Had I a Hundred Mouths (20 page)

Now I believe in
tellin
, while we're live and goin roun; when the tellin time comes I say spew it out, we just got to tell things, things in our lives, things that've happened, things we've fancied and things we dream about or are haunted by. Cause you know honey the time to shut you mouth and set moultin and mildewed in yo room, grieved by a ghost and fastened to a chair, comes back roun again, don't worry honey, it comes roun again. There's a time ta tell and a time ta set still ta let a ghost grieve ya. So listen to me while I tell, cause I'm in my time atellin, and you better run fast if you don wanna hear what I tell, cause I'm goin ta tell….

The world is changed, let's drink ower beer and have us a time, tell and tell and tell, let's get that hot bird in a cole bottle tonight. Cause next time you think you'll see me and hear me tell, you won't: I'll be flat where I cain't budge again, like I wuz all that year, settin and hidin way… until the time comes roun again when I can say oh go way ole ghost of Raymon Emmons, go way ole ghost and lemme be!

Cause I've learned this and I'm gonna tell ya: there's a time for live things and a time for dead, for ghosts and for flesh 'n bones: all life is just a sharin of ghosts and flesh. Us humans are part ghost and part flesh—part fire and part ash—but I think maybe the ghost part is the longest lastin, the fire blazes but the ashes last forever. I had fire in California (and water putt it out) and ash in Texis (and it went to dirt); but I say now, while I'm tellin you, there's a world both places, a world where there's ghosts and a world where there's flesh, and I believe the real right way is to take our worlds, of ghosts or of flesh, take each one as they come and take what comes in em: take a ghost and grieve with im, settin still; and take the flesh 'n bones and go roun; and even run out to meet what worlds come in to our lives, strangers (like you), and ghosts (like Raymon Emmons) and lovers (like Nick Natowski)… and be what each world wants us to be.

And I think that ghosts, if you set still with em long enough, can give you over to flesh 'n bones; and that flesh 'n bones, if you go roun when it's time, can send you back to a faithful ghost. One provides the other.

Saw pore Raymon Emmons all last night, all last night seen im plain as day.

T
HE
G
RASSHOPPER'S
B
URDEN

Here was this school building in the town, holding young and old, this stone building that looked from the front like a great big head with flat skull of asphalt and gravel and face of an insect that might be eating up the young through its opening and closing mouth of doors; and across its forehead were written the words: “Dedicated to all high emprise, the building of good citizens of the world, the establishment of a community of minds and hearts, free men and women.”

In this building and in its surrounding yards were many people, children and teachers—it was a world:

This was a rainy afternoon in Social Studies and Quella could not stand hearing the story of Sam Houston read out by different people in the class. She was just waiting for two-thirty, when she would get her pass to go to the auditorium where the May Fete in which she was a Royal Princess (and one of two elected by the whole school) would be practiced.

Miss Morris, who would never at any time in her life have been a Royal Princess, she was so ordinary, was the Social Studies teacher and listening as she sat in good posture at her desk to the story of Sam Houston as if it were a brand-new tale just being told for the first time. She did not like to sign a pass—for anything, May Fetes included. Miss Morris had a puckered mouth just like a purse drawn up. She knew everything about children, whether they told a story about undone homework; and especially about boys, if they had been smoking or had a jawbreaker hidden over their last tooth, or a beanshooter in their blouse—she surmised a beanshooter so dreadfully that it might have been a revolver concealed there. And when she fussed at a boy who was mean by stealing a girl's purse and going through it, showing all a girl's things to other boys in the class, Miss Morris would draw her pursey mouth so tight that she seemed to have no lips at all and stitches would crack the powder around it. Then she would shake this boy hard, often causing bubblegum or jawbreakers to fall from him everywhere and roll hard on the floor under all the seats. She did not like to sign a pass.

But Quella must have an early pass, not only to keep from having to read her turn at Sam Houston but to give her time to go get her hair ready for the May Fete practice. She thought what an early pass might be for—not to go to the Nurse to see if she had mumps because it felt sore by her ear, because yesterday she had said this and caused a lot of attention, but all the M's in her row and the L's and N's on both sides of her row shrank away from her and even Helena McWorthy had not wanted to go around with her between classes, the way they did, seeing what was in the halls together, or let her use her powder puff or blue woman's comb, just to get mumps. And she could not have something in her eye because not long ago she had got an easy pass from Miss Stover in Math for this and the Nurse, a little mean woman that smelled like white, had said, “I find nothing whatsomever in your eye that does not naturally belong there,” and wrote this on a note to Miss Stover and then glared at her with the whites of her eyes.

Quella sneaked a good black jawbreaker into her mouth, acting like she was just brushing her hand across her mouth, and Miss Morris never knew. Then she sat, waiting for a reason to get an early pass to dawn upon her. She could hear the voices of this one and that one reading out about Sam Houston—forever Sam Houston! They had had him in the Third Grade and they had had him in the Fifth. And now, even in the Seventh and as far as Junior High School they had to have him again. It was Mabel Sampson, the biggest girl, reading now. If she would say
thee—ee
, Miss Morris would stop her and make her say it
thuh;
and she could not even pronounce the word that clearly spelled
Puritan
but said it
Prutan
. Mabel Sampson was so dumb. Because Mabel Sampson was bigger than the rest in the class, she deviled them and snooted them whenever and wherever she could, to make it plain that she had somewhere (and Quella was going to find out) passed all the rest of them on her way to something and would get there first.

And then it was Billy Mangus reading. He was fat and white and whined a lot, and the worst boy to sit in front of if you were a girl and an M. She and Helena McWorthy just hated him for what he would do with redhots. He would plant these little dots of sticky candy in Helena McWorthy's beautiful hair and she would not even know it or feel them there and go all through the halls between classes having redhots in her hair until someone laughed at her and made fun of her and picked them out to eat them. Or Billy Mangus would bore a sharpened pencil into Helena's back right through an Angora sweater or even her Mexican bolero which her aunt brought her back from Tijuana, Mexico. Helena was a very quiet girl. She would let Quella stroke her, huddled blinking in her seat, keep her always right and everything about her straight, plait and unplait and plait again her hair, arrange her ribbons. Helena would go anywhere holding Quella's hand, submissive to be with her. She had little chinkapin eyes fixed close to the bridge of her nose like a cheap doll's, dull and with scant white eyebrows. Her almost white hair, which was long and divided down her back, was infested with lures like sometimes two red plastic butterflies lighted there, or a green Spanish comb staked over one ear, and always red or blue knitting yarn wound through a spliced hawser of it, which arched over the top of her head from ear to ear. Helena had discovered that a pencil, too, might be stuck there and stolen often by Billy Mangus, who sat behind her alphabetically, and have to be fussed for.

Billy Mangus was reading and Quella wondered if his false tooth in front was wiggling, and she stretched over to see. No. It must be locked in place now. But if he wanted to, Billy could, by unlocking this false tooth some way with his tongue, cause it to wiggle like a loose picket in a fence. This tooth was his special thing in a class or anywhere if he wanted to unlock it. Suddenly she just had to see it wiggle and she did not know why but she shouted, right in the middle of the reading, “Wiggle us your tooth, Billy!” This made Miss Morris very outdone and Billy Mangus giggled and the whole class tittered. Miss Morris made everything quiet, then stared so hard at Quella and all the class sat very still to watch Miss Morris do one of her stares, hold her rocky eyes, never even breathing or blinking, right on a pupil until he had to look down first. Quella did not know whether to try to outstare Miss Morris by doing just the same to her until
she
put her eyes down, or to look to see if Billy Mangus was wiggling his tooth. But she decided she would rather see the tooth and turned to look; and so Miss Morris won. “Sit up straight, Quella, and do not talk one more time out of turn!” Miss Morris said, very proud because she had won a staring contest.

Quella sat up in her seat and there seemed nothing to do, so she remembered her lips, if they had enough lipstick on them. Very carefully she opened her nice black patent-leather purse and got out her lady's mirror which was of red-skinned leather and had some redhots sticking to it. She cleaned them off into her purse to save them and held out the mirror for her lips to see themselves. She put her lips in a round soft circle. She saw them in her mirror, red enough, sweetheart lips, so beautiful. Then she made different shapes with them, some kissing shapes, some like “OOOOO!”; and one like being prissy, or a word like “really!”; or like the Nurse saying, “I find nothing whatsomever in your eye that does not naturally belong there.” But she would not do her lips like Miss Morris at a mean boy, for then it would spoil the lipstick. Last, she gently kissed a piece of composition paper to leave her lips there. Liz her sister kissed letters at the end and all over, she mailed her lips to boys, and she would, too, when she began to write letters to somebody besides her Grandmother in Yreka, who would certainly not be thrilled with kissing lips in a letter.

Then she put her mirror back in her purse and spied her big blue comb in there. She scraped some redhots off it and brought it out and raked her hair with it. It was a good feeling. She thought of Helena's bunch of hair and how she wanted right now to be behind her plaiting it and fixing it as she did in Science, where they did not have to sit alphabetically. She seined her hair again through the net of her comb, right in back this time, being very careful not to comb down the red ribbon which was pinned there like an award for something. If a boy pulled at it, this would make her mad and stamp her foot and have to slap him. She lolled the black jawbreaker around in her mouth and devoured the sweet juice from it.

Then suddenly there was something being unwrapped cunningly in the L's across from her. She looked to see Charlotte Langendorf, the ugliest girl, holding something sticky and blue in her lap. It had been wrapped in wax paper. “What is that stuff?” she whispered across to Charlotte. “A thing we cooked today in Cooking and I am going to eat it when the eating period comes,” Charlotte whispered, glad someone had noticed it. “Let me see it,” Quella whispered again. “I won't eat it, cross my heart. I have Cooking next period and I need to know what we will cook.” Charlotte passed it secretly across and Quella looked at this peculiar thing which they would cook next period. She examined it, smelled of it, and wanted right then to taste some of it. “What is it?” she asked. “It smells funny.” “I don't know,” Charlotte whispered back, “but it's something we made out of ingredients. Miss Starnes told us how.” Quella tasted it. It was not good to eat at all, not even cooked; but she had another taste. “Let me have it!” Charlotte whispered severely. “Give me back my cooking!” Quella gave it back. “It smells tacky,” she said. Then she looked ahead of her in the front of the S's and watched Bobby Sandro's broken arm in a cast, how he was writing tattoos on it, in a cast and a sling from breaking it in Gym and he did not have to write because of it. And then at Suzanne Prince's bandaged-up finger, so she couldn't write, too, saying it was bitten by their cat that went insane.

And then she surveyed the whole row of mean boys, every one of them mean, not a one cute, whose names began with B as though all the meanest were named alike, and she thought how they would step on your saddle shoes to dirty them. Then she thought of several things in a row: horses and their good gentle one named Beauty they used to have; of a fight in the rain before school by Joe and Sandy and how all the girls stood purposely to get their hair wet and be so worried about it; of Liz and her boy friend Luke Shimmens who owned a hot-rod and took them riding around town and up and down dragging Main blowing the horn and backfiring and seeing different kids walking along and waving out at them.

Then there seemed nothing else going on to see or do, and Quella wanted to have an early pass again. Wayne Jinks was just finishing his paragraph. When it was over she raised her hand and popped it to jingle the jingles round her wrist. Miss Morris said, “Do you want to read next, Quella?” “Nome,” Quella said, and prissed, “it is time to go to May Fete practice.”

Miss Morris said a surprise. “All right, take a pass and go ahead.” And she took a pad of passes from her drawer and wrote on one. She tore it off and gave it to Quella, looking for a moment as if she were going to stare at her. But Quella went out of the room quickly.

She was in the hall with a pass in her hand, going down the very quiet hall that did not have another single person in it. She passed all the rooms, sometimes seeing through a door pane some teacher writing on a blackboard or standing talking to a class. She noticed as she went along that without any other kids, alone in the hall (and this same thing was true when she was by herself with a teacher) she was no more than somebody quiet and courteous. But when the others were around, she could be all the things they were, shouting and slapping boys and eating at the wrong time, provoked with the way things were or excited about them. She stopped by the closed door to the Teachers' Room where all their mailboxes were, like pigeons' holes. No one was in there. She remembered seeing the teachers gathered in front of their boxes before the first class began, fumbling, dipping and rising like homing pigeons. She came by Mrs. Purlow's room where the Stuttering Class was—in there was George Kurunus and she spied him through the glass pane of the door, sitting like some kind of an animal. She heard Mrs. Purlow's perfect words, like “lit-tle,” like “yel-low” floating across the room, how she would say every word right. And next was Mrs. Stanford, who would treat you so very nice when you met her in the grocery store after school or on Saturdays, with her hand on your head, saying, “How's little Quella?” and patting you, but mean in class and acting as though she never had seen you in a grocery store in her life, or anywhere. Then here was the typing class. It was like a heavy rain in there. And old Miss Cross, who had been teaching how to type for thirty years, standing at the front of the class pointing with a long stick at the letters on a chart and saying “A” and then an enormous clack! to make an A, then “B” and another clack to make this letter. Then faster, and it was like a slow gallop of a horse on pavement and Miss Cross with her stick like a circus trainer, “A - S - D - F - G.” And next was Miss Winnie's room where this teacher cried a lot and for this was called Weeping Winnie and spoke in a soft cooing voice and seemed so sad. She always lost her voice the Ninth Period and said, “Cheeldrin you will have to write today, my voice is gone.”