“Explain it to me,” she said.
He couldn’t believe it. “What’s this?” he wondered. “Now she’s giving me a test!” “Explain what?”
“If she’s a woman, why is her name Mr. Bone?” Angeline asked.
“I don’t know!” he shouted in frustration. “You’re the one who said it! Not me! She’s a lady. Her name is Mr. Bone. And she teaches a school of fish. She feeds them cookies shaped like Gary.”
She laughed. Angeline liked it when her father told her jokes.
Abel was too upset to notice he had made her laugh. “Okay, fine,” he said again, starting all over. “What else happened in school?”
“Guess what?” she asked him.
“I give up, what?” he asked, happy to play along.
“I was elected Secretary of Trash,” she said proudly.
“That sounds very interesting,” he said. “Do you enjoy that?”
“Yes, it’s lots of fun,” said Angeline.
“Good,” he said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Well, see, when everyone else goes to recess, I stay inside and collect the garbage. I didn’t think I’d win but Philip Korbin nominated me and Christy Mathewson seconded the nomination.”
His face reddened. “You do what?” he demanded.
“I collect the garbage—just like you.”
He felt like his insides were being ripped apart.
“I thought you might be able to give me a few pointers,” she said.
“No,” he told her as he stood up.
“You know,” Angeline continued. “Like is it better to crumple up the paper before you throw it in the wastepaper basket?”
“No!” he repeated, much louder this time. “No, I’m not giving you any pointers and no, you are not going to be a garbage collector!”
Angeline started to cry. “But—”
“No!” he shouted. He was furious. “That isn’t what you are going to school for. Someday, Angeline, you’ll be a doctor, or a lawyer, but not a garbage collector.”
“You never know,” she whimpered.
“Oh yes I do!” he shouted. She was afraid he was going to hit her. She’d never seen him so angry. “Tomorrow I want you to tell your teacher—Mrs. Hardlick or Mr. Bone or whatever you want to call her—that you are not going to pick up anybody’s garbage except your own.”
Angeline buried her face in a throw pillow. “I’ll see if I can resign,” she said.
“If your teacher doesn’t like it, tell her to talk to me!” he told her. He looked at her crying into the sofa, then walked away into the kitchen.
She sat up. “It isn’t fair!” she cried, and headed for the bathroom. “That’s what you do!” She slammed the bathroom door. Then she opened it and slammed it again.
Abel turned on the kitchen sink and splashed water in his face. “I can’t even talk to her,” he muttered. He sighed as he thought of her crying in the bathroom. He sadly began preparing dinner.
“Do you want a milkshake with dinner?” he called. He knew she loved milkshakes. “Strawberry!”
She walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were red from crying. “No thank you,” she said. “I’ll have a glass of salt water, please.”
“Salt water,” he thought. He wanted to ask her why she liked to drink salt water, but he didn’t know how.
Nine
Garbage
Christy Mathewson had her ears pierced. She came to school with little gold posts sticking through them.
“They’re real gold,” she said to the circle that had gathered around her. “If it wasn’t real gold, my ears would turn green.”
Angeline wanted to see too, but she was outside the circle. She either wanted to see Christy’s gold earrings or else she wanted to see her ears turn green.
“I have to leave them in for two weeks,” Christy said. “I can’t take them out for anything, or else the holes will close up.”
“Big deal,” said Philip as he pushed his way through the circle. “I wish your mouth would close up.”
“Drop dead,” said Christy.
Angeline tried to peek through the hole in the circle made by Philip but it quickly closed up, just like Christy said her ears would if she removed her earrings.
“Why don’t you get your nose pierced, too?” said Philip. “That would look real good.”
“Why don’t you shut up,” said Judy Martin.
Pretty soon the circle broke up and Christy was talking only with Judy Martin, mostly about what a creep Philip was, although they also thought he was kind of cute, but in a creepy sort of way.
Angeline walked up to them. “May I see your earrings, Christy?” she asked.
Judy Martin replied before Christy could say anything. “Get lost, Freak. Can’t you see we’re busy?”
Angeline flushed. She turned and quickly went to her desk. She couldn’t understand why people were so mean, for no reason at all. And it wasn’t even Judy whom she’d asked. It was Christy. “That’s no reason to cry,” she told herself, “just because she wouldn’t let you see her earrings.” It was just that she was always on the outside. She wished she could be an insider.
Mrs. Hardlick came in and the bell rang. Algebra was first. Algebra would have been Angeline’s favorite subject except that Mrs. Hardlick killed it.
Angeline tried to think of a way to tell her that she couldn’t be Secretary of Trash anymore. I wish to resign my position as Secretary of Trash…Due to family obligations I must resign my position as Secretary of Trash. She stared at a poster that she hated. She hated everything about the classroom. She thought it was the ugliest classroom in the school. And it was the ugliest school in the world. The only thing she liked about it was being Secretary of Trash. And Gary. And Mr. Bone. And Mr. Bone’s fish. I can no longer be Secretary of Trash. I regretfully resign.
She heard Mrs. Hardlick teaching algebra, but she couldn’t listen to her. She hated Mrs. Hardlick more than anything.
She thought of a joke Gary had told her. A man fell out of an airplane. Luckily, he had a parachute. Unluckily, the parachute wouldn’t open. Luckily, there was a haystack underneath him. Unluckily, there was a pitchfork in the haystack. Luckily, he missed the pitchfork. Unluckily, he missed the haystack. She laughed to herself. She thought it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard.
“Angeline!” said Mrs. Hardlick. “Do you think algebra is funny?”
“No,” she replied. Actually she did think algebra was funny, but not the way Mrs. Hardlick taught it. Mrs. Hardlick killed all of the humor in it.
“It is all memorization,” she heard Mrs. Hardlick say. “You have to memorize every answer for every equation.”
When the bell rang for recess, she walked up to Mrs. Hardlick’s desk to tell her that she had to resign. She hoped she wouldn’t cry. She took a deep breath to steady herself but before she could speak, Mrs. Hardlick said, “Just where do you think you’re going? You can’t go anywhere until you’ve picked up all the garbage. I plan to give the room a very thorough inspection after recess.” Then she walked out before Angeline could say what she had to say.
Angeline looked around the empty room, unsure of what to do. She didn’t want to get in trouble but she didn’t want to disobey her father. She started to cry.
She saw the piece of chalk, which Mrs. Hardlick had used to kill algebra, lying on the floor. She bent down, picked it up, and examined it through her tears. “Garbage,” she said aloud, and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.
Mrs. Hardlick’s algebra book lay open on her desk. She could tell it was the teacher’s edition because it had all the answers written in it. She thought that Mrs. Hardlick probably couldn’t figure out the answers herself. “Garbage,” she declared, and she dropped the book in the trash.
She tore the poster off the wall. “Garbage!” she said. She crumpled it up and tossed it in the direction of the garbage pail.
Judy Martin’s “A” composition was tacked on the bulletin board
. She ripped it down. “Garbage!”
She ran back to Mrs. Hardlick’s desk as tears fell from her face. She grabbed the blotter with both hands and threw it off the desk, knocking all of Mrs. Hardlick’s books, paper, pens, pencils, paper clips, and gold stars on the floor. She broke a glass vase with a plastic rose in it. “Garbage!” she laughed. “Garbage!” she cried.
She tore wildly through the room, pushing paper, pencils, pens, and books onto the floor. “Garbage, garbage,” she repeated. She pushed all of the books off the back bookshelf. “Garbage!” She knocked over somebody’s desk—she didn’t know whose—then ran out of the room.
She took several deep breaths. She stopped crying but felt very light-headed. She wiped her eyes, took a long breath, and slowly exhaled.
Then, off she went to look at Mr. Bone’s fish.
Ten
Fish
The rainbow fish gently swam about, easily and unconcerned. The angelfish glided past it. Watching them eased Angeline’s mind at once. She didn’t look at either Gary or Miss Turbone. She didn’t think about what had just happened in Mrs. Hardlick’s room, or even worse, what was going to happen. The angelfish drifted to a stop and faced Angeline head-on while it methodically breathed through its gills.
“It’s watching you, too,” said Gary, “just like you’re watching it.”
Angeline breathed with her lungs as she stared at the fish.
“I don’t think it can see her,” said Miss Turbone. “I think it just sees itself reflected in the glass.”
Gary and Miss Turbone watched Angeline watch the fish. They knew something was wrong. When she came in, she went right to the fish tanks without even saying hello.
“Tell her about the aquarium, Mr. Bone,” said Gary.
“Yes,” Miss Turbone began, “well, they have—”
Gary interrupted her. “It’s this gigantic building with nothing but fish tanks, full of fish from all over the world. Some of the tanks are as big as houses with sharks and dolphins and whales.”
“No whales,” said Miss Turbone.
“No whales,” said Gary, “but sharks and dolphins, right Mr. Bone?”
Miss Turbone nodded.
“Mr. Bone says that some people think that dolphins are smarter than people,” Gary added.
“They are,” said Angeline, with her eyes still fixed on the fish.
Miss Turbone laughed, not because she thought what Angeline had said was funny, but because she was startled by the matter-of-fact way she had said it.
It was one of the things Angeline knew before she was born. Not all dolphins are smarter than all people, but some are smarter than some people—people like Mrs. Hardlick. “A duck is smarter than Mrs. Hardlick,” thought Angeline.
“Tell her about the field trip,” said Gary.
“Well—” began Miss Turbone.
“Mr. Bone is going to take our class on a field trip to the aquarium and she said you can come, too.”
For the first time Angeline turned away from the fish tank. “Let’s go,” she said. “Right now! Can we? Right after recess?”
“No,” said Miss Turbone, “you know that. You have to plan ahead. And of course you’ll have to check with your teacher to see if you can go with us.”
Angeline looked back at the fish tank. Mrs. Hardlick would never let her go. She didn’t even want to think about Mrs. Hardlick. She concentrated on the fish. As she watched the rainbow fish peacefully swim around, she pretended she was in the middle of the ocean.
“Can we go to the ocean too?” she asked.
“Maybe,” said Miss Turbone. “First the aquarium.”
“Did you ask your father how come he’s never taken you to the beach?” Gary asked.
“He just won’t,” said Angeline. “I don’t know why, but he won’t. He won’t even take me on his garbage truck.”
Miss Turbone turned her head around and looked peculiarly at Angeline. She wondered what the ocean had to do with a garbage truck.
“You know why you never get hungry at the beach?” Gary asked.
“Why?” asked Angeline.
“Because of all the sand-which-is there!”
Angeline laughed. She thought it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard. But then her laughter suddenly stopped as she heard the bell ring.
Eleven
Mrs. Hardlick’s Triumph
Angeline was scared as she walked back to Mrs. Hardlick’s room. She considered going home, but she figured that that would only make matters worse. Mrs. Hardlick would call her father, and, most of all, Angeline didn’t want to disappoint him. She knew that he had such high expectations of her.
She tried to think of some explanation to give to Mrs. Hardlick, but was unable to come up with one. The truth was that she didn’t even know herself why she’d done what she’d done. “It’s because they’re killing the whales,” she thought. “It affects everything.”
She took a breath, then boldly opened the door to the classroom. Immediately she burst into tears as she saw the mess she had made. She took a couple of steps, then stopped as Mrs. Hardlick coldly stared at her. It was as if Mrs. Hardlick’s silent stare prevented her from going any farther.
The rest of the class were all in their seats except for Nelson Ford, whose desk Angeline had turned over. He was standing next to it, trying not to laugh. Mrs. Hardlick had evidently told everyone to leave everything exactly as it was.
Angeline wished that Mrs. Hardlick would say what she had to say and get it over with. The silence was killing her.
All the other sixth-graders tried their best to be quiet but she could hear a few muffled snickers. “The freak freaked out,” someone whispered. Then someone else, thinking it was funny, copied the same joke. “The freak freaked out,” she heard again.
“You did this!” shouted Mrs. Hardlick. “You can’t fool me! You did it, didn’t you?”
Angeline wasn’t trying to fool anyone. If she hadn’t done it, she wouldn’t be standing there crying.
“Well, young lady, what have you got to say for yourself?” Mrs. Hardlick demanded.
Angeline sniffled back some tears. “I wish to resign as Secretary of Trash.”
Mrs. Hardlick looked furious. “Oh, you think you are so smart, don’t you?” she said. “Smarter than everybody else in the class—even me!” She snorted. “Well you’re not! This wasn’t so smart now, was it? You don’t belong in the sixth grade. A sixth-grader doesn’t throw a temper tantrum when there is nobody else around. A sixth-grader doesn’t rip down other people’s compositions just because they got a better grade. A sixth-grader doesn’t suck her thumb or cry at the drop of a hat! Babies do that! Maybe you’re not as smart as you thought you were.”
Angeline stood trembling and crying, waiting for Mrs. Hardlick to finish. Mrs. Hardlick had loved it when Angeline sucked her thumb and cried, but she loved this the most.
“Look at poor Nelson,” Mrs. Hardlick continued. “He doesn’t have a place to sit.”
Nelson had to turn his face away to keep from laughing.
“I think you owe him an apology,” Mrs. Hardlick demanded.
“I’m sorry,” sobbed Angeline.
Nelson shrugged.
“I’m sending you home now,” said Mrs. Hardlick. “I’ve written a note to your mother telling her what you did. I want you to bring it back tomorrow, signed by her.”
“My—my mother’s dead,” said Angeline.
Mrs. Hardlick looked annoyed. “Do you have a father?” she asked.
Angeline nodded.
“Well then, I don’t care, have him sign it.”
Angeline shakily walked to Mrs. Hardlick’s desk and took the note from her. Carefully she walked outside.
“Can I leave my desk like this, Mrs. Hardlick?” asked Nelson.
Once outside, Angeline took several steps, then collapsed against the corner of the red brick building. It felt cold against her face. She thought about her mother. She remembered her having a very s
oft face and great big eyes. Her mother and father went out one day while she stayed at her grandmother’s. Her father came home alone. She remembered him telling her that her mother was dead. She could still see his face, pale and quivering as he told her, but he never told her how she died. She didn’t want to ask.
There are some things you know before you are born, and there are some things you never know.
Christy Mathewson found Angeline just around the corner, sitting against the building. The bricks were wet from her tears. “I brought you your lunch, Angeline,” she said. “You forgot it.”
Angeline looked up at her and smiled. That was the second time Christy had done something nice for her, for no reason. “Thank you,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“Are you all right?” Christy asked. “Maybe you should go to the bathroom and wash your face. I’ll go with you if you want.”
Angeline didn’t have the strength to move.
“Boy, I hate Mrs. Hardlick, don’t you?” said Christy. “She’s so mean. That’s because she’s such a lousy teacher. She covers up what a crummy teacher she is by being mean.”
Angeline gulped.
“You shouldn’t let a crummy teacher like her upset you,” said Christy. “I mean, you being so smart and everything. Someday you’re going to be so brilliant and famous, anyway.”
Angeline wiped her face on her sleeve. “You never know,” she said.
“Philip calls her Mrs. Hardboiled,” laughed Christy.
Angeline laughed.
Christy helped her stand up. They slowly walked to the girls’ bathroom together.
“I like your earrings, Christy,” said Angeline.
“They’re real gold,” said Christy. “If they weren’t, my ears would turn green.”
Twelve
More Fish
With her lunch bag gripped tightly in her hand, Angeline waited at the bus stop in front of the school. She was still feeling a little shaky. She felt like she was losing her balance.
When the bus finally came, she stepped up onto the first step only. “Which bus do I take to the aquarium, please?” she asked the driver.