Storymania - Tidings Of Comfort And Joy by Kathleen May

Tidings Of Comfort And Joy
Kathleen May

               Tidings of Comfort and Joy


   As she shifts from one foot to the other, Cara prepares herself for the taunts that are her morning ritual. She knows she has to steel herself for the moment when the yellow and black school bus pulls up in front of Asphalt Vista Estates. Since it’s a Monday, which are the hardest, she has put on her best pair of second-hand blue jeans and a recently acquired hand-me-down ’70s retro v-neck orange sweater from her older sister. The top is much too big, out of fashion with the form hugging styles that dominate the eighth grade, but Cara isn’t bothered much by that. She doesn’t feel all that comfortable in clothes that stretch against her body. As she looks down at her Payless white sneakers that have already started to crack on the sides, the lump in her stomach grows. Today it feels about the size of a baseball. On those days when it swells to basketball proportions, she tells her mother she doesn’t feel well enough to attend school. But seeing as it’s only December and she has already accumulated six sick days, she knows she has to save them up if she wants to make it through the year.

   The bus wheezes to a stop and the door bangs open. Cara hesitates, wishing she could flee, but she drags her lead-heavy feet up the three steps. As she makes her way to an empty seat mercifully toward the front, a boy in a Tommy Hilfiger jacket snorts, “Make out with your brother last night?” Loud guffaws follow. Some other girls start the chant, “trailer trash” as they pull out of the trailer park. Cara settles into her seat and ignores them. Not too difficult a morning all in all.

   Cara’s family hasn’t always lived in Asphalt Vista. Up until this summer, they had an apartment in a different part of town and she attended a school where lots of kids didn’t own designer clothes. But things have been tight ever since the plant closed and left her father drifting from job to job, so they ended up moving to the trailer park that placed her in a different school district. Ironically, her family’s economic misfortunes have put her in contact with the much wealthier kids from the leafy subdivisions on the other side of Route 29.

   Not that things had been a picnic at her previous school. Somehow she always managed to say the wrong thing—usually simply because she answered a teacher’s question. She quickly learned the errors of her misguided ways and stopped volunteering information, but it was too late. She had been branded a nerd, and junior high was not a place for reinventing oneself. Doing well in school isn’t quite the same crime at her new junior high, but it turns out that she is guilty of many other, previously unrecognized, misdemeanors. Cara is beginning to learn that you can’t force social acceptance. Some people have it, and others just don’t. The worst part about wanting so desperately to belong is the knowledge that the group isn’t really worth belonging to in the first place.

   Because of the bus route, there is no way to hide the fact she lives in a trailer park. At first she had tried not to be intimidated by her classmates, with their Gucci handbags, DKNY clothing, and Calvin Klein perfume. But in her first week of school, she was sitting down eating the free hot lunch her family qualified for in the overcrowded, noisy cafeteria. Belinda Von Knorring, who was part of the popular clique of girls that would come to haunt her, had stopped by her table and asked her if she was going to the fall school dance the next weekend. She was joking about how dorky the whole thing was but it was still a good time because they always managed to sneak some alcohol into the bathrooms. Last year, Anabeth Richards had puked all over the Assistant Vice Principal and it was soooo funny. Cara hadn’t even considered attending before Belinda started talking to her but said that she might. As Belinda lifted her tray to move on, she blurted out, “Good, because we’re all hoping that you’ll wear those really cool cords.” Laughter erupted from the table behind Cara and she realized that Belinda’s friends were all sitting there, egging her on. Cara’s face turned bright red and she cast her eyes down on the hateful cords that were much shorter and straighter than everyone else’s.

   Shortly after this incident she was told that she needed to spend her free period with the hypercheerful Mrs. Peabody, the school counselor who prided herself on really understanding the kids. The enthusiasm of Mrs. Peabody knew no bounds. Good cheer seemed to flow from her expansive girth with the same ease that life maxims sprang from her fleshy lips. She tended to wear blowzy pastel frocks made of gauzy fabrics and accessorized with filmy scarves and bundles of silver bangles. Fond of brooches and pins, you often found exotic animals like a silver lemur or a brightly painted wooden elephant perched on her chest. In their first session together, it was a creature Cara didn’t recognize but looked something like a cross between a small hippopotamus and a groundhog. She was envisioning what sort of animal Mrs. Peabody most resembled—the options were limitless—when the counselor stopped her monologue and leaned toward her in the confiding position.

   “Cara, what I’m saying here is that you don’t look like what I call a happy camper. I take it upon myself to watch out for the new kids at Hoover Junior High, and the word in the teacher’s lounge is that people are sensing a negative vibe from you.” She looked at Cara encouragingly, inviting her to chip in but was met with silence.

   “Cara when you walk around the halls with that mopey, long face, people think you’re not happy. And I am in the business of making people happy. Now I wonder if you've heard of a woman I am a great admirer of –Eleanor Roosevelt? Well she said something that I‘ve always really appreciated, and I thought I might share it with you today. She said that no one can make you feel inferior without your own consent. Do you know what ‘inferior’ and ‘consent’ mean?”

   “Yes.”

   “Good, good. Now why don’t you think about that then. Don’t you think that’s a real nice thought—to think that you have the power to be your own person and command respect? You have that Cara, I see it in you. You just need to choose to exercise it. I’ve been doing all the talking here today, and I’d like to hear a little more from you. Communication is a two-way street, so I’m gonna need you to start driving!” She gave a little laugh. “Seriously Cara, I want to see you in the halls holding your head high and smiling. Ok, then?”

   Cara nodded.

   “Alrightie, why don’t we say you meet me in here during your free period every Monday so we can continue to have these little chats. Let me know how things are going, that sort of thing. I want us to be friends Cara, I really do.”

   Sitting on the bus, a smirk flickers across Cara’s face as she remembers Mrs. Peabody’s helpful hints from last week. Throw a slumber party she had suggested, it’s a great way to make friends! Cara tried to imagine any one of her classmates crammed in around the minuscule kitchen counter in the trailer as her mom nervously heated up hot dogs and her dad sat immobile in front of the tv, wearing his customary grimy sleeveless t-shirt and threadbare boxer shorts, while drinking Milwaukee’s Best or whatever was on special offer at Valu-4-Less that week. It almost made her laugh out loud.

   Mrs. Peabody had been brimming over with suggestions on how Cara could make friends.

   “You need to develop your personality so that you have some kind of schtick, something that makes people want to be your friend, because you re the girl who—What Cara, what kind of girl are you?”

   “I dunno.”

   “Well we’ve got to figure it out! Take me for example, I’m the wacky one who is crazy about animals. And you need to decide what can make you different. Maybe you can be the girl who reads all the Judy Blume novels. Or the one who plays piano. Or the jokester who does all the practical jokes. What do you say, Cara?” Mrs. Peabody was in such a fit of excitement, red-faced, arms flailing as she dispensed her pearls of wisdom that Cara hated to burst her bubble.

   “Well, um, I guess I have to think about it.”

   “Right on!. That’s the spirit. You go home tonight and think, what makes me me? And remember Cara, as our great American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘Insist on yourself. Never imitate.’”

   Cara didn’t know how to take Mrs. Peabody seriously. The sessions made her uncomfortable and she dreaded the inevitable questions about her life. But at least the counselor’s office provided a refuge from the harassment at study hall.

   In homeroom, Cara is disturbed to discover that it is the day to pick Holiday buddies. They used to call them Kris Kringles or Secret Santas, but any allusion to a specific holiday had been banned by the School Board. They were to embrace not only the tradition of Christmas but also those of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Winter Solstice. The Jehovah’s Witnesses left the classroom when the teacher passed around the hat.

   Cara closes her eyes and prays over and over again, “Please, God, please don’t let me pick Belinda Von Knorring. Anyone but Belinda. Please.” When the hat at last comes to her and she unfolds the crumpled lined notebook paper, flouncy cursive writing reveals the name: Belinda Von Knorring. Panics overwhelms her. Although it is hard to imagine that her school life could possibly get more miserable, she knew it would become intolerable if she failed to deliver a cool enough gift. How will she ever going to afford it? Obviously it is out of the question to ask her parents for the money. There are no paper routes to deliver or lawn chores to do in the trailer park. She finally resigns herself to the fact that she would have to offer her babysitting services to the detestable Bechler family.

   The mere thought makes her shudder. The Bechlers live two rows over from Cara’s trailer, and their mother was forever looking for sitters because no one ever agreed to come back after spending one night with the four boys. The one time Cara had been roped into babysitting for them previously, she had come home with a bite mark on her ankle that had actually bled. Fortunately the boys were too small to do any serious damage yet, mainly they just hurled objects at the sitter and tried to set things on fire. The baby was harmless enough, unless you count catching whatever his latest illness was. A perpetual stream of snot and phlegm seemed to ooze out of his every orifice. But if she could survive one night with them, she would have enough cash to buy something decent. She hopes.

   When the day comes for the holiday party, the last day of school before the much-anticipated winter break, Cara feels something she hasn’t felt in a long time—pride. She had managed to escape her night at the Bechlers without sustaining any physical injuries and she has the new Puff Daddy cd wrapped in nice heavy paper that her mom had brought home from Walmart.

   The students are so preoccupied with opening their gifts, they don’t have time to pick on Cara. She almost feels relaxed. The tearing of gift-wrap was in the air. Mrs. Peabody, dressed as an oversized elf, acts as DJ. Some of the boys play a game of catch with dreidls.

   Cara watches anxiously as Belinda picks up her gift. Belinda rips it open and carelessly tosses the cd in her Kipling backpack. “As if I wouldn’t already own the Puff,” she said in disgust.

   Cara tries not to feel hurt, at least she hadn’t been laughed at. She comforts herself with the fact that things could have been much worse. But when she opens her own gift, she cannot mask her feelings. In an old shoe box was a canister of deodorant, a bar of cheap soap, and some free bottles of sample shampoo, along with a note saying “Why don’t you clean up trailer trash?”

   Forcing back tears, she wills herself to stand up. She focuses her clear blue eyes on the blackboard and commands herself to stand tall. She walks slowly and steadily to the wastebasket, and without bending down, drops the shoebox in with a loud thud. No one can make you feel inferior without your own consent, my ass, she thinks bitterly. She opens the door to the classroom and leaves. She does not look back.

   When the excruciating day is finally over and it is time to line up for the buses, Cara finds her exit blocked by the imposing presence of Mrs. Peabody who comes sailing out of her counselor’s office singing Cara’s name. “You’re forgetting your Christmas gift, my dear. You know I give gifts to all my friends at Christmas,” she chirps. Before she could launch into a rendition of “’Tis the Season to be Jolly,” Cara mumbles a quick thanks and bolts for the bus, hoping to get a seat up front so she won’t have to walk the endless aisle to reach the door when they pulled up to Asphalt Vista. She isn’t tempted to open the package from Mrs. Peabody. No doubt it contained the words of wisdom of some dumb dead optimist in the form of inspirational plaque or book of pithy sayings. She considers chucking the thing out the window but then comes up with a more satisfying plan.

   Her mother is alarmed when she asks for a hammer. But it turns out that the tool kit is one of those things they hadn’t been able to fit in the trailer and was being stored at her aunt’s house. So Cara slits open the dancing bear gift-wrap and pulls the lid off the box. She lifts out a white DKNY top and a pair of black Gap jeans in her size. And for the first time in many months, the tears that almost come are not ones of sadness.