The Center of Everything (22 page)

The other teachers don’t think Mr. Goldman is adorable, though, I know. My locker is just around the corner from the coffee machine in the teachers’ lounge, and I can hear what they are saying even when the door is shut. They liked him okay at first, but now they’re mad because they think he balks. This is the word they use. He balked about parent-teacher night, because it was scheduled on a day that was a holiday for him but not for us, and they had to reschedule it.

“I had a sitter lined up,” Mrs. Hansen told Dr. Queen. “If he’s going to balk about every special holiday, this is going to be a pain in the ass.”

Mr. Goldman also balked about Christmas, about how the proposed title for the annual winter musical was “Christmas Around the World.” I heard him balk about this myself, making photocopies in the teachers’ lounge.

“Ignoring the fact that the title isn’t exactly inclusive,” he said—and though I couldn’t see him, I imagined his hands were probably moving—“it’s also pretty inaccurate, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh Jake,” Mrs. Hansen said. “We’ve done it that way for years. You don’t have to be so careful with these kids. Everybody celebrates Christmas out here.”

“Well,” Mr. Goldman had said, stacking his photocopies. “I’m here now.”

No one said anything until after he left. He smiled quickly at me as he passed my locker, shutting the door to the teachers’ lounge.

“Give me a break,” Mrs. Hansen said. “He’s too sensitive. Nobody’s burning crosses.”

They wait until he leaves the teachers’ lounge to say things like this. They are nice to his face, and he is nice to theirs. With the other teacher no one likes, Ms. Jenkins, nobody bothers pretending.

Ms. Jenkins is different from the other teachers in a lot of ways. She is maybe fifty, but she isn’t married, and she doesn’t have any children. All the other teachers eat at one lunch table together, even Mr. Goldman, but Ms. Jenkins sits by herself. I don’t know who started this. Maybe they won’t sit with her, or maybe she won’t sit with them. She does not buy hot lunch, but brings a salad in a Tupperware container in a cloth bag that says
JUST BAG IT
!, and while she eats she reads magazines that don’t have any pictures. She has a floor-to-ceiling poster of Mr. Spock on her door. She is a vegetarian. Also, she is very tall, and does not wear makeup. She scratches her head when she talks, and her hair stays in the direction that she scratched it, sometimes sticking straight up because of static electricity, even when everyone else’s hair is fine.

I like her, though. She hands back my lab reports with smiley faces drawn in red ink with words like “Impressive!” and “Quite good!” across the top. She has colorful posters of extinct and endangered animals along one wall of her classroom, and whenever an animal or insect or bird gets taken off the endangered species list, she brings a bag of Snickers to class. Another wall is covered with Far Side comics, and if you finish your test early, you get to go over and read them until the bell rings.

But the best part of Ms. Jenkins’s room is the beehive. She made it herself. It’s just a plastic container with a tube that leads directly to a sealed-off window, so the bees can go in and out as they please. But the plastic is see-through, so we can watch them when they bring back their honey in round balls they carry with their feet. When they come back into the tube from outside, sometimes they stop where they are and spin in circles. It looks like they are dancing, or maybe confused, but Ms. Jenkins says really they are communicating with one another, telling one another where the good flowers are. Two circles to the right means one thing; three circles to the left means another. If you want extra credit, you’re allowed to stay in during lunch and watch them, taking notes on which way they turn.

I do this sometimes. I don’t need the extra credit, but I think it’s amazing, watching the bees. They really do spin in circles the way Ms. Jenkins says, telling one another things, and it’s like watching something secret. I look at bees more carefully now when I see them outside, even when I see just one, resting on a flower. All my life, I’ve seen bees buzz around, and I never really thought they knew where they were going, but apparently they do.

Deena and I sit at her grandmother’s creaky kitchen table, newspapers spread out beneath our pumpkins and carving knives, careful not to make too much noise. We had to buy our pumpkins at the Kwikshop, and it wasn’t the greatest selection. My pumpkin is bad, but Deena’s is worse. It has a brown scar on one side, the other side is covered with some kind of fungus. She squinted at it for a while in the Kwikshop, tracing the moldy spot with her finger.

“I’ll make it the mouth,” she said.

Deena’s good at things like this. Art is the only class she likes. For the pottery unit, we each had to make a vase in the shape of an animal, and Deena made a baby bird, its beak stretched up and opened wide. She had spent hours texturizing the wings with a No. 2 pencil, and by the time she finished, it looked as if a real baby bird had survived the kiln and was still waiting to be fed, its downy wings small and unfolded.

Mrs. Toss had carried Deena’s bird slowly around the room, cradled in her hands. “Isn’t it lovely?” she asked us. “Isn’t it?”

I had tried to make a swan, with a long, thin neck, but I made the neck too long, and the head fell off in the kiln. Mine was the only animal without a head, and I got a D–. My mother took it out of the garbage and put it on her dresser, and now she keeps safety pins in it.

“I think it’s nice,” my mother told me, not even cracking a smile. “I like it.”

I watch Deena draw on her pumpkin with a ballpoint pen. The swirling lines she’s making don’t look like anything yet, but I know they will. She never messes up.

“You’re so good at things like this,” I tell her.

She looks up quickly, like I have surprised her. “No,” she says. “Not really. Did I miss anything in English?”

“Nope. We all just sat around. It’s just not English without you.”

She squeezes a pumpkin seed between her finger and thumb, hitting me on the cheek. “Very funny. What did I miss?”

I shrug. “You’ve missed a lot. We’re on the third act of
Othello
. You’re going to have a hard time with it, trying to read it by yourself.”

She squints at her pumpkin. “I know. I know.”

I cut into my pumpkin and tell her that she should come to English, not just because she has to but because sometimes it’s fun. Mr. Adams jumped up on his desk today, holding a yardstick up like a sword, pretending to be Othello.
“Put down your swords or the dew will rust them!”
he had yelled, jumping off his desk, both of his feet hitting the floor at the same time.

Deena rolls her eyes. “Whoopity-do.”

I say nothing, looking down at the jagged line I am cutting into my pumpkin. She has been doing this lately, talking to me like I am a little kid, instead of the same age that she is, as if everything I think is interesting is actually kind of dumb. I don’t know if she’s doing it on purpose or not. I finish the circle on top of my pumpkin and try to pull it off. The green stub twists off in my hand.

“Well, what’s so great about whatever you and Travis do all day?”

She sets her knife down and looks at me, a slight smile on her glossy lips. She is trying not to laugh. “You really don’t know?”

“No.” I wipe my hands on the knees of my jeans. “I really don’t know.”

She leans in close, her eyes on mine. “We’re having sex, silly goose.” She laughs her goofy laugh, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. “That’s what we do all day. That’s what’s so great.”

I stop cutting, my knife stuck into my pumpkin where the nose should be. I’m not ready for how much this hurts me. I’ve gotten used to seeing them together by now, his arm around her waist when we walk back from the bus stop, their feet wrapped around each other’s under the table in the cafeteria. But now, hearing this, it’s like I just swallowed a needle and can feel it moving down my throat, a long, slow, and sharp descent.

“Sex? Like real sex?”

“Shh!” She nods in the direction of her grandmother’s door. “If my grandmother hears you, she’ll come out and call me a little
schlampe
.” She picks up her knife again.

“Every time you skip, that’s what you’re doing?”

She laughs again. “Mmm. Not every single time. Sometimes we do it, and sometimes we just go out to Dairy Queen and he buys me a Mr. Misty.” She moves her eyebrows up and down. “Either way, I come out a winner.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where do you do it?”

I hear her talking as if I am not really in the room with her, just watching her on television. Mostly in Ed’s van, she says. And no, not with Ed in it. Once in her bedroom, her grandmother sleeping in the next room. “We were
very quiet
,” she says, giving me a knowing look, even though we both know I don’t know anything. I imagine them lying together under Deena’s pink sheets, Deena with a finger pressed against her lips like a librarian. The needle is in my chest now, turning slowly.

“Don’t look at me like that, Evelyn.”

“Like what?”

“Like you think I’m a terrible person.”

“I don’t.” This is a lie. You’re not supposed to have sex before you’re married. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

She takes her pumpkin off the table and cradles it in her arms, making quick, short jabs into its skin. “What’s so weird about it?”

“Because. Because, for one, you’re only fourteen.”

“And?”

“And you could get pregnant.”

“I’m on the pill.” She glances up at me. “Travis and I went to the clinic together, for your information. You know, sometimes you act like you think I’m stupid, Evelyn.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” Another lie. “But you could get a disease. You could get AIDS.”

She snorts once, hard and fast. “We’re not homosexuals, Evelyn. I’m sure.”

But I’ve heard stories. Patty Pollo said her cousin had a friend who went down to Fort Lauderdale for spring break and met a man who was so nice to her she couldn’t believe it. She was a virgin, but she had sex with him because she knew she loved him right away. When she woke up the next morning he was gone, but he had taken her red lipstick and written on the bathroom mirror
WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF AIDS
.

I remind Deena of this story. She laughs again.

“Do you really think Travis is going to do that to me?” Her half-moon eyebrows stay raised, amused. “We’re very careful. Don’t worry. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

I frown, watching her carve. This doesn’t seem exactly fair. “What’s it like?”

“What do you mean?”

I stare at her, annoyed.

“I can’t really explain it,” she says. “It’s one of those things that you can’t explain.”

“Try.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Did it hurt?”

She shakes her head. “Not as much as everyone makes it out to. Getting my ears pierced hurt more. I think they just tell you that to scare you.” She wags the knife in her hand like she is Groucho Marx holding a cigar. “I know I’m hooked.”

Her pumpkin is already amazing. The mouth she has cut is wrinkled and menacing, baring fangs instead of teeth, small, swirling lines spiraling beneath it to look like a beard. I tried to make lines swirl out of the circle-shaped mouth on my pumpkin, but all the cuts ran together, and now it’s just one big hole, too big to be any reasonable facial feature.

She looks up at me. “What else do you want to know?”

“How long does it take?”

She laughs again. Everything is funny now, apparently. “A little longer every time.” She picks up her pumpkin. “It’s like this, Evelyn. I’ll show you.” She holds the pumpkin in front of her, pushing its grinning mouth against her neck and chin. “Oh, Travis,” she whispers, rolling her eyes back, shutting them. “Your head is so…orange and round…and your stem! Oh, your stem! Oh Travis!” She arches her back, holding the pumpkin close to her throat.

I look away. “You’re a weirdo, Deena.”

She smiles and puts the pumpkin down. “You’re the one who asked.”

When we are both finished, she gets candles from her grandmother’s nativity scene, packed away in a box in the closet. With the lights out and a lit candle behind its eyes, Deena’s jack-o’-lantern looks like a real person. The eyes she made are wide, asymmetrical, curvy lines radiating outward so they look like seeing suns. Mine is not as good as hers, but still, the candle helps. The jagged triangles turn into shining eyes above a smirking mouth.

We sit in the darkness, silently watching them, their faces flickering light and darkness around the room.

thirteen

R
ONALD
R
EAGAN IS IN A
lot of trouble.

Even when he got shot, he was making jokes, telling the doctors he hoped they were Republicans and telling Nancy sorry he forgot to duck. But now he stands in front of a blue curtain and behind too many microphones, his face white, his voice shaking.

“Listen,” he says. “We did not,
did not,
trade arms for hostages.”

But now it looks like maybe they did. When the reporters ask him questions about the money from Iran going to the Contras in Nicaragua, he looks like he is mad at them for asking, and also like he just remembered he left his keys locked in his car with the engine running. Oliver North is a Marine, and he says he would stand on his head if the president asked him to because that’s how much he loves this country. But nobody asked him to stand on his head. Somebody asked him to get money to the Contras in Nicaragua, even though Congress said not to, and he did it. He found a way. Maybe Ronald Reagan asked him, but maybe not. If he did, he’s in trouble.

Deena says Oliver North looks like Mel Gibson, but my mother says really, that isn’t the point. She leaves the news on when she feeds Samuel his dinner in the front room, watching reporters yell questions to Ronald Reagan as he walks from the White House to his helicopter. He waves and cups his hand over his ear like he can’t hear their questions because the helicopter is too loud, but he keeps walking, and you can tell that really, he just doesn’t want to hear them.

My mother is happy and mad about this at the same time. “Now who’s the cheater, Ronnie?” she says, eyes glittering. “Tell me who the liar is now.”

But I feel bad for Ronald Reagan. When I look at his face and hear his voice, I can see in his heart that he really is trying to be a good person. My mother says that’s because he’s an actor, but I think it’s real. When he says “God bless America,” I think he means it so much that in some ways, he is almost crazy, like maybe in his mind he sees a ray of light coming down from the sky, shining down on America and no one else, just because he loves it so much. So then he would have to lie and cheat to save Texas from the Communists, and he would still be as good as Moses, smiting down the Midianites, even the little children. It gets confusing, because that’s why he hates the Communists in the first place. Because they lie and cheat. But if America is really blessed, then it’s different for us.

I’m sure God loves people in Nicaragua, almost as much as he loves us. But it would be a bad thing if the Communists came to Texas, so maybe some of the Nicaraguans have to die to keep that from happening.

But I probably wouldn’t think that way if I lived in Nicaragua.

The reason Travis and Deena don’t get in trouble for missing so much class is because the school spent five thousand dollars on a computerized attendance system this year. The teachers said it was worth every penny, because now all they have to do is mark “absent” by your name on the slip that goes to the office, and the computer automatically calls your house. The computer called my house one day, when I really was sick. My mother, thinking it was a person she was talking to, said, “I know. She’s right here. She’s sick,” getting madder and madder before she figured out she was talking to a machine.

But Deena’s grandmother doesn’t hear very well anymore, so Deena just turns down the volume of the ringer on the phone before she leaves for school in the morning. She tested it a few times, calling from the pay phone at the Wendy’s across the street from the high school. If nobody answers the phone when the computer calls, it sends a letter right to your house, but Deena brings in the mail for her grandmother every day, so that’s not a problem, at least for now.

The attendance policy at Kerrville High says that you are allowed to miss thirteen days of each class each semester. You get thirteen sick days, no questions asked, whether you are sick for real or just sick of school. It sounds like a lot, but if you go over thirteen, you fail that semester, no matter what, even if you get pneumonia and are really about to die. But Travis figured out that the computer can only count: it can’t tell if you miss different classes on different days. So really you can miss thirteen gyms, thirteen algebras, thirteen biologies—and they don’t have to be on the same day. Since thirteen free sick days each semester mean twenty-six free sick days each year, Travis says he and Deena can get away with never going to a full day of school for almost the entire year without ever getting in trouble with anybody but the computer.

So really, two years of freshman algebra taught him something after all.

But Mr. Goldman is catching on, and he’s starting to balk. “Where are they?” he asks, looking at me. The dark eyebrows lower, and I know he knows I know. He’s figured out that I’m the one turning in their homework, all of it done in Travis’s handwriting.

“I don’t know,” I say. But I do, of course. They are either at Dairy Queen, or worse. Either way, Deena comes out a winner.

Mr. Goldman doesn’t like this answer, and he keeps looking at me, pulling on his red tie. “Do their parents know how much they miss?” he asks. “What’s going on here?”

Mr. Sellers cuts in to rescue me. “Mr. Goldman,” he says, not even looking up from his book, “let us not bother the industrious Miss Bucknow with the whereabouts of her less industrious peers. If they choose to miss, they choose to miss. Their parents have been duly informed. Life, and class, will go on without them. We should focus on teaching the students who are actually
here
.”

But just then, just as he’s saying this, the door opens and Deena shuffles in, smiling at Mr. Goldman, her hair wet from the snow. “Sorry,” she says, like she really means it. “My watch broke.”

Mr. Goldman frowns, not just at Deena, but at Mr. Sellers too. “I already marked you absent and sent the sheet to the office,” he says. “You have to be here on time.”

“Yes sir,” she says, looking back at him, very seriously, until he turns around.

Mr. Goldman goes back to the chalkboard, telling us that it isn’t so important that we memorize the quadratic formula, but when we see it written down, we should be able to recognize it for what it is and plug the right numbers into the right spaces. But if you do want to memorize it, he says, it helps to know that you can sing it to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” And of course he does this for us, his voice low, straining on the high notes. This is what he is doing when all of a sudden he looks out the window and freezes, the chalk in his hand resting against the board.

We turn around, all of us. Outside, just across the street, Travis and Ed Schwebbe are walking slowly, their hoods pulled up over their heads and their hands in their pockets.

“Hold on for a minute,” Mr. Goldman says, setting down the chalk. “I’ll be right back.”

Ray Watley runs to the window the moment Mr. Goldman leaves. Deena gets up next, and then we all do. Mr. Sellers tells us to sit back down, but we don’t care about him anymore. Already we can see Mr. Goldman outside, jogging after Travis and Ed, his red tie flapped up over his shoulder, leaving footprints in the inch of snow that has fallen on the sidewalk since they shoveled it at lunch. He shouts out to them, and they turn toward each other, Ed saying something quickly and then running ahead, disappearing behind the Wendy’s. But Travis just stands there, smoking a cigarette, watching Mr. Goldman run toward him.

When Mr. Goldman catches up to him, he takes the cigarette out of Travis’s hand and throws it on the ground. He points at Travis and then back to the school as if Travis were just lost and maybe needed directions. Travis says nothing, his hands in his pockets. I can’t see his face from here.

They walk back together, Mr. Goldman still talking, not even acting like he is cold although he must be, in just one of his crisp colorful shirts with snow falling on his dark hair. We move quickly back to our seats, everyone in place before they get to the door. Travis takes his seat in the back, his eyes steady on the back of Mr. Goldman’s head for the rest of the hour, the hissing radiator the only sound in the room.

The protesters show up the next day, chanting loud enough for us to hear them in health and family life. The snow has turned into a cold March drizzle, but they are out there anyway, walking in slow circles in the school parking lot, carrying signs:
DON’T LISTEN TO JENKINS; LISTEN TO JESUS!! DON’T MONKEY WITH FREEDOM OF RELIGION
!

Mrs. Hansen pulls the curtains over the windows and turns on the air conditioner so the hum of it will drown them out, even though our hair is still wet from walking from the buses.

“Who are they?” Traci asks. “What do they want?”

Mrs. Hansen rolls her eyes. “Ms. Jenkins wants to teach evolution. It gets people stirred up.”

I am silent, taking this in. I don’t know what the protesters are mad about. I want to ask, but I’m worried if I do it will be like asking about Noah’s ark, and Traci will turn around and say, “You’ve
got
to be joking” again.

I am most disturbed by the sign that says you have to listen to Jesus instead of Jenkins, like Jesus is on one side and Ms. Jenkins is on the other. Ms. Jenkins has just handed back my report on the different kinds of cloud formations with an A+ and
GREAT WORK
written across the top, underlined three times. She’s my favorite teacher besides Mr. Goldman, but if she’s on a different side than Jesus, well then.

I have biology third period, and all through class, I watch Ms. Jenkins carefully. She moves around the room like nothing is happening, like we don’t all know that there are protesters outside with her name on their signs. She talks about chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone layer, scratching her graying hair so it sticks up at the sides. I am thinking that Ms. Jenkins doesn’t believe in God, and this is why the protesters are mad.

Eileen says she feels sorry for people who don’t believe in God, just plain sorry for them. I don’t know if she would feel sorry for Ms. Jenkins or not, if she met her. I can’t imagine them in the same room. I can’t even have both of them in my head at the same time. They are like two parallel lines that should never cross each other, but keep going on side by side, always on different tracks.

At lunch, Mr. Goldman sits by himself, reading
U.S. News & World Report,
sipping orange juice through a straw, his green tie flipped up over his shoulder so he won’t spill anything on it.

“I hate that fucker,” Travis says.

I give Travis a look. I don’t like his calling Mr. Goldman a fucker. He’s nice. If anyone is confused about a math problem, he stays during lunch and helps them, eating a sandwich with one hand, writing on the board with the other.

Last week, he caught Libby Masterson passing a note to Traci. Usually this is a good thing for everybody else, because if a teacher like Sellers catches you passing notes, he takes it from you and reads it out loud to everyone. It can be very interesting. But when Mr. Goldman took the folded-up note out of Libby’s hand, she looked up at him with her rabbit face and said, “Please,
please,
don’t read it,” and just looking at her you could see that the note had something about him in it, and that if he read it, that would be it for her as far as being embarrassed. Sellers was in the back of the room, and he started snapping his fingers and saying, “Bring the note to me,” and we were all saying, “Read it! Read it!” But Mr. Goldman just wadded it up and threw it away and told Libby to keep her mind on math.

I was one of the people saying, “Read it! Read it!” and now I feel bad.

Deena does not say yes or no about whether Mr. Goldman is a fucker. She’s preoccupied, reading an article in
People
about Fawn Hall. Fawn Hall was Oliver North’s secretary, and she was supposed to shred the documents about Iran and Nicaragua but did not. The article is not about this, but about how Fawn Hall is not just a secretary but also a part-time model with a red sports car and a license plate that says
FAWN
1. She drives around Washington, D.C., in this car with the windows down because she smokes. If there is a movie made about all of this Iran-Contra business, the article says, she could be played by Farrah Fawcett, or maybe Vanna White.

“She’s so pretty,” Deena says, looking at the picture.

Travis takes the magazine from Deena, shaking his head. “You’re prettier,” he says.

She smiles and places a raisin on the tip of his tongue.

I eat my yogurt and look at the clock. This is how it goes. I have to eat lunch with them when they stay on campus because they get mad if I don’t, but when I do, they say things like this to each other, and they have to be touching or feeding each other at all times. Right now his hand is on her knee under the table. I can tell this just by the way they are looking at each other. This look between them has everything to do with their having sex in Ed Schwebbe’s van every other day while I am sitting in algebra.

The protesters are still outside, the paint on their signs bleeding downward in the rain. They are all wearing jackets and scarves and hats, wrapped up like colorful mummies, and they have stopped chanting. Now they just talk to one another, holding the signs up with mittened hands.

Travis sees me watching them through the window, and he grins. One of his front teeth is crooked, yellow. This should make him look ugly, but it doesn’t. “Your old buddies out there?” he asks, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“What?”

He rolls his eyes. “Your church friends. The people who used to come and pick you up in the station wagon. With the bumper sticker. I recognize the car.”

Of course. I had not thought of this before, but of course Pastor Dave and Sharon are outside. I put down my yogurt, a wave of nausea passing through me.

“Maybe they’ll cancel it,” Deena says, turning a page of the magazine. “Biology, I mean. That’s what I vote for.”

Ms. Jenkins is on the other side of the cafeteria, eating a salad, her glasses pushed up into her hair. She catches me looking at her, and before I can look away, she smiles.