The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet (8 page)

“This one I carved out of Styrofoam,” he said, eyes shining again. “It took me all of August to get the seats right.” He pointed out the dimensions, the setup of the stage, where the entrances and exits were, and how he’d used toothpicks to reinforce the tiers between the second and third levels. Then he brought out one he made using Popsicle sticks. And the corrugated cardboard version. He gave us the guided tour of each.

By our third detailed discussion of the “tiring house,” Ty was slumped over, a dazed expression on his face. I was nearly asleep. Ely’s dreads drooped, and Judith, I was pretty sure, was composing music in her head. She’d hum every so often, and run her fingers on her thigh like she was playing piano.

“Dad,” I interrupted, shaking myself out of my stupor, “we really need to get started on ours.” I hoped he wouldn’t be offended.

“Of course!” he said. “As Willie says, pleasure and action make the hours seem short.” When none of us responded, he kept going. “But I do want to share my favorite of the collection . . .” He disappeared into his office for the final time, thankfully—he didn’t have any more left after this one.

The last Globe was mounted on a piece of wood—maybe plywood? It was the most beautiful of all of them. Painted a rich shade of brown, with real stage curtains and tiny details on the seats and entrances, it had clearly taken him a long time to complete. Ty sat straight up again.

“Whoa,” Ely breathed.

Dad nodded. “I made this one out of leftover shingles from when we had the house redone. It was the first one.”

“It’s amazing,” Judith agreed.

After show-and-tell, Dad went over the directions with us.

“Well,” he said when he was done, “I guess I should let you work now.” I could tell he wanted to stay and help, but Mom would be mad if he did. He started putting the Globes back in his office.

I thought I knew what might make him feel better. “Could you leave one for us to look at?” I asked. Ty nodded his head.

“Yeah—I mean, yes,” he agreed, forgetting that it’s my mom who gets hung up on the grammar thing.

“It would really help us know if we were doing it right.”

“A wonderful idea!” Dad said, smile returning. “I shall leave you with this one.” He put the shingle Globe on an end table next to the couch. “May it inspire you to greatness.” He gave a half bow and went back upstairs.

“Well,” said Ty, after a glance at his watch, “
that
took an hour and a half. We’d better get started.”

We laid our materials out and got to work.

“I’m guessing the two of you already hashed out the English thing, huh?” said Judith. She laid a piece of wood onto their foundation and held her hand out for the glue.

Ty nodded. “Ham wants to fake-read next time.”

“That’s so bogus,” Judith said. She shook her head, sending her streaky red hair flying. She’d dyed it again.

“Why shouldn’t I read like everyone else? It’d get Wimple off my case,” I complained.

“Never deny your true nature.” Ely used his
Star Wars
voice: deep and slow. I hucked a piece of balsa wood at him. It wasn’t satisfying—just flitted in the air and landed on the table.

“This
is
my true nature: no Shakespeare, terrible at algebra—”

“Perpetual crush on Carter Teegan,” Judith teased. I glared at her. “Ooooh, do you think he was the one who left—?”

I cut her off quickly and gave her a little kick under the table. I still had no plans to share my pig mystery with either of them. “That is
not
what I was going to say!”

“But it’s true,” she said.

Ty snapped a piece of wood in half. “He’s an idiot,” he muttered. “I don’t know why you waste your time.”

“Why is this all about me?” I cried. “Don’t you people have any drama to deal with?” I was only half kidding. All of a sudden, I felt attacked in my own house. It was a new, and unsettling, feeling.

“Chill, yo,” Ely directed at Ty and Judith, “or Ham is going to climb into that suit of armor and go medieval on us.” I cracked a smile.

That broke the tension, and I think the others realized that talking about any of my issues wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Instead, our talk shifted to a songwriting contest Judith wanted to enter and how Ty and Ely scored tickets to the last regular season Red Sox game, thanks to Ely’s uncle, who worked for the team.

By the time they went home, we’d set up the foundation and stage level of our theaters. The theater Ty and I made was constructed from the balsa wood. Learning something from Dad’s agonizing lecture, we planned to use a cardboard/Styrofoam combo to build the upper levels.

“Nicely done,” Dad said when he came down to check it out after dinner. “Have you decided what scene you will stage yet?”

I shook my head.

“Not a decision to be taken lightly,” he said, mistaking my lack of consideration for indecision. If it weren’t for Ty’s suggestion to work on it, I probably wouldn’t have started.

“I’m thinking of using LEGO people as the characters,” I said, trying to distract him.

“Speak ye no of such heresy!” He spun toward me.

Well, he was distracted all right. “No players of the Bard’s work shall be represented by an infant’s
figurines
.” He said the last word as though it tasted like spoiled milk.

“Well, what should I use?”

“Something noble! Something that is worthy of the representation.” He rubbed his chin. “I have just the thing.” He disappeared into his office and came back with a book, which is how I found myself cutting fancy illustrations out of a collection of sonnets (“I have a second copy, and it’s for a worthy cause,” my father admitted) and mounting them to cardboard to serve as my players, cursing Mrs. Wimple and Mr. Hoffstedder in my head the whole time.

While I dissected the pictures, I couldn’t help but think about what Ty said about acting. It
would
be kind of cool to have something I was good at, but why did it have to be this? It was difficult enough to get my parents to chill out and join the twenty-first century. This could set us all back by a few hundred years.

 

Sunday night, I sat in my room, copy of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
propped open on my knees. Mom, Dad, and Dezzie were out at a lecture. After all the talk about Shakespeare and Globes this weekend, it was the perfect time to test out Mrs. Wimple’s theory that my Shakespeare-spouting was a “gift” and not an accident.

I opened it randomly to the end of Act II. Helena, Hermia, and Lysander were fighting. I picked Helena’s lines:

“Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?/When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?/Is’t not enough, is’t not enough, young man,/That I did never, no, nor never can,/Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius’ eye,/But you must flout my insufficiency?” It was easy—the phrases came out of me as naturally as talking to friends. I tried another one from the same scene, this time with Lysander speaking:

“For as a surfeit of the sweetest things/The deepest loathing to the stomach brings,/Or as tie heresies that men do leave/Are hated most of those they did deceive,/ So thou, my surfeit and my heresy,/Of all be hated, but the most of me!” Again, same thing. Even though I didn’t know the meaning of some of the words, I was pretty sure I was pronouncing them right. And my voice had fallen into the rhythm of the poetry. Truthfully, it was kind of fun. I knew how the characters were feeling and could sense the emotion Shakespeare built into the words. But, really,
why
did it have to be Shakespeare-reading that I was good at? Couldn’t it have been something useful, like cooking contemporary recipes? Or exciting and dangerous, like tightrope walking?

Silly questions aside, how would this impact the Dezzie situation at school? Already my parents were way more involved in my life since she entered HoHo. And that made me think of the Salute to Shakespeare extravaganza. I’d been afraid to ask if Mom had called Mrs. Wimple or Mr. Hoffstedder, choosing instead to live in terror that one of them would show up wearing an Elizabethan collar or Tudor jumper when I least expected it. There was no way I was telling them about this freaky talent.

It was sure proving to be more of a curse than a gift.

xi

The following week in art, Saber and Mauri, who were in a different history/English block from me, brought up the dreaded projects after finishing a long, boring conversation about some ski trip Mauri’s dad was going to take them on over winter break.

“Mrs. Wimple is making us act
Midsummer’s Night’s Dream
out in class,” said Saber, as if Dezzie didn’t already know that. She splattered green paint on her canvas. We were making Pollock paintings. I didn’t think that Pollock would like her hot pink and lime color choices, but it wasn’t my place to say anything. Evidently, Dezzie didn’t agree.

“Pollock’s palette was much more muted overall,” she said, mixing a gray/green shade. “He was reflecting post-WWII angst. And it’s mid-
summer
, not midsummer’s,” she added.

I kicked her chair, both in an effort to remind her of the “blending in” rules and to stop any Shakespeare-reading talk. Immediately, her face turned pink.

“So?” asked Mauri.

“You’re not being true to the abstract expressionist way of thought,” Dezzie explained. “Really, your palette should be more elemental and basic.” I gave up.

Saber looked uncomfortable. “But these are my favorite colors,” she whined.

Why did Saber care what Dezzie thought? I was working with deep blues and black, but that was because those were my favorite colors too.

“It’s, you know, personal
choice
,” Mauri piped in. “It’s
art
.”

Worried that Dezzie might lecture them on the nature of artistic expression, I tried to change the subject. “How’s the play?” I asked, realizing that I’d brought up the one subject I wanted to avoid. I stabbed my frustration at the canvas.

“It’s so fun,” said Mauri. “Today I got to read Hippolyta’s lines. She was queen of the Amazons, you know.” I didn’t want to tell her that she’d also been kidnapped and forced to marry Theseus. Better to let Mauri think of her as a regular, royal queen, so she could enjoy acting all princessy—and so it wouldn’t draw attention to our Shakespeare experience. At least she wasn’t questioning me or Dezzie.

“Hippolyta’s such a good representation of Shakespeare’s feelings of the female as slave,” said Dezzie. She was struggling with her painting and not paying
any
attention to her rules. “It just doesn’t look
right
,” she muttered.

Mauri and Saber gave her matching blank stares. “Shakespeare’s what?” Saber asked.

I glared at Dezzie and tried to deflect the conversation. “You know, all the women have to ask for permission to do stuff, instead of making their own choices.”

“I thought she was cool,” said Mauri. She stuck out her lower lip.

“I like your painting,” I said, hoping she’d let me change the subject. If they realized that Dezzie was making them look dumb, I’d have to deal with their embarrassment and annoyance for the rest of the day. Mauri was using browns and oranges. Our goal was to capture a specific emotion on canvas. Hers was called “Bored.”

“Thanks,” she said.

Dezzie smacked her brush on the table, sending out a short dark green spray from the bristles and making us jump. Her face was red.

“I hate this,” she said, scowling at her easel. I moved around her to look.

The title of her painting was “Understanding.” She was using shades of green, gray, and blue. We were supposed to be splattering and dribbling the paint on the canvas, but her splatters were intermingled with smears and strokes.

“It looks fine to me,” I said, studying it. It was like anyone else’s painting in the class: The colors dripped and swirled together, and splashes dotted the whole thing.

“It’s
not
fine,” Dezzie snapped. “I can’t get it to look the way I want it to.” She crossed her arms.

“What’s all the discussion over here?” Ms. Finch-Bean walked around Dezzie’s easel. “This is good, Desdemona,” she said. “You’ve chosen a strong color palette.”

“But it doesn’t look right,” insisted Dezzie. “Not like it does in my head.”

Ms. Finch-Bean started talking to her about trying your best, and how art is an evolution, but Dezzie’s gray eyes just grew darker. I could tell that no matter what the teacher told her, she wouldn’t be happy with her work. I’d never seen Dezzie act like that before. She was always good at anything she tried.

Mauri and Saber, although pretending to paint, were obviously listening to the conversation. Mauri wrote something on a piece of notebook paper and slipped it into her book bag when she thought I wasn’t looking.

When she was done with Desdemona, Ms. Finch-Bean gave each of us at the table a quick review—she suggested that I add more dark purple to my piece—and then clapped her hands to get our attention.

“I have an announcement,” she said. “When we’re done with our Pollock paintings, they’ll be hung in the halls for everyone to enjoy!”

She went on to explain that parents, teachers, and administrators were looking forward to seeing the work . . . all the typical stuff.

Dezzie pouted and didn’t say another word for the rest of class.

After art, she didn’t want me to walk her upstairs. “I
know
where choir is,” she hissed, an irritable tone creeping into her voice. “I’ve been going there for weeks now.” She swung her backpack over her shoulders and stalked out of the art room.

Fine by me. I could use being early for English. But as I walked—not ran—to my class, I felt strange. Walking around with Dezzie was weird, but now it was just as weird to be without her.

Later on, I thought I’d try and find Dezzie at choir before she went to TLC and see if her mood had improved. But when I got downstairs, Mrs. Applebaum said that she’d already left, with two other girls. The back of my neck prickled.