The Wonder Spot (6 page)

. . . . .

That Wednesday, I brought a Baggie of gingersnaps to Hebrew school. I knew Margie wouldn't be in class, but I thought she might be in the powder room, and she was.

She was sitting upside down on the velveteen chair, her head on the rug, high-tops in the air. She held our sixth-grade graduation booklet from Surrey, entitled “Memories: The Way We Were.”

She asked me to fish her cigarette out of the waste can, and I did, making sure it hadn't started a fire that would burn the synagogue down.

When she thanked me for the cookies, her voice had no expression in it at all, but I assumed this was from the strain of being upside down.

I wished I could've brought milk, which made gingersnaps taste better, especially if these were as stale as I suspected. She sat up and ate them slowly, thoughtfully, softening each bite in her mouth before chewing.

I sat in the chair next to hers, and she shared the graduation booklet with me. She had it opened to a page on which one of the Foxes had written, “Don't ever change!” and another, “Foxes forever.”

On the opposite page, I caught a glimpse of my own picture and signature. What I'd written sounded sarcastic now: “Good luck in Jr. High!”

She said, “I'm glad I kept this,” as though the booklet were a crucial piece of evidence that would prove her innocence and the Foxes' guilt in an upcoming friendship tribunal.

Then she said, “I'm not the one who changed.”

I was suddenly enraged. I remembered the Foxes ganging up on anyone who was alone during recess. I thought of their regular victims: Richie, who was pale and thin, they called “Queer”; Sheralynn, who was shy, “Weird”; and Charles, who was retarded, “Retarded.”

“Sofa” was mild by comparison, and at first I hadn't really minded
their singing, “Sofa and Eric sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G . . .” I'd even hoped that it would remind Eric of his feelings for me and bring them back. But when it didn't, the song was torture, as were their smooching sounds.

I'd known my mother couldn't help; she pronounced
clique
the French way, CLEEK, and would just tell me that the Foxes were jealous and to ignore them.

I'd gone to my dad. As usual, he'd wanted to know the full story; he'd wanted to know my part in it. “What do they tease you about?”

I told him they called me weird.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he'd said. “The meek shall inherit the Earth.”

At the time, I'd heard only the implication that I was meek, which felt even worse than being called
lovesick
and
Sofa.
But now I remembered how gentle his tone had been, and I wondered if he'd just meant meek as the opposite of bossy, and if his unspoken message was that one day the bossy shall fall.

This day seemed to have come for Margie. It had become important to be pretty, and she wasn't; important to have boys like you, and none liked her. Everyone I knew had dropped out of Girl Scouts. I was sure all the Foxes had; I doubted the Foxes even thought of themselves as Foxes anymore, except as it meant “sexy ladies.”

Margie's thumbs were pushed up against her eyelids—she was crying—and I was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for her. I tried to think of something to say. I remembered how happy she'd seemed in Girl Scouts, wearing her pale green uniform and her dark green sash with all the badges sewn on it. To earn them, you had to perform impossible tasks, such as visiting an elderly person for a year; at the end of my stint in Girl Scouts, I'd safety-pinned exactly three badges to my sash. Now I marveled aloud at how many she'd earned.

She said, “My sister Joy helped me.” Both of her sisters were away at Penn State now, she said, and hardly ever came home “except for vacations.”

I told her that my brother was going away next year and had already changed.

She said, “Joy got engaged,” as though this was the culminating betrayal. A moment later, she added, “His name's
Ted.
”

She seemed more forlorn than ever, so I tried to bring the topic back to Girl Scouts. “You know what I liked about the camping trips?”

She handed me another cigarette. “What?”

I didn't have an answer ready; I tried to think of what I had liked. “The outdoors.”

She told me that there was a camping trip in a couple of weeks. “You want to come?”

“Can I go if I'm not a Girl Scout anymore?”

“Lee goes.” When she saw that I didn't know who Lee was, she said, “Miss King.”

Miss King—or Miss K, as some of the girls called her—had played guitar and sung folk songs on our camping trips. She'd always worn the same outfit, jeans and a jean shirt, a suede coat, and old leather boots you'd expect a folksinger to own. She was husky, and her face resembled Arlo Guthrie's and her hair fluffed up like Bob Dylan's. I'd wanted to like her but hadn't; once, after we'd all sung “Blowin' in the Wind,” Miss K had told me that I'd been flat.

I said, “But she gets to go because she plays the guitar, right?”

“She goes because she's best friends with my mother,” Margie said. “She practically lives at our house.”

Later, I would hear that Miss King was in love with Mrs. Muchnick.

Now Margie said, “My dad doesn't like her.”

I couldn't picture any friend of my mother's, even Aunt Nora, living with us, and especially one my father didn't like.

“Anyway,” she said, “you can come if you want.”

“I'll ask,” I said, though I knew I wouldn't.

The bell rang then, so I couldn't even go back to class to get my
Hebrew I,
which made me feel like a criminal.

. . . . .

At dinner, my father said that he had been meaning to ask how Hebrew school was going.

I swallowed. “The same.”

He said, “Are you giving it a fair chance?”

I'd forgotten that I was supposed to do more than show up, and, picturing my
Hebrew I
on my desk in the dark classroom, I could hardly get my head to nod.

After dinner, when I was sent to get the cigarettes in the basement, I was glad to be by myself for a minute. I stood in my cardboard kitchen. It had belonged to Rebecca first, and by the time Aunt Nora had given it to me, as a birthday present, it appeared to have undergone years of industrial food preparation. I'd been bitterly disappointed, especially by the stove; it was white with three red concentric circles for burners, and what should have been the fourth was ripped down to its brown corrugated cardboard. I'd stared at the stove incredulously and thought,
I can't cook with this!

My mother had said, “Did you want to thank Aunt Nora?”

“Thanks.”

Right in front of me, Aunt Nora had said, “You're not strict enough with her.”

Later my mother had scolded me about my manners. I'd said, “Isn't it bad manners to give a used present?”

She'd said, “Sometimes that can make a present even more special.”

. . . . .

Moreh Pinkus held up my
Hebrew I
, and I took it from him. I didn't know whether to thank him or apologize. I wound up saying nothing.

After attendance, he announced that we would not have class next week, “in observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,” and though his voice was heavy with the importance of the holiday, I still felt the joy of an unexpected reprieve. I would have clapped if anyone else had, but instead I hid my hands inside the desk, and my fingers performed a merry folk dance.

It seemed possible that the whole class was as thrilled as I was; whenever Moreh Pinkus asked a question, almost everybody raised their hands. It was as though they'd all suddenly turned into Leslie Liebmans, and, as though they had, Moreh Pinkus was calling on all of them.

Then he said, “Please put your books on the floor and take out a pencil.”

I thought,
You can't give a test without warning.
But no one else seemed surprised, and I realized that he'd probably announced the test at the end of last week's class, when I'd been in the powder room; he could've announced the test a hundred times and I wouldn't have known, I'd been in class so little.

The first half of the test was Hebrew and the second half English, sixteen sentences in all, each with a blank line underneath for the translation.

I thought,
Did you ever hear of multiple choice?

When I looked up, he was watching me. He said, “Just do the best you can.”

I stared at the test for a long time, and particularly at the sentence “The teacher brought the book to school,” and prayed for a divine force to fly the Hebrew translation into my brain.

None came and there was no point in guessing. Finally I decided to write a note:

D
EAR
M
OREH
P
INKUS
,

I
DID NOT HAVE MY BOOK
,
AND THEREFORE COULD NOT STUDY FOR THIS TEST
.

S
ORRY
,
S
OPHIE
A
PPLEBAUM

I handed in my test, and left the room, even though I could feel Moreh Pinkus staring at me. I went down the hall to the powder room.

Margie was standing at the closet door. Her cheeks were as flushed as they'd gotten after her home runs, and I noticed her hair was back in a barrette instead of up front in two bunches.

She stepped aside and ceremoniously opened the door to the closet; like a lovely assistant in a game show, she gestured at the shelves lined with plastic-wrapped merchandise from the gift shop.

“It was unlocked?” I said.

She set her woolly hair free and demonstrated inserting the barrette in the lock.

She'd already made a pile on the floor of what she wanted to take—mostly jewelry, but also boxes of multicolored Hanukkah candles and net satchels of gold-foiled chocolate coins. “Check it out,” she said, handing me a big plastic bag of jewelry, each piece in its own little bag. I dumped the bag and spread its contents on the counter.

She brought her own stash over to try on next to me.

I found a silver cuff that looked a lot like an MIA bracelet, except it had Hebrew writing where the soldier's name and number belonged.

I looked at my wrist in the mirror, and then I saw all of me and then both of us, and what I saw was the enormity of this crime through my father's eyes: If there was a God, this was about as close as you could get to stealing from Him in the modern world; this seemed so obviously wrong, so symbolically wrong, we might as well have melted the jewelry down and created a golden calf to worship.

But it wasn't God or religion or my father that made me take the bracelet off. It had nothing to do with getting caught or getting in trouble with anyone but me.

I thought,
What am I doing?
and I surprised myself by saying it aloud. As soon as I did, I got this great feeling; it was like I'd been holding my stomach in for a long time—only what I'd been holding in was my personality—and I let it out now.

All Margie said was, “What's your problem?” but she spoke as though she was once again the boss of the world, addressing the Sofa of yesteryear.

She looked at me in the mirror; she was fastening the catch on a Star of David necklace. She was going to wear it.

I said the thought as it occurred to me: “You want to get caught.”

“I don't care,” she said. “I think my parents are getting a divorce.”

I wasn't sure what her parents' divorce had to do with her theft, but I knew it did. Maybe she was getting back at them, or she felt
she deserved these stolen goods in return for what was being taken from her.

“I'm sorry,” I said, and meant it.

She shrugged. “You don't want anything?”

“No.”

She didn't even look up when I left.

Miss Bell was coming down the hall.

Instead of saying hello, she asked if I knew that there was a bathroom right by the classrooms.

“Yes.”

“So why don't you use it?”

I said, “This one's nicer.”

Her eyes didn't register that I'd answered her question.

It was scary to walk away from her, just as it had been to walk out on Margie, but I was determined: I would be a slave to no person.

In class, a few students were still struggling with their tests. Leslie Liebman was reading her answers with obvious pleasure—she just couldn't get over how correct they all were.

Moreh Pinkus was saying, “Finish up,” when Miss Bell appeared at our door. “Pardon me,” he said to us, and joined her out in the hall. Everyone turned around to look; Margie was out there, too.