Читать книгу Ludell - Brenda Wilkinson - Страница 9

3.

IT WAS FRIDAY, “hot dog day” at school! Each teacher taking a turn would sell them, with the money going to the PTA. You could buy a 5¢ hot dog which was a half one; 10¢ whole; 15¢ one and a half; and you could go up as high as you pleased. The record Ludell had seen was when Monkey Juice got 40¢’s worth.

After getting organized to take the hot dog orders, Mis Rivers called out, “CASH!”

Three hands went up—Ludell’s and two more persons’. Mama normally gave her 10¢ a day, but on Fridays she’d get an extra dime. She’d usually get 15¢’s worth of hot dogs and a drink. The week Mis Stevanson (who made the best ones) was selling, she’d get two and just drink some water.

After Mis Rivers finished with the cash list she called for credit, and the rest of the class’s hands went up, except for Ruthie Mae’s and another girl’s. Ruthie Mae still owed the teacher who’d sold last week, and the other girl owed a teacher from many many weeks back.

You were suppose to pay off your credit before Friday and when you didn’t, you had to take the slip back to the teacher you owed, every day until you paid. For weeks Mis Rivers had been calling out the girl’s name for her to pay, and everyday she’d say, “I’ll brang it tomorrow.”

Then Mis Rivers would pass the slip to her and say, “Tell that to the person you owe.” Sometimes the girl would come back almost in tears, causing Ludell to feel so sorry for her. She didn’t owe but twenty lil ole cents, but the teachers would hound you like a dog over even a nickel! If the girl was ever able to pay off her bill, Mis Rivers would never let her credit more than 5¢’s worth from then on. She always did that to persons she said had made their credit bad, and would embarrass them by telling them so out loud in front of the whole class.

Ludell deeply regretted that Ruthie Mae hadn’t been able to credit today, for she knew now she’d be unable to eat her own in peace. “All that stuff she gave me from the store yesterday, she probably expecting a whole half o’ one outta me,” she was thinking.

Since arriving at school this morning, she’d been waiting for someone to start picking at her shoes, but no one had yet. She’d been forced to put them on today. “I guess it’s true what mama said bout ‘God don’ like ugly,’” she’d thought to herself upon awakening this morning and finding her tennises all scorched up. She’d placed them before the fireplace last night with the intention of removing them later, but never woke up again until daybreak, when mama hollered for her to get up for school. She’d stepped out the bed, and there they were! Her tennises—not even fit for the garbage! One of them had burnt so badly it split at the toe when she touched it.

“Look like it was just meant for me to wear these shoes,” she said, looking down at her feet that she had doubled up as far under the desk as she could get them.

They were having Geography, and Mis Rivers was discussing something about orange groves in California, when Monkey Juice started waving his hand and hollering, “Mis Rivers, Mis Rivers!”

“Yes Bernard,” she said. “What is it?”

“One time my uncle sent us a whole crate o’ oranges from Flo-ri-da,” he bellowed out in a singsong manner.

“Yes Bernard,” replied Mis Rivers with a nod, then returned to where he’d cut her off.

He was forever stopping class like that, with something dry to say. Sometimes Ludell wondered if he had em all, the dumb way he acted. She couldn’t understand why Mis Rivers wouldn’t just tell him what he was saying was unnecessary.

Bored, she began looking out the window into the skies. Seemed they were the bluest blue she’d seen before, with greaat big fluffy patches of white scattered here and there.

“What if I could just stretch my arms up there and touch em?” she thought. “Wonder what clouds taste like? Maybe marshmellons? Ice cream? Probably just like plain ole H₂O,” she concluded with a deep sigh. “Ooohhh, there go a bunch of clouds lumped together over there that remind me of Mis Stevanson!”

That was so funny to her that she had to stop looking at the sky to keep from laughing out. Still half-smiling over the clouds, she turned her head up front toward the globe Mis Rivers was pointing at, just in time to hear the last part of some question the teacher was addressing to her. All she heard was “imaginary line, Ludell Wilson?”

“Ah, ah,” she said with her mouth hanging open, knowing good and well she had nothing to let out.

She figured if she said anything too stupid, Mis Rivers would know she wasn’t paying attention, and she knew what that meant, so she decided she’d better not do any crazy guessing and just kept going, “Ah, ah, the, th . . .”

“Equator, equator!” she heard Bobbi Jean whispering from the right.

Ludell took her word, and it was correct. Bobbi Jean was the last person she expected to help her. “I guess I scared her pretty bad yesterday,” she thought, smirking.

Mis Rivers passed out the hot dogs just before noon, and before Ludell could get around to the seventh grade room for her drink, Ruthie Mae was there in behind her waiting; so she simply went, “Here!” giving up her 5¢ hot dog. Before recess was over, Ruthie Mae had begged up another half’s worth off two more girls, and thereby ended up having as much as Ludell.

The two of them went over to the swings and stood waiting for a turn, but it seemed nobody was ever getting off. Remembering that she hadn’t been to the bathroom, Ludell turned to go but it was too late, for the bell was ringing now, and Mis Rivers signaling for them to come along. At first she didn’t really have to go, but now, somehow knowing she couldn’t made her need to urgently.

“Oh Lordy what I’m gon do?” she thought. Mis Rivers wouldn’t let anybody be excused just coming in from recess, and she didn’t feel that she could hold it too long.

When they got back in the room, she scooted into her desk and started twisting around, crossing her legs and trying with all her might not to think about it, but she could think of nothing else! It seemed if she breathed too hard, pee would start running down her legs.

“Maybe if I can wait just ten more minutes, then ask her, she might let me go—but can I make it up to the desk to ask?” she thought.

She started concentrating harder on what Mis Rivers was saying than she had on anything Mis Rivers had taught them the whole year! She felt she was halfway safe, until Mis Rivers told her to go to the board to diagram a sentence.

“Why now?” she thought despairingly. “Well, I was gon have to get up to ask to be excused, so what I’ll do is finish my diagraming and then ask her to go.”

Sliding from her desk, she walked up to the board keeping her thighs pressed close together. She hadn’t picked up the chalk good before she realized that she wasn’t going to make it. She could feel the pee warm, about to drop. It seemed she went crazy then. Throwing the chalk on the floor, she flew from the room crying, “MIS RIVERS CAN I BE EXCUSED?” She was well out the door when she got the final word out, and pee was streaming all down her legs to her socks, into her shoes. She kept running until she reached the toilet but didn’t know just why, cause she was through.

She was standing near the sink, feeling shame and looking pitiful when Mis Rivers stomped in.

“Why didn’t you ask to be excused earlier?” she asked.

“I-I was scared you was gon be mad for me not going at recess, and wouldn’t let me go,” she answered, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Well crying won’t help anything now,” snapped Mis Rivers. “Get some paper towels and dry your legs off. I guess you’ll have to go on home. Is your mother there?”

“No mam, but the door aine locked.”

“Well you can go on home to change—let me see, hmm, I got one fifteen,” she said looking down at her watch. “By the time you change and walk back, it’ll be about time to dismiss, so you might as well stay home.

“What time does your mother generally get in?”

“Just before me,” Ludell answered, drying her eyes, then her legs, with the brown paper towels.

“Well come on get your jacket and books,” Mis Rivers ordered. “Then you can leave!”

When they got to the room, almost everybody was whispering, and a few were giggling. Ruthie Mae was sitting with her hand in front of her mouth, in what Ludell was sure was an effort to hold back a grin. “I guess everybody who aine noticed my ugly shoes before see em now while they all looking down at my peery socks,” she thought, experiencing the deepest humiliation ever. She was so glad to be leaving.

Walking home she tried to think of something that might have caused a person as much embarrassment as what happened to her, but “gitting beat in the street by your mama; someone discovering you had a hole in your sock or panties; your mama gitting ‘happy’ in church; NOTHING! but nothing, can match peeing in school!”

“Well at least I don’ have to run from Willie nem today,” she told herself in consolation. “They probably would ’ave had a ball off me bout these shoes!” Although not a word had came her way about the shoes—even during recess—she felt it was just plain foolhardiness for her to think that nothing would.

“Maaa-n this been some bad luck day for me!” she said. “Burnt up my tennises, peed in school . . . Maybe I’m being punished for not obeying mama and sneaking and wearing them tennises all that time. Yeah, I guess it really is true—that God just don’ like ugly!”