Читать книгу Miss Boo Is Sixteen - Margaret Lee Runbeck - Страница 7

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Usually when Boo is telling us about some episode in her comic-strip existence, she unconsciously imitates all the characters. She does it so well that I think in panic, What would we do if we found we have an actress on our hands?

Boo herself has no such notion, and I doubt if she realizes that when she’s telling about a squirrel she happened to meet in the park, her teeth get bigger, her cheeks bulb out, and her hands become tiny paws holding an invisible nut.

At the beginning of this school year when we were picking our electives, I suggested a course in drama.

“I thought you wanted me to be well educated,” she cried in surprise. “Drama isn’t education.”

“Well, it might teach you to come into a room without everybody thinking the house is on fire, and sitting in a chair like a lady instead of a wad of wet noodles.”

“You have to learn lines,” she said distastefully.

But the more she thought about it, the more appealing the idea became. “Mostly, I think the kids just horse around with each other.”

Then a sobering thought occurred to her. “Suppose they ask me if I have any talent?”

“You could always say no, then count on surprising them.”

“They’d soon find out,” she said. But once the idea had been mentioned, wild horses couldn’t have kept her out of the drama course.

The first couple of weeks were a disappointment. The class took a quick glance at the history of the theatre since the Roman empire. It was sheer swindle; you couldn’t tell it from just any ordinary history course.

Then things began looking up. They were put into little teams and given an assignment.

“Guess what? I’ve got a part to work out!” she said as she burst into the house. “We’re supposed to present an old woman being told she can’t be on relief.”

“What’re you ... the relief?”

“Comedy, I suppose? Very funny,” she said with dignity. “I’m the social worker who asks the questions. Quite a nice part, Miss Thugbugger says.” (That isn’t her name, of course, but nobody between the ages of thirteen and seventeen would pass up such an invitation to improvise.)

We didn’t hear how the drama went, for hot on its heels came an assignment to be “a girl who needs glasses and won’t admit it,” and then “a father showing off his baby,” “a woman accusing a maid of stealing,” and on and on through a nerve-wracking semester until we inevitably reached The Skin of Our Teeth, which statistics tell us has been played by every high school in the nation except 672 backward groups, who happen not to have any stage available.

We weren’t alone in the misery, for several of our friends had children also bitten by the drama. I felt especially sorry for my friend Martha Burton, whose child is what my mother used to call, “Less prit than smart.”

Martha had entered her daughter in the course because she thought it would give her confidence. But, instead, it turned out that Cabby was petrified whenever she had to stand up before the class, and couldn’t even get her teeth unclenched. So eventually she became the Props Committee. Martha tried to put the best possible face on that, but I knew she was humiliated.

“Cabby has so much ingenuity! It was simply inevitable that they’d make her rig up the props for their little plays,” Martha said, looking very bright-eyed about it.

The appointment involved a lot of work for everybody in the family except Cabby. When they put on the sketch about Lincoln for the whole student body, Martha had a terrible time getting the items together.

“I’ve ridden all over town trying to borrow a paisley shawl,” she said. “And would you believe it, the people who own one, won’t lend it! I bought some nice copper to hang on the walls ... that I didn’t mind. You can always use copper for something. But the dough nearly threw me.”

“The dough, dear?” I murmured, thinking that under the strain Martha had lapsed into slang.

“Bread dough. I couldn’t seem to get a big enough batch so it would look like anything in the large yellow mixing bowl. Finally about four in the morning I threw in three more yeast cakes, and by the time we got up, dough was billowing all over the kitchen.”

My heart ached for her, but I was glad she had so much manual labor that she couldn’t grieve over the fact that Cabby wasn’t being trusted out on the stage.

Parents were banned from attending that performance, so we never really knew how Boo came out as a shawled neighbor who dropped into the Lincoln cabin to borrow a Bible.

Her review of herself was laconic.

“I was okay,” she said.

“I think on the stage they call that ‘adequate,’ ” one of the less sympathetic members of the household said. But the point was lost on Boo, who has probably never read a drama review in her life.

Now the five-finger exercises of ad lib assignments were over, and Miss Thugbugger was bracing herself for the Spring Play.

“Have they given you your part yet?” I asked anxiously.

“We try out next week,” Boo said glumly. “I don’t think I’ll get the female lead, so don’t be disappointed.”

“I won’t be, dear. After all, there have to be secondary parts and good sports to play them.”

“Wrong game,” Boo said. “Good sportsmanship hasn’t anything to do with drama. On the contrary.”

She looked positively gaunt during the week of tryouts. “Don’t keep asking me,” she said quarrelsomely. “I’ll tell you when I know for sure.”

“I’m just interested,” I said meekly.

“Well, don’t be.”

And then the suspense was over, and we knew. She came home, smugly beaming with pride and relief.

“Guess what?”

“You got the lead! How wonderful!”

“Well, no. Better than that. I’m the Chairman of the Props Committee. My name on the program, and everything.”

“But ... but I thought Cabby did the props.”

“Pooh with Cabby. She’s only the committee. I’m the chairman.”

“As talented as Cabby, only more so,” I said without bitterness. Then I went and phoned Cabby’s mother to find out where we could borrow a paisley shawl, and how many yeast cakes to put in the bread dough.