When I Was Five I Killed Myself (4 page)

When I woke up I didn't know where I was. I threw up because I was so scared.

They had to get a janitor to clean it up this morning. Howie said I am a baby for throwing up, and I didn't know what to say back.

And today I had Dr Nevele again. I asked him if my letter from Jessica got here yet. I told him on the night we did it she said she would write me a letter if we ever got separated.

“Don't count on it,” said Dr Nevele.

I didn't talk to him after that. I folded my arms and sat. And talked to Jessica. And when he told me again that Jessica wasn't there I grabbed the papers on his desk and started to tear them up. But he just looked at me, and I didn't tear them.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Or if you want them so badly, you can take them with you.” I did.

I went to the Quiet Room. I am here now. I wrote something on the wall. Z. For Zorro.

(I got pungent from my dad. He said it about beets.)

I copied this on the wall from the papers I got from Dr Nevele's office because I was bored, but I don't understand it. It is too big words.

A
FTER SUMMER VACATION
I
HAD TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL
. I didn't want to. I had forgot about school because of vacation, which is long when you're a child. I hate school. You have to get up early. My mom wakes me by coming into my room and patting my head and then she pats my tushy (which is under blankee) and then she gets real close to my face and whispers, “Burt, Sweetheart, it's time to get up.” She whispers soft and nice. I could kill her. I wish I just had an alarm clock.

I get up. I go to the bathroom. I brush my teeth and I wash my face and I make. (I like the upstairs bathroom best because it is blue, the downstairs is pink like for girls.) Then I get dressed. I can dress myself. Mom lays out my clothes the night before on the other bed in my room where Jeffrey used to sleep except that now he has his own room, where Sophie used to sleep except that now she doesn't. I don't know where Sophie sleeps. I don't think she does.

I hate my clothes, they are square. Larry Palmer has cool clothes. They are sharp, man, he has chinos. His hair goes down in front like on Brylcreem commercials.

When I am dressed I come down for breakfast which Mom makes me and which I can't stand, to be candid, because it makes me want to ralph my guts out. I am never hungry for breakfast but she makes me eat it, it is scrambled eggs with like water around the edge. My mom sits in her chair where she always sits, at the end of the table, turned sideways so she faces me. I sit in Jeffrey's chair for breakfast because he goes earlier than me. Mom wears her pink robe. She has a net on her hair. She has slippers that hang off her feet so you have to look at them. They have nail polish on her toes that is all chipped and you have to look at her legs which have veins in them which are blue. She smells like lotion, you can smell it across the table. I have to eat watery scrambled eggs and smell her lotion.

At breakfast everything is very silence because it is early in the morning. I can hear the clock in the living room. It says tick tock. My mom always has a cup of coffee. She stares at the wall. She zups it. Then she holds it in her mouth for an hour. I wait. Everything is quiet. Tick tock. I wait. Then she swallows it. It sounds like a tidal wave. Then she gives me my lunch to take. It is in a bag which is brown. It is a new bag. I have a new bag every day. She folds it over three times and staples it. Some of the other children, like from the Home, bring bags that are all wrinkly. Some other
children have lunch boxes with cartoons on them which I feel are for sissies.

I don't eat my lunch. I put it in my locker and leave it there to rot. The reason is that I have pleurodynia. It is a disease, my doctor says, when I have cramps and diarrhea. It is entitled pleurodynia. But I deduce that if I don't eat I won't get it, even though I am a big eater and at home I am always a Clean Plate Commando.

At school you can buy lunch for thirty-five cents. You stand in line, the cooks are all fat and sweaty with nets on their hair and red fingers. You get milk in little bottles. It is warm, they keep it next to where they have the rags that you use to clean up the tables when you're through. The water is gray with pieces of food floating in it. It smells like vomit. You wipe the tables off with the rag and it leaves white gunk. I don't buy milk at school very frequent.

Sometimes I am lunchroom captain for the day and I have to wash the table. You get to be tardy going back to class. Once I used a big broom and swept off the table and Miss Shultz said she was going to brain me. (Miss Shultz is the gym teacher who is in charge of lunch because lunch is in the gym, they have tables that go inside the walls like. Miss Shultz thinks she is a man. She wears sports jackets and she doesn't have any lips.)

The first day of school after summer vacation Shrubs called for me and then we went next door and called for Morty Nemsick, who is a spaz, I feel. Then we walked to school. It is exactly three and a half blocks. Exactly.

We had an assembly first thing.

Assemblies are in the auditorium. Auditorium is also a class, I have it sometimes, you put on plays. Last semester another class did
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
. It won a prize. Auditorium is a special class. Usually you have Homeroom for half the day and special classes for the other half.

(I saw tidal waves once in a movie at assembly, about an earthquake. Tidal waves are the large economy size.)

That first day we went to assembly right after reporting to our old rooms. For assembly you enter the auditorium in an orderly fashion, no talking, girls in one line boys in the other. You wait to be seated. Each class has a special place. I sat next to Shrubs so we could fool around. When we sat down he took out a pen he had, there was a picture of a girl on it that when you turned it upside down her dress fell off. He bought it for seventy-five cents off the safety on Seven Mile Road who is a hood. The pen gave me a funny feeling in my stomach, under my stomach. Everybody looked at it, we were in the middle of the row. Then Miss Filmer was coming so Shrubs put it under his shirt.

For assembly we had Officer Williams. We had him before, he is a fuzz. He has a gun and everything. We always say “Shoot Miss Filmer,” but he never does. He is an artist. He has an easel and draws and tells stories at the same time. It is boring, man. He drew a traffic light, it was three circles. Then he told us we should be
extra careful crossing in winter because the streets are slippery and then he changed the traffic light into a snowman. He drew a wise old owl and changed it into a bicycle but I don't know how because I was watching Shrubs turn his pen over.

But then something happened. Miss Filmer saw. Shrubs tried to hide it but it was too late. She leaned over four people and grabbed at the pen but Shrubs pulled it away and she fell on top of me. She was quite heavy for a teacher. She grabbed the pen.

“Where did you get this, mister?” she said.

“I don't know,” said Shrubs. (Shrubs always says “I don't know” when he gets yelled at.)

“What do you mean you don't know?”

“I don't know.”

Miss Filmer got very cross. “Answer me, young man!”

Shrubs said, “I don't know what I mean by I don't know.”

“How come you never know anything?” asked Miss Filmer.

“I don't know,” said Shrubs.

Miss Filmer tried to slap him but he ducked and she hit me instead. It didn't tickle. I tried to get up but she was still like on top of me and then she like fell on the floor and the pen dropped and rolled all the way to the front of the auditorium under the seats and everyone tried to grab it.

Officer Williams drew a railroad sign and turned it into a safety boy. (The R was a nose.)

Sylvia Grosbeck picked up the pen and gave it to Miss Filmer. Filmer put it in her pocket and went like this with her finger to Shrubs which means come here.

“Come and get me!” said Shrubs. (He was mad.)

She did.

Officer Williams looked over and it made him goof on the safety boy's face and Marty Polaski yelled out, “Oo, scarred for life!” So Miss Filmer grabbed him too and dragged them both to the back of the auditorium into her office. You could hear her yelling, and a little child in the front row started crying real loud and Officer Williams said a poem:

Then the bell rang and everyone started making noise. Miss Krepnik said, “That was not a signal to talk.” But nobody knew what to do because it was a new semester and nobody knew what class to go to. The teachers had a meeting in the front of the auditorium and all the children started to visit with their neighbors. I wondered where Shrubs was. I thought Miss Filmer killed him.

Then Miss Murdock came. She was my first grade teacher. She said for everyone to go back to last year's Homeroom and pass from there except for the following people and she read off names, and one of them
was mine. Everyone else left. I started to sweat because I didn't see Shrubs. I thought Miss Filmer killed him. And I almost was crying. She came out of her office with her arms folded and suddenly I was standing up. And I walked to her across the front of the auditorium, and I thought, I am on a mountain up high and down there is everyone, and there is wind blowing me. I stood in front of Miss Filmer and suddenly I was screaming.

“What did you do to Shrubs!” I screamed. “If you hurt him I'll kill you, I swear to God!” And then I wet my pants, and I started to cry real hard because I thought everybody saw, and then the door to the auditorium opened and Jessica was standing there and she saw.

I cried and went and sat down. Auditorium was my next class, that's why Miss Murdock read my name.

Mr Stolmatsky came in. He is a teacher but also he is an actor at a college. He was in charge of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
, when they did it for the contest last semester. Then Miss Filmer made an announcement.

“Since almost the whole cast from the
Wizard of Oz
happens to be in this class, Mr Stolmatsky has asked if we could use this period to rehearse for the contest coming up in Lansing.”

I sat alone.

Mr Stolmatsky said for the cast to get on stage. Jessica got up. She was Dorothy. She had the red dress on that had waves in it when she walked. Also there were three boys. They stood just. And there was another boy
on the side of the stage who blew on his fist. Later I found out it was supposed to be a microphone and he was the sound of the tornado. Mr Stolmatsky went to the back of the auditorium and shouted, “Ok, back on the boards, thespians.” (I haven't the vaguest idea what this means.) Then Jessica was in the middle of the stage. She started to say words.

She said, “Auntie M, Auntie M.”

It was very soft. Mr Stolmatsky said he couldn't hear but Jessica didn't listen to him because she was looking out someplace, I could see her eyes all the way from where I was. They were green with brown pieces inside. She stood for a long time just looking and everybody waited. Then very slow she started to get down on her knees. She got on her knees and whispered, “Auntie M, Auntie M.”

The boy on the side of the stage stopped blowing on his fist. Nobody moved. It was real silence. Jessica whispered, “Auntie M, Auntie M.” Then she stopped. Her lips moved but there wasn't any words coming out. She layed down on the floor and put her head down on her arm.

“What's going on?” Mr Stolmatsky yelled. “Did you forget the rest of your lines?”

Jessica lifted her head up very slow, and I saw she was crying. Mr Stolmatsky was very surprised, he didn't say anything else, and I knew she didn't forget.

After a few seconds Mr Stolmatsky said, “That was excellent, Sweetheart, you really made us care about Dorothy.”