Where was my gosh-darn voice when I needed it? All I could manage was a small smile and a nod. Within moments, I was dancing with Josh . . . the sweetest, cutest, best dancer in the whole world.
I was still dancing on air that night while getting ready for bed. My smile was huge as I twirled through the hallway and into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Standing in my nightshirt, I suddenly caught a glimpse of my legs and realized that the embarrassment I thought I’d never survive seemed almost laughable . . . well, almost.
I was better at shaving now. My mom didn’t even get mad at me when she found out that I’d shaved against her wishes. She just looked at me and said, “Be more careful next time.” I was eternally grateful she didn’t make more of a fuss. My dad, on the other hand, was not too pleased that I used his razor. . . . Well, that’s another story.
When I went to tell my parents good-night, I hugged them both extra tightly. I was having a hard time falling asleep. My sister was breathing evenly next to me, and I knew she was already out for the night, but I was still so excited that Josh had asked me to dance.
Suddenly, I felt grateful to my PE teacher for making everyone choose a partner, even though earlier that night I’d felt like shooting her when she started the game. I smiled into the darkness at the thought and felt satisfied that I had just survived the worst humiliation of my life. With that thought came the realization that Josh must still like me despite my gorilla legs. After all, he asked me to dance, didn’t he?!
My smile broadened, and with a satisfied giggle, I rolled onto my side and fell fast asleep.
Elizabeth J. Schmeidler
Just Desserts
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The Golden Rule
“Great dinner, Hon,” said Dad, kissing Mom good-bye, then giving a kiss to Sherre, Lizzy and me. “Don’t wait up, I won’t be home ’til after three.”
I was disappointed to see him go. I missed not having dinner together as a family now that Dad had to work nights. He and Mom ate early, leaving the three of us to eat alone.
“Come on and eat, kids,” Mom said after homework was done. “It’s hamburgers tonight.”
We slid into the diner-style booth Dad had made last year before he lost his job as an upholsterer. Little Lizzy was squashed between Sherre and me. The booster seat she had given up since becoming a “big four-year-old” had been replaced with the hips Sherre, now a teen, seemed to have sprouted overnight.
Mom slid a thin hamburger, one by one, onto each bun then—plop, plop, plop—three thick spoonfuls of her tasteless, lumpy mashed potatoes followed.
Our barely audible “Uhhh,” was stopped short by a sharp look from Mom.
“Eat all those potatoes, girls,” she said. “They’re filling and they’re good for you.” We nodded. Times were tough and potatoes were cheap.
As soon as she left, I took a bite of the hamburger. The smell of heavenly garlic hit my nose. The taste was sheer bliss, juicy and full of flavor. I gobbled it down in four bites.
I risked a forkful of the potatoes, chewed as little as possible and struggled hard to swallow. Mom must have been absent the day they taught potatoes in her Home Ec class, I thought.
Sherre and Lizzy were having their share of trouble, too. Sherre gagged and Lizzy looked like she was going to throw up.
I smooshed the potatoes around on my plate trying to make them look less massive. I could dump them in the trash. A pang of guilt shot through me at the thought, knowing how hard Dad worked to put food on the table. Anyway, it’d mean having to pass Lizzy to get to the garbage can, and the little tattletale would tell on me for sure.
Then the idea came to me.
“Look, Lizzy!” I pointed up. “There are footprints on the ceiling!”
“Footprints?” said Lizzy. “Where?” Her gaze followed my finger.
“Up there.” I scooped up a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
Plop.
“I don’t see anything,” she said.
“I see them,” said Sherre, picking up my lead and a spoonful of her own. “Look, Liz, over the sink!” Plop.
“I don’t see them,” Lizzy whined.
“Aw, you missed it,” I said. “They’re gone.”
“I hear too much talking and not enough eating,” Mom called from the living room. “No dessert till those plates are clean.”
Lizzy turned back to her meal. A puzzled look spread across her face. She took her fork and cautiously poked at the huge heap of potatoes now on her plate. Sherre and I snickered quietly, but Lizzy was silent, unable to take her eyes off the swollen blob.
“I’ll be in there in two minutes,” Mom said in a loud voice. “You girls had better be through.”
Sighing, we re-attacked the potatoes again. Lizzy stuffed her mouth full and managed to get them down with a gulp of water. I choked. Sherre chewed and chewed. Gagging, she spit the whole mess into her napkin.
“Look, Liz,” she said. “Those footprints are back!” She pointed to the ceiling. Lizzy snapped her head up. Plop . . . plop. Lizzy was still looking up when Mom reached the doorway.
“Elizabeth Ellen Mandell!” she said. “What have you been doing all this time? Your sisters are almost done with their potatoes. Yours have grown!”
Lizzy looked at her plate and gasped. Her lower lip quivered and she began to whimper.
“Never mind the waterworks, Lizzy,” said Mom. “There are starving people who would love those potatoes. Eat.”
Obediently, Lizzy scooped up another lumpy forkful and tried to eat it. Her face turned red. She sputtered. She tried to swallow. I watched with a lump in my throat as she fought to force them down.
Suddenly I felt clammy and sick to my stomach—and it wasn’t because of the potatoes. I opened my mouth to speak, to admit to Mom what was really going on. But remembering the torture Sherre had put me through the last time I confessed for both of us silenced my tongue.
Sherre didn’t seem to notice my guilt. As soon as Mom left the room, she was back at Lizzy like a hawk on a chicken.
“Lizzy!” She said pointing to a spot behind Lizzy’s head. “There they are again!” Lizzy turned around in her seat. Plop.
I picked up my spoon and filled it up with the last of my potatoes, then stopped. No, I told myself. I’d rather eat Mom’s mashed potatoes the rest of my life than to watch my baby sister suffer like this.
I shoveled the potatoes into my mouth and dropped the spoon. It clattered onto my plate. At the sound, Lizzy looked down at her mashed potato mountain. She turned around again to try to find the imaginary footprints, then looked from Sherre to me, a light of understanding in her eyes.
Grasping a spoon in her pudgy little fist, Lizzy began plopping potatoes onto our empty plates.
“Lizzy, are your potatoes gone yet?” called Mom.
“Almost!” said Lizzy cheerfully, loading on some more. “Better eat ’em all up,” she whispered to us with a grin. “Or I’ll tell!”
Beverly Spooner
Calvin and Hobbes
by Bill Watterson
CALVIN AND HOBBES. © Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.
A Chicken-Noodle-Soup Day
Lying is done with words and also with silence.
Adrienne Rich
“I think I should stay home from school today, Mom. I’m sick. Really, I am.”
I don’t believe my fifteen-year-old sister for a minute. She hates school. This is just another one of her excuses to stay home. Again.
Mom isn’t as sure as I am. She’s a working mom who struggles with guilt for not being home for us. She gives Sandy the benefit of the doubt. Again.
“You can stay home,” she says, “but you have to stay in bed. And I want you to eat chicken noodle soup for lunch.”
We always eat canned chicken noodle soup when we’re sick. It’s the only time either of us likes it.
Mom feels Sandy’s forehead as she
kisses her good-bye.
“You don’t feel warm,” she says. “Are you sure you need to stay home?”
My dramatic sister lays one hand across her forehead. “I feel dizzy,” she says, “and my head hurts. I must have that bug that’s going around.”
Mom reluctantly leaves for work.
“I’ll call you later, Dear,” she says as she closes the door.
I have to catch the bus for school.
“Enjoy your day, Sister Dear,” I holler over my shoulder, “and get well.”
Sandy waves to me from the kitchen window and grins.
She tries her best to look pathetic when I come home from school, loaded down with homework. I hear her scurry into the bedroom we share as I open the door.
“Mom will be home soon. You’d better get your act together,” I warn.
Sandy peers at me through drooping eyes.
“I’m feeling a bit better,” she sighs.
“Then why are you still in bed?”
“Paying my dues for a day off,” she replies.
“Well, save it for Mom,” I say. “You’re going to need it. I need a snack. What’s in the cupboard?”
“Well, I found some donuts, and there’s popcorn, and Mom hid a package of candy bars on the top shelf.”
“Got you, you little faker. Wait until Mom comes home. This was a chicken-noodle-soup day, remember?”
“Oh, she’ll never know.”
Famous last words.
When Mom comes home, I’m at my desk doing homework. I open the door a crack so I won’t miss anything. Sandy is on the couch, pressing a cool washcloth to her forehead.
“How are you feeling tonight?” Mom begins, in a tone of proper concern.
“Better,” Sandy says with only an edge of brightness to her voice. “I think I can go to school tomorrow.”
Smart move, Sister, I think.
“The chicken noodle soup must have made you better,” Mom says. “Did it taste good to you?”
“Soup always tastes good when I’m sick,” Sandy says sweetly.
Liar, I think. Watch out. You have become an unsuspecting prey.
“Well, Dear,” says Mom, “you just lie there while I get supper. I don’t want you to overexert yourself. Are you up to eating your favorite pizza?”
Probably not, I think, after a day of junk food.
Sandy manages to say, “I think I could eat a little.”
Mom rattles around in the kitchen, stretching pizza dough and filling it with our favorite toppings. I hear her open the trashcan.
I know what’s coming next. I think I’ll stay right here in my room.
“Sandy, I don’t see your soup can in the trash. Where is it?”
If I were you, Sister, I’d confess now. Otherwise, you’re done for. But my cornered sister attempts a getaway move.
“I pushed the can to the bottom, so I wouldn’t smell the chicken. It was upsetting my stomach.”
That’s a good one, I have to admit. But Mom’s not buying it.
“Poor dear,” clucks my predator mother. “I’ll get rid of it for you.”
“That’s okay, Mom. I’m feeling better now. Why don’t I empty the trash while you get dinner?”
“No need, Dear. Just relax.”
I hear a clatter of cans and bottles in the kitchen.
“Oops,” says Mom. “I dropped the trash.”
I could help her clean up, but think I’ll stay here and begin my essay for English class. I have my topic, thanks to Sandy. I think I’ll call it, “What a Tangled Web We Weave.”
Mom’s voice remains calm and pleasant. Too pleasant.
“That’s strange, Sandy. I can’t find the chicken noodle soup can anywhere.”
There is a long silence. Sandy makes one last attempt to get out of the trap, but she is definitely the weaker one in this predator/prey game.
“I forgot, Mom. I put the can in the bag on the porch.”
I know that there are at least four bags on the porch, all tied up, waiting for trash day—just as I know that Mom and Sandy will play this game to the death.
I have finished a draft about the complications of lying by the time Mom calls me to dinner. We sit at the table in silence. Four bags of trash are strewn on the floor.
Mom and I eat pizza, made just the way I like it, and drink soda. There is a special treat in the oven for dessert.
In front of Sandy sits one solitary mug of chicken noodle soup.
Donna Beveridge
Everything Will Be Okay
The world that we live in is the one that we create. We create our world with every thought that we think, with every word that we speak and with every action that we take.
LeVar Burton
The kitten is a scrawny thing with burrs and bits of wood caught in its coat where it still has fur, and pus coming out its eyes and nose. Its big baby head looks even bigger at the end of such a stick of a body. I found it in the woods at the end of my street where I play most days with my friends. This time I was alone. Lucky for you I was, I think. Otherwise, David or Claude might have decided you’d be good practice for their slingshots. Those two can be mean, I think to myself. I don’t like playing with them really, but they live at the end of the street and sometimes you just play with the kids on your same street, even if they’re mean, sometimes, even to you.
The kitten makes a pitiful noise.
“Don’t worry,” I tell it, stroking its scabby head until the mewing is replaced by a faint purr. “Everything will be okay. I’m going to take you home, and my mom will give you a bath and some medicine.”
I tuck the kitten under my jacket and run out of the woods, across the street, down the sidewalk toward my house. I feel the warmth of the kitten through my shirt and start thinking of names.
I’m only ten, so it will be five or six years before I work for Dr. Milk. My two oldest brothers worked for him part-time and summers when they were teenagers. Now my other brother, Paul, works there. Dr. Milk is the vet out on Ridge Road. He takes care of our dogs, and he will take care of my kitten. I never had a pet that was my very own. A couple of years ago, my father got a new beagle to replace the old one that had died. Patches was his name. He called the new one Bucky and said that Bucky could be mine. But saying a thing is so doesn’t mean it is.
Bucky lives in a kennel out back, keeping his beagle smell, which my mother hates, far away from the house. I feed Bucky some days and play with him, but I am not allowed to bring him inside to sleep at the end of my bed or curl up next to me while I do my homework. Bucky is an outdoor dog; he is a hunting dog.
He is my father’s dog, really.
When I am older, I will go hunting with my father the way my brothers have done. I try not to think about this. I want to go, because I want my father to like me. But I don’t want to kill animals.
One time when my father and three brothers went hunting, one of my brothers killed a deer. Most times they kill rabbits or pheasants if they get lucky. Most times they don’t get lucky. But this time one of my brothers, I don’t remember which one, killed a deer.
The deer was hung by its feet from a tree just outside the kitchen. I could see it hanging there when I sat at my place at the table. My father urged me to eat my venison and talked about the slippers he was going to have made from the hide. I couldn’t eat. The thought of the venison made me want to throw up.
I could see the deer’s eyes, even from the kitchen table. There was life in them still. Only the deer and I knew that there was life the bullet had missed; it was in the eyes.
I pushed the venison away.
My father said, “That’s a waste of good meat.”
My brothers teased me. One of them called me a sissy.
My mother said, “You don’t have to eat it,” and took the slab of gray meat off my plate.
My mother reaches into my jacket and removes the kitten by the scruff of its neck. She tells me to go down to the cellar and take off all my clothes and put t
hem in a pile next to the washing machine.
“This animal is filled with disease,” she says. “We can’t let it touch anything in the house.”
“We’ll take it to Dr. Milk,” I say. “He’ll make it better.”
“We’ll see,” she says, pushing me toward the cellar stairs, the kitten dangling from one of her hands.
I can feel tears welling up. “But that kitten is mine,” I say. “I found it and it’s going to be my pet.”
She doesn’t say anything. Looking up from the cellar stairs, I see her shaking her head at the kitten. Its eyes are clamped shut. I can see the pus oozing out of them.
“You are a sorry sight,” she tells the kitten in the same soothing voice she uses with me when I’m sick. “A sorry sad sight.”
I feel in the pit of my stomach what the future of that kitten is. The feeling spreads through me like a sudden fever. Down in the cellar taking off my clothes, I cry so hard my body shakes.
When I return upstairs, my mother wraps me in my bathrobe and holds me until I can speak.
“Where’s the kitten?” I ask.
“Out on the back porch in a box. Your brother will be home soon.”
Paul will be going to college in the fall. Right now he’s a senior in high school. I can’t decide if I’m going to miss him or not. He’s the brother I know best because he’s been around the longest. The others left home when I was even younger.
Paul is the brother who taught me to ride my bicycle and the one who spent an entire Saturday with me and not his friends building a real igloo out of snow and ice. He’s the brother who tells me how to be a man.
He is also the brother who plays tricks on me and sometimes the tricks are cruel. When I get angry, he says I don’t have a sense of humor. He twists my arm behind my back sometimes until I say I’ll do what he wants me to do. He makes promises he doesn’t keep.