The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(13)

“They all want me to be on their kickball team,” I said. “They had a big fight about it.”

“I hope not a fistfight,” my mother said, passing a bowl of peas.

“No, just some yelling.”

“I don’t doubt it, with all those home runs you’ve been kicking. Maddy, we might have ourselves a soccer star.”

“I don’t know,” I said, concerned I’d possibly overdone it.

I convinced myself these were not real lies—not the kind that caused a person to burn in hell, anyway. These fit squarely in the category of lies my mother had once explained were okay if they were intended to avoid hurting a person’s feelings. I knew how badly my mother and father wanted me to fit in, and the smiles that lit up their faces while sitting at that table were worth the daily pain of my isolation. I thought it the perfect plan.

“You’ll have to invite some of your friends over after school to play,” my mother said, which nearly caused me to choke on a piece of steak.

“But my word, where will we fit them all?” my father asked. “We’ve created a regular Bobby Kennedy. Do they have student government? Maybe you could run for class president.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think you have to be older before they let you do that stuff.”

“Any problems?” my mother would ask.

“No,” I’d quickly say.

My father’s concern that others would be cruel seemed as far from reality as the world I created each night at our dinner table.

All of that would soon change, however.





16

The following Monday, I took what had become my customary spot on a bleacher near a cinder-block wall that provided a wedge of shade in which I tried to hide from the lunch ladies. I had no trouble getting this spot. As I ascended the bleachers, the other students would either move to another bleacher or slide away. The void expanded as each student quickly ate, eager to depart for their all-important exercise.

Not me. In just five days, I had mastered the art of eating so slowly I could take up an entire thirty-minute lunch period, much to the annoyance of the lunch ladies—who, I’d come to learn, some of the older kids called lunch Nazis. The longer I took to eat, the longer I could remain on the bleachers. I doubt that I fully understood my predicament at six years of age, but I had a strong sense that I was different, and not in the extraordinary way my mother wanted me to believe.

I started by eating the crust of my Wonder Bread sandwich in a circular fashion. I worked my way inward to the cheese and mayonnaise while periodically sipping milk from the small carton we purchased for five cents a day. After eating my sandwich, I moved on to the apple slices, eating the skin first before crunching the remainder. When the apples were consumed, I opened the plastic wrap to my Hostess Twinkie and commenced to eat the sponge-like golden cake as one would eat the kernels from an ear of corn, left to right and back again. My goal was to leave the tube of vanilla cream for last.

The beginning of the second week, as I proceeded with this delicate operation, I noticed a dark-skinned boy sitting two bleachers below staring up at me with a furrowed brow. Though school had started a week earlier, I recognized immediately that this was his first day. He was the only black kid in the entire school. Sister Kathleen had introduced him that morning as Ernie Cantwell, though he was placed in Sister Reagan’s class to even out the number of students in each class.

I had never seen a black person, except on television, and to my knowledge he was not just the only black child in OLM school; he was the only black child in Burlingame, though that was likely an observation based on the limited breadth of my world at that age. Ernie had finished his lunch and sat holding his brown paper sack by the neck. When I glanced at him, he blew into the bag and smashed it with a loud pop! Fortunately, the lunch ladies were engaged in conversation and didn’t stop to admonish him or to notice me.

Ernie climbed the bleachers and sat on my row. “Do you always eat it that way?”

I nodded.

He slid closer. “Why?”

I shrugged.

He sat beside me, focused on the Twinkie. “I peel the chocolate from the top of my cupcake,” he said. “But I eat the cake with the cream.”

I didn’t answer, hoping he would leave.

“What’s the matter with your eyes?” he asked. I turned my head. He came around the other side. “They’re red.”

“No duh.”

“I’ve never seen anyone with red eyes before.”

“So, I’ve never seen anyone with black skin before.”

He shrugged. “Most of the kids where I come from have black skin . . . and brown eyes.”

I had nearly finished removing the cake exterior. “Where do you come from?”

“Detroit. It’s really far away, like another country. My father made cars there, but now he mostly works in the garage.”

“We had to take our car to a garage when it broke.”

“No. He works in our garage. He’s building something.”

“My dad gives people drugs,” I said.

“We had a lot of those in Detroit; that’s why we moved. I’m Ernie.”

“I’m Sam.”

“You sure take a long time to eat a Twinkie. You want to go play?”