Ten (17 page)

“Winnie,” Dad warned. “Why don't you get to work on your own beans,
hmm
?”

“Fine, fine.” I stabbed two beans with my fork and shoved them in my mouth.
Blech
.

Sandra's gaze traveled around the table as if she had no idea how she ended up in this family. But guess what? She
did
end up in this family. She was one of us, and without her, we wouldn't
be
us.

“I have just one thing to say,” she announced.

“So say it,” I said with my mouth full.

“Make that two things.”

“And those two things would be . . . ?”

She munched off the tip-top of a single bean. She chewed, swallowed, and patted her mouth with her napkin.

“Goodness gravy, you slowpoke,” I said. “Dad, would you poke that slowpoke?”

“I will,” Ty said.

“Ty, no,” Mom said. “Winnie was kidding.”

“Actually, Mom—”

“She was kidding,” Mom repeated.

Sandra cleared her throat. “One: baked beans make you toot, not green beans.”

“Blah-bitty-blah,” I said. “And two?”

She shook her head.
“Oy.”

 

The next day, the two fifth grade classes got together to draw names for Secret Santas. I loved Secret Santas almost as much as I loved Christmas, so I hoped I would draw Amanda's name, or Chantelle's. But I knew I probably wouldn't, and I was right. The folded-up piece of paper I drew from the bag said “Mindy.”

I read it silently and thought,
Huh
. Mindy was new this year, she was in Mrs. Tompkins's class, and she was best friends with Katie Jacobson. She hadn't found me amusing when I pretended to be a mad scientist at the World of Coke. That was pretty much all I knew about Mindy, and it didn't add up to a lot.

Well, that's okay,
I told myself, folding the paper back up so no one could peek. By being Mindy's Secret Santa, I'd get to know her better. Presto-magico!

I spent a lot of time on Mindy's gift. First I bought an awesome plastic container that I'd spotted in an odd little store at Peachtree Battle Shopping Center. That might sound boring—a plastic container—but this one wasn't boring at all. It was a transparent pale pink rectangle, with crisp edges that begged to be touched. The top fourth of the rectangle was the lid, and when the lid was pulled it off, it made an awesome
swicking
sound. I took the lid on and off a zillion times just to hear that sound.

The container by itself was cool, but I made it even cooler with puff paint. I used fancy lettering to write Mindy's name diagonally down one side, and then to add more flair, I added a buzzing bumblebee and painted wavy lines by its wings to show that it was on the move.

When I painted the bumblebee, I guess I wasn't really thinking holiday-ish thoughts—or maybe I wasn't thinking, period. Because what did bumblebees have to do with Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever holiday the Rasta-whatever-ians celebrated?

But a bumblebee was what flew into my brain as I sat there wondering what to draw, and so a bumblebee it was. A bumblebee with a big chubby stinger. Then I filled the whole container with miniature Reese's cups. It was tricky, because of course I wanted the Reese's cups to fill the entire rectangle, not just the part of the rectangle that was below the lid. I invented a creak-crack quick-pop-one-in SLAM! technique that worked pretty well, though, and I filled that baby up.
Mmmm-mmm
.

I knew that when Mindy popped the lid off for the first time, Reese's cups would spill out in a flood of gold foil. That was okay. It would just add to the fun!

 

We had our actual gift exchange on the last day before Christmas break. The kids in Mrs. Tompkins's class filed into our room and dropped their wrapped presents off at Ms. Meyers's desk, where our presents were already stacked. Then they found seats on the floor, and everyone was chatty and full of high spirits. I spotted Mindy and bounced in my seat. She was going to
love
her present. Hee hee!

Once everyone was settled down—or as settled down as we were going to get—Ms. Meyers selected the presents one by one, checked the tags, and called kids up to open them. My name was called before Mindy's was, and I skip-hopped to the front of the room. Ms. Meyers handed me a shiny blue cookie tin with reindeers on it, and I pried the top off to find a mountain of homemade potato latkes.

“From Maxine,” said a slip of paper. I squealed and said, “Oh, Maxine, thank you thank you thank you!”

Maxine looked happy. “My mom says just microwave them, and they'll be fine.”

I took a chomp out of one and made an I'm-in-heaven face. “Okay, but they're already great. I like them cold!”

After that, I munched on potato latkes and waited for Mindy's name to be called. Finally it was, and Mindy went to the front of the room. She was wearing an all-white dress with white fur (probably fake) around the collar and the cuffs of her sleeves. She was very fancy compared to me in my normal old jeans and a Dr Pepper shirt. She was very fancy compared to everybody, actually. But there was nothing wrong with fancy!

“For you,” Ms. Meyers said, presenting Mindy with her gift. I'd wrapped it very creatively. I'd covered the container with brown paper cut from a grocery bag. Then I traced my hands on a piece of orange construction paper and cut the handprints out. I glued the orange handprints on top of the wrapped-in-brown box, making them stick up like reindeer antlers. I drew eyes and a mouth on the reindeer's face, and for the nose, I glued on a cotton ball that I'd colored red. It was Rudolph! It was adorable!

Mindy, however, seemed wary as she accepted my reindeer-wrapped gift from Ms. Meyers. Maybe she thought that was the whole present, a fake reindeer head.

“Open it!” I called, hoping to help her realize that she could open it, that the reindeer head was just an amazing wrapping job.

“From Winnie,” Mindy said, fingering the tag. She glanced around the room, and I waved and bounced in my seat. She tore off the brown paper and examined the personalized container of Reese's cups. She had to use both hands because of how heavy it was.

“Aw w w w! That's so cute!” Chantelle said.

I grinned.

“You lucked out,” David told Mindy. He turned to me. “Man, Winnie, I wish you'd drawn my name.”

My grin grew wider.

Mindy, on the other hand, didn't crack a smile.

“Thanks,” she said flatly. She returned to her spot on the carpet and set the container beside her, while up front, Ms. Meyers gathered the remains of Rudolph the Wrapping-Paper Reindeer and threw the scraps in the trash. Later, when Ms. Meyers called out the next kid's name, I saw Mindy nudge the container farther away. She didn't even want it near her.

I was bewildered. Did I do something wrong? Misspell her name? Was she a Rasta-whatever-ian, and Rasta-whatever-ians didn't believe in candy?

During lunch, I gathered my courage and walked over to her. She was sitting at a table with Katie Jacobson. It took a long time for her to notice me, but finally she glanced up and said, “Yes?”

My mouth fell open, but no words came out. I guess I'd expected her to say “Hi” or “Want to sit down?” or “Omigosh, I
love
the container you made. I just get really shy about speaking in public.”

She didn't. She simply looked at me as if she were . . . I don't know . . . a snooty saleslady at Macy's, and I was a pesky little kid asking for perfume samples.

Katie laughed. It was an ugly laugh. A through-her-nose laugh.

“I was, um, just wondering if you like your present?” I said. As I spoke, my voice went up and up.

Mindy sighed. She fished something out from between her teeth with her tongue, grabbed it with her thumb and index finger, and wiped it on her napkin. Tilting her head, she said, “Do you want the truth or a lie?”

“What?” I said. My cheeks got warm, because who said things like that? People didn't say things like that. Kids, especially, didn't say things like that.

I should have turned around and walked away. Instead, I was so flustered that I clasped my hands behind my back and stammered, “I guess . . . the truth?”

“No,” she said, as in,
no, she didn't like my present
. In a monotone, she ticked off reasons why. “I'm allergic to peanuts, which means I'm allergic to peanut butter, too. The container is tacky. Your handwriting is, like,
so
babyish, and I hate the color pink.”

Kids at nearby tables had realized something was going on. They'd stopped talking so they could hear.

Katie elbowed Mindy. “The bee,” she said.

“Oh, right,” Mindy said. “And that . . .
bumblebee
? Is that what it's supposed to be?”

I was rooted to the floor. I couldn't move.

“It looks like a turd,” Mindy pronounced.

The word
turd
made kids laugh. I wasn't sure how many, but it sounded like lots. All I could think was,
It does not. It has wings. It has stripes. There are wavy lines to show that it's on the move.

Katie's ugly nose-laugh sounded as if it was coming from underwater. So did Mindy's dismissal.

“You can go now,” she informed me, and like a robot, I turned and left.

When I walked past my own table, Amanda and Chantelle glanced at each other in alarm. I saw them through a film of waiting-to-spill tears.

“Winnie?” Amanda said.

She and Chantelle shoved back their seats and trailed me out of the lunchroom. In the hall, they flanked my sides to keep me safe, because I was crying by then. Not noisily. Stonily, although on the inside, I'd crumbled to dust.

“What happened?” Amanda said when we got to the girls' room. It was empty except for us. I went into the far stall, and Amanda and Chantelle crowded in with me.

“It was Mindy, wasn't it?” Chantelle said. “She wasn't very nice when she opened your present.”

“What did she say to you?” Amanda demanded. She put her arm around me. “What did she do to make you cry?”

I told them. Amanda's lips formed an “O” of dismay, and Chantelle huffed and said, “How
rude
!”

They took turns trying to make me feel better, telling me that Mindy was a jerk, the present I gave her was awesome, and that nobody heard the “turd” remark except
maybe
the kids sitting right near Mindy and Katie.

Amanda told me that Mindy's parents were divorced, and so were Katie's, and that was the only reason they were friends. Chantelle said she overheard Mrs. Jacobs, the assistant principal, tell a parent that Mindy wasn't “a good fit” for Trinity, and that once Mindy had been sent to the office for calling someone a donkey hole.

“She is
not
someone whose opinion you need to care about,” she said. By then, we'd all slid to the floor and were sitting with our knees bent and our legs squished up toward our chests. “I mean it, Winnie.”

“She was so mean,” I whispered. “It's like . . . she
wanted
to embarrass me. Why would anybody do that?”

Amanda, Chantelle, and I looked at one another. None of us had an answer.

Chantelle wiped the lost expression off her face. Shifting her features around, she said, “Well, we've
all
had our embarrassing moments. Remember when Ms. Katcher thought I was a boy?”

Amanda winced. Mrs. Katcher was our teacher in third grade, and on the first day of school, she called Chantelle “Robert.”

“Ms. Katcher was crazy,” I said, sniffling.

“She was,” Amanda agreed. “Just because you had short hair, that meant you had to be a boy?”

Chantelle lifted her eyebrows. “That's what I'm saying. Em
barr
assing.”

“What about the time I got trapped in the bathroom?” Amanda said. “In this very stall?”

I blinked. I'd forgotten all about that, but sure enough, this was the very stall I'd crawled under when Amanda couldn't make the lock unstick.

“I was
so
embarrassed, but you rescued me,” Amanda said.

“What about the time you got that staple stuck in your tooth?” Chantelle said to me.

Amanda pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to hide her smile.

“Ha ha,” I said. I'd eaten a caramel, and it glued itself to my back tooth. I tried to pry it out with a staple, only to get the staple stuck up there, too.

“You couldn't close your mouth,” Chantelle said. “You were afraid you'd jam it in farther.”

Amanda widened her jaw as well as her eyes. “You alked ike iss,” she said, keeping her top teeth from touching the bottom ones.

My lips twitched.

Amanda let her mouth go back to normal. “
I
had to pull it out. It was covered with spit.”

“Yes. Well. These things happen.” I tried to sound lofty, but failed.

“Exactly,” Chantelle said. She put her hand on my knee.

“You know what, though?” Amanda said. “With the caramel, and the staple? That was your own fault.”

I swiveled my head and made a face at her. “Thanks.”

“No, I just mean that was all you. You embarrassed yourself.”

“And again I say thanks.”

She knocked her leg against mine. “You know what I'm saying. Just now, with Mindy, I
know
you were embarrassed—”

“I would have been, too. Anyone would have been,” Chantelle piped up.

“Yeah,” Amanda said. “But in
reality
”—she looked at me hard—“she embarrassed herself.”