Operation yes, p.10
Operation Yes, page 10
Gari already knew how to find circumference. She’d learned it last year. Besides, she was trying to STOP her mind from racing around in circles. She stuck the sketch she was working on inside her math book.
She had a plan now, Plan B, and it didn’t require her to say one word. But it would be dramatic, and powerful, and it would change the way people thought. She had supporters. She knew what they would do. And she knew on which day she would have a high probability of being heard.
She quietly slid her plastic bag nearly half-full of stars from her backpack. Underneath her desk, she folded star after star, adding them to the bag, trying to keep her mind cool, calm, and focused. Until the School Commission visit tomorrow.
Friday morning was easier than Gari thought it would be. It turned out that vomiting on your first day at school made everyone believe you when you said you needed to be excused now. And no one checked to see which bathroom she’d run to.
The bathroom on the kindergarten hall was marked with a handmade sign: OUT OF ORDER. Gari pushed against the darkened wood of the door and slipped inside. The smell of sewage was so thick that she had to pull her T-shirt over her nose. She opened her backpack, which was full of supplies. She’d bought five bags of army men from the BX. Later, she’d gone back for red paint. Black crayons. Super Glue. She took one last look at the sketch she’d made, and then she began to work, quickly and smoothly, on her campaign to bring her mom home.
When she finished, she looked over the scene she had created. Piles of little green figures, some of them on their sides, lay all over the floor. The sinks were filled with stagnant puddles of red paint. She’d taken a black crayon and written one word on each of the three mirrors:
BRING THEM HOME!
In the stalls, she’d filled each toilet with more red paint, and flushed one with paper towels in it to make it overflow. It wasn’t exactly like the picture of the antiwar rally, but it was close. And she hoped it might cause a lot of trouble. She picked up the black crayon again and wrote GARI WHALEY in the corner of the right-hand mirror, just to be sure.
She slipped out of the bathroom and walked back to the library, where her stack of books was still waiting for her on Miss Candy’s desk.
“Feeling better?” said Miss Candy, offering her a butterscotch drop.
“Hey,” said Shaunelle, who was gathering up her books too. “Can you still show me how to make those stars?”
“Later,” said Gari. “We should get to class.”
Knock, knock.
Mrs. Heard opened the door and put her head inside Room 208. All of Miss Loupe’s class was dili gently completing the math problem she’d written on the board. Heads were bowed over papers, and the only sound was the scritch, scritch of pencils.
“Miss Loupe, the Commission has arrived. Since your classroom had the most extensive report on its physical condition …” She smiled at Miss Loupe. “I thought we’d start here.”
Mrs. Heard stepped to the side, and three people walked into Room 208: a woman so skinny she would have been able to slide under the door if it hadn’t opened, another woman in a white pantsuit, and one man, with no hair on his head but sideburns that stretched deep into his cheeks. Each of them had a clipboard, and the pantsuited woman had a palm-sized gadget that she tapped at with a plastic pen the instant she moved into the classroom.
She examined the chalkboard on which Miss Loupe had written the math problems for the day. There was a crack running through it. Tap, tap, tap.
She bent down to view a spot where the baseboard had slightly detached from the floor. Tap, tap.
She looked up at the bent cage that covered the clock. Tap, tappity-tap.
The other two members of the Commission didn’t move around at all. They flipped pages on their clipboards back and forth and occasionally whispered to each other. The skinny woman pointed to one of Miss Loupe’s signs. The man nodded.
Mrs. Heard stood at the door, watching and waiting.
“Thank you,” said the woman with the gadget. “We’ve seen what we need.”
Mrs. Heard moved to open the door for them to leave.
“But,” said the man, holding his clipboard against his chest, “I still believe it’s the quality of the teaching that matters, not the condition of the classrooms. We can spend all the money we want on repairing infinitesimal cracks, but if the teachers aren’t doing their jobs …”
Mrs. Heard’s smile faded. “I don’t believe that’s a problem in my school,” she said, fixing the man with a cool gaze. She swept her hand over the students of Room 208, who were the model of an industrious classroom.
“Oh, yes, they are busy,” said the man, his sideburns bristling away from his face. “But what are they learning?” He indicated the quote on the wall:
ART IS ARRANGING OBJECTS TO CREATE BEAUTY
“The last time I checked, that was NOT part of the sixth-grade curriculum.”
Mrs. Heard straightened the cuffs of her blouse, pulling them firmly out of the ends of her suit sleeves. They had embroidered flowers on them. “You don’t believe in beauty, Mr. Johnson?”
“Not at the expense of facts,” he said, walking over to Gari’s desk. “This young lady has only been pretending to work that math problem. In reality, she has been making these.” He reached under her desk and pulled out a plastic bag filled with paper stars.
Gari felt hot and cold at the same time. This wasn’t the trouble she’d planned for.
Miss Loupe moved beside Gari and put her hand firmly on Gari’s desk. She drew herself up as tall as possible.
“Mr. Johnson,” she said, “with all due respect, Gari is my newest pupil. She joined the class last week. I’d like to give her time to adapt.”
Mr. Johnson clipped Gari’s bag of stars to the metal hinge at the top of his board. “Then perhaps you have another student who can explain how these quotes tie into the curriculum established by the state and approved by the school board?”
Miss Loupe turned to Melissa. “Would you show Mr. Johnson your notes, please?”
Melissa handed over her notebook. Mr. Johnson paged through the tabs marked Social Studies, Math, and Language Arts. Filed under each tab were lines of careful, color-coded, orderly notes, on everything from ecosystems to area and circumference to a list of their required reading. Melissa tried not to look smug, but she felt a pleased glow building in her cheeks.
Then Mr. Johnson came to the tab marked Taped Space, and he paused. He began to read intently. His eyes stopped midway down one page and he motioned his fellow Commission members to come closer.
“What’s this?” he said, thumping his finger against the page. The three of them huddled over a certain paragraph.
“May I see?” said Mrs. Heard. “I’m afraid I can’t address something if I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He shoved the notebook in front of Mrs. Heard. “Would you care to explain why one of your teachers is ‘jumping on couches’ and ‘rolling on the floor’ and encouraging this student to … to …” He spit out the words. “…‘just do the first thing that pops into her head’?”
Melissa let out a hiccup of fear.
“Those aren’t Mrs. Heard’s ideas,” said Miss Loupe. She stood straight, her arms at her sides and her shoulders pushed back. She could have been standing at attention at any military ceremony. “They’re mine.”
“But Mrs. Heard hired you, did she not? She knows what’s going on in your classroom, is that not so? Are you saying that Mrs. Heard has approved these ideas as acceptable teaching practice? Or are you saying that the principal doesn’t have control of this school?”
The man with the sideburns looked at Miss Loupe as if she were a little mouse. Mrs. Heard was looking at her too. Miss Loupe looked from Melissa’s notebook to Mr. Johnson to her former teacher, struggling to find the right words. There was a moment of horrible quiet.
Bo did the only thing he could think of. He bolted for the jammed window. He banged and pushed and threw his body against the stubborn frame. Everyone in Room 208, including all three members of the School Commission and Mrs. Heard, turned to look at him as though he had yanked them on a cord.
“What if this room caught on fire?” Bo said, jumping and twisting as if there were flames licking at his feet. He tried to smell the smoke, feel the heat. His voice rose. “What if the door were blocked and we couldn’t get out? What if this window were the only way to save us and you hadn’t fixed it …?”
He wasn’t nearly as good as Miss Loupe was at getting an audience to imagine a scene. The woman with the gadget was staring down at the floor. The other woman looked as if she would rather be at a dentist’s appointment. Mr. Johnson’s sideburns twitched.
The alarm! The alarm! The alarm needs to go off! Right now!
It didn’t.
But Shaunelle raised her hand and said, “Yes, and what if we tried to break open that window and got cut on the glass?”
Rick said, “Yes, and I broke my arm as I fell out the other side?”
Trey said, “Yes, and what if Allison here …” He indicated Allison to the Commission members. “… croaked from breathing all that smoke while she was waiting to leap out the window, and her mom and dad sued?”
Allison’s eyes widened at the thought of her own tragic death. She said, “Yes, and … they would. Totally.”
“Yes, and it’s not only here,” said Aimee. “There are loose tiles in the hallway, and all over the school. Someone is going to trip and bust their head open.”
One by one, the members of Room 208 listed every crack they had discovered.
“Yes, and in the girls’ room …”
“Yes, and on the playground….”
“Yes, and you wouldn’t believe how bad …”
Even Gari entered the skirmish, to Bo’s surprise. Eyeing her bag of stars, still pinched in Mr. Johnson’s grasp, she contributed:
“Yeah, and there’s a bathroom in the kindergarten hall that would completely flunk the health code. My mother is a nurse, so I should know.”
Tappity tap. Tappity-tappity-tappity tap. At least one person on the Committee was listening. The other two seemed overwhelmed by the torrent of information pouring over them.
Before they could recover, Mrs. Heard reached for Melissa’s notebook.
“I’ll take care of this, don’t you worry,” she told Mr. Johnson. “We have important things to focus on, as you have heard. Now, the library?” Her large arms shepherded the Commission members out of Room 208. As she shooed them through the door, she turned and deftly handed the notebook to Miss Loupe. They looked at each other for a moment. Then Mrs. Heard was gone.
Miss Loupe slowly walked backward from the door, as if she expected it to reopen at any moment. She shuffled into the middle of the Taped Space and looked down at the browning edges of her tape, then up at her class.
A huge smile broke over her face.
“Brilliant!” she said. “The best piece of improvisational theater I’ve seen in a long time!” She ran her fingers through her hair, sending her spikes even higher. “Wait until I tell Marc about this!”
She stopped smiling when she saw that Melissa had her head down on her desk. Miss Loupe put her hand on Melissa’s shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.
Melissa raised her head and pushed her bangs out of her eyes.
Miss Loupe continued, “I’ll tell Mrs. Heard that I can explain how everything in this notebook relates to our curriculum and more.” She handed Melissa back her notebook. Melissa put both of her hands on top of it and folded them.
Bo was still standing by the window.
“Does that really not open?” Miss Loupe said, a frown forming.
Bo banged his fist against the frame, which loosened the crooked seal of dried paint. He pushed the sash up and a gust of air blew into the classroom. He peered into the sill. Just as he thought: bugs, piles of them, legs and antennae and crunchy wings. He hoped none of the School Commission would run into his dad.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join the Ugly Couch Players?” Miss Loupe said to Bo.
Bo swooshed across the room as if he were on skis. He picked up the marker. He signed his name with quick, dark strokes: BO. Not Bogart, not yet. Just Bo. But just Bo was pretty good.
“And Gari!” said Miss Loupe. “You’re a natural! You’ve had hardly any training and yet you jumped in there! Bravo!”
Gari gave a quick smile, her first all week. Before she could say a thing, Bo had inked in her name, under his.
No! she thought. You’re the show-off, not me! To stand up in front of all those people!
She shook her head at Bo, motioning for him to strike through her name, but he ignored her.
Well, it didn’t matter, because as soon as the School Commission got to that bathroom …
It didn’t take long. Twenty minutes later …
Knock, knock, knock.
Mrs. Heard was back to see Room 208, but this time, her face was dark, as serious as a heart attack, as Gari’s mom would say. She motioned Miss Loupe to the door. She said something to her in a low voice and handed her a slip of paper.
The class started whispering.
Melissa steadied herself.
Gari steadied herself.
Miss Loupe clutched the oval that hung around her neck. The cord holding it broke, but she didn’t notice. She looked at her class and then at the piece of paper.
“Go,” Mrs. Heard said in a tight voice. “I’ve told the School Commission to come back another time. I’ll take over your class.”
What? thought Gari. Don’t they know it was me? MY idea?
They can’t get her in trouble over the Taped Space! thought Bo.
Melissa was so scared she couldn’t think.
Mrs. Heard took Miss Loupe by the shoulders and gave her a tiny but firm shake. “Carol! GO!”
Miss Loupe ran out the door, down the hallway, out the side door, through the grass, and into the teachers’ parking lot. As she ran, the cord and oval fell through her peacock-green shirt and onto the ground.
“Sixth graders,” Mrs. Heard announced. “I’ll be your teacher for the remainder of the day.” She moved into the room and stood behind Miss Loupe’s desk.
“Why, ma’am?” Melissa finally spoke up in a small voice. “What’s happened, ma’am?”
“Miss Loupe has had an emergency come up.” Mrs. Heard unbuttoned and re-buttoned the top jeweled fastener on her suit jacket.
“It’s all my fault, ma’am!” Melissa burst out. “Please don’t blame Miss Loupe!”
Mrs. Heard’s voice was quieter than Bo had ever heard it. “Melissa, please calm down,” she said. “It’s not about that. She would have told you if …” She paused. Then into the silence, she said:
“It’s Miss Loupe’s brother. His unit in Afghanistan reported him missing.”
The class erupted.
“Marc! He sat on our couch! … The Super Bowl … Remember, the cat ate his salsa … I can’t believe he … his box is still … Army … missing … Does that mean … He’s dead?”
Gari sat in the middle of the chaos, not saying a word. She squeezed the one little green army figure still in her pocket. She didn’t know much about Marc, not like the rest of the class.
He’ll be okay, thought Gari. He’ll be okay. He has to be.
But the words in her head couldn’t drown out the other words in there too. The ones that had popped into her head like huge splotches of red paint when she’d heard the words Army and missing and dead:
It will feel like this. When it happens to me, it will feel like this.
The weekend, for once, felt too long.
On Saturday, Trey asked Bo to go to the skate park, and they dropped in the steepest side, over and over, until their legs and ankles hurt. They asked Gari too, because Bo knew his dad would want them to, but she refused to come. Instead, she went to the BX and bought the last bag of little green army men.
Bo’s mom made macaroni and cheese for dinner, a giant casserole’s worth, with toasted crumbs on top, the kind she used to make before she became a P.E. teacher and lost fifty pounds. She made an extra casserole and placed it in the freezer.
“Just in case,” she said.
Gari ate two bites and went to check her e-mail.
Hi, baby. Only have a minute. Crazy busy here. My FOB trip was approved, so I have to prep for that. Plus a million other things.
Is everything okay? You haven’t been writing much. I’ll try to call soon.
All the time,
Mom
P.S. Have you taken any pictures yet?
While Gari was on the computer, Bo sneaked into her room and borrowed the mouthpiece off her trumpet. He didn’t feel bad because she hadn’t even picked it up since she’d gotten there, not even when he’d asked her if she could play it. When Taps sounded that night, he tried not to think about when he’d heard it in movies: at funerals. He put the mouthpiece to his lips and acted as if he were a magnificent trumpet player.
On Sunday, after church, Gari tried to reach Tandi. She wasn’t home. Gari got a new plastic bag and sat on her bed and folded star after star after star. She wasn’t folding them for Tandi anymore. She was folding them because if she didn’t, those awful paint splotches of words filled her head. Even after an afternoon of folding, the bag still looked empty.
Bo’s dad made confidential phone calls to his contacts in the Army, but no one knew more than the initial report about Marc. Or they weren’t saying.
Indy ate a small hole in the hallway carpet and a large one in the toe of a black shoe that she found in Bo’s room.
Gari stared at her new bag of army men and thought of the others she’d left in the bathroom. If someone found them now, without the publicity of the School Commission visit, her message wouldn’t get farther than the principal’s office.
Mrs. Heard called Miss Loupe at her apartment six times, but got no answer.
Miss Loupe did not return on Monday.
