Three small hands searched an enormous coloring basket in the middle of a squat, bright blue plastic table. A hand began to pull away, closed tight around–
“No! I want the cherry one! Gimme that!”
Misty snatched a fat, red, cherry-scented marker from Stephanie, her right hand neighbor and fellow member of Miss Jennifer’s 1st grade class. She yanked the marker’s cap off with a spastic flourish and held its bare tip very close to her nose. She scrunched her little face, inhaled deeply and sighed, pausing just long enough to peek with a blue, long-lashed, squinty eye at her two tablemates’ faces, one wide-eyed and one thoroughly pissed.
“I loooove cherry. This is my favorite. Only I get to color with this one,” Misty declared in a piping, faint English accent. She wiggled and hummed and shimmied in her foot-tall kiddie chair, waving the marker in loose figure 8s just out of Stephanie’s reach over her Once Upon a Farm coloring book. She began to decorate an apple in a barnyard scene, but quickly shoved the marker back to her nose for another long sniff. With a delighted glance in Stephanie’s direction, she turned the marker downward and slowly, deliberately drew and filled in a crude crimson heart on the back of her delicate, olive-skinned left hand, then gave that a big, sensual whiff too. She was really making a show of things.
Stephanie lunged at her. Misty leapt from her chair and let loose an ear-piercing wail. Miss Jennifer, 28 and in only her second year of elementary education which was proving to be not the walk in the park she anticipated, descended wearily onto the scene. She heard only a few seconds of simultaneous testimony from both parties, and quickly commandeered the marker. “If you can’t share, neither of you can use it. Misty, you know the rules,” she recited and bore the marker away.
The other tablemate, Bobby, wide-eyed and rapt, watched Miss Jennifer return to her desk and open a bottom drawer. He knew she was depositing the marker into a box full of crayons, Yo-Yos, Dora the Explorer dolls, Matchbox cars and other small objects collected under similar circumstances. She thought the box was hidden, but the whole class knew where it was. Half the kids, including himself, often “got back” their confiscated items. She slid the drawer shut, and Bobby turned his attention back to his tablemates. Stephanie was guardedly exploring the coloring bucket again, with anger seeping out of her bleary eyes. Misty had hoarded a handful of random crayons and was telling Stephanie in hissing whispers just where she could stick whatever marker with which she chose to color. Bobby, with soft eyes and short for his age, stared long and hard at the shaken heart on Misty’s hand as she furiously drowned a cartoon chicken in green ink. He absentmindedly colored a tractor wheel.
- – - -
The
“What do you have? Ew, gross, did your mom make that? I bet she did. Gross. Guess what I got. Just guess. It’s better than your lunch. Yours is gross. I got a peanut butter fudge sandwich and chips. What do you have? What’s that? My mom makes me whatever I want. What do you have?”
In the second row from the cafeteria entrance, Bobby, Stephanie and everyone in earshot heard Misty brag like she did pretty much every lunch period. She talked constantly and mostly just picked at her famous sandwiches. Today she was tearing off the crusts, licking the bread clean, and smashing the remains out on the table like cookie dough.
“School lunch? SCHOOL LUNCH? Are you poor? My mom says we’re rich, because my daddy’s the Sultan of Brunei, and he sends us money and jewelry and houses and says I get whatever I want. Shut up, it is true, how come you think I get peanut butter fudge sandwiches every day and not that gross crap you eat. Mommy says he’s not here because he’s got a beautiful country to run and I’m their special secret. I threw my Thermos away but Mommy thinks I lost it, so she gives me Coke in cans. You could have Coke every day too if you were as smart as me.”
Her classmates half-listened and answered questions when asked. After Misty had bloodied that fourth grader’s nose for suggesting her peanut butter and fudge sandwich was actually a runny doo doo sandwich, the kids had learned to play along. “This chip,” she said, holding up a greasy half of a Ruffle, “is for Slowpoke. Slowpoke will love it. He loves me. If I give him food, I’ll make him love me even more and then I’m going to take him so he can live with me and eat fudge. He doesn’t care about you poor people anyways.” Slowpoke was the pet turtle in Miss Jennifer’s classroom. Slowpoke was the only thing beside herself Misty showed continual interest in. The class had watched a cartoon about baby animals loving their mothers because they fed and protected them. So despite warnings, about once a week, she tried to feed the turtle part of her lunch. Miss Jennifer always caught her, but there had been some close calls.
- – - -
During afternoon playtime, Misty snuck to the back of the classroom where Slowpoke scuttled and scratched around in his ten-gallon terrarium. The bottom was covered with a sand island, complete with fake plants, surrounded by a few inches of water. He didn’t flinch or really even blink as Misty removed the tank’s cover, shoved a slender arm in, and poked Slowpoke’s mouth with a potato chip bigger than his whole head. He blinked, and chomped. A huge chunk broke off in his jaws, so big he couldn’t bite down on it. He struggled with it. Misty whispered, “I knew you’d love chips.”
- – - -
Bobby hurtled off the school bus, skipping the bottom two steps, and ran in his house, past Uncle Andrew watching TV in the den, up the stairs straight into his bedroom. He shut the door behind him, tore his backpack off and withdrew his circa-1985, metal He-Man lunchbox. “Take care of this,” Uncle Andrew had warned. “I coulda got a lot of money for that on the Internet.” From under his bed he slid out a shallow, flat Tupperware box. His mom had put her shoes in it at first, but surrendered it to Bobby after he kept dragging it out of her room, saying he wanted to put toys in it. He peeled up the flexible green lid. The box stank and was full of trash. Coke cans, candy wrappers, a Barbie Thermos with dried pizza sauce on it. A purple barrette, a half-colored picture of a horse, the upper right quarter of a spelling test. Carefully, like a curator opening a display case, he unhooked the lunchbox’s latch. Next to his Skeletor Thermos were a crumpled napkin, two jagged fudgy crusts of bread and one fat, red cherry-scented marker. He’d really risked it snatching that one from Miss Jennifer’s desk. Bobby put his face as far into the lunchbox as possible, his forehead and chin resting on the cold metal, and breathed in the smells. He scooped up his treasures and laid them carefully in his box, closed the lid and pushed it back under his bed.
He fell backward, spread-eagle on his bedroom floor. He lay there and thought about Slowpoke. Slowpoke was the Holy Grail, the gold medal, the prize, her favorite thing. He had memorized his shell and feet, wished he was his, wished he was his like everything else she touched or talked about or sneezed on. He would distract Miss Jennifer when she tried to feed him. She never noticed.
Bobby had been upset about getting held back a year, and on the first, his second first, day of the first grade, had pouted silently for a solid three hours, staring at his shoes and ignoring everyone. Who cares about stupid letters and numbers, who cares about colors, who cares about math, who cares about anything. Miss Jennifer had taken notes, watched his sullen face and prepared a letter, to be folded and pinned to his crisp new school shirt, that yes, Mr. Morrison, Bobby does seem to be slower than the others in some areas, and perhaps, as you suggested, another year here with me would do him good, when her folding was interrupted by a staccato rap on the frame of her open classroom door. She, Bobby, and 24 other heads looked up and saw the principal, Mrs. Westell, leading by the hand a tanned stranger in an orange sundress.
“Students, this is Misty–say hello–she will be joining you this year, she and her mommy and daddy– her mommy just moved here from
Bobby could say with surprising accuracy that Misty had never talked to him again, not even to ridicule his sandwich. He wasn’t too worried about that. He loved her so purely and so absolutely that sometimes he forgot she could even see him. Sometimes he’d stare at her for so long on the playground, dreaming up ways to smuggle home the monkey bar she’d just hung from, that kids would wave their hands back and forth in front of him and knock on his skull. They’d snicker and call him retarded or Blobby Bobby, which didn’t make sense but still hurt his feelings. The meaner ones would slap him or trip him in the hallway when his guard was down, let down not out of stupidity but by Misty’s flogger whip ponytail undulating in front of him in the water fountain line.
He’d started out darting looks at her back and had just recently worked up to scavenging her trash. He liked having part of her at home, using her leftovers to conjure her face in his mind like a medium using old clothes to summon a dead man’s spirit. Before, Bobby’s love for Misty was so pent up it almost hurt him. Now that he was a collector, he had reason, method, a purpose.
——–
Someone knocked, then slowly opened Bobby’s door.
“Hey there, little man. You dead?,” Bobby looked up at Uncle Andrew leaning against the doorway.
“Noooooo,” Bobby giggled in response. He sat up and curled into a ball.
“Coulda fooled me. Your room smells like you’re dead,” Andrew said. He swooped into the room, scooped Bobby up, held him high and dropped him onto the bed, both laughing. Andrew was visiting from
“Nothin’.”
“Nothin’? Not even dreaming? Not even thinking?”
“Nooo, I was thinking.” Bobby buried his face in his pillow and giggled again.
“Ohhhhh. What were you thinking about? Cartoons? Baseball? I like to think about baseball.”
“Noooo….”
“No? OK, I’ll guess again. Unicorns. Monsters. No? OK….how…about…girls?” Andrew sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged at the pillow. Bobby just giggled more and held the pillow tighter around his face.
“Uh huh, I get it. You got a crush, huh! What’s her name? What’s she look like? You think she’s got a sister?” More giggles.
“Alright, Mr. Secret. Well, does she like you?” Bobby stopped giggling and lifted his head. He looked at Andrew with suddenly sad, dark eyes. “I dunno.”
“You dunno? Why not?”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“Won’t talk to you?” Andrew repeated. “Well, do you talk to her?” Bobby’s eyes got wide.
“Ohhhh, no. Never.” Bobby started squirming a little.
“Well, dude, you gotta talk to her. Make her notice you. Give her a present or somethin’.”
“I can’t. She’s rich, her dad’s the Sultan of Brunei and she says she gets whatever she wants.”
“The sultan of what? Please. Ok, well, look, she can’t have everything. Give her something special, something only you could give her. Do you know what kind of stuff she likes? Draw her a picture or something. Girls love that stuff.”
Bobby’s brow wrinkled up. “Well, little man, I gotta go. Let me know how it goes with your little friend. And find out if she’s got a sister.” Uncle Andrew tousled Bobby’s hair like he’d seen older brothers do on TV. As he walked out, Bobby’s face relaxed and a little smile perked up. He knew just the thing.
- – - – -
Two o’clock, right before school let out, was Slowpoke’s official feeding time. The class herded to the back of the room, where the turtle’s terrarium sat on a special desk. Miss Jennifer stood against the wall next to the tank, facing the kids. Misty, as usual, elbowed her way to the front of the group, proclaiming Slowpoke only wanted to see her anyways. Bobby usually kept to the back of the crowd, but today he also jostled his way up. He had an escape route to plan. The two were shoulder to shoulder over the tank. Misty slapped both hands down on its top and hollered, “Wake up, Slowpoke! Time for your turtle bites!” He didn’t move. He just lay half in and out of his water, chin and tiny clawed feet resting against the sand. Miss Jennifer lifted the tank’s grate aside and sprinkled special pet-store turtle food into the pool. “Come on Slowpoke, lunch time,” she said carefully. Still nothing. “Slowpoke! Aren’t you hungry? You don’t like turtle bites? You want Ruffles, don’t you? See, he likes my food!” Misty shouted. Miss Jennifer shot Misty a look. “When did you feed him Ruffles, Misty? You know he doesn’t get people food.”
“Yesterday, and he loved it. He ate the whole thing and now he doesn’t like your crappy food. I knew he wanted to live with me!” Misty looked around, triumphantly. Miss Jennifer bent down, looked closer, and lifted Slowpoke out of the tank. His head and limbs stuck straight out, like a green and brown starfish poking out of the holes in his shell. She gasped and dropped him, hard. He landed on the island with a solid thud. Flustered, and realizing the kids noticed, she picked him back up and cradled him in her hand, above the children’s heads. For a few long moments, she stared at the kids. “Guys,” she started, “Slowpoke has…gone to turtle heav–”
The sentence was drowned out by one sob, 25 voices strong. Oh hell, she thought, OK OK OK… “OK, calm down, everyone. I know this is very sad. We will all miss Slowpoke very much but he’s gone to little turtle heaven, where he’ll be very happy,” she said. The children, mostly, were crying and wiping their eyes with their shirts. Bobby and Misty both looked shocked, crushed, but neither cried.
“We’ll give Slowpoke a special funeral,” Miss Jennifer offered. “Tomorrow morning we’ll skip math”–some sniffles stopped–”and we’ll take Slowpoke to the playground and bury him by the fence, OK?”
“No math?” one red-eyed boy asked.
“No math,” Miss Jennifer promised.
“NO! Slowpoke is my turtle!” Misty shouted. “You can’t bury him!” Now she was starting to cry.
“Misty,” Miss Jennifer slid the name through her teeth. “Slowpoke was the class turtle, he belonged to everyone. And you clearly ki–he was our turtle, OK, and he needs to be buried where we can all visit him.”
“No! I want him!” Misty was hysterical now, sobbing. Bobby’s body had gone cold. He stared back and forth between Slowpoke and Misty, wide-eyed. His mind was reeling. What was he going to do now.
“Misty, we just can’t do that,” Miss Jennifer said. “We are going to keep him here. But today let’s let Slowpoke sleep one more night in his home, OK? Everyone be good and let Slowpoke have a good night’s sleep at home. Don’t bother his tank, OK?” A lot of heads nodded. She gently laid the turtle back down in his terrarium and patted him on the head. “Everyone, let’s go back to our seats and be quiet for Slowpoke until the bell rings.”
The children sulked back to their seats. Miss Jennifer, furious, sat down and began shooting off a letter to Misty’s mother.
Bobby and Misty both spent the next fifteen minutes nervously glancing backward at the terrarium. When the dismissal bell rang, everyone sprang up in miniature chaos, running from cubby hole to desk to hallway like hopping wind-up birds circling on a street vendor’s spread carpet, grabbing lunchboxes and backpacks and hair and lots of other things.
- – - – -
One small hand clutched a lunchbox, held tight against a belly and a pounding heart, in the last seat on the bus. Keep the box steady. The school bus careened around corners and into potholes, knocking everyone into each other. Had to be careful. The lid cracked open just a little bit, and a marker angled in. Not the cherry one she loved, but this one would do. A red heart was quickly drawn on Slowpoke’s shell. Perfect. It’s beautiful. The lid snapped shut. The lunchbox had to be still. With no Thermos in there, Slowpoke had a lot of room to slide around.
“I know you loved me best,” Misty whispered.
