You Will Call Me Drog (7 page)

I got to the dojo early, wearing baggy pants and a sweatshirt faded to the color of strawberry Jell-O powder. The old Montgomery Furniture sign still showed on the storefront window, but I couldn’t see in. I stretched my sweatshirt sleeve down to cover Drog and opened the door.

The thick white paper covering the storefront windows glowed from the late afternoon light trying to shine through. There was no furniture at all inside, just a clean, bare wood floor, partly covered by one big tumbling mat and one small one off to the side.

An older girl, dressed in white with an orange cloth tied around her waist, knelt on the floor barefoot, facing a scroll of swirly black writing on the front wall. I took off my shoes and socks too. The floor felt cool and smooth.

Pretty soon other kids came in, and we waited off to the side without talking. The place was just naturally quiet and calm. I couldn’t believe I was still in Ferrisburg. It was like being snowed in. And I was about to learn the secret of flying through the air without getting hurt, like those people I saw at the Y!

Sensei entered through a side door and bowed to us. Right away the girl in white bowed back, and we copied her.

“Let’s begin with a concentration exercise,” Sensei said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Drog mumbled in my sleeve. “I believe we have a previous—”

But I was concentrating already, more awake than I ever felt in school. I pulled my sleeve down more.

“I see most of you are new,” Sensei said, so let’s begin with our one-point, not because it is for beginners, but because it is the most important thing. In aikido we aim to create harmony. To do that we must always balance and focus, putting our attention on our one-point, our center. Yours is located directly below your navel, about two inches below. Know where that point is and put your mind there as often as you can.”

I had to smile. Finding my center would be easy. Because two inches below my belly button was my only other mole.

“Now place your hand over your center and breathe slowly in and out.”

I covered my mole with my right hand.

“As you breathe, say one-point one-point...”

We all breathed and mumbled the words.

“Good,” Sensei said. “Do this many times a day until you can do it without using your hand or saying the words out loud.

“That’s it. Remember, whenever you need to balance or calm yourself, on or off the mat, repeat, ‘one-point one-point.’ That is the beginning of your practice. Tomorrow you will learn the first roll.”

Next he and the girl with the orange sash demonstrated that first roll, plus a lot of throws and rolls that he would be teaching in the coming months. Sensei kept saying how important it was to focus and relax. Finally he taught us five different stretches we could do at home and before class to stay flexible and avoid injury. He explained how to sign up if we decided to and measured each of us for the uniform, the
gi.
Then he bowed to dismiss us.

Drog pestered me on the way home. “One-point, gunpoint. I’m not taking a fall, no matter what Pansy says!”

“It’s not Pansy, Drog, it’s Sensei, and besides, nobody’s supposed to get hurt, remember? I’ll figure out something.”

“You?”

Mom agreed to give me money for my
gi
and lessons. That night I dug around in the bathroom cupboard and found an old Ace bandage Dad used to use for his basketball knee. It would have to work.

The next day at school I had a new problem. The minute the bell rang, someone called out, “Good morning, kiddies!” in a Drog-like voice.

Gordy was the only one who laughed.

“Settle down, Parker,” Mrs. Belcher said, frowning.

But it wasn’t me. It wasn’t Drog either.

During math, the same voice called out silly answers like, “There are two and a half centipedes in an inch” and “We reduce fractions because they’re so fat.”

“Parker?” Mrs. Belcher said. “Didn’t we have an agreement?”

Wren turned around and waved at me behind that ventriloquism book.

“Cut it out, Wren,” I said to her at recess.

“Well, I will if you will,” she said. “You’ve been doing this ever since we found that puppet.”

“No I haven’t. And besides, I’d never do anything on purpose to get
you
in trouble.”

She brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anymore what you would do.”

At the dojo that day, I put on my
gi
for the first time. It fit loose in the arms and legs and smelled like pine soap.

“Pajamas!” Drog said.

I wrapped the Ace bandage around him mummy-style so he couldn’t feel anything if we fell to the floor.

The girl with the orange belt noticed the bandage.

“What’s that? Are you injured?”

“No.”

“Well then, you should take that off. You can’t do aikido with it on.”

“I have to.”

She put her hands on her hips. Why do girls do that, anyway?

“Why do you think we wear uniforms?” she asked. “You’re not supposed to draw attention to yourself here.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Well, let’s see what Sensei says.”

I waited on the mat with the others and tried to focus.
One-point one-point one-point.
Sensei had said Drog was welcome.
One-point
. He had said no one should get hurt.
One-point one-point
.

Sensei came in, and the girl nodded toward my bandaged hand. His expression stayed relaxed.

“Good,” he said. “You’ve all been focusing on your center. I’ve asked Kelly here to demonstrate the basic roll technique. But first I want to do a demonstration of another kind. Parker, please step forward.”

Uh-oh.

“Mike, please come and stand next to Parker.”

Mike was in the beginner’s group too, but a lot older.

“Parker, hold out your arm. Yes, straight out like that. Mike will push down on your arm as hard as he can, and you will do your best to keep him from moving it. Now.”

The guy was over six feet tall, and his arm muscles had muscles. I tensed my arm and tried as hard as I could, but I couldn’t resist for even a second.

“All right, Parker, please step outside with me. The rest of you go back to your one-point and think about ... possibilities.”

Out on the sidewalk, Sensei said, “You’re going to do this again in a few minutes, only this time Mike won’t be able to move your arm at all.”

“He won’t?”

“Plant your feet firmly, about shoulder-width apart, one slightly ahead of the other. That’s it. Now imagine that there is a big root extending down from each foot for about a mile.”

Right away I felt steady.

“Put your arm out and see it reaching clear across town, even to the horizon.”

My arm seemed to grow and grow.

“Now—most important—your one-point. We haven’t talked yet about the enormous energy you have in there. When Mike pushes down on your arm, breathe out from your center and feel that energy flowing up and out through your arm to the horizon and out into space.”

That sounded impossible, but Sensei was so sure that it made me want to try everything exactly the way he said.

“Don’t think about Mike or the other students or me. Don’t even look at anyone. Just focus on your one-point and all that energy flowing out through your arm.”

We went back into the dojo.
One-point one-point one-point one-point one
. I got myself set and stuck out my arm.

“The other arm, this time,” Sensei said.

Oh no.

Still looking at nobody, not even him, I stuck my Drog arm out and went back to concentrating,
one-point one-point
, thinking so hard about that energy that I barely noticed Mike come toward me. My arm was the longest tree limb in the world, and his hands were like birds that landed on it and then took off again.

The next thing I knew, people were clapping and Mike was staring at me.

“Awesome,” he said.

“You may reset now, Parker,” Sensei said. “Well everyone, what do you think happened here?”

Finally Mike said, “He’s got something under that bandage.”

Sensei laughed. “True, but that’s not the answer. Do you think Parker suddenly developed his muscles and became super-strong? Could he do that in a few minutes?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“No. In aikido our strength doesn’t come from size or muscles. It comes from our energy, our
ki
. I showed Parker how to focus his energy.

“By the way, Parker has learned something else important on his first day.” He held up my bandaged Drog hand. “In aikido, we protect our opponent.”

Kelly, the girl with the orange belt, helped us to get started with our rolls. After class she came over to congratulate me and say she was sorry. She even thanked me, which I couldn’t figure out.

The other students wanted to know how I had managed to use the
ki
and how it felt. And what was under the bandage. When I showed them, they looked confused, but at least they didn’t laugh.

“Do you have any idea how hot your hand got when you did that long-arm number?” Drog said as we stepped out into the street. “Most uncomfortable.”

I smiled. “So why didn’t you just imagine you were back in the desert with the emir?”

“Don’t get smart with me,” he said.

Late one night, Mrs. Belcher got one of her Great Ideas. She decided our class should make a puppet theater and put on a puppet play. Everyone could tell she was doing this to keep me from becoming the class weirdo, but I appreciated it.

As soon as she brought up the puppet play idea in class, Big Boy boomed from the back of the room, “We could put it on for the kindergartners.”

Kids stared at each other. It was easy to forget about Big Boy for days at a time because he didn’t say much. Not in a loud voice, anyway. And when he did talk, he mostly said “man” and “cool.” Nobody knew how old Big Boy was exactly. They say he had to repeat first grade, and then he spent two years in fifth. He barely fit his desk.

“That’s a wonderful suggestion, Norbert,” Mrs. Belcher said. She never called him Big Boy.

Everyone knew Big Boy picked kindergarten because his little sister was in that class, and he was crazy about her.

“As a matter of fact, the kindergarten is having its parents’ night in just two weeks,” Mrs. Belcher said. “Do you think we could be ready that soon?”

“Sure,” we answered in a chorus.

“Since it’s your idea, Norbert, maybe you’d like to pick the play?”

Way to go, Mrs. B. Take care of two oddballs at once.

“Um, how about The Three Little Pigs?” Big Boy said. “Lisa loves—I mean, I think that would be a good one for them.”

“Excellent. The story and the lines are already familiar, and we don’t have much time.”

Mrs. Belcher was humming now. Her favorite part of any project is writing lists on the blackboard.

“Let’s see, we’ll need a stage and scenery and a script, and of course we’ll need a mother pig, the three little pigs, and the wolf—that’s five puppets. Hand puppets will be the simplest, I think. Parker you already have one ...”
Very smooth, Mrs. Belcher
. “... so maybe you could just make a costume for it. Wren, will you help him?”

“Mmmmm,” Wren said. I guessed that was supposed to be a yes.

Drog started muttering, so I put him up to my ear. “I am the big bad wolf, or I’m nobody,” he said.

I raised my hand. “Can Drog be the wolf?”

“You have to try out, Parker,” Big Boy said. “Let’s hear you say the huff-and-puff part.”

“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll PUFF, and I’ll BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW your house down!” Drog said, adding a wicked cackle at the end. Everybody thought it was me.

Big Boy practically knocked over his seat laughing. Even Wren giggled. We were in.

Mrs. Belcher turns every project into an “Educational Opportunity.” The kids making the theater had to go on the Internet and print out pictures of real puppet theaters from around the world. Most stood high off the ground, like towers, so that all the kids in a crowd could see. Wren’s dad made the frame for ours, and the theater committee painted and decorated it and made a curtain you could pull open and closed.

The puppets had to be made from scratch with papier-mâché heads. Wren got to be the third little pig, and all I could do to help her was dunk the paper strips into the paste for the pig’s head and hand them to her. She did help me sew the wolf costume, which was a good thing, because I sure couldn’t do it one-handed.

Breathing the minty school-paste smell and working on something with Wren was beginning to make me feel almost like usual. She even came over to my house one day and brought some fake black fur she bought at the craft store. For eyes we found a couple of shiny red buttons in the spare room. The wolf costume turned out just about perfect.

“Wait,” I said. “Drog has to be able to see out.”

Wren gave me a dead-fish look.

“Make some eye holes under the buttons,” I said.

“It’s just a puppet, Parker. You’re going to do all the seeing.”

“Boy, if you’re going to be doing all the seeing, we’re in trouble,” Drog said.

I ignored him. “He needs eye holes, Wren.”

“Oh all right.” She cut a couple of slits. “Do you have to be so weird?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like I do.”

Mom was really happy when I told her about the play, and especially when Wren came over, so I told her I didn’t think I needed to go back to see Dr. Mann.

“I’m definitely staying out of trouble,” I said. I hoped that was true. How could I get into any more trouble than I was in already?

“That’s good, Parker,” Mom said, “but I promised the school.”

Dr. Mann liked hearing about the play, especially since Drog was part of it. But mostly he asked a lot about Dad, his work, what I remembered about living with him, things like that. Drog refused to say anything during our appointment. He wouldn’t even put words in my mouth.

Three days to the puppet performance and everything was coming together on schedule. The scenery committee painted the pigs’ houses of sticks and stones and bricks on flats to hold up behind the stage. Big Boy, who got to be the director, decided that we needed sound effects, so he took a tambourine from the music closet and brought in some balloons to blow up.

He rattled the tambourine each time the wolf huffed and puffed, and when he blew, Big Boy let the air out of one of the balloons. It sounded more like a fart, actually, but Big Boy glared around the room, daring anyone to laugh.

Rehearsals went okay. Drog cooperated, saying his lines over and over on cue, and everybody thought I was a good actor. But after school the day before our performance, Drog said to me, “The play is boring. Tell Mrs. Burper I’m not doing it.”

I groaned. Just when I was starting to feel half-normal, Drog might clam up completely during the play and mess me up again.

“What do you mean Drog?” I said. “You’re the wolf! You’ve got the best part. And nobody else can do it now, it’s too late.”

“I have decided. Drog doesn’t do kiddie plays.”

I didn’t argue with him, just ignored him and hoped he’d change his mind. He had to. But the next day in rehearsal I had to cover for him.

“Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in,” I said. It didn’t sound one-tenth as wolfly as Drog. Big Boy stopped the rehearsal.

“C’mon, man, do it like you did yesterday. You sound like a wimp.”

I didn’t get much better, and by the end everybody was mad at me.

Mrs. Belcher called us into a circle. “You know, an old tradition in the theater says bad dress rehearsal, great performance. Everyone go home now, and don’t worry. You’re doing a good thing for the kindergartners, and you’re going to be fine.”

“Whooooooeeeee, did you ever sound pathetic!” Drog said on the way home. “You wouldn’t know a wolf from a wiener dog, ha-ha!”

“Drog,” I said, trying to sound much calmer than I felt, “you have to do the play. Because if you don’t, it’ll be really embarrassing. There could be forty or fifty people there. Not just kids, but adults, too—teachers and parents.”

“My public.”

“Yes.”

“My big chance.”

“Yes.”

“And only Drog can do the role.”

“Right!”

“Very well, then. This once.”

Big Boy’s little sister, Lisa, sat cross-legged down front, jabbering with her class, while the adults took folding chairs or stood in the back. Mrs. Belcher introduced the cast and crew and the kids in our class who worked on the play, which was everybody. When she announced that Big Boy—er, Norbert—was the director, Lisa grinned like a cat who’d caught a bird.

The play started out better than it ever did in the classroom. Big Boy’s sound effects actually worked okay. Drog hammed it up a bit with the first two pigs, but by Drog standards, he was behaving himself. Then Wren came on with the third pig, the one who’s supposed to outsmart the wolf. The cooking pot waited for the wolf to climb down the chimney.

When Wren got to the “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin” part, Drog said, “Oh, come on, Little Pork Chop, it’s me, Gunga Din.”

A few giggles bubbled through the audience, and one of the fathers laughed out loud.

“Not by the hair of my chinny chin
chin
,” Wren said.

“It’s Publisher’s Sweepstakes,” Drog answered. “Think what you’ll win.”

Wren pinched my arm. Hard.

“Shut
up
, Drog,” I said.

There was no stopping him. He squeezed my hand so suddenly and hard that I batted the brick house aside and knocked Wren’s pig into the cooking pot. Then he said, “Oh, I do love a good pork ragout, don’t you?”

I looked at Wren. Half of her was mad, and that half was trying hard to keep the other half from laughing.

The crowd howled, but everyone behind the stage was shoving and punching me.

Drog called out to the kindergartners, “Have I been a bad, bad wolf?”

“Yes!” they cheered.

Wren pulled the curtain, but Drog peeked out again.

“Oh, shall I be good then?”

“Noooooooooooo!”

“Shall I be horribly horrible?”

“Yeeeeeessssss!”

“Well,” he snickered, “wait till you see what I do to Red Riding Hood—and her grandmamma too.”

“No! No!” Big Boy’s sister Lisa wailed, but almost everybody else laughed.

Somebody pulled my Drog hand back in while Wren yanked the curtain closed again. The audience clapped and hollered.

“Just listen to that applause,” Drog said. “I was magnifico!”

Wren let her mad half win. “I hope you’re proud of yourself, Parker,” she fumed. “You’ve just ruined the play.”