The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb
out, everyone! Rosemary’s got her Irish up.”
“It’s your turn,” I said. But instead of moving his man, he picked up one of mine and jumped a bunch of his own checkers. “You win,” he said. “Go play.” Over at the record player cabinet, he lifted the needle and dropped it down on that song about the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie. He went into the kitchen, whistling.
“Because I don’t want to dance with you, that’s why!” Mother said. Then Daddy said something, and Mother said, “You think I can’t smell it on you, Alden? You think I can’t recognize a lost cause when he’s standing in front of me?” Then there was some noises and a crash. The kitchen door banged open.
“Wanna play Crazy Eights?” I said.
At the parlor window, I watched him walk faster and faster, down the driveway and onto Bride Lake Road, taking swigs from Grandpa’s bottle.
Mother was sitting on a kitchen chair, crying. She had one regular cheek and one all-red one. The broken pieces of our soup bowl were on the table next to her. “Lolly told me this tureen was one of Great-Grandma Quirk’s wedding presents,” she said.
“Oh…. You want a glass of water?”
“His wild Irish rose. That’s a laugh! I was just the first girl he grabbed on the rebound.” Then she looked at me. “Don’t you ever be mean like Daddy.”
“Want some water?” I said again.
She nodded. I got her the water and she took a little sip. She kept touching the broken soup bowl. “My hands were wet from the dishes,” she said. “It slipped. It was an accident.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
She took another sip of her water. “How about a hug?” she said.
She put her arms around me. It was one of her stiff hugs, with the little pitty-pats on my back. “How come you never hug me back?” she said.
“I hug you back.”
“No, you don’t.”
MISS HOGAN? AT MY SCHOOL? She used to be our second-grade teacher and now she’s our third-grade teacher, too, on account of she switched grades. And I’m glad, because Miss Hogan’s nice. Plus, she’s pretty. She drives a green Studebaker and likes cats instead of dogs. This one time, Penny Balocki in our class was teasing me and saying that I love Miss Hogan and want to marry her. I don’t, though. I like her, but I don’t love her. And anyways, she’s already getting married.
Miss Hogan’s fiancé, Mr. Foster, used to play football at Fordham University, and now he’s a cameraman at a television studio in New York City. Miss Hogan’s favorite TV show is I’ve Got a Secret because that’s the show where Mr. Foster works at. And you know what? When Mr. Foster visited us that time, Frieda Buntz raised her hand and said, “Can you and Miss Hogan kiss for us?” And she had to go stand in the cloakroom until recess.
One time, during vacation week, Mother let me stay up late and watch I’ve Got a Secret. One man’s secret was that he got struck by lightning and didn’t die. Another man had this long, long beard and his secret was that, at night, he slept with his whiskers inside the covers, not outside. They guessed the whiskers guy, but not the lightning guy. Last year, one of our best milkers got struck by lightning. Dolly, her name was. And you know what the vet said? That Dolly’s heart exploded. Grandpa had to bulldoze her across the road and down into the gravel pit. All week long, vultures kept flying over our south field.
I’ve got a secret. Someone in our grade keeps spitting in the drinking fountain in the main hallway, and Miss Hogan thinks it’s Thomas Birdsey, but it’s not. It’s me. Last week, our whole class wasn’t allowed to get a drink until someone admitted they were the spitter. And everyone got madder and madder at Thomas because he wouldn’t admit it. Even I was mad at him, because I was thirsty and I kind of forgot who the real secret spitter was. Then Thomas made a load in his pants, the way he used to in first grade, and the office made his mother come get him. Our whole classroom stunk, and Miss Hogan had to send for Mr. Zadzilko, and we all went outside and played dodgeball. Dominick Birdsey had to stop playing, though, because he was whipping the ball too hard and hitting people’s faces. And after? When we came back in the building? Miss Hogan let us all get drinks. In the hallway, Mr. Zadzilko always looks at me, and I want to say, What are you looking at, Mr. Big Fat Glasses Face? I don’t, though. I just look away.
You know what? I stole something once. Mother and I were at Lu’s Luncheonette, buying Rolaids for Mother’s ulcer. And while Mother and Lu were talking at the cash register, I just picked a Devil Dog off the rack and put it in my coat pocket. I kind of thought I was going to get caught, except I didn’t. I don’t even like Devil Dogs that much; I like Hostess cupcakes better. I didn’t eat it. I just kept reaching inside my pocket and poking it with my finger. It got squishy, and the cellophane broke. And the next morning, I mailed it in the mailbox in front of our school.
Sometimes, when I try to hand in my paper early, Miss Hogan goes, “It’s not a race, Caelum. Go back to your desk and check your work.” If I check my work and I’m still waiting and waiting, that’s when I have to take the pass and go help Mr. Zadzilko. After Mr. McCully picked Mother to be head teller, now she always has to stay late at the bank because of her extra responsibilities. She won’t let me go on the bus, because Aunt Lolly’s already working at the prison when I get home and Grandpa’s getting ready for milking. But she doesn’t pick me up until way after all the other kids go home. She had to talk to Miss Anderson about letting me stay and wait, and Miss Anderson lets me because Mother’s divorced. Sometimes, I get to stay in our room with Miss Hogan, but sometimes I have to go be Mr. Zadzilko’s helper.
He has me clap erasers, or empty the wastebaskets into the big barrel in the hallway, or wipe down blackboards with the big sponge. One time, after an assembly, I had to go to the auditorium and help him fold all the folding chairs. We stacked them on these flat carts that have wheels. You know where all the folding chairs go? Under the stage. This door I never even noticed before opens, and the chairs roll in on the carts and stay there until the next assembly.
After the United Nations assembly was when Mr. Mpipi got fired. After he did his dance. First, Miss Anderson gave a speech about the UN. Then the fourth graders sang “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Then some lady who went on a trip to China showed us her China slides. Dominick Birdsey started tickling me, and Miss Hogan made us sit between her and Miss Anderson. The China lady talked so long that the projector melted one of her slides, and some of the sixth-graders started clapping.
Mr. Mpipi came on near the end. He walked out on the stage, and instead of his janitor clothes, he was wearing this big red cape and no shoes. He told everyone how the Bushmen hunted jackals, and prayed to their praying mantis god, and he talked their clicking talk. The sixth-graders started being rude. It’s okay if you laugh with someone, but it’s bad if you laugh at them. Mr. Mpipi thought everyone was laughing with him, so he started laughing, too—his squealy laugh—and that made things worse. Miss Anderson had to stand up and give the sixth-graders a dirty look.
Mr. Mpipi said he was going to show us two Bushman dances, the Dance of the Great Hunger and the Dance of Love. But he wasn’t going to stop in between, he said. One dance was just going to turn into the other one. “Because what does all of us hunger for?” he asked. No one in the audience said anything. Mr. Mpipi waited, and then finally he said the answer himself. “We hunger for love!”
He untied his cape and dropped it on the floor, and all’s he was wearing was this kind of diaper thing. I saw Miss Anderson and Miss Hogan look at each other, and Miss Anderson said, “Good God in Heaven.” Mr. Mpipi was shouting and yipping and doing this weird, shaky dance. He had a big potbelly and a big behind, and the sixth-graders were laughing so hard, they were falling off their chairs. Then someone yelled, “Shake it, Sambo!” Mr. Mpipi kept dancing, so I don’t think he even heard it, but Miss Andersen walked over and started flicking the auditorium lights on and off. Then she went up on the stage, handed Mr. Mpipi his cape, and said the assembly was over. “Everyone except the sixth-graders should proceed