Blue Boy (13 page)

Mrs. Buchanan’s “classroom” is actually a big, unfinished space with cold, dusty cement floors, high ceilings striped with exposed, half-rusted I-beams, hanging lightbulbs that look like fiery tears, and long, wide tables covered in acrylic paint and modeling clay smudges and papier mâché. Mrs. Buchanan stands in the middle of this avant-garde scene and is as unlikely an occupant as you could possibly imagine. She wears dark brown leggings and a woolly cardigan. She has cropped gray hair and thick glasses and enormous breasts that stick out like torpedoes. She stands with her hands clasped against the soft hump of her pelvis, as if she’s been expecting us all morning. It’s really a terrifying sight. Doesn’t this woman have anything better to do with her time than stand in the middle of a crazily constructed room and wait for people to walk in the door?

It’s a rather lonely profession, teaching. I guess Mrs. Buchanan has to spend most hours of the day, most days of the week, in this maddening room. Away from Mr. Buchanan, who must be a heavy oaf of a man who loves beer and football and who wears plaid flannel shirts and a John Deere trucker hat. Or maybe he’s a thin, mousy man whose eyes are level with his wife’s ample bosom and who works as a clerk in some depressing office. Or maybe he’s dead, resurrected for this odd woman in the projects her students create—she sees his eyes reflected in a pair of blue beads glued to a sock puppet’s face or thinks of his warm breath when she lifts the lid off the kiln and heated air wafts out.

“Hi, Linda,” Mrs. Buchanan says to Mrs. Goldberg, and I laugh internally at this salutation. It’s crazy to think that teachers have real first names, real lives, and I never think of Mrs. Goldberg as Linda. “Mrs. Goldberg” indicates a caring, encouraging lady, but “Linda” conjures up a free-spirited woman who wears long, flannel jumpers in the fall, the collars turned up like they are in L.L. Bean catalogs, and who has a golden retriever and a sandy-haired, rosy-cheeked husband.

“Hi, Mrs. Buchanan,” Mrs. Goldberg says, putting her hands on my shoulders and pushing me forward. “You know Kiran, don’t you?”

Boy, does she. There’s one thing that I forgot to tell you about Mrs. Buchanan. In addition to being my art teacher, she once yelled at me really loudly.

It was when I was doing my own papier mâché head for her class. In case you don’t know how to make a papier mâché head, it involves taking a balloon and blowing it up, then covering it with newspaper strips that are coated in a paste of flour and water and glue, then letting them dry and harden, then taking a pin and popping the balloon inside, and then painting this oval-shaped mass so that it looks like a head. I thought long and hard about what to do for mine—we only got one chance at it, and every fourth grade class had its papier mâché heads displayed prominently in Mrs. Buchanan’s studio before a select few were hung out in the lobby. Since every other grade had Mrs. Buchanan for art class, it was always a big deal to have a nice papier mâché head displayed in her room because it was a sort of instant celebrity. Likewise, people who made terrible papier mâché heads became instant pariahs; Marcy Smith made a Madonna head that looked like someone had thrown acid in the Material Girl’s face and teased her hair out into a wispy mess, and it was only a couple of days after it was displayed that people started transforming “Like a Virgin” into “Like a Monster” and serenading Marcy with it everywhere she went. So I thought long and hard about what I could do, knowing that I would have to execute the creation of this project deftly so as to avoid ridicule. Naturally, the first image that came to mind was Strawberry Shortcake, but I eventually decided against this because, in the freak instance that I made a terrible head, I couldn’t bear the thought of it defiling SS’s beautiful visage. Sculpting her strawberry hat alone would require some marvelously intricate papier mâchéing, and I just couldn’t risk it. SS must be perfect, and papier mâché is an imperfect art.

It was when I had my chin resting on my hand, daydreaming about the project, staring at the wall of the classroom and the paintings some other students had done, that I discovered my muse. One of the kids had painted a portrait of Early Bird, the bright yellow-and-pink mascot from McDonald’s. Early Bird basically looks like Daisy Duck, except with yellow feathers and long brownish orange braids and an aviator cap and pink clothes. So I guess she looks nothing like Daisy Duck. (I just like the name “Daisy Duck.”) Anyway, I was really inspired by her. Every kid would know who she was because we all live for McDonald’s, and all of us, at some point in time, had had a birthday party there, with stacks of puffy hamburgers and greasy golden fries and soft-serve cones and a birthday cake with sugary red, blue, and yellow balloons on its top.

Since she was accessible to boys and girls alike, Early Bird didn’t make for too girly a sight; I could get away with making a feminine character because she represented something so exciting and delicious to all of us. And she presented a creative challenge without being all that hard to conjure up. For starters, Early Bird’s head is bottom-heavy, not top-heavy like most heads, and so I would have the chance to do something different: I would flip my balloon upside down and use the narrow end of the balloon as the summit of Early Bird’s head, while the wider, rounder end would form her plump chin. Painting her actual face would not be too hard, and I could even place my old swimming goggles on top of her head and paint their border pink.

The more I worked on the head, the more ingenious my ideas became. I managed to sculpt Early Bird’s beak out of leftover papier mâché. The kids around me began to notice the exciting genesis of this birdy creation over the next few weeks, and soon their own projects began to suffer because they were too busy watching me—how I painted Early Bird’s bright eyes, placing one tiny dot of white paint in each large black pupil to show the light reflecting off it, and how I braided orange yarn to make her hair. Each time Mrs. Buchanan walked by my table, I would cover my head playfully and wag my finger at her, promising her she would be impressed with the results.

Finally, we all had to present our projects to the rest of the class. By this point, I had crafted a throw cloth out of Brawny paper towels to prevent others from seeing Early Bird. When it was my turn to present, I carried the Brawny-plastered orb to the front of the room like Salome carrying the head of John the Baptist. I pulled off the sheets in one swift move, and the classroom ooh’d and aah’d at what I’d done.

I expected Mrs. Buchanan to echo their awe, but instead, she crossed her arms and frowned.

“Key-ran! How could you?”

As this was the last thing I expected to hear, I reacted with a mixture of sadness and confusion. Interestingly enough, so did the rest of the students in the class.

“Key-ran, what made you think of doing this bird as your head?”

“I like Early Bird,” I said. “And so does everyone else.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes!”

“Is that so?” Mrs. Buchanan got up from her desk and swayed her skirted self over to the wall opposite my chair. She put one thick index finger to the picture of Early Bird that had sparked my epiphany. She raised an eyebrow at me, an eyebrow knitted with consternation and exasperation. She looked like the ever-disappointed Bea Arthur in
Golden Girls
. “What about this?” she said.

I shuddered. “What about it?”

“Key-ran! How can you be so careless about copying!”

“Copying!” I said. “I didn’t copy! I took inspiration from it!”

“‘Inspiration’! Oh, come on, Key-ran. That’s a big word to use, even for you. I know the difference between inspiration and copying when I see it!”

“Just think of this as a form of flattery!” I said, almost screaming with purpose. “I am not copying. I am using Early Bird as an icon.”

Mrs. Buchanan harrumphed loudly, in that way that conveys ignorance instead of informed anger.

At this point, Cody, bless his soul, piped up. “Mrs. Buchanan, I think it’s really cool.” To my surprise, the class agreed, a few similar supporting comments spewing forth. But Mrs. Buchanan would not hear of it.

“Class, I want you to learn something from this. There is a difference between inspiration and copying, and this is
copying
.” With that, she walked over to me and tried to take the head from my hands. I held on to it for a second but had to let go; the force of her hefty pull was about to rip the damn thing in two. As Mrs. Buchanan headed back to her desk, the head swinging in her hand, I imagined Early Bird’s face contorting into a pained scream. (Although I guess I can’t say “scream,” since Mrs. Buchanan would probably say I was ripping off Edvard Munch. Not that the ignorant cow would know who Edvard Munch is.)

Mrs. Buchanan made me stay after class that day and went on for almost ten minutes about how plagiarism—
plagiarism
, she called it!—was the most reprehensible of crimes and how I needed to learn that now before my lying got me into more trouble. Throughout the speech, she held Early Bird’s head up as if it were a stinking thing. During the speech, Mrs. Buchanan kept saying, “Look at me,” so I had to hold my head erect and look into her stern face. Inside, I was crushed, but the more Mrs. Buchanan spoke, the more I stuck out my chin. At one point, Mrs. Buchanan reproached me for not looking repentant. I assured her that I was, and yet something curled inside of me—a desire to be defiant.

“I don’t know what it is with you people,” she finally said, almost under her breath. At the time, I thought “you people” meant “smart people,” and this became yet another reason for me to stick out my chin. “Listen, Key-ran,” she said. “I have to go out of town tomorrow, so I don’t have the time to give this the attention it deserves. But I hope you’ve learned your lessons here today. If I ever hear of you copying again, I will tell Principal Taylor, ya hear me?”

I nodded.

“
Ya hear me
?” she repeated more loudly, as if my nod had never happened.

“Yes!” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Now you may go.”

The next week, when I went back to art class (art class, after all, like gym and computer class, happened only once a week), I noticed a marked difference in Mrs. Buchanan’s behavior. She treated me like a felon, frowning every time she passed me and showing extra caution when I asked to use the restroom. It was the first time I had ever felt that an adult hated me. Sure, I often got the feeling that I was annoying to my father or to certain teachers, but there was such coldness in this woman’s reactions to me that I didn’t know how to respond to her. Who, I thought, could so thoroughly detest a child? Especially someone who spent all of her time around children!

The artistic expertise behind my project could not be denied, but I still got a grade of Unsatisfactory on it. Obviously, Mrs. Buchanan’s fury had overlooked my brilliance.

My mother was not pleased when she got my midterm report card and saw that I had an “average” grade in art class. Luckily, my earlier art projects—an etching of Mickey Mouse, a pink-glazed flowerpot, and a mobile made of strawberry images—had leveled out the overall grade, but I had never gotten just “average” reviews about my art. My mother raised an eyebrow at me over the kitchen table.

“I can explain,” I said.

“Vell, you better,
beta
,” she said.

“I—I didn’t do so well on my last project,” I said. My mother didn’t know I had been crafting an Early Bird head; usually, I would tell her what exciting new projects I had under wraps, but I had kept this one a surprise so that she could be stunned at the finished product. That plan had obviously misfired. “It’s the only time I’ve ever had something go wrong. I promise it won’t happen again.”

My mother clicked her tongue, a snappy sound of disappointment, and then got up to watch the news. Thankfully, she did not share my report card with my dad, who never asked to see my grades but simply asked my mother what she thought. For some reason, he always trusts her judgment in academic matters. I guess he sees it as a part of mothering.

That incident with Mrs. Buchanan cost me so many things. It made me lose a little bit of respect in my mother’s eyes. It made me lose my perfect grade, since I ended up with a Satisfactory at the end of the term instead of my usual Excellent. It made me lose a coveted spot on the art classroom wall, and for a whole month I was forced to stare at the mediocre faces that the other students created. (Tracy Nichols was stupid enough to make her own Madonna to erase the memory of Marcy Smith’s version. Tracy’s ended up just as deformed, with wiry yarn hair that skewed in several directions like a bundle of garden snakes, and the demonic masses that had composed “Like a Monster” brought out the ditty again.) But what the incident with Mrs. Buchanan did not make me lose was my artistic drive. I knew 100 percent that my head had been perfection. I carried this knowledge with me like it was a grenade.

As I stand before Mrs. Buchanan with Mrs. Goldberg now, I can feel that grenade inside me as surely as the rolling pump of my heart…and yet I know that it can disintegrate into a mess of cinders with a barb or something as simple as an arched, maligning eyebrow.

“Hi, Mrs. Buchanan,” Mrs. Goldberg says as I half-hide behind her. Mrs. Buchanan wears a bemused smile so subtle that Mrs. Goldberg probably can’t even see it.

“Well, hello, Mrs. Goldberg,” my enemy says. “What is so urgent that it couldn’t wait until after school?” She says this with a laugh as horrid as her scraped-up Payless flats.