The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, page 13
Several people in the class heard this challenge and uttered, “Ooh.”
“Fine,” Ernie said, “but you have to finish purple and all of blue.”
“I’ll be done by Friday,” I said.
Ernie finished the yellow packet Thursday.
One afternoon later that year, Mrs. Cantwell stopped by to pick up Ernie on her way home from work and delivered a chocolate cake she’d baked. I heard her talking to my mother about Ernie’s dramatic improvement in his reading. After Mrs. Cantwell and Ernie had left for home, my mother called me down to the kitchen. Though it was nearing dinner, she cut me an enormous slice of cake and poured a tall glass of milk. I thought it was a test of some kind, but my mother handed me a fork and brushed her hand through my hair. “I’d say Ernie is lucky to have a friend like you.”
8
I would remember middle school for the arrival of a new student at OLM who would have a profound impact on my life.
Michaela Kennedy started school shortly after the Christmas holidays, when we returned to start the second semester of the sixth grade. I overheard a couple of the girls talking about Michaela, who went by Mickie. Rumor had it Mickie got in some type of trouble at the public school, and her parents enrolled her at OLM hoping the nuns could “straighten her out.” I sensed Mickie was different from other girls the very first day. She did not wear her hair long or pulled back in a ponytail or twisted in braids with bows and ribbons. She cut it so short it barely touched her ears, which were not pierced. The school required that skirts extend to one inch above the knee, but to me it seemed Mickie’s skirt inched higher each day. I heard one of the lunch ladies admonish Mickie for “showing too much leg.”
Mickie retorted, “I wouldn’t be showing any leg if they’d let us wear pants like the boys.”
That comment got her a detention picking up trash for the remainder of the lunch period.
Mickie gravitated to the boys and forsook the girls entirely, not interested in practicing cheers or jumping rope. Mickie played kickball and basketball, though it didn’t start out that way. Boys in the class denied her admittance into our exclusive domain, but we learned quickly that Mickie was not to be denied.
“What, are you afraid a girl might beat you?” she’d say, dropping the challenge that no self-respecting boy could walk away from. Then she would proceed to not just beat them but humiliate them. Only Ernie was willing to readily accept Mickie, and his doing so had nothing to do with any understanding of discrimination. Ernie liked to win, and he quickly recognized Mickie’s proficiency at sports. This resulted in my being demoted from Ernie’s partner, and I resented Mickie for it. For a month, I silently seethed as I watched her and Ernie beat the stuffing out of all challengers in foursquare and wall ball, ignoring their accomplishments as if I couldn’t have cared less. But I would soon learn Mickie was also not a person one could easily ignore.
9
The end of January marked another all-school Mass, and our class was responsible for the presentation. This was not an insignificant affair. Not just the entire school attended the Mass but parents and members of the general congregation as well. My mother never missed one. As the responsible grade, we were to choose and present the readings, prayers of the faithful, serve as the altar boys, sing in the choir, and bring up the gifts. To be chosen as the lector, however, was universally considered the highest honor. The position offered the greatest exposure, and therefore the greatest risk. This wasn’t to discount the off chance an altar boy could catch his robe on fire on a candle, or that a student carrying the gifts up the aisle might stumble and toss the wafers into the crowd, but I’d never seen that happen. I had seen a lector screw up a reading at an all-school Mass. We all had.
The prior year, Anna Louise Gretsky had walked up the steps to the lectern, looked out over the crowd, and failed to utter a single word. We all thought Gretsky was employing a dramatic pause, until Father Killian, our new pastor, looked up from his throne, anxious to get going. We quickly realized that Anna Louise Gretsky had frozen as solid as a block of ice. After another tense minute, one of the nuns climbed the steps and escorted a dazed and still-silent Gretsky back to her seat. That had not been the end of her humiliation, however. She endured taunts and gibes for the better part of the remainder of the year.
Monday, as our class began the task of dividing up the assignments, the frozen image of Anna Louise Gretsky remained a vivid reminder that being lector was not for the faint of heart. Students could volunteer for any position, but you had to be nominated to be lector. Since the vote was by a show of hands, the winner was usually the most popular student in the class, like Ernie, or maybe Valerie Johnson, the head cheerleader.
“Let’s start with the gift bearers,” Sister Mary Williams said. The students had nicknamed the elderly nun Sister Muffin because her face looked squished and wrinkled beneath her coif. She also wore Coke bottle–thick, black-framed glasses that magnified her eyes to look like two blue marbles under water. Sister Mary Williams wrote the names of the first four volunteers on the chalkboard in her flowing cursive style. The slots for the ushers and greeters also quickly filled.
“Who would like to be an altar boy?” Sister asked.
I was about to raise my hand when Ernie said, “I’ll do it,” taking himself out of contention for lector. I knew Ernie’s decision had to do with his uneasiness about reading in public, and as I sat contemplating his decisions, two of my other classmates quickly raised their hands to join him. I had been shut out. The only thing left for those of us not chosen for any other tasks was the choir, which was like being a stagehand at a play—all the work without any of the glory.
Sister Mary Williams moved to the final position on the board and, without fanfare, said, “All right, I’ll take nominations for lector.”
The clock above the cloakroom buzzed as the big hand struck ten. With Ernie out of the running, Valerie Johnson, the girl who’d given me an envelope with a dead fly in it on Valentine’s Day in the first grade, was a shoo-in. Taking nominations was a waste of time.
“I nominate Sam Hill.”
I think every head in the class turned as if they’d heard a foreign language being spoken. The nomination had come from Mary Beth Potts, a cheerleader and Valerie Johnson’s best friend. Potts had never said more than a few sentences to me. I had no idea why she’d nominated me. Even Sister Mary Williams hesitated before turning to scrawl my name on the blackboard. A loud murmur ensued, along with a lot of whispers and giggles. I heard Ernie urgently whispering my name.
“Sam. Sam!”
Ernie sat in the row to my right and two seats behind me. When I turned his face was grave, and he was shaking his head. “Say no,” he said. “No!”
No? Was he crazy? Nothing short of my announcing that I intended to become a Catholic priest would make my mother prouder than to see me standing at the lectern in front of the entire school. As for me, this was my chance to show not only my classmates but all their parents that I was just a normal kid. As I contemplated this, with Ernie continuing to try to get my attention, I saw another hand go up.
Mickie Kennedy. My anger swelled. It would be just like this newcomer to tank my candidacy. She’d stolen Ernie. Now she intended to steal my chance at glory.
But to my surprise, Mickie said, “I second the nomination.”
This was a clear breach of the election protocol, there being no need to second the nomination. Then Mickie blurted even louder, “And I say we vote.”
Valerie Johnson quickly raised her hand, and the hands of the others in her entourage followed. The boys also raised their hands, Ernie being the last to do so and looking reluctant.
“Congratulations, Sam,” Sister Mary Williams said.
It might have been the happiest moment of my short life, next to the day my father drove up the driveway with the red Schwinn bicycle. I only hoped for a better ending.
10
At recess Ernie quickly chased me down. “Sam. Sam!”
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Why didn’t you want to vote for me?”
Ernie hesitated. “They want you to fail, Sam. I saw Valerie Johnson whispering to Mary Beth to nominate you. I think they want you to freeze like Anna Louise Gretsky so they can make fun of you.”
“What? How do you know that? Did you hear her?”
Ernie shook his head. “But it’s Valerie Johnson,” he said. “Why would she nominate you?”
“She didn’t. It was Mary Beth—”
“Valerie told her to nominate you, Sam.”
I ignored this well-reasoned rationale because I wanted the position. “So why shouldn’t I be lector? I’m the best student in the class.”
“You should turn it down, Sam. Just tell Sister you can’t do it.”
“No,” I said emphatically.
“What if something happens?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. They do something to embarrass you, and you screw up.”
“I’m not going to screw up,” I said.
As recess was coming to an end, I found myself walking back to class beside Mickie. With Ernie’s admonition fresh on my mind, I asked her, “Why’d you nominate me?”
“Don’t get a swollen head, Hill,” she said. “You’re a brain; you should be the lector. Better you than that airhead Valerie Johnson or one of her stupid friends.” Then Mickie punched me on the arm and ran off to the classroom at the sound of the bell.
11
After school I raced home, dropped my bike on the lawn, and rushed through the front door. “Mom? Mom!”
“Samuel Hill.” My mother emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “What have I told you about bellowing my name like a banshee?”
“I got it,” I said. “A girl in my class nominated me and Mickie seconded it and the vote was unanimous, every kid.”
“Slow down,” my mother said. “Start over. You got what?”
“Lector. At the all-school Mass on Friday. I got it.”
My mother did not, however, whoop for joy or immediately embrace me as I had expected. “They elected you?”
“Yeah. It was unanimous.”
“Samuel,” my mother said, still somewhat solemn.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am,” my mother said, forcing a smile. Then she hugged me. “Oh, Samuel, I am happy and I’m proud of you. That is a great honor. Won’t your father be proud.”
“I have two readings and the responsorial psalm,” I said, pulling back from her. “That’s when you raise your hand, like this.” I raised my hand. “Then everyone knows it’s their turn. I have to get started right away.”
“Well, I can certainly help,” my mother said. “You know I did theater in college.”
“Really?” The thought of my mother doing anything except being a mother seemed highly unlikely, but theater came as a real surprise. I would have thought she’d consider acting a display of vanity.
“I’ll have you know I played Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.”
I had no idea if that was a big deal, but from the grin on my mother’s face, I could tell it meant something to her. “That’s great, Mom. Can you help me?”
12
We studied and worked on the readings each day after school, my mother helping me with the pronunciations of the difficult words and then with my posture and presentation.
“Hold your head high,” she said. “Make eye contact with the audience before you speak. Slow down—you’re rushing.”
After posture and presentation, she moved to voice inflection, which words to emphasize. This resulted in a few disagreements between my parents.
“No, no. Emphasize not. Don’t emphasize road,” my father would say.
“Emphasize road,” my mother would correct.
My mother made a makeshift lectern by having me stand on several volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I would perform the readings after dinner. My parents surely must have tired of these performances, but if they did, they never complained.
“We have a regular showman,” my father said one evening as we sat down for meat loaf and mashed potatoes with gravy.
“He gets it from me,” my mother said. “You know I played Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice in college.”
“How could I forget,” my father said, taking a piece of meat loaf and holding the plate for me. “You kissed Bill Mahler right there onstage before God and man.”
I nearly dropped the meat loaf on the floor. “You kissed another man?” I asked. “I hope you socked him one, Dad.”
“I did not kiss anyone,” my mother said. “I was in character. That was Elizabeth.”
My father rolled his eyes. “Well, Bill Mahler found it convincing. He asked you out for two years after that one kiss. And I would have socked him, Sam, but he was also captain of the basketball team.”
My mother smiled. “I will have you know, Samuel Hill, that I have always only had eyes for one man, and he’s sitting right here at this table.”
I grinned and wedged a green bean between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
“I wish I could be there in person to hear you, but I’ll be there in spirit,” my father said.
My father continued to work six days a week, leaving the house early and working so late sometimes that he’d even miss dinner. The table felt empty without him.
“We have to tighten our belts,” my mother said during one of our meals without him. “A chain pharmacy just opened on Burlingame Avenue, and your father’s prescription count has dropped.”
I was disappointed my father would miss my performance, but I understood how hard he was working.
13
Friday morning, I was nervous, mainly because throughout the week Ernie had continued to stew over all the things that could go wrong and suggested that I feign an illness, or laryngitis. I continued to focus on just one thought. I knew my classmates and their parents still considered me the devil boy. This was surely God’s way for me to prove I was a normal kid, maybe even extraordinary, as my mother frequently professed. Who was I to argue with a woman who’d had the lead in Pride and Prejudice?
Arriving at school, I slid the front wheel of my bike into the bike stand and snapped the lock through the tire. Ernie skidded to a stop beside me. “Are you ready?”
“I guess so,” I said.
We walked up the covered breezeway together, and I was certain the eyes of the entire student body were watching me, and that this would be the best day of my life. Then I opened the door to our classroom and froze. The face that wheeled to greet us had not the soft and comforting features of Sister Mary Williams but the laser-precise glare of Sister Beatrice.
14
Ernie stumbled into me, not seeing Sister Beatrice. “What the hell, Sam.”
Our principal’s eyes threw daggers at Ernie. “Detention, Mr. Cantwell. I will not tolerate profanity.”
Ernie’s shoulders sagged, and he stepped past me and found his seat.
“Do you not know where your seat is, Mr. Hill?”
“Yes, Sister. I mean, no, Sister.”
“Then I suggest you find it.”
I took my seat along with my equally depressed classmates.
“Sister Mary Williams is under the weather. I will serve as your substitute. When the bell rings, you will assemble in an orderly fashion and proceed to the church.”
Ernie raised his hand. “Sister, the altar boys need to be at the church early to get set up—”
“Does Sister Mary Williams allow you to speak without permission, Mr. Cantwell?”
“No, Sister.”
“Then I suggest you wait until called upon.”
Ernie sat back.
“Was there something you wanted to ask, Mr. Cantwell?”
“No, Sister.”
“Something about the altar boys having to leave early for church?”
Ernie still did not answer.
“Well, Mr. Cantwell?”
“Whatever . . .”
If the room had not already been deathly silent, this would have been one of those moments when you truly could have heard a pin drop.
“You just earned a second detention, Mr. Cantwell, and I shall be sending a note home to your mother to discuss your insolence.”
“You’re diabetic?” Peter Hammonds asked.
It was an innocent question, I’m sure. Hammonds wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and his vocabulary skills were less than stellar, but Sister Beatrice saw it as a further attack on her authority. “And you will be serving detention with Mr. Cantwell, Mr. Hammonds. Anyone else wish to test my patience?”
No one did.
“Now, who are the altar boys?” Ernie, Matty Montoya, and Billy Fealey raised their hands. Their arms looked like limp noodles. “The altar boys are excused.”
Valerie Johnson then raised her hand and, when called upon, said, “Sister, the altar preparers also need to leave early to set up the church.”
Sister Beatrice dismissed them. As they departed Sister Beatrice turned her attention to me. “I suppose you believe you should be allowed to leave ahead of your classmates as well, Mr. Hill.”
“No, Sister, just the altar boys and the altar preparers.”
“Vanity is a sin,” she said, but it sounded like thin. “Can anyone in the class tell me what vanity is?” This time not even Peter Hammonds would venture a guess. “No one? Vanity is the excessive belief in one’s own abilities or attractiveness. Do you believe you are better than your classmates, Mr. Hill?” Her words hissed at me like a rattler disturbed from sleep. I noticed her eyes were glassy.
