a cross look,” Dad admonished. When I sat back in my chair, he continued. “Now, explain to us about this Shakespeare event going on at school.”

“Dezzie can tell you,” I said, and folded my arms. Her eyes went big. She could tell I wasn’t happy, but I bet it didn’t occur to her as to why. Sharing her “intellectual pursuits” with my parents came as naturally to her as calculus or four-syllable words. Iago, who’d been sleeping under the table, hopped into her lap.

“Well,” she began, “some of the English and history classes are studying Shakespeare and Elizabethan England.” She patted Iago’s head, speaking to him more than us.

My mother brought her hands to her chest in two excited fists. “Marvelous! What a wonderful opportunity for the students!” At home, when she’s not dressed in her regalia, Mom wears pleated broomstick skirts with those handmade sweaters and “stocks and socks”—Birkenstock sandals with big, thick woolen socks. Sometimes I don’t know which is more mortifying—being out in public with her in a costume, or the thought of someone showing up unexpectedly and seeing her “loungewear.”

“Agreed,” said Dad. I pretended that I didn’t exist, praying to the ghosts of geeks past they would be so excited at the
thought
of junior high kids learning about Shakespeare that they wouldn’t actually ask the question that made the most sense. It had happened before.

“Is your English class one of the ones studying the Bard, Hamlet?” Mom asked. She gave me her professor stare: narrow eyes, tight lips.

So much for my prayers.

For a moment, I considered lying. If I said no, there was a chance that they’d forget about it, or at least only question Dezzie about the class. But they’d find out eventually. Best to get it over with now.

“Yes,” I replied. Shock flitted across Mom’s face, Dad’s showed mild curiosity.

“Why did you not tell us?”

“Because I wanted to surprise you,” I explained. And because it’s only been the first week of school, I added in my head. And I don’t want any more Shakespeare-o-rama in my life. “I thought it would be more fun that way.”

Their faces changed to mirrors of happiness and pride.

“Perhaps we will make ourselves available to consult,” Dad said.

“Consult?” I coughed the word out. “Like, help?”

“Why, yes,” Mom added. “It would be a lovely way to be involved in your studies.”

No it wouldn’t.

“Uh, well, let me check with my teacher,” I said lamely. Shock spread through my body. “I will let you know what she says.”

Dezzie, probably figuring out what had gone wrong, changed the subject to a calculus problem and the conversation moved away from me. Although relieved, I now had to figure out how to avoid any parental involvement in “Salute to Shakespeare.” And that would be about as easy as identifying the ingredients in potage of mutton.

 

In my room later, Dezzie apologized.

“I am sorry I told, Hamlet,” Dezzie said. She was wearing her
Finding Nemo
pajamas—the ones with fish on the pants and a picture of the turtles on the top—and her long hair was still damp from her bath.

And I could tell that she truly was. Not that it made me feel any better. I kept her age secret at school; the least she could have done was keep my coursework off Mom and Dad’s radar screen. I stretched out across my bed and knocked my math book onto the floor with my foot.

“Are you mad at me?” She stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, big-eyed and quiet-voiced.

It’s hard to be mad at someone who is barely four feet tall and wearing Nemo pants.

“No, Dez, I’m not mad at you,” I said, feeling like a jerk for being upset.

She straightened and eyed me like a TV cop evaluating a criminal. “It’s all right if you are. From now on, I will try and do my best not to share excess information.”

Having a brainiac little sister is tough enough, but when she’s not only smart, but you kind of like her, that makes it even worse.

“It’s fine,” I said, taking a deep breath and finding some genuine forgiveness. I sat up, and she joined me on the bed, sitting cross-legged across from me.

Dezzie sighed. “I know I need the social development and the art credit,” she said, changing the subject. “I just don’t think Howard Hoffer is the best environment for me. I wish Mom and Dad would let me just do art and music at SMARTS over the summer.”

SMARTS is the camp for gifted kids that Dezzie goes to each year. It’s a way for children with high IQs to spend time with other kids like them, so they won’t feel alone in their genius. Most of the kids that go are between nine and thirteen, but there are a couple who are Dezzie’s age. They take classes (of course), but there’s also a lot of encouragement to do camp-type stuff: arts and crafts, swimming, Topographic Beach Exploration . . . you know, the usual.

For the past three years, we’ve attended SMARTS Family Day—when the “campers” present mini-lectures on their coursework and the moms and dads ooh and ahh. The first year we were there, my parents made me go to a class called Siblings of Gifted Scholars. We had a group leader—an older brother to one of the former campers, who is now in medical school at fifteen. The leader guy was twenty, and he would try to encourage us to talk about our “feelings of jealousy, inadequacy, or rage” toward our brilliant sisters and brothers.

Every so often I wonder what that girl wanted to talk about. Some days, I think I know—that it’s hard, that nothing is normal, that being constantly behind someone else is tiring, especially if they are younger than you. And it may have been nice to hear it out loud.