Shimmy Bang Sparkle(23)

Some people say rage is a red haze. Mine is a magenta mist. It made my ears hot and my face tingly. It was overpowering; I could feel my heartbeat behind my eyes. My cheeks got sweaty, and my fingertips got cold. I felt sick and shocked. It had been so brutal, so fast, and so awful. And there I’d sat frozen, clutching my stupid juice box.

The rink supervisor helped Gus off the ice and sat him on the other end of our bench. A man with a dustpan and broom followed with the remnants of Gus’s glasses, which he put in a pile on the rink-side bench. The adults left Gus there, all alone. For a moment, he stared straight ahead. Stunned. Shocked. Then he hung his head and stared into his lap. And began to sob.

Roxie was closest and scooted down the bench first. She wrapped her arms around him. I remember the way his chubby body shook as he cried. Ruth and I joined them, our steps unsure on the rubbery mats that lined the concrete. As Gus cried with hoarse, barking gasps, I stared at the bits and pieces of his glasses. At useless remnants of the thing he needed to live in the world.

Even then, so young that I slept with headgear and needed a night-light, I understood that it was not only wrong but unjust. What had happened was unfair and terrible and cruel. Random and violent. I gave the bullies the stink eye as they looped around the rink, but they didn’t even see me. One of them wore his hair in a terrible rattail, and I thought about how much I’d like to snip it off with the scissors I carried in my pencil bag.

“We can call your mom,” I told Gus softly as his sobs became less jagged. “She can come get you.”

But Gus shook his head at his lap as a bubble of snot popped under his nose. “I have to take the bus,” he said, through racks and heaves. “Without my glasses, I don’t”—he sobbed—“know”—he sobbed even harder—“how.”

Ruth’s eyes met mine, and Roxie looked at us from over Gus’s tattered winter hat. I felt so helpless, and I could see that Ruth and Roxie did too. That was when the real problem came into focus for me. Calling his mom could wait. Taking vengeance on the bullies could wait. Right then, right there, only one thing mattered: Gus needed to be able to see. We had to do something to help him.

I took my second designated juice box from Roxie’s little cooler, jabbed the sharp end of the straw into the little foil circle, and gave it to Gus. While he let his tears tumble down onto his snow pants and drank his juice, I thought about what in the world we were going to do. How to help. How to make this right. How to undo what had been done. How to fight back.

Then, just as I was putting the lid back on the cooler, I saw it. The Lost and Found desk. All manner of things lined the shelves. And right in the center, I saw a cardboard box, marked on the side with the word GLASSES.

The rage subsided just a little. Magenta gave way to more of a rose pink. I pulled Ruth and Roxie into a huddle. “I’ve got an idea,” I said.

And so, with Ruth and Roxie beside me, I marched over to the Lost and Found. It was manned by a great big guy reading a magazine with a muddy truck on the cover. He was bearlike, in a plaid shirt that was so tight across his chest that the fabric puckered around the buttons. He reminded me very much of Smokey Bear. “Help you?” His voice was deep and booming. And sort of scary.

“Yes,” I said, swallowing my fear and lifting my chin. I hadn’t lied a whole lot in my life; it made me feel a little wobbly. But I held on tight. For poor, sweet, half-blind, snot-bubbling Gus. “We’ve lost some glasses.”

“All of you?” said Smokey. He narrowed his eyes, glaring at me especially. It was my first lesson in being the front woman; even then, I knew it didn’t matter how scared I was. All I had to do was seem like I was fine. Next to me, I heard Roxie make a gulping sound, and Ruth gripped my hand a little tighter.

“Just me,” I said. “I lost my glasses.”

“And it takes three of you to come ask about them?” He set down his magazine and studied us. “What do these glasses of yours look like?”

I began squinting, peering around, as if I really was unable to see. “Very thick,” I said. “I can’t remember. Brown. Or black.” I let go of Ruth and Roxie’s hands and pawed out in the air. Fortunately, I had a little bit of experience with this shtick; due to occasional paralyzing stage fright that rendered me totally unable to speak, I had been cast as Helen Keller in our school play. I had the blind flail down pat. “I’ll know them when I touch them.”

Smokey shook his head and turned the page of his magazine, without looking at the images. “Girls. If you can’t describe the lost item, I can’t show you what we’ve got. Rink policy.”

Like paper dolls attached at the hands, the three of us shuffled aside and convened in another huddle around the corner, in a dimly lit cinder block hallway that smelled like wet socks. I remembered that in the Helen Keller play, Roxie had been cast as my sister, who occasionally fainted for no reason at all. She’d been really good at it; every time she did it, the audience would let out a big, dramatic, “Oooooh!”

“Roxie,” I said. “Do your fake faint. Distract him.”

“Definitely,” she said. “No problem. I practice it every week in church.”

“Ruth, you help me look through the glasses,” I said.

Ruth nodded. “They were bifocals. Like the lunch lady wears, but thinner. I remember them exactly.”