The Mighty Miss Malone (5 page)

Benny Cobb snickeled, “Deeza’s a number two!”

“Okay, kiddo. Jump real high and drop a quick elbow into Dolly’s left eye, then do a sharp uppercut to Benny’s jaw. They’ll never see it coming!”

All there was left for me to do was quietly and with a bunch of dignity walk to my desk.

I told myself, Stop being silly. Keep your chin up.

But as soon as I sat down, my arms folded on my desk and my head thunked down.

Mrs. Needham said, “And we close this year with another A for Miss Clarice Anne Johnson.”

I couldn’t bear to look. Clarice would be unconsolable.

I raised my head when I heard Clarice’s gut-wretching yips and yaps.

I am so proud of that girl!

Clarice had decided to pretend she was excited by jumping up and down. She hopped like a bunny to the front and gave our traitor teacher a huge hug! Clarice is such a champion! She was making sure our classmates took their mocking eyes off of me and put them on her by waving her paper in the air and braying like a donkey.

I loved her even more than I already had.

“Well, kiddo …”

I clenched my teeth so hard that the back ones started
hurting. That’s the only way to make that second brain quit talking. When it shut up I laid my head back down on my desk.

I’ll probably be pondering what went wrong until I’m weak and weary.

I didn’t even hear the bell ring or notice that my horrid classmates were gone.

I could feel Clarice rubbing my shoulder. Mrs. Needham called from way, way off, “Miss Johnson, wait outside. Miss Malone. Sit up. Are you all right?”

I wanted to say, “Other than having my life destroyed by your A minus, I’m fine, thank you,” but I raised my head. “No, ma’am.”

“What did you think about my comments?”

I sniffled, smoothed my essay on my desk and looked down to see what she’d written.

Mrs. Needham said, “Well?”

I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand.

“You said this is the most important paper I’ve ever written.”

“Depending upon how you react, I believe it could be.”

I looked at the red minus sign that looked like a tiny bloody slash cut into my work and my soul by a razor of hate.

“But I worked so long and hard. Why did I get a A minus?”

“Deza, come here.”

This day was getting stranger and stranger. She had never called any of us by our first name.

Mrs. Needham sat at Benny Cobb’s desk. “Have a seat, Deza.”

I started to sit next to her but she said, “No, there,” and pointed at the chair behind her desk.

“Really?”

“Miss Malone, sit.”

The old saying that every cloud has a silver lining is true!

I’d pretended a million times that I was sitting here and giving my unappreciative, hardheaded students a lesson. I had even lifted buckets of rocks at home a couple of times with Jimmie to build muscles so I could call Dolly Peaches and Benny Cobb to the front of the class, then mercilessly beat them into
bloody pulps with a yardstick for embarrassing and bullying their classmates and not trying hard enough on their work.

I’d imagined that many years from now, I’d pick one of my favorite students, maybe it would be Clarice’s daughter, to work a problem on the blackboard.

The chair had burgundy leather and buttons and was cool and smooth on the back of my legs. I looked at the classroom and forgot all about that red grade.

Well, pretty much forgot.

Mrs. Needham said, “I know being a teacher is your ambition, Deza, and a fine one it is. But I can see you as a professor or, if we can pry the dictionary out of your hands, even as a writer.”

I wiggled and the chair swiveled from side to side! Only the tips of my toes were touching the floor but it felt perfect!

“Deza, I have been teaching longer than you could imagine, and I’ve always had the dream any teacher worth her salt has. I had thought, prior to this year, that I would have to be satisfied in coming close to the dream once, before, alas, ‘the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley.…’

“The dream is the gift of having one student, just one, who is capable of making a real contribution. One child who’d have no choice but to make a difference for our people.

“Out of the thousands of students I’ve had in the thousands of years I’ve been teaching, I’ve suspected for quite a while who the child I’ve been waiting for is.”

All I could think was, I love her like a sister, but
please
, just don’t say Clarice!

“Miss Malone, you are that child.”

I stopped wiggling.

“That’s why I gave you that A minus, Deza, and it won’t be the last if you’re not up on your p’s and q’s. Any more grandstanding in your writing, there might even be a B or two down the road. Remember, much is required of her to whom much has been given.”

My heart flew like a rocket ship!

“These are trying times for the whole country, Miss Malone, and I’m aware that you have been dealt a pretty rough hand, but, child, with your gifts, you are the richest person I have ever had the honor of teaching.

“I believe from the bottom of my heart that if we lose you, we’ve lost this country. If we can’t get
you
to your true path, it’s the failure of everyone from President Roosevelt right down to me.

“And while President Roosevelt is far too busy to give a hoot, I have nothing but time on my hands. I will not sit idly by and see you fall.

“I understand that
you
are the reason I’ve taught for all these years. We are both in the right spot at the right time.”

Goose bumps danced all over my arms!

“Oh, Mrs. Needham, I can do whatever needs to be done. Jimmie’s always saying if I read one more book or study one more minute my brain will explode out of my eyes, but I can work harder! Your words are like manna produced from heaven to me!”

I hope I pronounced “manna” the right way.

Mrs. Needham’s eyes rolled. “Oh, for the love of Pete! The first thing I have to do is wrench that dictionary and thesaurus
out of your hands. And we’re going to have to work on the way you react to bad news. You have to toughen up, missy, but we’ll get by.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“As you know, the board is forcing me to retire this year. So what I’d like to do is have you come to my home every day after school and weekends for private tutoring. The work here is not challenging enough for you, but I’ll take care of that.”

It was like she was reading my mind when she said, “We’ll include Clarice if you’d like.”

Mrs. Needham almost smiled!

My eyes swelled with tears. I wanted to run around the desk and give her a hug, but she’d looked like she’d eaten a piece of bad fish when Clarice hugged her.

“Oh, thank you! Clarice will be just as happy as me! But could I ask you what does the thing you said earlier about gangs mean?”

“Gangs? Oh, it was ‘gang aft a-gley.’ That’s from Burns, my favorite Scottish poet. We’ll be studying him later. The poem is called ‘To a Mouse.’ ”

Mrs. Needham closed her eyes.

I didn’t understand a bit of it.

Mrs. Needham said, “Mr. Burns wrote this after he was
plowing his field and accidentally destroyed a mouse’s nest. He tells the mouse that even though its home is ruined, it’s still better off than most humans because the mouse only looks at the present, while people look to the past and end up being sad, or look to the future and end up worrying. No matter how well a mouse, or a human being, plans for the future, those plans ‘gang aft a-gley.’ In other words, no matter how well you think something through, many times schemes simply will not work out. They will go astray.”

I already knew this, but I could never have said it like a poem. This sounded like something Father would say.

“By the way, a former student of mine is graduating from Meharry dental school and plans on returning to Gary. I have prevailed upon him to take you on in September once he’s officially a dentist and starts practicing.”

“A dentist? But my teeth don’t bother me.” Not too much.

Mrs. Needham looked at me long enough to make me a little nervous. “A thorough checkup won’t hurt.”

I wondered how she knew that my teeth
can
be a little sore some of the time, especially the back ones that are all hollowed out by cavities.

She’d said this new dentist was just starting to
practice
. I’d rather wait until he started working for real. But I said, “Thank you very much, ma’am.”

“You’re quite welcome, Deza. Now open the right bottom drawer of my desk and remove the bag, please.”

I put a crumply brown paper sack on her desk.

“Take out what’s inside, please.”

Inside the bag there was a beautiful pair of new patent
leather shoes and some folded-up clothes. Mother says it’s rude to set shoes on anything but the floor so that’s where I put them.

“Do you wear a size five?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Try them on.”

I picked up the first shoe. There were some socks rolled up in it.

“Should I put on the socks too?”

“Yes.”

I was glad I was behind her desk and she couldn’t see my shoes and socks. My shoes are quite tired and my socks have been darned a million times. Jimmie says our socks and clothes are very religious because they are so holey.

My hands were shaking, but I pulled the new socks on and slipped my feet into the shoes. I knew just how Cinderella felt! They were a little big, but maybe that was because mine were so tight. I sat on my socks so Mrs. Needham wouldn’t see them.

She said, “My niece from Cleveland spent the summer with me a while ago and left a few things. I thought they might fit you.”

Did Mrs. Needham really mean these shoes were for me?

I walked out from behind the desk so she could see her niece’s shoes. I’d never felt this tall!

The right-hand heel on my old shoes had fallen off. Jimmie tried to put it back on but it wouldn’t stay. He ended up pulling the left heel off so I wouldn’t walk with a limp.

Mrs. Needham said, “What do you think?”

“I’ve never
seen
such a beautiful pair of shoes, not even in a store window! Are you really going to let me have these?”

“They may as well be put to good use.”

“I’m going to save them until seventh grade!”

“You don’t need to save them. My niece left a few pairs of shoes and I’ll give them to you as needed. Take them off and ask your parents if it’s all right for you to accept them.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

This horrible day was turning into the best day anybody ever had!

“Empty the bag, Miss Malone.”

I pulled out two brand-new half-slips and three pairs of blue underpants.

The last thing I pulled out was even more beautiful and special than the shoes!

I read this book about a place called Niagara Falls, which is a waterfall geologically located between the United States and Canada. The last thing in the bag made me think of it.

The book said you could ride a boat called the
Maid of the Mist
right underneath these huge waterfalls and get covered with a cool mist the water made when it splashed on rocks. The last thing in the bag was just like the mist. It was a lovely, soft blue gingham dress! I ran my hand over the dress. This was what it must feel like to ride the
Maid of the Mist
under the falls.

I pressed my face into the gingham and found out how new smelled. I must have dreamed about this dress, it was so familiar.

“Hold it up and see if it fits.”

I squeezed it to me, then quickly pulled it back. It made my regular one look really, really old.

There was a little piece of paper held onto the dress by a string and a safety pin. My hands were shaking like a leaf and I read,
HIMELHOCH’S FINE APPAREL FOR LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
.

Then I remembered. I
had
seen this dress before!

Himelhoch’s is a rich people’s clothes store me and Clarice walk by every day on the way home. We’d seen a dress just like this one in the big front window on one of those little white dummy girl statues! I fell in love with it and Clarice fell in love with the green-and-gray dress that the dummy sister of my statue was wearing.

Every day we passed Himelhoch’s we’d imagine where we’d wear the two dresses.