Nobody Cries at Bingo (19 page)

“You feel sorry for that jerk? Even after he made Stacy Smithson cry by breaking her Strawberry Shortcake lunch kit? Even after he said that Jerrod was fat because he ate his own dog? Even after he called our breasts nibblets?”

On the playground Tyler was losing his confidence. His minions crowded around him panting for his leadership but he didn't know what to do with them. A chubby kid would fall during a baseball game and instead of yelling, “Hey, look, Blubber hit the dust!” Tyler would walk out to the field and help him up.

One day Tyler turned towards us and blurted out, “I have to talk to you!”

Half the schoolyard turned around, and then turned back around as Tyler walked directly up to Trina and me. Trina beckoned him closer.

“Keep it down, Tyler. Everyone doesn't have to know our classroom business.”

He lowered his voice to a quiet yell, “One of you take it. You be the pet, Dawn. You love being the pet.”

I snorted, like I hadn't thought of that a thousand times already! “It's not my choice, you know that.”

Trina decided to goad him, “See, this is what you get for being a suck up. Now you're gonna suffer like the rest of us.”

Tyler turned his scared eyes to her. “Don't you think I know it?”

It happened on a Wednesday. The day had been rough. The grade threes had been particularly rebellious. One of them had gas and was letting farts go at random. Miss Gramiak identified the student and berated him only to have another student let one go. It was only ten am and she was already hoarse.

A few of the grade threes were in tears but two of them — Hope and Cindy — had crossed over into crazy territory. They had gone where they could not be broken. She would scream at them and they would only smile. It was a demented smile and you had to turn away when you saw it.

You also had to admire them. Where they lived now, yelling, spankings and banishments to the hallway had no more effect. In fact, I envied their trips. Once you were outside the classroom, you could run to the bathroom, the water fountain or anywhere you pleased. Inside, you were trapped.

On Wednesdays it was Tyler's job to water the plants. Miss Gramiak had a lot of them. “Plants create a joyous environment,” she said at the beginning of the year. “They are for everyone to enjoy.” As our year progressed, the plants grew listless.

Precisely at 1:20 that day, Tyler got up from his seat and went to the back of the room to do his job. The rest of us sat still in our seats as Miss Gramiak taught us about the solar system.

“The earth is the only planet in our solar system that can support life,” she intoned. “Some of the planets are composed entirely of gas.”

The grade threes snickered. Miss Gramiak glared at them.

Behind us, we could hear the water running and hitting the bottom of the plastic watering bucket. Then the water stopped running. Miss Gramiak looked back. Tyler was hunched over the sink with a plant in his hand. He smiled back at her. She returned her gaze to the board.

Then Tyler's tight control slipped and a word escaped him. “Shit.” A normal person might have been able to murmur a profanity with no chance of detection. Not Tyler. His loud voice propelled the word across the classroom, past the front row, right into Miss Gramiak's breathing space.

Miss Gramiak called out to him. “Everything okay, Tyler?”

Tyler did not answer. He was too busy trying to balance the heavy plant against the sink. He had over filled the plant and was trying to pour the water out.

Miss Gramiak's eyes grew large as she saw what he was doing. She ran to the back of the room.

“Not my geranium!” She touched the fronds of the drowned plant. “Get away from it!” she hissed at Tyler.

Tyler backed away and dropped the plant on the floor. The ceramic pot broke and wet dirt sprayed across the floor over his jeans and onto her corduroy skirt. A swarm of profanities flew from her mouth into my belly making it lurch. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears but I worried that it would draw her attention to me.

Tyler held on. He nodded in agreement with her abuse. Tears were threatening but he held them in.

One of the criers sitting to my left whispered, “Just let it out, Tyler.”

I understood what Tyler was doing. Holding in our tears was all we had. It was our only flag — she had not broken us — that we could wave proudly after this was over.

Miss Gramiak wasn't going to settle for agreement. Not today. She picked up the green plant and waved it in his face. “Look! You killed it. Are you happy Tyler? Are you happy!”

She stared at him waiting for a response. Tyler's loud voice failed him. His shoulders began to shake, his mouth trembled and then finally the tears came rolling down his cheeks, like big fat traitors.

Even kids he'd tortured since kindergarten felt for him. Trina mumbled beside me, “He's a jerk but he doesn't deserve that.” I nodded. I dared a look across at the grade threes. They were smiling.

I told my mom about Miss Gramiak. It was hard to explain exactly what was the matter with her. I was only nine and lacked the proper similes, “She is like a powder keg waiting to go off.” “She has a temper like a rabid wolverine.” “She screams like a banshee.” Instead I was left with meager statements like, “She's really mean and I don't like her.”

My mom dismissed my worries and said that I was being too sensitive. Besides, Mom was too busy dragging Celeste off to specialists in Regina trying to figure out why she kept wetting the bed to concern herself with my classroom problems.

Each month meant a month closer to being rid of Miss Gramiak. The year had not made her any nicer but we had learned to cope better. For instance, twice a week a teacher's aide was in the classroom. We would cling to her like kittens and climb onto her lap. “I've never seen kids be so affectionate. Especially children who are so . . . old.” We needed all the love we could get to balance out Miss Gramiak.

When there were visitors, Miss Gramiak never ever lost her temper. Her voice never went above the danger range. She kept her comments short and mostly positive. The grade threes shamelessly took advantage of her tied hands. They turned their backs to her and sat on their desks and ate their lunches. They ripped pages out of the books and wiped their faces with them.

Miss Gramiak would keep the same dead smile on her face. “Oh my grade threes, what am I going to do with you?”

We knew.

The principal, Mr. Macdonald, visited the class on a regular basis. When he first started coming around, I had hoped to slip him a note asking for his help. I lost faith in him when I saw how his cheeks turned red whenever Miss Gramiak smiled at him. Instead, we learned to keep him in the classroom by asking him questions about his job: Do you ever have to spank kids? Do you enjoy it? What if a teacher is bad? Do you have to spank her?

When we ran out of questions, Tyler would beg Mr. Macdonald over and over again to tell us his lame knock-knock jokes. We would laugh uproariously at each joke.

“Tell us the one about the banana and the orange again.”

“Oh no, you've heard it.”

“It gets funnier every time you tell it.”

“I tell you, Miss Gramiak, your class is a bunch of jokers.”

“Oh, don't I know it.”

In a surprisingly strategic move that one might expect of a chess master, Miss Gramiak organized a visit to the beach. She had to, she had nothing left to use against the grade threes. In the war of wills, they were now about even. The grade threes had the look of weathered Vietnam vets. They would sharpen their pencils and stare at her desk. She would sense their eyes on her and shiver as she corrected spelling tests.

“If you behave, then you can go to the beach,” became her new mantra. And it worked. It held the classroom together for the remaining month.

However, a day at the beach only increased my fear. Miss Gramiak would be even more dangerous away from the school. The beach was dotted with small thick bushes every twenty feet, perfect for stepping behind to dole out spankings. I decided I wouldn't go.

“We can't go,” I told Trina at lunch break. “I told Miss Gramiak that swimming in water is against my tribal beliefs. And since we're both Cree, you can't go either.”

Trina refused to go along with my plan and placed her permission slip on Miss Gramiak's desk along with all the others.

It was annoying to see Miss Gramiak happy that her plan was working: “We're going to have a great time at the beach — except for Dawn, of course. She has tribal beliefs. Dawn, would you like to come up here and explain them to the class? No? Oh, is speaking about your tribal beliefs against your tribal beliefs?”

On a piece of paper, I calculated how many seconds I had left in grade four: 166 billion left to go.

My mom decided to be one of the parent chaperones. She felt that a day at the beach was exactly what she needed after all the stress of the year. Mom had failed to discover the reason behind Celeste's bed-wettings. The doctor assured her that a few sessions of electric shock would solve the problem.

I tried to talk her out of it but she was determined to go. I consoled myself with the fact that Mom would finally get to see Miss Gramiak in all her tense glory. She would understand and I would be vindicated.

My plan quickly went awry. Mom and my nemesis immediately hit it off when Miss Gramiak bummed a smoke off of Mom. Then my plan went further south when they sat on the same beach blanket and introduced themselves.

“I'm Theresa, Dawn's mom,” Mom said lighting Miss Gramiak's smoke.

“Theresa, I didn't think you'd come — isn't swimming against your tribal beliefs?” Miss Gramiak asked with a sly glance in my direction.

Mom replied, “The only tribal belief I follow is cheap smokes.”

I lost all hope for retribution when Mom laughed uproariously at Miss Gramiak's impression of the ever-perky Miss Noble. “
'Okay my songbirds, all on three!'
Songbirds, my butt! It sounds like she's squeezing kittens. Twenty-four students and not one can carry a single note in key.”

“What about the sounds coming from your classroom?” I wanted to yell. “What about the crying students in the hallway, what about my nervous eye twitch and my sharp pain in my gut that is probably an ulcer?! Grade fours shouldn't even know what ulcers are!”

Miss Gramiak surprised everyone with homemade chocolate chip cookies. I could see Trina and Tyler come around as they ate her cookies. I held out, whispering to Trina that they were probably poisoned.

“C'mon Dawn, they're cookies.”

“Don't you remember the time she held us in all recess? She's crazy.”

“So what? Recess is over-rated. You've said it yourself a thousand times. Who the hell wants to go play outside in a blizzard?”

I tried to get Tyler on my side. “What about the time she screamed at you until you cried?”

Tyler stopped chewing and stared at me. “You're thinking of someone else.”

I glared at them and grabbed a cookie.