Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (5 page)

Stacy turned toward me, then suddenly whirled back around and landed a violent kick in Tim’s midriff. He doubled over. Everyone gasped.

“I’m telling!” Shelly Thomas shrieked.

Stacy turned back to me, cupped her foot around my leg and nudged me, as if to indicate that I should follow her. My face turned white. The mob had gotten a taste of blood; now various kids pushed me forward eagerly. Stacy led me to a corner of the playground as they watched in anticipation.

I closed my eyes, envisioning the school assembly that would be called to announce my untimely death.

Everyone would gather in the gymnasium, excited that my murder had gotten them out of class.

“We’re gathered here today,” Principal Pullman would announce, “to mourn the loss of Eric Poole, who died at the hands . . . of an armless girl.”

“You wanna be best friends?”

I opened my eyes. “What?”

“You wanna be best friends?”

I was taken aback. I had no real friends, so Stacy’s friendship would automatically qualify her for best friend status, but sharing this information seemed moot at the moment.

“Well . . . um . . . sure.”

“You can help me with my homework, and I’ll show you how to kick people,” she proposed.

“Cool,” I replied, not quite sure if she was serious or just lowering my guard before she felled me with a single blow.

“But if I find out you’re making fun of me behind my back, you’ll be sorry.”

Inwardly, I smiled. Score another one for magic.

 

 

OVER THE next several months, Stacy and I became inseparable. We sat across from each other in class, cheering each other on as we brushed our teeth with red dye toothpaste during Dental Hygiene Day, attempted mouth-to-mouth on the blow-up doll during Show and Tell, and played two-man kickball in the open field across from the school during the frequent bomb scares (which, to everyone’s dismay, never seemed to result in anything actually blowing up).

Just as my vision had shown, we ate lunch together every day, sitting alone at a table, acting highly amused and fascinated by each other in an effort to assuage the fact that no one else wanted to sit with us. The no-armed girl and the one-eared boy were the freak show of the fourth grade, but we were determined not to let it get us down.

“We’re so lucky,” I whispered to Stacy as we leaned toward each other and, in an ill-chosen re-creation of
Lady and the Tramp
, put the ends of a Twinkie into our respective mouths, munching until we reached the middle. I allowed Stacy to have the last bite, since (a) I wanted to appear gentlemanly, and (b) I didn’t really want to kiss anybody, much less a girl. From the corner of my eye, I could see Tim Turkel, seated at the Cool Kids table, pretending to gag.

“They
wish
they could be us,” Stacy said defiantly, as she motioned to Tim to look under the table, where she attempted to flip him off with her middle toe (no mean feat, even for her). “Wait till I get him on the playground.”

Stacy’s house was just a few blocks from mine, and since our neighborhood bordered the school grounds, we had the option of walking to school. I had always been too afraid, since the path was loaded with hiding places for bullies; but Stacy’s absolute refusal to be cowed by boys like Tim meant that we now sauntered home each day, laughing and playing with the casual self-assurance of almost normal kids.

Stacy had many great qualities, but unfortunately, a genius IQ was not among them; so I took it upon myself to improve her test scores. Whenever Miss Hooperman’s attention turned to the Harlequin romance novel she hid inside her teacher’s manual, I would subtly raise one corner of my test to allow Stacy a sneak peek at my answers, whether she wanted it or not.

Normally, my paralyzing fear of becoming Grade A meat in Hell’s barbecue would have prevented such behavior; but I deemed this particular sin forgivable—indeed, perhaps even laudable—since I was helping someone in need, someone whose challenges were far greater than my own. Wasn’t this what Christianity was all about? Didn’t Jesus help the sick and infirm? I was Mother Teresa with a number 2 pencil.

Then, one afternoon as the bell rang, Miss Hooperman called my name.

“Eric, I would like you to stay after class, please.”

I froze. I’d been found out. I was aiding and abetting a cheater, and would be sent to the principal’s office for a spanking.

I envisioned the dungeon where Principal Pullman awaited me, a leather executioner’s mask over his face as he wielded a long wooden paddle stamped with a series of aerodynamic holes. While Dad spanked me all the time, his spankings were performed with a spatula and were always prefaced by his patented “This hurts me more than it hurts you” speech. They were more about humiliation than pain.

Principal Pullman’s punishments, on the other hand, were reputed to be nothing short of horrific, a veritable buffet of butt pain. Rumors were that those who escaped alive could not sit down for months, possibly even years.

I sat shaking in my seat as Stacy turned to go, whispering, “Call me when you get home.”

“I will . . .” I replied, “if I can dial.”

Miss Hooperman was a kindly, pear-shaped woman who, by our estimates, appeared to be somewhere north of forty and was thus obviously near death. She had never married, which was understandable since she was nearly as wide as she was tall; but her childless existence meant that she channeled her love for children into her students, and Stacy and me in particular. Until now.

As the last of the kids left the room, she sat down at the desk next to mine and smiled. This threw me completely off balance. She had never impressed me as a sadist.

“I have some exciting news for you. You’re going to be a Crossing Guard!”

In that moment, I knew that while my criminal activities had escaped Miss Hooperman’s detection, God had punished me nonetheless. Crossing Guards were a form of life only slightly higher than Hall Monitors. She thought she was rewarding me, but as someone in the final stages of life, Miss Hooperman had obviously forgotten that this gig meant ratting out your fellow classmates. I didn’t even know the real name of our hall monitor; she was so despised that even teachers called her by her nickname, “Wombat.”

Oblivious to my panic, Miss Hooperman handed me a bright orange belt/sash combination, boldly labeled with a giant “CG.” My very own scarlet letters.

 

 

IN TYPICAL STACY FASHION, she took the news of my impending stewardship of the bridge over a nearby creek with aplomb. The small, slightly rickety wooden bridge joined the school’s property with our neighborhood and enabled us to walk to class in both subzero and sweltering conditions, an activity the school district enthusiastically encouraged since it saved them bus maintenance.

“I’ll stand guard with you,” she announced. “Don’t worry, we won’t turn in the kids who jump up on the handrails. We’ll just push ’em over the edge!”

This seemed at cross-purposes with the school board’s intentions, but I had to admit it was a superior alternative to getting beat up for being a snitch.

My first several shifts went by without incident. Stacy’s reputation preceded her, so as long as she stood beside me each day, no bully had the courage to actually confront me. A few kids snickered, but I pretended not to notice, happy that for once I was able to use my hearing defect to face-saving advantage.

“Why do you let them laugh at you?” Stacy said, shooting several boys a threatening look that sent them hustling down the path.

“Because I don’t care what they think,” I replied airily. “You don’t care what people think about you, either.”

“Sometimes I do.”

I turned to her, shocked. “You do?”

Stacy sat down on the ground, her legs bent in front of her as she kicked idly at the tufts of grass with her left foot. “It’s just easier to make people scared of you than to make them like you. At least, when you look like me.”

WITH STACY at my side, I made it through the entire first week with no major incidents; and as the days wore on, I began to gain a newfound sense of power. Most kids just ignored me, but a few actually seemed impressed, and I began to realize that I might be able to parlay this position into an elevated stature at school, raising my profile from that of Derided Social Pariah to Largely Ignored But Rarely Ridiculed Regular Kid.

Then one afternoon, Stacy’s mother appeared at the door to our classroom.

“Eric,” Miss Hooperman said, “will you help Stacy with her things?”

I quickly gathered up Stacy’s books. “Where are you going?” I whispered.

“To the doctor,” she replied. “I might get an arm.”

As I stood at my usual post at the creek an hour later, I marveled at the idea of Stacy getting her very own arm. Boy, I thought, the seventies sure are an amazing time to be alive.

“Hey, look, it’s One-Ear!”

Having gotten wind of Stacy’s absence at the creek, Tim Turkel—who usually took the bus, preferring its captive audience of victims—had decided to pay me a visit, along with two of his partners in crime. I pretended not to hear them and instead imagined Stacy, the now one-armed wonder, arriving just in time to slug Tim and drop-kick his friends.

“Hey, One-Ear, what happens if we get up here?”

Tim and his friends climbed up onto the wooden handrails of the bridge, nearly losing their balance while grabbing onto one another. They screamed with laughter as they jumped from one handrail to the other in a dangerous game of chicken.

I looked on, helpless. “You guys, you gotta get down.”

“Says who?”

I pictured them plummeting six feet to their deaths in the creek below, their broken limbs askew, a small trickle of blood dripping from their mouths as they lay there, motionless, their cold, dead eyes staring up at me.

This sunny reverie was interrupted by a flash of Principal Pullman in full spanking gear, warming up by smacking his paddle against a large hanging cowhide as he barked, “Whoever’s responsible is gonna PAY!”

“If you fall, I’ll get in trouble,” I beseeched them.

“Hows about if
you
fall, then?”

Tim’s friends jumped down and grabbed me. Before I knew what was happening, they had hung me over the handrail. I dangled over the creek, my life flashing before my eyes—in a series of brief but poignant musical vignettes—as they screamed with laughter.

A small group of kids enthusiastically gathered at the bridge to watch the spectacle. To their delight, my tormenters began yanking my Keds off while another tugged at my belt buckle.

“Stop it!” I hollered as I tried to squirm free.

They threw my belt and shoes into the creek, then Tim grabbed the waist of my jeans.

“Time to pants the pansy!”

“Do it!” Tim’s friends yelled.

“Don’t!” I screamed back.

With one rough pull, my pants came down, revealing my now slightly-pee-stained tighty whities to the world. The crowd went wild. Tim sent my pants flying over the railing to join my shoes and belt in the muddy creek below.

“You pantsed One-Ear!” one of the bullies shrieked in delight.

Humiliated, I began to kick wildly until they finally pulled me back over the railing onto the safety of the bridge. I tore free from Tim’s grasp, pushed my way through the throng and scooped up my textbooks with one dramatic sweep of my arm. As I dashed across the common ground that ran behind the line of nearly identical Wedgwood Green tract houses, I realized, somewhat belatedly, that I had left my clothes in the creek.

“Now you know what you really need to guard!” I heard Tim yell after me.

As I sprinted the last hundred yards toward the safety of our backyard, the laughter began to fade in the distance. Now all I could hear was the pounding of my heart, the rush of blood in my ears, the screaming of my mind in furious protest as I recounted the ways I could—and should—have fought back.

I ran up to the patio. The sliding glass door was unlocked. I opened it slowly so as not to alert my sister. Slipping inside, I crept stealthily across the family room toward the hall, school books in hand. Suddenly, Dad emerged from the kitchen. He paused.

“Did you know you’re not wearing pants?”

Although Dad appeared to buy my improvised story of Christian charity (“Tim Turkel fell into the creek on the way home, so I gave him my jeans—and some accessories”), the kids at school knew better. By the next afternoon, the news of my impromptu trouser removal had swept the school, and my nickname, “One-Ear,” had been replaced by the cleverly alliterative “Pee Stain Poole.”

 

 

STACY FINALLY RETURNED two days later. She met me at my house for the walk to school, proudly sporting a new appendage. Her “arm” was not quite what I had pictured. Rather than appear human, it was a mass of steel joints and beige vinyl padding, and resembled the claw that scooped up prizes in an arcade machine.