← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
School Misrule
00:58:08
On this week’s SELECTED SHORTS, we're going to hear stories about students and schools that abandon the usual rules to follow their own, unusual, codes of behavior. In "Singin' in the Acid Rain," by Patricia Marx, performed by Katrina Lenk, it’s recess at a post-apocalyptic school. Marx talks with Meg Wolitzer about the story and her unique brand of humor after the read. The class in “The School,” by Donald Barthelme, performed by Laura Esterman, is facing a difficult test; and young love is framed by larger issues in "Melvin in the Sixth Grade," by Dana Johnson, performed by Nikki M. James. We hear from James about this nuanced rite-of-passage story.
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- [00:00]
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- [01:10]
Meg Wolitzer
Don'T know much about history? Begins the great Sam Cooke classic, and the characters in the stories on this show aren't hitting the books for the answers to their questions, either. Join me in the schoolyard at recess for moments of misplaced optimism, a madcap curriculum, and loving the wrong boy. I'm your host, Meg Walitzer, and you're listening to selected shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. What is an education without following rules? Raise your hand, sit up straight, fill in the bubble with a number two pencil. The school rule I personally hated was being made to change into a gym suit before gym class Rules. I guess they're necessary. Trying to disseminate information to a classroom of rambunctious kids would never work without certain guidelines to maintain order. Pay attention, students are told, and you just might learn something. But what's fun about doing exactly as you're told? For the next hour, forget what you know about proper education as we put our feet up on the desks and replace history books with comic books and coloring books and freedom from books of any kind. We're going to hear stories about students and schools that abandon the usual rules to follow their own unusual codes of behavior, and we'll look for new and different kinds of life lessons in these moments of misrule. We're going to start with a very funny piece by my friend, the writer Patricia Marx. Marx is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, writing about everything from virtual reality to taking emotional support animals on a bus to the Hamptons and to a funeral home. Her books include Starting From Happy. She has also collaborated with cartoonist Roz Chast. After the story, we talk a little bit about what makes things, but especially Patti funny. The piece we're about to hear, A Parental Notification from the Near Future, is performed by the accomplished Katrina Lenk. She won a Tony for her role in the band's visit on Broadway and has appeared in series including Ozark. Here she is performing Singin in the Acid Rain by Patricia Marks.
- [03:28]
Katrina Lenk
Singing in the Acid Rain Dear Parents, what an exciting year 2058 has been for our third grade class. Summer is just about to begin and already we've seen 148 days of rain and a lightning bolt that spelled wear a hat. As we prepare for our end of term barbecue. A few of you have asked whether the event will be canceled because Thursday's forecast calls for increased yuckiness. No way. Didn't we learn in October that when life gives you wildfires makes s'mores? The prediction of a hurricane of hail and fire doesn't mean that it has to be all gloomy and doomy for our class. Except for Dee Dee Davis, who was swept away by a roving glacier last week on her way to school. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the where have all the Flowers Gone? Fund care of Dark Horizons Elementary School. Our children are not the future. Next snacks. I know that we were all disappointed last month when our nutritionist, Mr. O'Donnell, announced that the cafeteria would no longer be serving its famous Miami Coconut Patty treats on account of Florida not exist anymore. Mr. O D promises to whip up an even yummier replacement in time for the barbecue. I can't say more. It's a surprise, but please let us know if your child is allergic to anything, including radioactivity. Hey, I hope everyone is psyched for our year end field trip to the newest Jersey Hot Springs, which used to be the Delaware Cold Springs, which used to be the Amazon.com, rainforest and before that the island formerly known as Prince Edward. We still have not heard from many of you about whether you'd like to reserve a Level A hazmat suit for your child or supply your own on the permission slip. Don't forget to check the box that prioritizes breathing over once in a lifetime experience. By the way, some parents have asked for guidance on the best way to talk to their children about our unfriendly environment. It's important to reassure young ones that it's not the planet that's going to disappear, just humans. And anyway, this will probably not happen before school starts again. Why not make this a teachable moment and try to instill Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest? Then the fun part. Explain that millions of years after Mommy and Daddy and everyone else your child loves is wiped out, a new life form will emerge. And it might look like a sponge. It's also important to let kids know that the apocalypse is not their fault. Mr. And Mrs. Nailbuff. This may not apply to Emily, whose science fair project, how to Make Ebola in the kitchen with the 3D printer and some Glitter is still in quarantine. Along with Emily at the center for Disease Anxiety. One more item before I tell you our gerbil news. Unless you're living under a rock. Sorry about the avalanche on Lava Lane, Dylan. You probably know that our class recently made the front pages of both High Mercury Level News and Trump's Wall Tweet Journal. Thank you Mia Stein, for bringing the screeching possum you found under your bed for show and Tell and then, whoop, fatally dropping it on its head. We were all glad when the critter finally shut up. How fascinating to learn the next day that it had been the last surviving screeching possum in the world. Congratulations to Mia on becoming the youngest ever violator of the Endangered Species Act. To show its support for the Steins during their legal battle, the class voted to change show and Tell to show and Kill. What's more, we're working hard to even things up by creating a brand new species. Remember the ferocious striped polar bear that showed up in our faculty parking lot on Groundhog Day and still won't leave? Mr. Alvarez, Earth Science is showing us how to splice its genes with those of his dog. Cross your fingers. Mrs. Kittle's third grade class might soon be the proud copyright owners of the world. First Polar Doodle I almost forgot to tell you that yesterday. While Mr. Alvarez was showing us the potatoes that came out of his garden already roasted by that thing in the sky we thought was a rainbow, our gerbil. Our gerbil gave birth to an offspring. But we don't know yet if it's an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral. It's 2.3 ounces. We named it Spatula.
- [09:15]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Katrina Lenk in her selected Shorts debut performing Singin in the Acid Rain by Patricia Marks. Dark Horizons elementary is certainly up against it, and most of its unusual methodology is aimed at maintaining decorum In a world that's rapidly falling apart. I don't know about you, but I sometimes like my dystopias playful. And so clearly does Patti. I had to know more.
- [09:40]
You are indeed one of the funniest people I know. And I was wondering, when did you realize that, you know, the apocalypse, destruction of the earth was ripe for the Patricia Marks humor treatment?
- [09:51]
Patricia Marx
I have to tell you that when people say you're so funny, I wish I had listened to my father and become a lawyer. Because no one says, you're so litigious. Do something litigious right now. I was always superficial, and I always valued funny. And being earnest was very embarrassing to me. I was not brought up in a sincere household. So it was a way of just kind of deflecting reality.
- [10:24]
Meg Wolitzer
So the reality of this piece, Singing in the Acid Rain. Well, how would you describe the reality of the piece and then tell us how you got into it?
- [10:33]
Patricia Marx
Humor, when it works, it's based in truth and authenticity, and it's pretty much accepted by everybody. I like and know that what's going on with the planet is sucky. But I also think that people kind of are the same people no matter what the circumstances are. And third grade is going to be third grade, and children don't know any different. So I thought, wouldn't it be rich and possibly funny to explore what a third grade class with kids who don't know that it used to be better are like? And I just love that kind of cheerfulness of a third grade teacher.
- [11:16]
Meg Wolitzer
Where did that sort of manically cheerful teacher voice come from? Is that part of you or teachers you've had?
- [11:22]
Patricia Marx
I think it just came out of the culture. I mean, it's an easy voice to do because it's extreme. And you couldn't get away with it. I don't think in a novel, because it's hyperbolic, it's fun to do extreme. And I wanted the opposite of what reality was. So it was extremely in the other direction.
- [11:43]
Meg Wolitzer
And yet there is some truth to it, because, I mean, I have kids. And having sat through all kinds of curriculum nights and having gotten all kinds of messages from teachers, there is this need to sort of always be like, your kids are in good hands and here's this exciting stuff we're doing.
- [12:01]
Patricia Marx
Absolutely, yes. And I think in any relationship, be it teacher and student or in a couple, one person gets to be the gloomy one and the pessimist, and the other is in the position of being the cheerleader and the optimist. And that's what a teacher has to do. She has, particularly in that world, a lot of kids that are terrified and you have to assure them that it's not. And so I guess you overreact and become manically cheerful.
- [12:33]
Meg Wolitzer
Well, it is very, very funny. Where do you stand generally about apocalypse in humor? I mean, do you love apocalyptic humor?
- [12:41]
Patricia Marx
I think that I do best both as a creator and appreciator of dark humor. And it's hard to be funny about people in a perfect world having a perfect life. Happy isn't so funny as miserable. You know, the thing about writing, humor too. And I started Saturday Night Live. The bigger the crisis, the worse the world, the easier it is for me as a writer when it's dark and it's horrible things happening. Now that's funny.
- [13:18]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Patricia Marks talking with me about her very funny story, Singin in the Acid Rain. Next, let's hear a story by the experimental short story master Donald Barthelmay. His many influential pieces are collected in books including Comeback, Dr. Caligari and 60 Stories. This one, the School, is a fan favorite. It's about a classroom struggling with a very particular test, one which will not broach the kind of pussy footing usually reserved for life's toughest lessons. It's performed by the actor Laura Esterman. Esterman won Obie and Drama Desk Awards for her work in the stage play Marvin's Room and has appeared in many screen projects, including recent HBO series. I know this much is true. Now here's Laura Esterman with the School by Donald Barthelman.
- [14:07]
Laura Esterman
Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems is and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean? And the trees all died. There were orange trees. I don't know why they died. They just died. Something wrong with the soil, possibly. Maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got 30 kids there. Each kid had his or her own little tree to plant. And We've got these 30 dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks. It was depressing. It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before, the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that, you remember the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike. And that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line. They knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes, they weren't too disturbed with the herb gardens. It was probably a case of over watering. At least now they know not to over water. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens, and some of them probably, you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren't looking. Or maybe. Well, I don't like to think about sabotage. Although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way, probably because before that the gerbils had died and the white mice had died and the salamander, well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags. Of course, we expected the tropical fish to die. That was no surprise. I mean, those numbers, you look at them crooked, they're belly up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical fish input. At that point, there was nothing we could do. It happens every year. You just have to hurry past it. We weren't even supposed to have a puppy. We weren't even supposed to have one. It was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under Gristeedi's truck one day. She was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery. So she stuck it in her knapsack, brought it to school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw the puppy, I thought, oh, Christ, I bet it'll live for about two weeks. And then. And that's what it did. It wasn't supposed to be in the classroom at all. There's some kind of regulation about it. But you can't tell them they can't have a puppy when the puppy is already there right in front of them, running around on the floor, yap, yap, yapping. They named it Helen. That is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it, yelling, here, Helen. Nice Helen. Then they laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. Hmm. I enjoyed it myself. I don't mind being kidded. They made a little house for it, and the supply closet and all that. I don't know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. Probably hadn't had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning routinely, because I knew what was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian and then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program. All the kids brought in. A quarter a month. That was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing. The kid's name was Kim. And maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got. They suggested we adopt another child instead. Sent us some interesting case histories. But we didn't have the heart. The class took it pretty hard. They began. I think nobody ever said anything to me directly. To feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. I don't think there's anything wrong with the school particularly. I've seen better and I've seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were, I think, two heart attacks, two suicides, one drowning, four killed together in a car accident, one stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents. Or maybe it was heavier this year. It seems so. And finally, the tragedy. The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wine and Tony Mavregordo were playing over where they're excavating for the new federal office building. There are all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There's a court case coming out of that. But the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don't know what's true and what's not. It's been a strange year. Oh, I forgot to mention Billy Brandt's father, who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home. One day. We had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Helen, the papas and mamas, Matthew and Tony. Where did they go? And I said, I don't know. I don't know. And they said, who knows? And I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said. I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn't death considered such a fundamental datum? The means by which the taken for granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of. I said, yes, maybe. They said, we don't like it. I said, that sound. They said, it's a bloody shame. I said, it is. They said, will you make love now with Edgar, our teaching assistant, so that we can see how it's done? We know you like Edgar. I do like Edgar, but I said I would not. We've heard so much about it. They said, but we've never seen it. I said I would be fired and that it was never or almost never done. As a demonstration, Edgar looked out the window. They said, please, please make love with Edgar. We require an assertion of value. We are frightened. I said that they shouldn't be frightened, although I am often frightened, and that there was value everywhere. Edgar came and embraced me. I kissed him a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.
- [22:48]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Donald Barthelmay's classic story, the School, performed by Laura Esterman. I think that story and the Patricia Marks story we heard earlier have something in common. They're both about looking for some new kind of order in larger, more chaotic circumstances. And somehow both of them manage to be dark and funny at the same time. When we return, an after school crush on Melvin, a boy whose name is spelled out in rhinestones. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to selected shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.
- [23:24]
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- [23:39]
Nicky M. James
Got it.
- [23:40]
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- [24:42]
Meg Wolitzer
Welcome back. This is selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You've just heard some great short fiction and now we want you. Submissions are now open for the 2025 selected short story Prize judged by writer Ottessa Moshfegh. The winning work will be performed by an actor in spring 2025 and published on Electric Literature. And the winning writer will receive a cool $1,000 and a free 10 week course with Gotham Writers Workshop. We know if you're listening to Selected Shorts. You love a great short story, so why not tell us yours? Go to selectedshorts.org to find out more. Our final piece about unorthodox educational experiences is by Dana Johnson. She is the author of the collection Break Any Woman down and the novel elsewhere California. She also won the Flannery O'Connor Award for short Fiction for her book in the Not Quite Dark. Her story of an unusual adolescent yearning is read by Nicky M. James, a Tony winning performer whose successes include not only the Book of Mormon on Broadway, but TV series, including the recent Apple TV hit Severance. Here's Nicky M. James performing Dana Johnson's Melvin in the Sixth Grade.
- [26:09]
Nicky M. James
Melvin in the Sixth Grade maybe it was around the time that the Crips sliced up my brother's arm for refusing to join their gang. Or it could have been around the time that the Crips and the Bloods shot up the neighborhood one Halloween so we couldn't go trick or treating. It could have been the time that my brother's friend Anthony got shot for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But my father decided it was time to take advantage of a veterans loan, get out of LA and move to the suburbs. Even if I can't quite nail the events that spurred the move. I know that one and a half months after I climbed into my father's rusted out Buick Wildcat and said goodbye to 80th street and hello to Vermillion street with its lawns and streets without sidewalks, I fell for my first man from the day Mrs. Campbell introduced him to the class, reprimanded us for laughing at his name, and sat him down next to me, I was struck by Melvin Buchfort with his stiff jeans, white creases ironed down the middle, huge bell bottoms that rang, the kids claimed every time the bells knocked against each other. Shiny jeans because he starched them. Melvin sporting a crew cut in 1981, when everybody else had long scraggly hair like the guys in Judas Priest or Journey, pointed ears that stuck out like Halloween fake ones, the way he dragged out every single last word on account of him being from Oklahoma, the long pointed nose and the freckles splattered all over his permanently pink face, taller than everybody else because he was 13. All that and a new kid is why nobody liked him. Plus he had to be named Melvin. All us kids, we'd never seen anything like him before. Not in school, not for real, not in California. And for me, he was even more of a wonder because I was just getting used to the white folks in West Covina. The way they spoke, the clothes they wore. Melvin was even weirder to me than the rest of them. It was almost like he wasn't white. He was an alien of some kind. My beautiful alien from Planet Cowboy. I was writing Melvin, Melvin, Melvin, Melvin. Mrs. Avery Arlington Beuquefort on my peachy folder. By Melvin's second week of school, we walked the same way home every single day. I fell in love with the drawl of his voice, the way he forgot the E in Avery. Avery. He said it soft or Avery when he thought I had said the funniest thing, squinting at me sideways and giving me that dimple in his left cheek. All that made me feel like. Well, just like I wanted to kiss my pillow at night and call it Melvin. So I did. Oh, Melvin, I said, making out with my pillow every night. Oh yeah, Melvin. I was keeping all that a secret until my 18 year old brother saw my folder one day and asked me who Melvin was. Nunya, I said, and he said he knew it had to be some crazy looking white boy or a Mexican, because that's all West Covina had. Avery's done gone white boy crazy, he called out. Imma tell Daddy. I ran into my room and slammed the door to stare at my four bare walls because Daddy had made me take down the posters. I'd had up all centerfolds from Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines. For one glamorous week I had Andy Gibb, Sean Cassidy, and Leif Garrett looking down on me while I slept. But one day Daddy passed my door, took one look at Leif Garrett, all blond and golden tan in his tight white jeans that showed off a very big bulge, and asked me, avery, who in the hell are these white boys? Oh, Daddy, that's just Andy. Get that shit down off those walls right now, daddy said. He glared at Leif Garrett. I couldn't figure out why he was yelling at me, but what did I say? He demanded. Take the posters down, I mumbled, and that's why I was staring at four blank walls. But that was okay, because Melvin was my world. I didn't need him up on the wall. I had him in my head. I turned on the radio to listen to Ozzy Osbourne, who'd just bitten the head off a dove a few days before singing all about going off the rails on a crazy trip train. Two months since being the new girl myself, Melvin was the only one who called me by my name otherwise. The other kids usually called me after my hairstyle, like Minnie Mouse or Cocoa Puffs if I wore my hair in Afro puffs or Afro Sheen if my mother had greased my hair and pressed it into submission the night before, or electric socket if I was wearing a plain old Afro. Avery. To hear that coming out of someone else's mouth at school was like hearing, hey, superstar. They were warming up to me, though. Lisa White, who always smelled like pee, had invited me to her Disneyland party. Why, I don't know, but I was going, grateful to be going for no reason. One day she said, hey, you, when she saw me standing by the monkey bars watching her and a bunch of friends jumping ropes. Come to my party if you want to. What I heard was something like, hey, you. You just won a trillion bazillion kabillion dollars. But everything had become even more tricky than usual. Lisa didn't like Melvin. Nobody did. One day when the smog wasn't so bad in the San Gabriel Valley, the air was only orange, not brown, and you could sort of see the mountains if you squeezed your eyes some. Melvin and I stopped at the same place we did every day after school, by the Ivy in front of Loretta Morales house on the corner. Fat Loretta with feathered hair and green eyes in high school now, even though we used to play Barbies together, who got down with boys now, who had a mother in a wheelchair for no reason, I could figure out she could walk. Mrs. Morales. Melvin stuck his hand in the ivy, pulling it this and that, not finding what he was looking for. Hmm, he said. Avery girl, I believe you done took my cigarettes for yourself, ain't you? Nuh. I grinned at him, hugged my folders, and booxed my chest. You just ain't looking good. Well, then, help me out some. He brushed his hands over the ivy like he was running them through bath water to test it. There's rats in there. I wasn't gonna put my hands in the ivy because it was dark and I couldn't see. If I couldn't see, there was no need to just stick my hands into all that d dark space like a crazy person. I didn't think. Melvin took off his jean jacket and handed it to me. It had Mel spelled on the back with silver studs you pressed into the fabric. He was getting serious about looking for those Winstons. I put my face in his jacket and smelled it since he wasn't looking. It smelled like smoke and sweat and general Boy. From then on forever, I decided I would love the smell of Boy. Here we go, he said. In a minute. He stood up, tapped the package on his palm, pulled out the cigarette, popped it in his mouth, took the match that always seemed to be tucked behind his ear, struck it on his boot, and cupped the match while he lit his smoke so the fire wouldn't go out. He drew a deep suck on his cigarette and then threw his head back and blew the smoke up toward the sky. Then he rolled the pack of cigarettes in the sleeve of his white T shirt. I watched all this like a miracle. I've been dying for that cigarette all day long. You don't know, he said, letting it dangle between his lips. He winked at me.
- [34:36]
Meg Wolitzer
Hooey.
- [34:37]
Nicky M. James
He hollered. But I did know how it felt to want something so bad. Hooey, Melvin. How could you not know? Melvin tried to take his jacket back. I got it, I said. He shrugged. If you want to. But five steps later we were at my street Verdugo, so I had to give the jacket back anyway. Hey, Melvin. I started, trying to kill time and keep him with me a little longer. You go into Lisa White's Disneyland party? But the second the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was the dumbest question I could have asked. Like Lisa would have asked Melvin to her party. Like Lisa even thought about Melvin. That was just stupid to even think. How dumb are you? I asked myself. Melvin took his cigarette out of his mouth and offered me a puff. He knew I wouldn't. We had this little joke going on between us. He got a kick out of me being a goody two shoes and not taking a puff, even though I nearly died at the thought of my lips touching something that Melvin's lips touched. He grinned. There's your brother, he said, trying to scare me about the cigarette. But I knew Owen was already at work. You ain't Felony Melvin Buford, I said and punched him in the shoulder. He rubbed it like it hurt. I guess I punched him harder than I thought. Dang, killer, you tough when you won't be, ain't you? And he took another puff before he said, Lisa asked me to go to her party, but I said I didn't believe I could cause of the money. But shoot, I can steal me enough money to go to Disneyland. I just ain't too impressed with her or no Disneyland neither. I could not believe what I was hearing. Lisa asked Melvin and he said no. I thought I was asked because I was liked or on my way to being liked. Melvin said, she's just asking everybody to say everybody came to her little party. So what about her prissy party? He stubbed out his cigarette. Later, Ms. Avery, he said, pulling on his jacket, and don't be reaching into my stash of cigs, else a big rat'll chew off your fingers. Nuh, Melvin, I sang. I still stung from Lisa not really warming up to me that much after all, but Melvin's teasing and winking and dimples and smoke drifting hazy over his watery blue eyes made me happier. I would never need anything else in a man as long as I walk the planet Earth. I watched him walk downhill in that odd slopey way he did, knees bending a little too deep at every step like a flamingo, a flamingo smoking a cigarette, wearing a studded denim jacket. By the time I was walking through the door home from school, Mama was running out the door to catch the bus to her first job at the sprinkler factory and later her room cleaning job. Like always. I was only 11 but already taller than she was and bigger all around. She was a little woman with a tiny neat Afro, but you didn't mess around and confuse the little and the tiny with the way she ran things and with Daddy when you saw big and tall, you didn't mess around with that either. She didn't wait for me to speak before she started telling me what all I had to do and the dishes and put the pot on the beans. I already seasoned them. Do not put no more salt in them beans and mess them up. Do and you know what you gonna be in for. And Aunt Rachel sent you some more clothes. They in the living room. Be sweet. She patted me on the shoulders, hard, heavy, so you could hear it even then she was out the door. I was afraid to even look in the living room to see what kind of clothes were waiting for me. Aunt Rochelle's hand me downs from somebody's friend's cousin's daughter used to be cool, but now that I was living in this new house in this new city, far enough from LA that we were grateful when we saw other black people around town, I didn't like the hand me downs so much anymore because they were one more thing the kids could pick on me about. The fancy pants were dittos or chemin de fers or Sergio Valente's or jackets that were members only when they weren't calling me Afro Sheen. They were calling me Polyester or Kmart, where I got my good clothes. Or they called me Welfare for getting in the county line when I lined up for my lunch from the free lunch program for people who needed it. When I told my mother and father I wanted different clothes, my mother said, shimenda who? For how much? You must be out of your mind. And of course I was. All 11 year olds were. I was out of my mind, especially for Melvin. Couldn't anybody understand that if I just had one cool outfit like Melvin, I'd be on my way to the kids liking me for reals. Cool outfits may not have worked for Melvin, but he was an alien. I wasn't. If I tried hard enough, I'd be in I found these lime green polyester slacks that I really liked and put the rest of the clothes in the bottom of my bedroom closet. I imagined him saying, hooey, Avery, check you out. Melvin was going to get his ass kicked after school. I heard it from Terry Stovendorf, the tomboy with the protruding forehead and the sharp teeth on the side like a dog. She got drunk behind the portables, cheap mobile add ons to the rest of the elementary school. She was always pushing me around, making fun of the way I spoke. I didn't know there was anything wrong with the way I spoke. I said prolly when it was probably. I said fort when they said fart and I said fitna go home. Not getting ready to go home. That's how we always spoke. And it was good enough until the suburbs. I started studying the kids and editing myself. Mama. I practiced in the mirror at home. I'm going to do my homework. Go ank. Who farted? Somebody farted. Groovy. Jan and Cindy and Bobby and Marcia, owen said whenever he heard me. Groovy. When Terry told me the news, I was at the water fountain at recess, taking a break from tetherball, trying to get some water from the warm trickle coming out. I had to put my lips right up against the spout and try not to look at the gum somebody had stuck down by the drain. When I picked up my head and wiped the water from my mouth, Terry called me, hey, burnt toast. I turned around. Nice pants. Really? Thanks. I smiled at her shyly. I was kidding, dumbass. I scratched my scalp because I didn't know what else to do. I had eight neat cornrows that ran from my hairline to the base of my neck. Listen, terry said, suddenly doing business. You and that country cowboy guy are always Going around. We said going around to mean dating. I smiled at the thought that people thought Melvin and I were together, even though I was still trying to keep my distance from him in front of other people. I was scared about having more wrath heaped on me. What are you smiling about, stupid? We're not going together, I mumbled. I started kicking around a rock with my imitation vans, which were cooler than cool sneakers. Mine were knockoffs from Kmart. No duh. Terry said. Like Country Cowboy would even go around with a I meant like walking around and stuff. I had been called so many names that even didn't faze me anymore. Not so much anymore. There were Mexicans and Filipinos and Chinese kids sprinkled throughout the class, but they blended better than me. There was more than one of each of them. And when they were called Taco, when they were from Portugal or Chink, even when they happened to be Filipino or Korean, that's the best kids like Terry could do with them. With me there seemed to be endless creativity. So all I said to Terry was Melvin and me don't go around walk around together. His house is on my way home. Whatever. He's going to get his ass kicked after school today and you better not tell him why? Because I'll kick your ass too. No, I mean. I started cracking my knuckles, a bad habit I still have. I finally left the rock alone. I mean, why y'all gonna beat up Melfin? Terry looked at me with disgust and wonder, like I was eating my own boogers, like Casey McLaughlin did. He modeled kid underwear because he was good looking. Long eyelashes like a deer and lips that always looked like there was lipstick on them. You could see him in those colored junk ads that were always shoved in every mailbox in the neighborhoods. And he was stupid at stick. Are you a total moron? Terry ran her hands through her stringy brown hair and left before I could answer. I went looking for Melvin to tell him, but I couldn't be seen telling him. I saw him sitting on a swing all alone, spinning in one direction real fast to tighten the swing's chain and then spinning the other way as fast as he could to get that dizzy rush. The playground was full. A bunch of kids were playing touch football in the field. All the tetherballs were taken. Two dodgeball games were going on and both the handball courts were taken. I couldn't seat Terry or cross eyed Eddie Chambers or nasty Hector Hernandez, who was always grabbing himself and lapping his tongue in and out like a snake at the girls. They would be the ringleaders after school, the coast seemed clear enough to warn Melvin, but before I could make my way over to him, somebody called out to me. Hey, turd head. Harry Collins called out to me my name whenever I wore cornrows. We need one more person for buttball. He walked over toward me with his red rubber ball while I tried to figure out how to say no. Butt ball hurt. You and one other person had to volunteer to get on your hands and knees facing the handball wall while two people threw the ball at you and tried to nail you in the behind. It hurt for one, and for another. I never seemed to get my chance to try to nail someone in the behind. Plus, that day there were my lime green pants to think about. I didn't want to get dirt smudges on them. Well, Harry bounced the ball as though each bounce was a second ticking away. I stared at his stomach, which was always, no matter what, poking out from under a shirt that was always too small for him. I don't want to do it, Harry. Tough titty. We need another person. Well, I don't want to get my pants dirty. I kept looking over at Melvin to make sure he was still on the swings across the playground. If recess ended before I got the chance to tell him, he wouldn't have a warning. Come on, man, harry said. Quit wasting time. He grabbed the front of my 94.7k Met T shirt I'd gotten from somewhere and wore in hopes that I'd have at least one cool piece of clothing. It was a radio station that played Def Leppard and ACDC, though in secret I still liked my shylights 45. Have you seen her better? Harry started pulling me toward the handball court, and when I resisted he pulled so hard I fell down. I looked over at the swings. Melvin wasn't there. My slacks had a tear where I fell on my knees. I got mad because I told him to leave me alone and he didn't. I started to cry because I was mad and couldn't kick Harry's ass. Couldn't do anything. You all right, Avery? Melvin drawled, and suddenly he was standing beside me. I was happy he was there and scared to talk to him. To be caught with Melvin, be a combo with Melvin, permanently paired so nobody would ever accept me because of my connection to country cowboy. But I was still in love with his pointy costume ears, and when he spoke my name it was the first time I'd heard it all day. Not even our teacher, old powdery Mrs. Campbell, had called on me that day. So I Mumbled a thanks, I'm okay, and Harry sneered at both of us just when the freeze bell rang. It was the bell that told us recess was over and we were to stop whatever we were doing, whatever games we were playing, and come back inside. We always took the bell literally until the bell stopped ringing. We froze right on the spot, like statues, like mannequins. There were me, Harry and Melvin frozen along with everybody else on the playground while tetherballs kept twirling and balls kept bouncing. This is how kids start fights. Hey so and so. I'm gonna kick your ass for no reason. Out of the blue. So when Melvin was trying to leave school with his jean jacket slung over his shoulder, that's what cross eyed Eddie said to him. Everybody else just agreed. I had warned Melvin, but all he did was frown and offer me half his piece of Juicy Fruit. There was then the usually core group of fighters and the spectators when Eddie shoved Melvin. Come on, country cowboy. Fucking Elvis. Eddie wasn't as tall as Melvin, but he was big and sloppy. Melvin didn't seem concerned though. He ran his right hand over his crew cut, took off his jacket. Melvin didn't want to get it dirty. He handed it to the person closest to him without thinking gap toothed John Thompson, who said, I'm not holding your stupid jacket, country ass, and dropped it on the ground. Just for that instant, Melvin looked dumb and awkward, as though he honestly didn't expect such rudeness from anybody. He picked up his jacket and dusted it off. I was behind him and panicked when I thought he might know this, turn around and asked me to hold his jacket while he fought. What would I do? It had taken me weeks to get where I was, which wasn't very far, but I was grateful for that slight break in the torture, the tiny thaw in the frost. I was going to Disneyland with Lisa White and even if she didn't like me so much now, maybe at the party she would see who I really was and then like me. Avery, hold my jacket, will you? Melvin held it out and his nostrils fared a little bit when I hesitated. I glanced at Terry, who was looking straight at me with a psychotic grin on her face. Melvin thrust the jacket at me. I took it and then, well, it slipped from my fingers and fell to the ground. Melvin looked at his jacket and then at me. Those pale blue eyes looking at me, brand new and different from any time before. We both left the jacket there and then he beat the shit out of Harry, then Hector, then Eddie. Not Terry because she was a girl but she chased me home for two weeks straight, even though I didn't hold the jacket and even though Melvin didn't care when I told him that they were gonna kick his ass after school. Hmm. Walking home after the fight, Melvin didn't say more than five words to me. I can't even say that he walked home with me because he was walking fast and I couldn't keep up. His legs were so long, and every stride he took, I had to take two. I was looking forward to him searching for his cigarettes in the ivy, but he said he wasn't going to go the way we usually went. He was going home another way. I couldn't blame him for being disappointed in me. I'd let him down after he'd come to my rescue during recess. But couldn't he understand that really and truly, it wasn't a personal thing? Couldn't he understand that I could be completely in love with him, but just not want to make waves? And anyway, it wasn't like I threw the jacket down or anything. It slipped. But Melvin, I said, trying to get him to go my way, this is the quickest way to get home. Your house is straight ahead. Plus, what about your cigarettes? Aren't you dying for a cigarette, darling? He pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket and put it behind his ear. I can get by with what I got right here. Until later, darling. I never heard that from him calling me that before. I didn't like the way it felt like a pat on the head, not like when he said my name, which felt like a kiss. See you around, Melvin said and turned, walking uphill. I watched him for as long as I could see him. And I still didn't know that he was never going to walk my way again. But I was thinking, you probably should have picked up his jacket. Probably too late. Melvin got farther and farther away, Mel on the back of his jacket shimmering like diamonds, like he was some superstar star. And me, I was feeling as though I wished somebody fighting had slugged me, too. I walked up the hill to my house and replayed Melvin's fight. Only in my mind it wasn't Melvin's fight. It became my fight. I imagine I had on a bad outfit. Window pane pants and a leather jacket, new, not used. And a large, perfectly round Afro like the one Foxy Brown had when she pulled a gun from it and blew away some white man who was messing with her. Owen was obsessed with Pam Grier and her big breasts, and I was awed by her ability to whoop ass. People who messed with Foxy were sorry, all right. Just when they thought she was all brown sugar and a halter top, she had a gun or a karate kick to set them straight. Listen, I said. I was talking to myself. All y'all motherfuckers better leave Melvin alone. That's right, I cussed and I said, say motherfucker, not motherfucker. It's the way I speak, dumbasses, and unless you want your butt kicked, you best leave me and my man alone. Who you calling a I swung around and pointed a gun at the nearest palm tree. That's what I thought. I kept replaying my and Melvin's fight. When I got in the house, I was surprised to see Owen at the refrigerator, home from work early, drinking from a milk carton. You're not supposed to be doing that, mama said. Mama said. He mimicked me. You always gotta do everything. Everybody say goody, goody. Who are you talking to, anyway? I put my books down on the dining room table, round and glass. I didn't want to stop my daydream. Melvin was holding my hand. Darling, I guess you told them what side of the sidewalk they can spit on, didn't you? I went to the cabinet for a glass and poured myself a glass of milk dramatically to show Owen how it was supposed to be done. He thumped me on my head. You still ain't told me who you was talking to, all loud. I drank my milk down in two gulps, washed my glass out then and there because Mama liked her kitchen kept neat, and then I picked up my book so I could go to my room and get out of my torn green pants. Nobody, okay? I wasn't saying anything to anybody. I was just talking to myself. Trippin'he, said, making his way to his room. He's hardly seemed fazed by anything, not even moving to the suburbs. Hey, I said. Owen. What? Isn't it weird going to school with all these white people sometime? Don't it make you feel? My voice trailed off. I was looking for the word bad. Doesn't it make you feel bad? What? Owen rolled his eyes. I'm graduating this year. I ain't stutting these white folks. He went into his room and closed the door, and soon I could hear Peabo Bryson blaring from his stereo. I'm so into you, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Stuttin, owen said. Stuttin meaning studying. I repeated the word in my head. I'd heard that word my whole life, from my grandmamas, Mama, Daddy, everybody. But when Owen said it then Sutton sounded like a word he just made up. For the first time I really heard what the kids in school heard when I spoke. Owen sounded strange to me from someplace else, using that word, part of a language I knew but was already beginning to forget. Thanks.
- [57:59]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Nicky M. James reading Melvin in the sixth Grade by Dana Johnson. I'm Meg Wolitzer. One of the lovely things about that story, something that James performance really underscores, is Avery's slow dawning realization about love. While Melvin is her obsession, her failure to defend him only reveals a deeper need for self love, and Avery knows she must protect her true identity or risk losing herself. The unrelenting casual cruelty of kids comes through here, and listening to this story as an adult is a gut punch. But beyond that, the little shoots of tenderness that poke through give it an additional layer and keep it from becoming Lord of the Flies. Like all of the protagonists in this hour, Avery's unconventional school experience teaches her something that would be impossible to put on a syllabus. And maybe while the stories were read, you did what I did. Peered over the shoulders of those characters who were being tested and quietly copied down their answers for use at a later date. Don't worry in our classroom, it's not against the rules. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles are recorded by Phil Richards. Our mix engineer for this episode was Dennis Jacobson. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.
- [60:12]
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