Third Grade
School begins. We’ve all filed in from the April rain on the playground, where we wait for the bell. We’re in our seats now. I’m tall and I block the view so I have seat in the back of the room. The bad kids sit in the back; the dumb kids sit in the front. One time, in the middle of history class Mrs. Locke - she’s my third grade teacher- she called on Andrew in the front row and he blurted: “Do you like Guns and Roses?” Her response: “I like roses, but I most certainly do not like guns” Andrew likes heavy metal. Mrs. Locke is an old lady.
Every morning Mrs. Locke passes out the special paper for handwriting. The sheets of paper are thick and large. The lines are far apart, with no margins. These pages are horizontal. I cannot see my pencil lines on the gray paper. Its texture annoys me. An eraser will not erase on paper like that. You end up with a big black stain, or a hole.
We have history class and Mrs. Locke talks. She talks to us about all the great crazy men in West Virginia’s history. John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry. Billy the Kid was born in Wheeling. John Henry fought the machine and won, but it killed him. The test is on Friday.
In the desk left of the one in front of me, in the center of the class, there’s a girl coloring something. Her name is Angela Mangan. She has a piece of that paper hidden in her desk’s little shelf. She’s drawing a large heart, on a multi-crayon colored background. There are words: “I love you.” Who does Angie love, I wonder. Who is she going to give that to: her family, a boy? My desk isn’t like Angie’s. My desktop grinds open from the top on old hinges to reveal the book-cavity below. Watch Angie’s creation take shape, I wish I could secretly doodle.
I would draw dinosaurs. Everything about them fascinates me. I love imagining that diverse race of beasts, gone forever. Their bones- no- natural sculptures, fossil copies of their bones, are all that remain. I am the kid who dreams of digging them up. I like bones, rocks, Earth.
One kid approaches me on the playground, and asks about dinosaurs. It’s always a different kid, with the question about dinosaurs, but it’s always the same. Innocence, the stupidity of an eight-year-old, masochism: whatever it is it always drives me to respond. I hope that this time, just once, things will be different. Maybe this one will be interested, but it’s always the same.
I tell all I know: dinosaurs’ scientific names, their habitats, their diet, and who ate whom. I hear laughter, and then the song starts. They have this song for me: “Dylan, the last dinosaur
He’s not my friend
And he’s not much more” Its set to the tune of a cartoon-song, from a show about a boy and his pet, the last dinosaur, named Denver.
Back in class, back at my desk, I think, I hate these desks. They’re too short. I can float my desk on my knees, pretend it’s an earthquake. I think its funny. Mrs. Locke tells us to “open to page 42 in the spelling book.” My desk creaks open. I find a piece of handwriting paper laid across the books and papers inside. In the dim light inside the desk, I cannot read the paper, so I stash it inside my spelling book, slam my desk shut and pretend to open to page thirty. There are words: I love you, with “Angie” written in cursive on the bottom. And there are colors, laid on so thick with crayons and pressure and time that the gray color of the paper is gone. The paper is now smooth, coated with wax.
“Angie,” I lean over and whisper. She turns, looks at me. She has bright eyes, straight hair and a smile, with dimples. “Do you…wanna be my girlfriend now?” The smile widens. She nods. That’s that. The spelling lesson must go on.
Angie says she loves me. She’s my first girlfriend. Now what? I have no idea what comes next.
After school I board bus number 83, where I sit as far from the back as I can. The bus takes me to the housing development beside the river. My baby-sitter lives there. She is an older woman, divorced, with no family so far as I can tell. Everything in her house is white. All the lights are fluorescent. There is nothing on the walls. I must wait here in the company of this woman until my father finishes his four ‘o clock class. But we are not alone, my baby-sitter and I. Her house is populated by a gigantic herd of porcelain cows, wooden cows, doll-baby cows, every kind of copy of every kind of cow you can imagine. I cannot go anywhere in the house without suffering the neon glare reflected in the dumb eyes of a fake cow.
The only nice thing about my baby-sitter’s house is the junk food, which is in the kitchen, where I can stare out the window and away from those cows. Without fail, the kitchen always has graham cracker teddy bears, with a picture of the rock n roll bear on the box. I love to eat those bears. And I love Angie now, or at least I think I do. Sure, why not. It can’t be too hard to love someone; you just have to decide to do it.
But how does she know how I feel? I know how she feels because she told me. I’ll have to do that. How? How did she do it? She gave me something. I decide to give her something.
Finally, after decapitating 36 bears, the doorbell announces my father’s arrival. Sometimes it takes him fifty bears to get here. It’s time to go home. I sweep up the bear bodies and stuff them all into my mouth.
“How was school today?” “Good” I know I should say more. School was not ‘good’. Something horrible happened to me. Something wonderful also happened. I don’t have the words for all that. I never do. It’s so hard.
After dinner but before bed, I reach under my bed and get a box. The cardboard was once white, but now it’s covered with the dirt and damage of boy’s use. The box is full of rocks. I handle a few of my favorite rocks. One of them looks like a dog, so my dad painted ears and a face on it. Another, orange rock, is not a rock at all but a piece of petrified wood. I run my fingers over that rock made out of wood, and it feels like both. I found it myself. Inside that box is another smaller box, also white, but clean. I put that box in my book bag.
The playground in front of the school is mostly empty when I get there. Under a tree with my bag beside me, I pull the box from the bag and examine its contents. Inside the box, on a bed of cotton balls is a two-inch quartz crystal. It is perfect in every way. Its tip is sharp, its sides are even and flat, it is clear. On the other end of the crystal is the small blob of rock from which the crystal grew. You can see the whole story of the crystal just by looking at it. I will be sad to part with this rock.
I see that Angie has arrived on the playground. She is over by the picnic table with her friends. I stash the box in my pocket and drag my bag behind me as I walk slowly toward her. Deep breath. “I’ve brought you something” She takes the box and smiles strangely. “Thanks… .”
She doesn’t even open the box. The rock inside is lumpy on one end anyway.