The Moves Make the Man (8 page)

She broke into all kinds of a smile at that and went on talking fast to say what she had in mind. What it was is sticking me in a Home Economics class. These are usually all girls, learning how to bake cakes for the handsome men they will marry if they are lucky. You can hear them giggling when they yank their goodies out of the oven because the Home Economics cooking room is down the hall from where French meets and I hear them playing with pots and stuff though never smelled food yet. But I figured I could pick up some tips. I figured dudes must be able to learn as well as girls how to knock some food together, though nobody usually thought to teach us. I mean, our hands don't grow a certain peculiar way makes them unable to grasp a spatula or an oven knob. Anyway, anything would help, and the sooner the better. It was going to be spaghoots and melted cheese again tonight.

The counselor told me I could drop into the Home Ec
class, which is what she called it, quite easily. It was a mere formality of dropping the class that met during Home Ec period.

Okay, I said. Then I froze. I remembered: I always heard the kitchen noise jive during French class, therefore that meant I was going to have to drop French!

Wait! I said, but she was already filling out a form and talking.

Home Ec meets at two different times, third period and fifth. Let's see, if we drop you out of French…

No! I said.

She looked up, startled. What's wrong?

I don't want to drop French.

You…What do you mean, you don't want to drop French? She looked truly amazed.

I want to keep it. It is my favorite subject.

She wrinkled up her forehead and looked a little annoyed. But it's so hard! All those verbs. I NEVER liked French.

But I do, I said. I like it fine, I even like the verbs.

She looked at the schedule. But…if you don't drop French fifth period, that means you'll have to drop Communications! She said it as if this was the craziest thing she ever heard.

Shucks, I said, but I guess I have to sacrifice. That will do it. Communications has to go. I was trying hard not to holler Hooboy and toss in a couple of significant hand gestures to express my delight.

Her forehead got even more wrinkled. But…surely you don't want to drop Com. Surely!

Then her eyes got a little woozy and her cheeks got a little pink and she looked up at the corner of the ceiling and started slowly waving one of her hands, back and forth, very soft like conducting a real religious choir or something. In her
old dreamy voice, but different too, she said, Don't you find Chuck Egglestobbs to be the most completely elegant sensibility you have ever met?

She had it bad. I let her wave and swoon for a couple of minutes, and then, not wanting to make her mad enough to force me out of French, I said, Well, he can sure use the body!

She turned red and stopped waving her hand and glared at me, still looking kind of eager all the same. Young man, she said, what do you mean to say?

You know, he communicates with his knees and feet and such.

Ah, she said, yes, of course. Yes, you are right. Hmm. He—and here she got moony again—he certainly conveys himself with the utmost physicality.

We sat for a minute in silence, her dreaming of Egglestobbs and his talking knees, me thinking hard of how to get her away from thinking good things about old Com and yet keeping her in a soft mood enough to let me have my way and drop it. I tried, but the only way out was the melodrama. So I squinched up in my chair to look thin and sorrowful, and talked a little higher than usual and with more breath in it.

Body language is no good, I sighed, if your body is wasting away. I…I want so very, very much to feed my brothers.

She woke up and turned those big eyes on me and watched me pout and got so saddened up that I felt terrible and ashamed of myself. But it worked. She said, Oh, yes, young man. That is very dearly put. Oh my.

Then, pausing a couple of times to look up at me with six kinds of pity, she signed my slip.

I was out of Com. I was dans le francais. And I was going to be a Home Economist.

I was out in the hall already walking back to French when the counselor called me. I turned around and she said, I forgot to tell you. You will be glad to know that you are not the only boy in the Home Ec class.

For some reason, I was not especially glad to hear this. In fact I got a little annoyed. I think I was getting kind of attached to being an only. The only smarty in advanced math, the only black kid in Chestnut, the only boy in Home Ec. So I just shrugged and looked at her like what else did she have to say?

There's…there is another boy, that is, she said, wrinkled up again.

I guess you said so, I said. She stood looking at me, obviously thinking about the other kid.

His name is Braxton Rivers the Third, she said. That is the poor thing's name.

I said, Yeah, you got to feel sorry for someone stuck with Braxton the Third. Sounds like one of my people.

She blushed. I was not referring to his rather dignified name when I expressed sympathy, she said. Then she shook
her head and started to step back into her office.

Why? I said. Why is he a poor thing? Has his momma been dropped down an elevator and crushed by wrought iron, down four floors bleeding out both ears? Has she? Does she have her head all broken up? She going to be in the hospital for weeks with a shaved head and who knows if there might be damage to the brain? I was cheating a little there, having been assured by the doctor, but for some reason I was feeling mad and sorry for myself and even maybe jealous. The counselor looked at me straight and frowned and I knew I was starting to deserve it if she treated me a little like a child, but she didn't.

No, she said. No, it isn't like that. Not exactly anyway.

Lucky him, I said, very cocky.

She stared at me for a long moment. We'll see, she said. Then she closed the door.

The first day in Home Economics was trying on aprons. No kidding.

I walked in ten minutes late on account of being lectured to (in words this time) by old Chuck Egglestobbs when he signed my slip to drop his class. He told me I had a long way to go to get my body's truth under control, especially if I kept perverting its natural instincts by forcing it into fakery in the name of athletics. I almost invited him to come check out my fakery in a little one on one, but I knew he would give me no credit for all the grace in the world if it did not fit in with his theories. Anyway, I was a couple of minutes late.

First thing I saw was the teacher, standing up on a kitchen table holding up a loud red apron with white spots and ruffles. She waved it at this whole room full of girls and then tilted her hips and pressed the apron up against herself all slinky, saying A garment, girls, it's a garment not a towel. She stopped dead when she saw me walk in, and she stared at me, still pressing the garment to her hips and holding her mouth open. She had a bunch of makeup on, and her lips
were a reddish orange that made you sick when you saw it so close to the pinky-red apron. The girls stared at me too. There must have been twenty of them and they all had garments of their own, holding them up to their hips.

Hi, I said. Is this the place where a fellow can learn how to wear his apron?

That broke them up, all except the teacher, who just looked puzzled and said, You must be the boy.

I must be, I said. (I did not mean to be too snappy, but I get sort of jaunty sometimes when I am a little nervous, and those girls all looked old and large and they stared at you like you were a fly in their new-made vanilla pudding.)

We…we have another boy, she said, kind of like she could only take one at a time.

I heard, I said.

He is absent today, she said. He has the flu.

No, a virus, said one of the girls.

What? said the teacher.

A virus, please, Miss Pimton. In home room they said he was sick on account of a virus.

Influenza is a virus, said Miss Pimton, a little testy. However, that need not concern us too much, does it? Now, young man. What did you say your name was?

Jerome Foxworthy.

A few girls laughed.

All right Jerome. She looked confused. Ahm…Matty Sue, where does…ahm…our other boy sit?

A girl in a yellow dress holding a blue plaid apron pointed at the back table where there was nobody sitting today.

That's where, said Matty Sue, wrinkling herself up and making faces and all the girls laughed. I got the idea this other dude had been having a hard time getting himself liked
in Home Ec. Probably he didn't look good in an apron.

Thank you. Then I think, Jerome…or shall I call you Jerry?

No.

Oh. All right, Jerome. Then I think you had best sit back where…ahm…

Braxton, said one of the girls.

Thank you. Where Braxton will sit upon his return. We work in partners here. I think it would be best if you and he were partners. Unless Matty Sue objects, as she is Baxter's partner at temporary present.

Braxton, I corrected, but nobody noticed.

No ma'am, said Matty Sue, I don't object one iota.

I bet you don't, said one of the girls and Matty Sue made like wiping sweat off her head and went Whew! and everybody laughed, except me. I was felling pretty sorry for this other kid, and glad at least we could team up as long as these girls were on the attack.

I walked back to that table and put down my books. Everybody watched me. Most of the girls and the teacher still held their aprons up to themselves. I stood there and finally they saw I wasn't going to do anything more than just stand there being black and a boy and so they started looking back at the teacher.

She sort of shook herself awake, and looked at her watch and said, Okay girls, I guess it's time to clean up for the day. This meant that it was time for the girls to stuff their aprons in their table drawers and then talk nonstop for fifteen minutes until the bell, having to unwind after a hard lesson, and there being nothing within sight to clean up.

I wondered when the cooking was going to start. I couldn't satisfy Maurice and Henri by strutting around looking sharp in an apron.

Over that weekend at home we ate mostly corn bread made from the box recipe and a canned ham our next door neighbor Mrs. Paul gave us, but I told the brothers about Home Ec and talked it up big, promising that the cook was going to fly come Monday night. I did not tell them about the apron jive. I wanted them to believe in Home Economics. Maybe then the stuff I made would not taste as bush, being officially taught stuff.

When I got to class on Monday, I did not look straight back at the table where I was to sit, but when I slung the eyes up for a charming smile at Miss Pimton who did not know where to look but not in my eyes, I could see out the corners that there was someone sitting there. I still did not look, turning toward the back and nodding at a couple of those dippy girls who giggled and fussed getting their polka dots on straight. But I started to feel a twiggle in my stomach.

I was feeling a little cocky, still. It was the same sort of feeling of having my onlyness broken that I had felt talking in the hall to the counselor. I did not like it, I knew it was foolish, but I could not help it and I knew I was not going
to give that dude an easy time. Jerome can be cool and snappy when he is bad, and I felt like I was going to be bad. All the same, I was really pretty excited—here was a boy I would almost have to get to know, all alone like we were in that institute of wives for the future. I knew something was waiting for me back there in that kid, as I walked closer, swinging a cool check-out glance his way. But my cool fell right off my face, and I gaped. Sitting there, looking very different out of uniform but still the same kid without doubt, was the shortstop. What was it his momma called him? Bix. Bix Bix Bix. Bix for Braxton. Bix my baseball main man, my mystery opponent in phantom one on one, my new partner in cookery.

I expected him to recognize me and he did not, shooting me only a very timid don't-hurt-me look with a half smile like inviting me to be friendly, and then looking down again. Then I realized he could not have recognized me—he had never seen me before. This made me snooty again, like he someway SHOULD have got to know me while I was in the crowd watching him or something. Man, I was not thinking too clearly in the feelings that day.

I stared at him and he just looked down, feeling the stare and not wanting to meet it. I checked him out pretty thorough, and saw that he really was pretty different now, different from what I would have thought that Bix who gave me shivers pivoting on the double play and whipping that arm would be. First of all, I saw that kid as being sure of himself enough to look anybody in the eye and take the check-out proudly. Not this look-down dude here. Second, and maybe here I thought Egglestobbs' way for a moment, I thought he would be holding himself tight and high and clever on his feet, moving sure and fast and giving off that
glow with all of his grace. But no, he slunk all down like the white basketball boys after I hit that boss shot, only he had no reason to. I had taken no shots yet.

He was a good looking kid, despite being a white boy with the usual problem of they have no good tone in the skin. He had thick light hair kind of long for most whites, but instead of hanging down it sort of bushed out, wavy enough not to be bristly. From that one glance I saw his eyes were very fine, round and big, the same light brown color as his hair which was a little odd but in a good way. I liked his eyebrows, very thick. I liked his cheek bones too, they stuck out like mine only higher and right now they were pale which most white people have red on them. The weirdest thing about the face was this pink flush in the forehead, not a scar or anything, just like what most whites get when they blush only in a different place and irregular. Later I found out he got it his first time up in a Little League game, age eight, when a twelve-year-old kid pitching beaned him smack in the thinker. But it only ever turned pink when he was ashamed or shy and never showed on the surface or at other times.

His clothes were naturally different from his spiffy uniform, but even so I expected they would be just as sharp. At first I thought he was just a mess in bad threads, but then I noticed that the clothes actually were good things. Nice cord pants and a yellow button-down like I like, and a tweed jacket, which would have looked fancy worn the right way with a little confidence. Nice duds. But right now they were only being used to carry around a very grand set of wrinkles, baby. This boy had not seen an iron in moons. What was wrong with his momma, she let him get out the house like this?

Then I felt a little tingle. His momma—what was he doing
in Home Ec? I looked fast at his shoes. Leather loafers, all polished very nice. Wrinkly good clothes, polished good shoes. These added up, along with the counselor's talk the other day, and told me: something was wrong with this boy's mother too.

Here is how it figured. First, good threads. That went along with his momma, snazzy and decked out in full class to watch a ball game and yet not look silly either. Nice shoes, too. Now, what do you learn from polished shoes plus wrinkled clothes? Just this: a kid always polishes his own shoes, but his momma always irons his clothes. So if his shoes are done, it means he is still trying to look okay, well trained or whatever; but if his clothes are messy it means no momma at the ironing board, and nobody either to check his state of appearance before he gets it out the door for school in the a.m. Hey—maybe this kid has no daddy too, I thought.

On the whole it was no wonder the girls treated him creepy. He was like a pup begging you not to kick him and girls like that cannot resist getting a foot on such helplessness.

I sat down, and said, So, man, you going to be my partner?

I guess we are, he said. I mean, I guess I am.

You here to learn to sling the pots?

He looked at me puzzled.

You know, I said, sling the pots, fling the pans—cook, man.

Oh, he said, sure. He grinned, then looked down. Sling the pots, fling the pans, he said. Or if not, open cans.

Hey, I said, that's not bad. Open those cans. Only we probably don't learn how to get into a can until next semester, after apron tying and rubber glove putting on and choosing the right smell of dish soap and a sponge to go with your nail polish.

He shrugged. He had livened up for a second, but now he was back to being pure fish. I looked up toward the front, sighing. He just hunkered down. Between Miss Pimton and this dude, I might have a very trying time in old Home Ec.

Miss Pimton acted like she heard my thought, and set right out to obey. For she got out some tubs of water and a laundry basket full of torn up newspaper and smiled and said Okay girls, today, and tomorrow too, plenty of time, we are going to do patties.

Patties! squealed the girls, clapping their hands.

What do you think the newspapers are for? I asked Bix.

Newspaper patties? he said. I laughed, but he was right. For Miss Pimton made us come around her table and proceeded to show us how to make that perfect patty for the grill or broiler, only it was out of paper mache. Wet shredded newspaper, just right for the coals. Just right for tonight's supper at the Foxworthy household. Here we are, Maurice—you get last week's front page, and Henri, knowing your thing for football I have pattied up the sports section. Looked like fried eggs once more for the boys.

And I did not know, but when the next week we finally started on our first edible project, as Miss Pimton called it, I was in for the worst sight yet of White Man's Nonsense. I was never so amazed as when she told us what we were going to cook up. I mean, the usual jive like Communications of making something that seems important out of nothing is bad enough. But making something out of nothing and then EATING it…