Storymania - Watch Out, Henry! There's A Hole In That There Bucket! by Pearl S

Watch Out, Henry! There's A Hole In That There Bucket!
Pearl S

"English Essay Contrasting Fantasy Self with Reality"

or

"Watch Out, Henry! There’s a Hole in That There Bucket!"

Rachel sat on her bed, hands folded in her lap, and bit her lip until it bled.

There was still some time left before she had to start on dinner. The baby was asleep. The older boys weren’t home yet. Her six year old sister and eight year old brother were either doing their homework or playing their video games; she didn’t care. If they had problems she’d be able to hear them scream a mile away. It was quiet, though, and she could think.

And seethe.

"Oh my G-d, Rachel, you are just too pathetic."

She pulled her knees up to her chest and flipped her gaze violently to the pictures pinned to her mirror, hoping to distract her mind. She hated her mind. It was always looking for trouble. It would pull up every depressing or anxiety-inducing miserable picture it could think of right before bedtime, yank the scabs off of every hurt made by every insult or snubbing or betrayal. And that stupid imagination, that was even worse. Her imagination would spin these wonderful fairy-tale like daydreams about how things would have gone if she were writing the book, these warm, fuzzy scenes about friends who hugged you when you were crying and parents who understood what your real issues were and boys who actually called her and talked to her when they called.

"What’s so funny about that? That’s not funny. That’s stupid. You have no sense of humor, do you?"

Her eyes narrowed to slits. Her lip was bleeding.

"Please, it was just a joke. You didn’t need to get so offended. Oh my G-d, you are too sensitive."

"I wasn’t talking to you. Butt out."

"What a pathetic idea."

"What are you listening to? Let me hear. Oh, never mind, this stuff’s trash."

Crash. She could still hear the headphones clattering to the floor. Those things cost money, she had snapped at the girl who had dropped them.

The girl rolled her eyes and walked away.

The words echoed in her head, those hateful, hurtful words.

Listen, some people are normal. You’re just not one of them. This is a group of normal people having a conversation. Go talk to your weird friends.

You want to talk to me? Why? I already paid you for the broken headphones, you freak. Go listen to your sucky music and leave me alone.

Your handwriting is unacceptable, Ms. Skier. If you hand in another paper like this I will give you a failing mark.

The writing is cliché and not what the assignment called for, but I gave you an eighty because your grammar is excellent.

Hey, I got homework to do. I can’t talk to you all night long. Night.

She bit her lip harder. The boy who stayed up until five in the morning the day of his physics exam talking to another girl in her school. That was the one who had too much homework to talk to her.

No. She couldn’t be angry. Her mother would be home in a minute. She didn’t want to yell at her mother. She didn’t want to yell at the baby. The people who she wanted to yell at wouldn’t have talked to her again if she did, so she didn’t want to yell at them. Did she? She couldn’t be angry.

Your hair looks like a frightwig. It just does.

Your mom’s losing weight. I think she weighs less than you do. Isn’t that something?

You have no taste. None.

Students, until this day I would have told you there was no such thing as a dumb question, but for this one I have to make an exception.

Religious girls don’t need to listen to rock music.

Religious girls don’t wear those kinds of shirts.

Religious girls don’t talk to boys.

Wear do you draw the line, anyway? Do you know how close you are to being Conservative? Everyone here is more Orthodox than your family, admit it.

You are too pathetic for words.

Oh my G-d, why is she reading that stupid story? Fine, so you asked her to read it, but can she do it later? We want to tell her something. Not you, her! No, you can’t come! Oh my G-d, you are so annoying!

You have no respect for other people’s work. Why should they respect yours? You’re a complete contradiction.

It’s your fault it broke. You’re so careless and sloppy. I’m not sharing a locker with you next year, you can be sure of that.

Duh.

I’m not listening to you anymore. You don’t say anything interesting.

You’re not coping, you’re moping, and you’re not functioning. If you skip one more class I’m going to call your parents and get you professional help. Is that what you want? I’m only a teacher, but I will not stand for this.

Of course you’re angry. You listen to that angry music all the time. I’m going to take away all your music. I think that would solve the problem.

Your writing is so dead. I like your old stuff better. What happened to you anyway?

"Review for Going In Circles: This is an unoriginal concept and has been stated with much more depth by various other authors. I give it a 73 percent. Note to author: Why don’t you pick up some Eddie von Fredert, and learn from his art that cliches are uninteresting?"

You’re making it all up. You’re just fine. There’s nothing wrong with you.

There was blood trickling down her chin. She made her way numbly to the bathroom and wiped it off with a tissue. The heck there wasn’t anything wrong with her. It seemed like her parents always told her how perfectly fine she was the same day all the kids in school told her how they’d never seen anyone weirder.

She paused and looked in the mirror.

Well, there was no denying it now. She was angry.

"Rachel!" screeched her mother. "Why isn’t the table set? Why didn’t you start up the hot water? What are you doing up there, sleeping? I don’t see the dryer going. You’ve been home for two hours and you haven’t done a thing!"

"Coming," she called down the stairs. She took five deep breaths, punched her arm to get some of the anger out, and went to the kitchen.

She had been lying in bed for about an hour now. It was well past midnight; the rest of her family was fast asleep. She’d stayed up an extra hour and a half, sitting right next to the phone, waiting for Nussun to call.

She wondered tiredly how many hours she had wasted that way. Sometimes she wished she could kill the hope-for real. Destroy it. She pictured it sobbing on the floor and melting into oblivion. She wished she could just give it up and move on with her life.

"I called you and you didn’t answer the phone. Why didn’t you answer the phone? You’ve been talking to that other kid again, haven’t you? Don’t do that, Rachel. He’s double-dosing on you-"

"Nussun, he calls me more than once a month and doesn’t expect me to-"

"So I develop a life and you’re going to burn me at the stake for it, huh? You’d rather talk to him than me."

"No, Nussun, that’s not what I mean. I’m just saying it stupid. You know that’s not what I’m saying, it seems to me like you’re trying to pick a fight-"

"I’m so fed up with this. One minute you’re tirading that I never call you and I never pay attention to you, and when I do call you don’t answer the freakin’ phone, and then you yell at me for being upset about it? I’m not taking any more of this trash."

"Nussun, please. Let’s talk about something else."

"No. I’ve got stuff to do, and I don’t feel like talking to you anymore. And don’t expect another call from me next week-I have a geometry test…oh my G-d, I’m just so fed up with you. Good night."

He wouldn’t call again until January. She turned over in the bed. 1:02. She really needed to sleep.

Even the baby snored quietly. But she laid awake, dreaming.

Big imaginations are horrible to have in the daytime…when all you need to do is concentrate, but your lovely fantasies keep reminding you of what you could be doing. At night, though, it’s something different, because at night, big imaginations are the packagers of good dreams. This one was particularly good, too good to fall asleep and risk forgetting.

Like in most dreams of hers, there was a girl. She was small and petite, usually, although sometimes she was just a thinner version of her creator; she had black hair and green eyes, not frizzy brownish and grayish blue. She wore all black; black t-shirt, black sweatpants, black mini-skirt, black earrings. She had problems. She had a thin set of razor blades that she used to slit her wrists and a bottle of sleeping pills she took too many of. She got perfect marks, this girl, even though she was never in class, and she hung out with her boyfriend’s band all the time even though she always wanted to be alone. The boyfriend was someone who smiled and laughed at her bad jokes, listened when she talked, made her feel worth something after a bad day in school. He never told her she was pathetic, or too sensitive, or not religious enough. Sometimes he just sat with her. He had spiky rich brown bedhead hair and wristbands and was also a little messed up, but this dream-girl never minded that, because she knew he was there when she needed him.

Besides, the dream boy looked and acted just like a certain real boy. A boy she barely knew. A boy who she would one day like to write some long letter of explanation. But that was too complicated, and too cynical-mocking her own dreams-she needed those dreams to survive.

The dream girl never spent an hour lying on her bed trying not to cry. When she got angry, she just talked to the boy, or else she slit her wrists, and then she felt better. She didn’t have any girl friends, but that was ok, because the girls were just bundles of hypocrisies, disdain, haughtiness, callousness. The dream girl saw through them and proved them wrong each and every time. Sometimes people still hurt her, but she had the boy to lean on. She had never been caught between self-pity and anger at herself for wallowing in self-pity and hate for everyone else in her school. She had never hurled stupid insults when she was angry. She had never stayed up all night because she was sad. She had never looked at her writing and realized it was trash. This girl always slept through the night.

Unlike herself in every possible way.

She let her eyes closed, dreaming about the pretty happy girl with everything important in the world.

Rachel rolled out of bed as soon as the first dim light filtered through the window shades. The baby was still asleep in her crib, and her other sister snoring loudly in the top bunk. She stood, spent one minute in the horrifying realization that it was Thursday, which meant English at 8:30, double period biology, aerobics, and a very long never ending cycle of hurt, spent five minutes wishing violently that she could roll over and go back to sleep, and then she tiptoed over the creaky spots of the floor and started her day.

Her mornings were all about timing. Timing, timing, timing. Everything had to be timed to perfection or she was thrown off for the rest of the day. Breakfast was from six-forty-five to seven, no later. A shower took until seven fifteen. Her hair was until seven thirty, lunch and backpack packing was until seven forty five, and then she had to leave for the bus stop.

How she clung to her routines.

She narrowed her eyes at the mirror and mouthed at her reflection: Jump in a lake and take your freaking routines with you.

She did everything she needed to do before seven. She skipped breakfast. It was all a mentality. If she told herself she was sick and weird than she would be. She had finished her shower by seven ten.

She stood in front of the half-steamed bathroom mirror, studying her hair. It was almost black when it was wet, and instead of being thick and frizzy, it curled and coiled like an Greek noble lady’s she’d seen in a book. She loved it when it was wet. If only it would stay that way. But it wouldn’t, and there was no point wishing.

For a minute a vivid image of her hair in rich brown bed-head spikes flashed before her eyes. The boy in her head urged her: "Do something funky with it! Just this once! And wear the black lipstick and eyeshadow!"

Then she put it in a half pony just like she always wore and put on the same brown eyeshadow and lipstick she’d had for the past six months.

She threw the cd player into her backpack and marched to the busstop.

She was the first one there. She slid into her same corner seat, put on the music, waited for everyone else to come. She didn’t bother looking; she could tell by the busy chatter. They weren’t talking to her, were never talking to her. She plastered her face to the window and the bus rolled past the houses.

She’d memorized the street signs. She listened to the songs blaring in her ears about individuality and standing up for yourself and disgust with snobs and all the emotions that had burned inside her for so long, and all she could think was: There are people who feel exactly like me in the world, and they are so far removed from me that I will never meet them. Ever.

Bridges and forges and Christmas lights. The world glided by like a slide show. Before she knew it, they would be at Greenbay and Greentree, and then down the steps, and then to the school door, and then the timer would be set for another nine hours of repressed screams.

She wished the people singing the music would materialize out of thin air and carry her away. Goodbye, she would say to them. She listened to the lyrics. I can’t find the answers to save humanity. I can’t fight the anger-here’s a resignation from me. A resignation from me. A resignation from me.

She pictured herself confronting everyone in that entire freakin’ school. They would all stand there, open-mouthed, while she pitched her card at their helpless figures as carelessly as a millionaire tossing a quarter to a beggar and sallied away without a look back. Here’s a resignation from me.

The bus lurched past a patch of woods. She knew that woods very well. She had run away there at least three times in the past week. Who knew how many classes she’d missed that way. There was no air in the school; she saw it as perfectly logical to get away. Like anything painful, school needs to be broken up into smaller chunks to be consumed healthily, and she broke them up by getting out as often as she could.

She fantasized about packing all her valuable possessions-computer, books, music, teddy bear-into a backpack with three microwaved pizzas and running away for good. It would be so easy…just disappear through that tree-line and never look at anyone else again.

A sudden stomach-hurling bump, and the other kids were getting off the bus.

She turned off the angry shouting in her ears. She couldn’t turn off the angry shouting in her head. She bit her lip, mumbled a thank you to the bus driver, and tried to work herself into a numb state for the start of the school day.

Usually it didn’t work. But when it did, numbness was a beautiful thing. And today, somehow despite an ominous beginning, it just clicked. Nine hours-nine hours of sitting in the same exact spot in a dirty, airless, lightless basement-and, because her mind was somewhere else, it was as if she’d never been there at all. Chumush class, and a teacher lecturing, chiding, tugging at her anger, teasing, infuriating, but where was Rachel? A girl sat in her desk, but Rachel didn’t know her. Rachel had long since left; sitting alone with the friends in her head on some hilltop with a full-bodied breeze and green green grass that swayed with its every breath. English found her with the boy from her imagination and his band in his room, filled with all kinds of interesting things he’d forgotten to throw away; Ivrit was harder, since its teacher somehow insisted on singling her out each and every day and talking to her sympathetically like a child in need of psychiatric help. Rachel might come out of the dreamworld long enough to smile at her condescendingly, because the Ivrit teacher could not see the dream girl she was currently existing through, and there was no question of the dream girl being screwed up. The dream girl was and didn’t care either.

Yeshaya-blah blah blah. Music echoed through her head. The dream girl danced on top of the bed to songs with all the meaning and beauty everyone said Rachel’s songs never had. Biology? She laughed out loud, passed a note to the girl sitting next to her to inform the teacher that she had an appointment, grabbed her book bag, and walked right out of class, half-dancing, half-skipping to the dream girl’s songs. Stopped briefly in the bathroom, humming to herself, wet her hair so it curled like a Greek noble lady’s, put on the black lipstick and black eyeshadow, threw her backpack over her shoulder, and skipped through the school building. Through the hallway, past the copier, past that dinky little basement, up those hateful break-neck stairs. She felt like a butterfly bursting out of a cocoon, but as she skip-danced past the sidewalk and into ankle-high snow and dead shrubs, she knew whose situation hers was: a life-sentence busting out.

She did six sashays until she got to the woods, dead trees covered in a white undisturbed blanket (it had snowed over the weekend). She rolled down the little hill straight into the meadow, pulled her knees up to her chin, pulled her headphones over her ears, pressed full blast on her music, closed her eyes, and mouthed as many words as she could: "Storming through the party like my name was El Nino, when I’m hanging out drinking in the back of an El Camino-As a kid, was a skid, no one knew me by name, trashed my own house party because nobody came-I don’t wanna waste my time, become another casualty of society, I’ll never fall in line, become another victim of your conformity or back down-"

She stood, picked up her bookbag, and started walking: "Don’t count on me to let you know when. Don’t count on me-I’ll do it again. Don’t count on me-the point you’re missing: don’t count on me, cause I’m not listening!"

She jumped once, punched her fist in the air, and broke into a run.

Tearing blindly past the trees and the grass and the back of the school building. Ha! Just let them try and catch her now! They couldn’t run fast enough-not as fast as her. The book bag was too heavy; she dumped all the school books out in the middle of the meadow and kept running, laughing hysterically. Sweat pricked on her back and on her face; the motion was intoxicating. Intoxicating! Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she would pay for it later-a lecture on maturity, perhaps, an essay, a grounding, a groundhog, who cared? It didn’t matter. She was never going back! Not ever never. She laughed, singing with the music bouncing in her ears: "It’s all just a waste of time in the end-I don’t care, so why should I even pretend-Motivation, such an aggravation-Nothing’s going to change my mind!"

She jumped once up and down, just for kicks, glanced at the street sign on the corner, calculated some strange distance in her head (six blocks?) and kicked her legs up, streaking past like a stripe on a rocket or the dream girl on a skateboard. She stuffed her coat in her backpack and kept running. She felt lighter than air and faster than light. Greentree and-and who cared? Who cared at all? Five blocks and her legs would never give out. Faces out of car windows turning to stare at her. She waved and threw her head up high and laughed and laughed and laughed. Who in this world cared? By now bio would be over and she’d be cutting into Jewish History. This was truly a dream from which she prayed she would never wake up. Four more blocks, wind blowing past, and she was singing: "It’s summer! It’s summer! Dry your tears come out and play cause it’s summer, it’s summer, and I’m bored!" Three more blocks, dash across the street like a roadkill-to-be, singing like crazy, running like crazy and the world isn’t real and when her mom found out what she’s doing she’ll kill her and who honestly cared, cared, cared at all? "It’s summer! It’s summer! Dry your tears come out and play cause it’s summer! It’s summer!"

Turn to the left and to the right again and second house with that lovely little picket fence and the same music as was in her headphones blasting through the window. A bike rusting carelessly on the ground with blue and yellow stars; in Glendale a bicycle stealing would be an act of G-d. She skip-hop-danced up at the steps, rang the doorbell, waited for a skip-dip moment ("Forget reality, I plan on never waking up!"). Then she stuck her head through the of course unlocked door and shouted over the music: "Hey, Nussun!"

One minute, two minute, she was singing singing singing: "Turn my head it’s back to bed with no delay, can’t be bothered by the phone ten times a day, why get up my morning doesn’t even start till two, forget reality, waking up is hard to do!" and three minute and suddenly the blasting music stopped, three minute and a half and bam, bam, bam feet pounding down the stairs as loudly and quickly as an artillery cannon. She caught a glimpse through the crack of a baggy pair of faded jeans and a t-shirt with the message: "Sum 41 Makes This Hell Fun!" Then, while she sang the line about I’m Not The Person You Knew Back In High School, the door burst open and a sleek face with little black glasses and long chin-length black hair popped through.

"Rachel," he said, eyes wide, not believing.

"Hey," she said, pulling off the headphones, pushing through the door and hurling her backpack in the air. It flew in an arc (she could still hear the music: "Teach me how to fly, how to survive and thrive and be alive") and landed on the sofa.

He blinked, looked around at his house (his parents were away, as they always were, and so the entire place had become an extension of his bedroom) and said, not knowing what else to say: "Hey, your hair looks awesome."

"Danke."

"The makeup too. Holy toldeo."

"Wanted to do something funky."

"You are Rachel, right?"

"In and reporting." (Exactly what the dream girl would have said! Too intoxicating to be real!)

"Awesome. But Rachel, I thought-I mean-don’t you have school?"

She nodded happily. "Yup."

"So, then…um…are you ok? Are you mad at me for hanging up two nights ago? Because I feel really bad about that. I was in a crappy mood, the orthodontist says I need braces…"

"Aw, that’s awful, Nussun. Smile."

He smiled.

She shook her head. "Nope, nothing wrong that I can see. You know that’s even worse than if there was something wrong. A girl in my class had straight teeth like yours, and her ortho put braces on ‘em, and now she’s got so screwed up a mouth she’s got to get them back on when she’s done."

He moaned. "You live to torture me."

"I’m in a torturous mood."

He laughed, jerked his head at the stairs: "You just dropped in or you gonna stay awhile?"

"Awhile."

"Then come upstairs cause I have to study."

"Yeah, I could hear you studying six blocks away."

They started up the stairs, and she still skip-hopped over the laundry baskets and algebra books and tuna sandwiches littering the steps.

"I got to tell my parents I’m doing something productive or they won’t leave. But seriously, don’t you have school?"

"Darn straight."

"So…what’d you do?"

"Nussun," she announced, turning to face him, "I am bustin’ out." Then, singing: "Crashed my own house party cause nobody came!"
He stopped where he stood, his mouth partly open and his eyes wider than saucers behind the little square glasses.

He looked at her.

"You," he said. "You, Miss I-Can’t-Go-Out-Because-It’s-A-School-Night, Miss I-Got-A-Ninety-In-Biology-So-My-Life-Is-Over, Miss Let’s-Turn-The-Volume-Down-Because-A-Teacher’s-Walking-Past-And-I-Don’t-Want-Her-To-Hear-The-Expletive, you’re busting out?"

"Darn straight."

He tapped his fingers on the banister for a moment, seemingly at a loss. Then he took her temperature with the back of his hand. She pushed it away, unfazed. "Nussun, cut it out. I’m serious-or maybe that’s just it. Maybe it’s that I’m not serious at all. Nussun, I am Bus. Ting. Out! I’m freer than O.J.! I’m liver than live and Ozzie put together! I am psyched!"

Then she smiled and said lowly: "And with my luck, I’m still asleep, too."

He pinched himself, and shook his head. "No, I was thinking that I must have fallen asleep while I was studying, and dreamed this little number up, but they say pinching yourself wakes you up, and nothing’s changed." Hopefully: "If you want, I can pinch you too, just to make sure."

She shook her head. "Not needed. I don’t want to wake up."

"What have they done to you at that school? Did they knock you wrong side the head or something? You wanna sit down? What happened to Rachel? Are you her evil twin that I’ve never met?"

"Nope. Nussun, I busted out! I busted! I ran! Aren’t you proud?"

"Of course I am, but I don’t understand why. Were they hurting you? Boring you? You’re gonna get landed so majorly-not that I’m complaining, heck, I’d much rather you come here than me study alone and you suffer through double bio-but why?"

"Why?" she smiled quietly. "Why? Do you know what I just did? I just left them all behind! All of it! The boring, droning teachers. The obnoxious, hurtful girls. The strangling constricting no-air-breathing little basement of a building-I just left it all behind and you don’t even realize that. I just skipped out of my routine, I just skipped out of my prison, I just skipped out of double bio and the bus and helping my parents with dinner and the baby with her bath. Don’t you see that? Today I am going to do all the things I’ve only done in my dreams! Today is going to be my dream girl carried out. Don’t you get it?"

He laughed, catching some of the excitement. It is catchy, that. "You’re rebelling?"

"Whatever you want to call it." She flipped open the cd player. "Guess what I’ve got."

He took it in his hands, read the label. " ‘All Killer No Filler, Sum 41’-" Then his eyes widened, and he shouted: "Al-right! Oh my G-d! You know I love this one but that idiot Shmuel broke mine-"

"It’s a gift."

"You’re kidding."

"I ain’t. I told you today I was going to do all the things I only do in my sleep."

He hugged her once, cried: "In that case-to heck with geometry, it’s bleeping dance party time!" and bam, bam, bam, he bounded back up the stairs in full-force jumps.

And she laughed, ecstatic and envigourated and so alive, alive, alive and happy not to be drowning through double bio that she bounded up right after him, pounding on the steps for all she was worth, as certainly the dream girl would have done.

And she knew without caring that it was the best dream of her life, even if it had started out kind of dull, even if it probably only was a dream, and one day, one day she’d make it come true. For real.

She smiled in her sleep. Yeah, one day. Tomorrow.