Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (6 page)

“Does it look okay?” she asked tentatively.

“Are you kidding?” I replied. “It’s groovy! Everybody’s gonna want to play with it! How does it feel?”

“Like I’m gonna tip over. It weighs about three tons.”

“How come you only got one?”

“I have to learn to use them one at a time. If this one goes okay, I’ll get the other one.”

We had barely begun our walk to school when one of the witnesses to the Creek Bridge Incident came pedaling by us on his Schwinn.

“Hey, Pee Stain!”

Stacy stopped. “What did he call you?”

The boy sped up, loath to tangle with Stacy.

“What did he call you?” she asked again.

I reluctantly related my tale of woe. By the time we reached school, steam was coming out of Stacy’s ears. As we approached the playground, she marched straight up to Tim, who took one look at her new arm and laughed.

“Hey, freak,” Tim said loudly to Stacy, “what is that, a robot arm? You a robot now?” He glanced around to soak up the appreciative smiles of those within earshot of his delicious wit.

Without missing a beat, Stacy kicked him in the crotch and he fell to the blacktop. She put her foot on his neck, holding him in place, and slowly opened the claw of her new “hand.”

“Say you’re sorry.” She aimed the claw at his eye, hovering just inches away.

Tim gulped. “Hey, come on,” he stammered breathlessly, obviously in pain. “I was just kiddin’.”

“Say you’re sorry for
pantsing Eric
.” The claw inched closer.

“Why do
you
care?” he replied in a tiny voice. “Come on, you’re choking me.”

“Say it!” Her foot pressed harder, restricting the flow of oxygen until his face began to turn a lovely shade of purple.

Realizing that in his incapacitated and frightened state Tim was no longer a threat, I moved closer and stood with my feet on his ankles, ensuring his inability to move. The requisite crowd began to gather.

“What’s the matter?” I said, emboldened. “Cat got your tongue? Maybe Stacy can remove it for you.”

Stacy’s claw moved toward Tim’s mouth. He held his jaw firmly shut, afraid to say a word, making slight choking sounds as his eyes began to bulge.

I was exhilarated. My long-pent-up anger sent waves of adrenaline coursing through my body. Our control over Tim was complete.

“Maybe I should just pants you so you can see what it’s like,” I taunted.

“Yeah!” Stacy whispered. “Do it!”

Suddenly, the wave of kids parted. Miss Hooperman was running across the playground.

“Stop it! Stop it right now!”

Stacy and I quickly backed away from Tim. Miss Hooperman bent down and helped him up slowly, brushing his clothes off, her face flushed with anger. “What on earth is going on here?”

 

 

MISS HOOPERMAN DID NOT report us to Principal Pullman. She knew Tim’s history and probably figured it evened the score. For the next few weeks, Tim steered clear of both Stacy and me. There were no threats of revenge, no whispered recriminations. Just a glorious, pouting silence.

Our classmates, meanwhile, were in awe of Stacy’s new appendage. No matter what they thought of her personally, they had to admit—a mechanical claw was cool. Every day at recess any number of kids asked for a demonstration, as though she was in charge of an exhibit at the science museum, and Stacy happily obliged.

I’m not sure if it was her possession of this space-age device that raised her stock, or the fact that because more kids were treating her with respect her demeanor softened, but gradually Stacy’s popularity began to grow.

Then, one wintry December morning, she didn’t show up for our walk to school. I called her house. No answer. She must be sick, I reasoned.

As our class finished the Pledge of Allegiance, Miss Hooperman took a seat on the front edge of her desk and smiled sadly.

“I have an announcement. I’m afraid Stacy won’t be coming back to class.”

I was stunned. Kids exchanged quizzical looks as Shelly Thomas raised her hand. “How come?”

“Her parents felt that she would do better in a place designed to accommodate her special needs, so she’s moving to a different school.” Her eyes settled on me. “I know we’ll all miss her. She was quite a girl.”

Slowly, I raised my hand. “Why didn’t she tell anyone?”

“I don’t think she knew,” Miss Hooperman replied. “Her folks thought it was best if they just did it without a lot of fanfare.”

The day passed in a blur of multiplication tables and milk carton art projects. That afternoon, as I walked alone to my crossing guard station at the bridge, I heard a voice behind me.

“You’d better be guarding those pants, Pee Stain.” It was Tim. “Now that One-Arm’s ridin’ the retarded bus, you ain’t got a bodyguard anymore.”

In that moment, my feelings of loss and betrayal, of humiliation and rage, all synthesized into a reaction I could never have anticipated. I whirled around, grabbed my heavy math book with my free hand and pitched it at Tim’s head. The corner struck him squarely in the eye, and he fell to the ground like he’d been shot.

“Owwww!” he cried out. “My eye!”

I rushed over to kneel beside him as he lay on the ground. He was in a fetal position, rocking, his hand covering the right side of his face.

“I hope you go blind,” I whispered in a strangely menacing tone. “Then you’ll know what it’s like.”

I picked up my math book and walked away, down the path to my crossing guard station, never once looking back. I was exhilarated. For the first time, I felt empowered. Self-reliant. And it was intoxicating. Stacy would have been proud.

Sadly, I discovered that the buzz of intoxication eventually wears off. As my shift at the creek bridge neared its end, my newfound confidence began to fade. What had I done? Would there be consequences? What if Tim’s eyeball fell out? Would he have to wear a patch? Could he get a glass eye like Sammy Davis, Jr.?

 

 

TIM HAD A SHINER for a good two weeks, but, thankfully, he retained his vision. And because I went along with the lie that he tripped and hit his eye on a doorknob (the astronomical odds of which seemed to elude our classmates), he developed a newfound respect for me—or at least a grudging acceptance. “Pee Stain Poole” was discarded in favor of a new nickname, “CessPoole,” which was used more as a passing, dismissive greeting than a challenge. And most important, he no longer tried to beat me up. There would be no more pantsing, no more threats of physical annihilation. Just the kind of general disregard that he afforded math quizzes and fat girls.

I hoped that, although I would no longer see Stacy at school every day, she and I could still be friends. Stacy was the one person I trusted enough to consider sharing my special powers with, and I looked forward to one day revealing the spell that had made us friends. But it wasn’t to be. Her family moved in January, and we eventually lost touch as our contact gradually, and inevitably, diminished.

My magic, however, was still going strong. I may have lost the friend I had so diligently conjured, but by standing up for myself and for Stacy, I had discovered the magic of courage.

T
he ominous rumblings had begun weeks earlier, before school had let out for the summer.

Vacation. Arkansas. Fun.

These verbal flashes of horror reverberated through the house as Mother and Dad discussed the details of another potential trip to Fairfield Bay, the resort where they had purchased property the previous year.

A-frame cabins. Pontoon boats. Family togetherness.

“Cut something off,” Val demanded, motioning to my various limbs. “That’ll get us out of it.” She surveyed my body carefully, obviously somewhat concerned about the mess involved. “We’ll need a plastic sheet or something, so you don’t get blood on the shag.”

Her plan actually was a fairly sound one, since these weeklong abductions were plagued with the potential for tragic interactions between Mother and normal people, and were thus far more painful than the loss of any body part; but I had to haggle.

“Why don’t you do it?”

She leaned over and took my ten-year-old face into her hands. “Because I’m olll-der,” she responded slowly, as if speaking to a slightly retarded four-year-old.

Although “Arkansas resort” is, by any reasonable standard, an oxymoron, Val and I actually did enjoy the large freshwater lake and its attendant water sports; but along with those moments of joy and abandon came seven days of being trapped in a foreign environment with a woman for whom unpredictability was highly predictable. Her inclination, for example, to treat the nice men at the marina like serfs in the court of Queen Victoria was mortifying; and it had come back to haunt us more than once, as our pontoon boats mysteriously ran out of gas halfway across the lake.

“I’ve got it!” Val said, snapping her fingers. “We’ll do it in the garage. Then I can just hose it down.” She held her hand up to one side of my head as if to picture me differently. “How about your right ear? You’re not using it, anyway.”

Magic was needed.

I retreated to the rathskeller for a supernatural session. Bedspread securely in place, my arms waving and elephant sleeves billowing in a rush of fabric about my face, I commanded a respite from these potential Arkansas atrocities.

A flash of white light obliterated the basement. As the bedspread’s stringy white fringe came to rest at my sides, I realized that Dad, Val and I had been transported to a stunningly exotic locale—we were standing before the entrance to Walt Disney World, the consummate theme park that had recently opened in Florida. Now
this
was fun.

Photographers snapped our picture as Val and I walked through the gates holding Dad’s hands. It’s important to look modest, I reminded myself, so that the masses don’t resent your glamour and privilege.

Reporters hungrily scribbled our names on pads and questioned why Mother couldn’t be with us.

“She’s recuperating,” Dad explained, “from a fall off a stepladder while she was vacuuming the ceiling tile.” They clucked their tongues knowingly. “She’ll be fine,” he added. “She has a three-day supply of food and we made the vacuum cleaner into a walker.”

Another flash of white light filled the room, and we found ourselves checking into our spectacular suite (Mickey Mouse wallpaper! “It’s a Small World” on Muzak!) at the glamorous Walt Disney World Resort, exhausted from an exhilarating day of rides and attractions experienced thus far by only a select few. We watched
The Wonderful World of Disney
on television with Dad as we ate popcorn in bed. It was heaven.

“What on earth are you doing?!”

I was slammed back into rathskeller reality by the sudden appearance of Mother, who I had not realized had been in the laundry room. She stared at me, mystified.

“I’m . . . uh . . . cold,” I stammered.

“It’s sixty degrees down here!” she barked, as she stood holding two pairs of Keds tennis shoes whose tongues she had just pressed.

“Well, it’s—it’s cool when you’re not moving around,” I stammered, hoping she hadn’t witnessed my carefully rehearsed waving to the paparazzi. “Here, I’m warmer now.” I yanked off the bedspread and hesitantly handed it to her.

“Great. Now I’ll have to wash this.” She held up the Keds. “Like I don’t have better things to do.”

 

 

MY POWERS HAD obviously continued to mature, for before plans could be cemented for our next tragic foray into family getaways, our great-aunt Jinny—a spry, athletic spinster who was our father’s aunt—called collect to invite Val and me to accompany her on one of her weeklong camping trips to Roaring River State Park. Granted, this was no trip to Disney World, but it was that most magical of vacations nonetheless: a Mother-free week.

We only saw Aunt Jinny once or twice a year when we visited our relatives in Kansas City, so we weren’t exactly close; but she sent us each five dollars every birthday and Christmas, which was pretty much all that was required to win our mercenary loyalty. Who knows, we thought, maybe we can squeeze some extra cash out of her.

“The kids will love it!” Aunt Jinny barked to Dad on the phone.

“Boy, Aunt Virginia, I gotta be honest,” Dad responded, “I’m not real sure you’d have a good time with them. They’re not really the outdoorsy types.”

“Oh, nonsense,” she replied. “Once I get ’em out of that pampered city world, they’ll turn into regular Daniel Boones.
You
grew up that way. It’s in their blood.” We nodded enthusiastically.

“Well . . . okay. Here, say hi to Elaine.” He handed Mother the phone. Mother waved her arms, mouthing “No!” as though the handset had suddenly become radioactive and Dad was trying to kill her.

“Oh, sorry,” Dad improvised, “she’s Lemon Pledging the Zenith.” He mumbled his good-byes and hung up the phone.

“You do realize,” Mother said, turning to me, “that you won’t have TV for an entire week. Can you actually survive without
Bewitched
?” she said drolly, glancing at Dad. “I think the jury’s out on that one.”

I nodded furiously, inwardly smiling at the cluelessness of these well-meaning adults. I won’t need my beloved television magic, I thought. I’ll be too busy performing it.

Val and I ran down the hall to her bedroom to celebrate our good fortune, astounded that Mother and Dad had jettisoned the Arkansas trip so willingly. Perhaps, as highly self-involved children, it had never occurred to us that our absence was, for our parents, a glorious holiday in itself.