Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (24 page)

Doreen Hooper, who sat in front of me, raised her hand.

“You want us to dig up somebody who’s dead?”

Miss Plotnick sighed. “No, dear. I want you each to bring in some small artifacts from home that represent the members of your family. You know, pictures, little trinkets, that kind of thing. I’m going to bring in soil, and we’ll ‘bury’ them in the dirt for your classmates to uncover and decipher. This will help us create a microcosm of American society.”

Everyone moaned.

“Eric, your father works for McDonnell-Douglas, doesn’t he? Maybe you could bring in a picture of an airliner. That sort of thing.”

Doreen raised her hand again.

“My father owns a car dealership,” she announced as though this were news to anyone there. “Should I bring in the keys for a new Chevrolet?”

Doreen was a founding member of the “Elites”—those popular students who were destined to go on to be cheerleaders and quarterbacks in high school (thus, I imagined, assuring them a lifetime of acclaim). She was beautiful, dumb as a stump, and so popular she probably could have bombed the school and gotten off with detention. She wore so much Charlie perfume that my stomach was on evacuation alert on a daily basis; but since she had never participated in the Daily Degradathon, I kept a small bottle of Pepto-Bismol handy in a courageous show of team spirit.

“Only things you can spare, dear,” Miss Plotnick replied, “since they’ll be covered with dirt for a while.”

“Wonder if we could cover
her
with dirt,” Black Kenny whispered, referring to Miss Plotnick. “It’d make it a whole lot easier on our eyes.”

Several kids nervously laughed, afraid not to, but worried, since Black Kenny’s volume control was routinely set on 8. Miss Plotnick glanced up, yet didn’t appear to hear him, and he sat back with a satisfied smile.

You’re not ugly, I thought, gazing at Miss P. You’re just like Barbra Streisand—you have a special beauty that stupid bullies aren’t equipped to appreciate.

Doreen turned around to me. “Hey, Eric.”

I was stunned. We had sat six inches apart for months, yet I was certain that Doreen was unaware of my existence, since she had never, until now, acknowledged it.

“Would you help me think of some things I could use for my brother? He’s like you.”

Doreen Hooper was talking to me. Doreen Hooper wanted my help!

Enthralled by this sudden and unwarranted personalattention, I spent several glorious minutes after the bell conferring with her about her brother, who drew sketches of women in evening gowns and whom she had repeatedly caught performing numbers from the musical
Cabaret
. What this had to do with me was a mystery, but no matter. I was talking to an Elite—and people saw me.

I sagely suggested a fabric swatch (for the sketches) or a hairbrush (for the microphone). Doreen thanked me and smiled. I could not believe my good fortune.

I fairly floated out of the classroom, and spent the next several afternoons carefully assembling my archaeology with the kind of items that might impress both a teacher and a certain Elite—while avoiding the ridicule of everyone else. For Dad, I had a photo of an F-15 jet fighter and a bottle of Old Spice cologne. For Val, a Grand Funk Railroad 45 and a mood ring. For Mother, a brand-new can of Comet and a wine list.

I approached Archaeology Day with a combination of anticipation and trepidation, since this class could, given my luck, go either way. I held my bag tightly as I marched into the trailer, quickly scanning the room for Willy and Black Kenny, both of whom were fortunately busy with their own accoutrements and could not be bothered, today, with destroying mine.

I took a deep breath and feigned an air of casual confidence. “Hey, Dor,” I said loudly to Doreen as I sat down, using the nickname I had heard her fellow Elites use, “did you find the stuff for your brother?”

“What?” she said without turning around, busy evaluating her lip gloss with a compact mirror. “Oh. No,” she said, snapping the compact shut. “I just did my parents.”

Perhaps the fabric swatch was too complicated, I thought. I should have given her something easier, like a top hat or the
Cabaret
soundtrack—things everyone has.

Miss Plotnick, who was smoothing out the dirt in a large metal tub on her desk, removed her gardening gloves and clapped her hands.

“Okay, class, let’s get started. As you bring your items up, I’ll select one to put in the tub for this first round. Then I’ll mix them up so that they’ll be chosen randomly, and we’ll discuss what that item signifies.”

Row by row, we deposited trinkets in the tub. Miss Plotnick selected the small bottle of Old Spice cologne as my first item (to my dismay, since I had mentally rehearsed an elaborate explanation for the F-15 photo), carefully sifting it in with the other items in the tub. She then began to choose students one by one to pull an article from the tub, as we discussed whose parent or grandparent or newly discovered bastard sibling the item belonged to and what it meant for society as a whole.

Doreen pulled out a photo of a small black child.

“I’m gonna say”—she surveyed the room exhaustively, although we only had one black kid in the class—“that this is . . . Black Kenny’s brother.” She exhibited a dazzling smile of accomplishment.

“We don’t refer to people by their color, Doreen,” Miss Plotnick said sternly. “That’s what I want us to discuss. Labels marginalize us. How would you like it if we called you ‘White Doreen’?”

“Go for it,” Doreen said. “I’m not ashamed.”

“Great job, Dor,” I whispered collegially. Doreen smiled.

As Miss Plotnick labored to explain the concept of racial inequality, she began to frown and wrinkle her nose. Doreen and I were, of course, clueless to what she was smelling, since Doreen’s Charlie precluded the detection of any other scent within a five-mile radius.

“What
is
that?” Miss Plotnick finally muttered aloud, moving the items around.

Suddenly she gasped. “Oh, good heavens!”

Apparently, I had failed to realize that the stopper in the bottle of Dad’s Old Spice cologne was loose; and as she had sifted through the items, the cologne had tipped over, slowly turning the tub of photos and other paraphernalia into a fragrantly spicy stew.

“Someone run to the bathrooms and grab some paper towels!”

Four or five kids, seizing on this opportunity to be sprung from class, dashed out the door as she dug through the pile.

“Whose was this?” Miss Plotnick demanded, holding up the bottle. “It leaked all over everything!”

Everyone gasped. Various kids dashed up to the front to pull their items out of the muddy mess as Miss Plotnick grabbed a handkerchief from her purse and attempted to clean them.

“Well?!”

Slowly, I raised my hand.

Willy snorted. “Retard!” he hollered as the girls around him laughed (as attractively as possible).

Doreen turned around to me. “If you messed up those car keys,” she shouted, “you just bought yourself a Monte Carlo!”

Miss Plotnick sighed as she attempted to salvage various items. “It’s not your fault, Eric. I put the bottle in there. I guess I should have checked it more closely.”

“Yeah, he was just trying to make Plotnick feel at home,” Black Kenny stage-whispered from the back row as two of the missing kids came running back in with paper towels. “Don’t all toads like swamps?”

Even with one operable ear, I found this hard to miss. Fortunately, Miss Plotnick seemed to be so consumed with the circle of kids snatching muddy objects and shrieking that their mothers were going to kill them that she was oblivious to what came next.

“So,” Black Kenny announced with fanfare, as though an actual 100-watt bulb had lit up over his head at his latest thought, “I wonder how
Frogface
likes her swamp?”

The creation of nicknames for teachers was, of course, a popular and beloved pastime, and many others had names almost as insulting—“Hitler,” “Caveman,” “Whiskey Pete”—but they were mean teachers who deserved their labels. Miss Plotnick was nice. And she couldn’t help her looks.

Miss Plotnick seemed pained. Obviously, I had ruined Archaeology Day.

It was no longer a question as to which way fifth period would go. My classmates were pissed at me. Doreen thought I was an idiot. And my folly had given rise to a nickname for which I felt at least partially responsible.

As I rode the bus home to a derisive refrain of “Way to go, CessPoole,” from several female members of Willy’s Greek chorus, I wished I were eight again. Young enough to believe in magic. Young enough to think I could change my world. But I was a teenager now, older and wiser about the bleak realities of life.

I was a bigger pariah than ever. And Miss Plotnick was now, simply, Frogface.

 

 

“DID YOU HEAR? ” Black Kenny whispered a couple of weeks later. “Frogface is getting a new lily pad!” The nickname had swept the class like wildfire, and nearly every day since its inception, someone had come in with a new bon mot that they had slaved over the night before in lieu of actual homework.

Fortunately, Miss Plotnick seemed to have been none the wiser.

At least, until now.

Doreen had not spoken to me since the archaeology incident. Nor had anyone else, of course, with the exception of Willy, who had stopped calling me “CessPoole” and shifted to the simpler and more conversationally economical “’ Tard”; and Black Kenny, who thoughtfully took the time to inform me that by getting Old Spice on the picture of his baby brother, I was living on borrowed time.

“This week, class,” Miss Plotnick began, “we’re going to pretend that there’s been a nuclear war. Won’t that be fun?”

“Can we pick who gets to die?” Black Kenny shouted. “I nominate CessPoole.”

The class erupted in laughs—led, to my horror, by Doreen—as Miss Plotnick grabbed Kenny by the collar to haul him to the principal’s office.

Yet more painful than the certain death that awaited me at Black Kenny’s hands was my swift and bloodcurdling fall from Elite grace. For one brief, shining moment, I had been a friend of Doreen Hooper’s. I had been Almost Popular.

“God,” Doreen said to Linda, an Elite who sat next to her, as we awaited Miss P’s return, “she has
no
sense of humor.”

“Zero,”
I said, craning my neck toward them, desperate to regain my Slightly Elite status, forgetting that Kenny’s joke involved my untimely demise. “She just doesn’t get it.” I laughed conspiratorially, unaware that the trailer door had opened. “But then,” I added, “what would you expect from a Frogface? Ribbit!”

I suddenly realized that the room was quiet. And that Miss Plotnick was standing next to me.

“What did you call me?”

I shrunk back, horrified. “Oh, uh, n-n-nothing. I was just joking around.”

“What. Did. You. Call me.”

I looked down. “Frogface.”

Miss Plotnick stood over me for a moment. The room was crackling with anticipation, both of Miss P’s reaction and the terms of what would doubtless be a singularly devastating punishment.

The only time I had been sent to the principal’s office was the previous year, for chewing gum in class, and it had resulted in three days of after-school imprisonment with a group of kids who were destined to consider Leavenworth just a rest stop on the freeway to Folsom. I had learned from that experience why criminals—surrounded by bad influences while incarcerated—often remained criminals, and wondered if, this time, I would be unable to resist the forces of evil, and would be knocking over dry cleaners by the time I got out.

But even greater than my concern for the punishment that awaited me was my mortification that I had hurt someone so deeply. Particularly someone who had been so kind to me.

I was afraid to look up at Miss Plotnick, so I simply stared down at the cheap blond wood grain of the desktop and awaited her cold, harsh words.

But there were none. She was obviously angry, but she returned to her desk and ordered us to read aloud, one at a time, from our textbook, while she sat gazing down at her teacher’s manual with a blank, faraway expression.

 

 

MISS PLOTNICK NEVER disciplined me, and in the weeks following my Frogface faux pas, my popularity began to grow. My classmates saw me as a renegade, a loose cannon, someone to be respected and feared. I had insulted a teacher to her face and gotten away with it. I was Hazelwood’s own Dirty Harry. Okay, perhaps not Dirty Harry, but a détente had definitely set in. Willy and his admirers ignored me. Black Kenny, having gotten wind of my bravado while in detention, had magnanimously called off the hit. Even Doreen began acknowledging my existence again.

Of course, the pressure was on to repeat my behavior, to prove that I was a bona fide rebel. But hadn’t I done enough damage? Although Miss Plotnick had not sent me to the principal’s office, she wasn’t speaking to me, either, and I felt her pain grow a bit each day. The “Frogface” nickname had taken on a life of its own, in passed notes and quiet whispers and jokes told outside the trailer. She seemed to be aware of the growing buzz and, slowly but surely, was withdrawing into herself. Her lessons had mutated into more book readings and pop quizzes, the standard stuff teachers seemed to favor to keep us busy while they read Harlequin romance novels. She rarely smiled. She never called on me.

I desperately wished that I could magically make it all better. But I couldn’t. God might have given me a momentary reprieve with my sister, but the days of waving my arms and completely changing my destiny were gone.

 

 

AS MY POPULARITY continued to swell, the conflict inside me grew worse.

I attempted to maintain my anarchist image by nicknaming my geometry teacher “Bonehead Brown.” A heavyset, middle-aged man with a blond crew cut and a distinct distaste for kids, Mr. Brown spent most of his time giving us tests, the answers for which we were allowed to check—on the honor system—against his teacher’s manual, which he left open on his desk. There was, naturally, no such thing as an honor system among eighth-graders, and the class spawned an astonishing number of A students, which was fine by Bonehead, since he never wanted to see us again, anyway.