&&000 CANADIAN SCHOOLBOOKS          2004                                             CA90704.TXT

7TH GRADE, 1990s

edited by dph   1-17-2004
RE-EDITED TO REPAIR RESIDUALS 3/21/04  
Re-edited again 22 June 2005


&&111
=Zembra smiled, pleased. "See there," she said. "Good for you. What's your name, now?"
=Eliza," the little girl said.
"Oho, like the girl who crossed the ice in =UncleTom'sCabin," =Zembra said as she walked
away. "I hated that book. We had to read it in eighth grade, I remember."
"That's the grade I'm in," I said.
"You must be in junior high," =Eliza said, staring at me. "=Jennifer's in ninth grade. She's my
babysitter. =Jennifer doesn't go out on dates yet. I love her. We play dominoes and slapjack and
she lets me try on her jewelry She's got a ring made of real gold." =Eliza's big eyes got even
bigger. "And all these bracelets." Her voice and her face went all dreamy, contemplating
=Jennifer's bracelets.
"My mother's buying me a gold locket with a place to put her picture in when I stop sucking my
thumb," =Eliza told me. "Do you like jewelry?"
"It's okay," I said. I'd really rather have a horse.
"My mother's on her honeymoon, you see." =Eliza had decided to open up. "I wanted to go too,
but they said it was too expensive. To fly to =Hawaii, that is. That's where people go on their
honeymoon. It's a long way away. I'm going to stay with my aunt. She's got two boys and they're
monsters. They're wild. Only I'm not supposed to say anything because my aunt's taking care of
me and she's doing us a big favor. I'm bringing her a present. Want to see?"
"Sure," I said.
=Eliza rummaged through her backpack and brought out a box of
dusting powder. "Smell," she said, sticking it under my nose.
"=Urn. Very delicious," I said. "It smells like cotton candy."
"If you ask me, it smells pink. My aunt will like it, though, because
she doesn't have money for many luxuries."
"You talk very grown-up," I said. "How old are you anyway?" "I'm five and three quarters. Do
you have a mother?" =Eliza asked. "Everybody has a mother," I said.
"No they don't. I have two friends and they don't have a mother, they
only have a father. My father died when his motorcycle crashed," she
told me. "That was before I was even born. 


he thought later, he had known he was heading this way from the moment he left the house. The
cries of the other searchers had fallen far behind, barely distinguishable now from the twittering
and screeching of the birds.
An opening. There were several paths leading to it or from it depending on how you looked at
things; where you had come from or where you were going.
=Sloane stopped. It was as if he was in a dream. He felt he knew which path to take. He didn't
know why, but the certainty of his decision seemed to loosen the belt around his chest a notch or
two.
The path he chose led him through the dappled late afternoon into the shadow-making sunshine
at the edge of a small meadow Memory worked in him now. He had been here! When or how, he
couldn't recall. The familiarity of the meadow was not a knowing thing so much as a feeling
thing. As he walked, however, he was quite sure that he had been here alone.
Memory, loosed in him like this, seemed to unbuckle the fear and
pain a few more notches. He stopped, looked around.
"This way, he told himself. "There will be an old fence. An abandoned road. A swamp. A
junkyard."
He almost forgot =Todd. It was as if he wasn't looking for him anymore. Almost.
Finally, =Sloane saw what he had been looking for, though he could never have given it a name.
In the junkyard, resting on no wheels, rusted and overgrown with thistles and harsh grasses, stood
an old blue-grey panel truck. On the side of it in faded letters were the words: "The
=HOPEBakery."
The words "The" and "Bakery" were in a swirly kind of script, but the word "HOPE" was printed
in tall letters. There had once been a little hand-painted picture under this sign: some buns and
loaves and a pie, maybe. It was hard to tell now The paint was all peeled and crumbly
=Sloane looked at the panel truck, letting the shape of it drift into a waiting puzzle hole in his
memory. And as he looked, the back door of the truck opened with a loud squeaking and out
stepped =Todd. =Todd seemed almost to have been expecting him.



For the =Seder the door between the dining room and the room where the long, blue sofa was,
was folded back, and the table was pulled out to its full length. More than twenty people would
sit around it for the =Passover meal, eating matzos and bitter herbs and drinking sweet wine, and
telling the story of the Plagues that God sent down to the land of =Egypt. In the =Hagadah, the
book we looked at as the meal continued, there were colored drawings of the Plagues: frogs,
locusts, boils, and a very frightening picture showing a dead child covered in blood, and
representing the =DeathoftheFirstBorn. There was also a picture of =Moses parting the
=RedSea, with high, blue waves towering above the heads of the =Israelites like walls of
sapphire. We sang songs, and waited up till late at night to see whether this year, the prophet
=Elijah would come and drink the glass of wine my grandmother always put out for him. At the
end of the meal, my cousins and I would run all over the apartment searching for the =Afikoman.
This was half a matzo, wrapped in a napkin, which my grandmother hid like a treasure. Whoever
found it won a small prize: an apple or a square of chocolate. There were so many cousins
rushing about that I never managed to find the =Afikoman, but my grandmother gave us all
apples and chocolate too, so I didn't mind.
"It's not very fair for the winner, though," I said to my grandmother. "It makes winning less
special."
"Nonsense," said my grandmother. "Finding the =Afikoman is an honor and it brings good luck.
And looking all over the place is fun too."
In spite of the special dishes, and the book with pictures of the =Plagues, in spite of the sips of
sweet wine and the brown-freckled matzos which tasted so delicious with strawberry jam on
them, I was always quite glad when the festival was over and the visitors went home. Then I
could have my grandmother to myself again and she could tell me stories.
"You don't know," she said, "how well off you are. I should tell you the story of =Mordechai and
=Chaya. Once upon a time, there was a farmer called =Mordechai, who lived in a miserable little
farmhouse right on the edge of the village. He had two muddy fields next to the, house, where he
tried to grow this and that and the other. 


skirts hitched half-way up their thighs, and they'd come along looking really smooth. I mean,
even if I'd known about how to make the uniform look trendy, Mum wouldn't have let me do it.
Not on the first day. Not in a fit.
And =Berwyn and =Michelle, =Berwyn especially, never did anything stupid, or embarrassing.
They were never, like, too serious about anything, either. If you're too serious about things, or try
too hard at things, it leaves you, sort of, open, you know? You can end up looking like an idiot.
People can laugh at you, and send you up. =Berwyn and =Michelle knew that. I think they must
have known it since kindergarten, they were so good at being cool.
The thing was, they despised anyone who wasn't like them. And that was what scared me. I
would've liked to be like them, but I knew I wasn't, and I couldn't make myself not care about
what they thought of me. I was scared of their superior little smiles, and the way they didn't feel
they had to be friendly, or even polite, to other people, and the sarcastic things they said when
someone irritated them and the way they whispered to one another, laughing behind their hands,
and looking at you.
That was =Berwyn and =Michelle. The rest of the group weren't quite so cool. There were some
gigglers among them, and others of them you could talk to okay, when they were by themselves.
When they were by themselves they were quite nice, really. But when they were with =Berwyn
and =Michelle they whispered behind their hands and tittered and said smart, cool things to each
other, and flicked their hair back, and stared at you as if you were weird, or your nose was snotty
or something.
Well, this day I'm talking about we had a double =English period before lunch. Our =English
teacher that year was Mrs =Stephenson, who was also our class teacher. She was nice, and didn't
yell or anything, and she was very keen on creative writing. I liked that, so I looked forward to
=English, usually. Since the beginning of term she'd been getting us to write descriptions of a
place, a person, an animal, and so on. This day she said she wanted us to spend the second period
writing a description of ourselves-not in the first person, but as though.


And all the books I used to dream about owning looked like crap, and suddenly I realized there
was nothing at the mall I really wanted.
I sat down then, by the fountain, to collect my thoughts. There was no water in the fountain area,
because of the water shortage, and its tile floor was littered with pennies and nickels. I couldn't
get over how people just tossed their money away like that, when I couldn't even make myself
take my boot off.
It occurred to me then that I could buy a car for a hundred dollars. Maybe not a great car, but a
car nonetheless. I had this entire fantasy about being behind the wheel of my very own car,
driving my friends around, parking in the high school lot, going to drive-ins, moving around the
way you could if you owned a car. It was a pretty picture, and I was just about ready to spend part
of my =$235 on a newspaper so I could see what cars were available for a hundred bucks, until
common sense made me stop.
The problem wasn't the money for the car, or even the sales tax. I figured I could always argue
the owner down the extra couple of bucks. The problem was car insurance. Somehow I didn't
think I could count on finding the insurance money on the corner of =Maple and =Grove every
six months. No insurance, no car. No car, no freedom. I still had my money, but the fun was fast
going out of it.
Just to show myself that I could, I went into =Woolworth's and bought some chewing gum. They
were out of my brand, but I bought a package of some other brand, and broke one of my singles.
The change jingled as I walked away from the mall, chewing my gum, and limping.
I found myself walking a half block out of my way, to return to the corner of =Maple and
=Grove, but a scary thing happened once I got there. I realized I hadn't gone back to see if there
was any more money there but to leave the hundred-dollar bill smack where I'd found it.
You know, I actually wanted the person whose money it was to show up, demanding that I give it
back. I looked around for penniless orphans, or =Mafia dons, or anybody who looked like they
might be searching for a missing =BenFranklin, but the only people on =Grove and =Maple were
the sorts of people who were always on =Grove and =Maple. I know, because I stood there for
close to ten minutes, waiting.

Those golden days of nutritious snacks ended when =Dad moved out. I have an =MIA father.
You know the sort. He sends a few bucks every =Christmas with a note to =Mom telling her to
buy herself and the kids something nice, and the rest of the year he's missing in action. He's not
one for halfway measures, though. When he finally did leave, after threatening to often enough,
he moved six hundred miles away. His address is a post office box, and if for some reason you
have to call him, his machine answers for him and swears he'll call right back. Don't hold your
breath waiting.
So =Mom, not wanting us to starve, got a job and became a statistic. They do studies about
people like her. They call it the feminization of poverty, but I've got to tell you =Mom looked a
lot more feminine before she got poor. =Danny looked better in those days too, but maybe the fat
and the pimples would have come anyway, once he became aware of girls, and have nothing to
do with his potato chip diet.
I went up to my room, thinking about how many bags of potato chips a hundred dollars could
buy, threw my books down, and stared at the money a while longer. =BenFranklin had the nicest
face. He looked great in green.
We ate frozen for dinner that night, each of us picking our own dinner, which =Mom then threw
into the oven at =350. She cooks everything at =350 these days, for half an hour, regardless of
what the box says to do. As far as I can tell, it doesn't make a difference, so she's probably right
going with a single system for everything frozen.
"So," she said, as we each took our trays out of the oven and spread them on the kitchen table.
"Anything interesting happen at school today?"
You have to give her points for trying. Nothing interesting has happened in school for the past
seven years, but she asks regularly anyway. Seven years ago the goat got loose in the cafeteria,
but that's a whole other story.
"I got an =83 in science," =Danny announced. "And =MichelleCrain got sick in =English and
practically puked all over everybody."
"No puking talk over dinner," =Mom said automatically. She's ended a lot of really neat
conversations with that rule. "=Chris? What's new with you?"



At the =Anglo-Indian day school in =Zorinabad to which my sister and I were sent when she was
eight and I was five and a half, they changed our names. On the first day of school, a hot,
windless morning of a north Indian September, we stood in the headmistress's study and she said,
"Now you're the new girls. What are your names?"
My sister answered for us. "I am =Premila, and she "nodding in my direction "is =Santha."
The headmistress had been in =India, I suppose, fifteen years or so, but she still smiled her
helpless inability to cope with =Indian names. Her rimless half-glasses glittered, and the
precarious bun on the top of her head trembled as she shook her head. "Oh, my dears, those are
much too hard for me. Suppose we give you pretty =English names. Wouldn't that be more jolly?
Let's see, now =Pamela for you, I think." She shrugged in a baffled way at my sister. "That's as
close as I can get. And for you," she said to me, "how about =Cynthia? Isn't that nice?"
My sister was always less easily intimidated than I was, and while she kept a stubborn silence, I
said, "Thank you," in a very tiny voice.
We had been sent to that school because my father, among his responsibilities as an officer of the
civil service, had a tour of duty to perform in the villages around that steamy little provincial
town, where he had his headquarters at that time. He used to make his
shorter inspection tours on horseback, and a week before, in the stale
heat of a typically post-monsoon day, we had waved goodbye to him


On his head he had a little round cap, and down each side of his mouth drooped a thin, long
mustache.
"I am Dr =LuManchu, the mad scientist," he announced, putting his hands in his sleeves and
bowing.
He smiled when he saw me staring at his costume. I smiled back. I knew he was making fun of
the way some kids believed in stereotypes about =Chinese people. Still his was a scary smile,
somehow.
Some of the other kids came up, and when they saw Peter, they were impressed. "Hey, neat!" said
one boy.
I hadn't expected =Peter to put on a costume and go trick-or-treating like a normal kid. So maybe
he did want to join the others after all-at least some of the time. After that night he wasn't a nerd
anymore. He was Dr =LuManchu. Even some of the teachers began to call him that.
When we became too old for trick-or-treating, =Peter was still Dr =LuManchu. The rumor was
that he was working on a fantastic machine in his parents' garage. But nobody had any idea what
it was.  One evening, as I was coming home from a babysitting job, I cut across the =Lus'
backyard. Passing their garage, I saw through a little window that the light was on. My curiosity
got the better of me, and I peeked in.
I saw a booth that looked like a shower stall. A stool stood in the middle of the stall, and hanging
over the stool was something that looked like a great big shower head.
Suddenly a deep voice behind me said, "Good evening, =Angela." =Peter bowed and smiled his
scary smile. He didn't have his costume on and he didn't have the long, droopy mustache. But he
was Dr =LuManchu.
"What are you doing?" I squeaked.
Still in his strange, deep voice, =Peter said, "What are you doing? After all, this is my garage."
"I was just cutting across your yard to get home. Your parents never complained before."
"I thought you were spying on me," said =Peter. "I thought you wanted to know about my
machine." He hissed when he said the word machine.
Honestly, he was beginning to frighten me. "What machine?" I demanded. "You mean this
shower-stall thing?"



thinking about him when I went to bed at night. I guess I had a big crush on him. And I was
pretty sure that when he saw me in that blue dress, he'd have a crush on me right away too.
On the day of the play, all our families started arriving at the =Grove theater a full hour before
we got started. It didn't rain, and there wasn't even one of those noisy =NovaScotian winds that
shake the trees and keep you from hearing the lines. My mother was hustling around backstage
helping with clothes and make-up. Mostly she was fussing with my face and my first costume
and telling me how pretty I looked. We had rigged up eight bedspreads, some torn and holey,
some beautiful, depending on the fear or the pride of the mothers who lent them, and behind this
strung-out curtain, we prepared ourselves for the two o'clock production. =Henrietta was moving
quietly about the stage, straightening furniture, moving props, standing back to look at the effect.
Later on, just before the curtain went up, or rather was drawn aside, she went off and sat down
against a tree, where she'd have a good view of the performance, but where she'd be out of sight.
If any of us needed anything, she could get it for us without the audience seeing what she was
doing.
In the first part of the play, the nobleman ignores the beautiful peasant girl, who comes on
dressed in rags but heavily made up, and therefore beautiful. He is of course looking for a wife,
but no one even thinks of her as a possible candidate. She does a lot of sighing and weeping in
the first scene, and =Alphonse rides around on his horse =GeorgeCruikshank looking handsome
and tragic. =Harold did this very well. On the day of the play, I could hardly wait for the last
scene
in which I could get out of those rags and emerge as the radiant court butterfly. But I put all I had
into the first scene, because in the due course of time, =Alphonse turns down all the eligible and
less beautiful women of the land, and retires to a corner of the stage to brood, while
=GeorgeCruikshank stands nearby, munching grass. To a roll of drums (our wooden spoon on
Mrs =Eisner's pickling kettle =Genevieve arrives on the scene, and as he turns to look at her
dazzling beauty, he recognizes her for what she is-not just a poor commoner, but a young woman
of great charm and loveliness, worthy of his hand. At this point in the play, she places her hand
on her breast and does a deep and.



tears melded with the chlorine and coursed attractively down my face. People were
murmuring,"So young, so small, and so attractive."
"And such a leader!" My mother's voice hammered on. "Even at her age, she seems forever to be
president of this and director of that. I feel very blessed indeed to be the mother of such a child."
My sister stirred in her chair, and coughed slightly, carefully turning a page.
It was true. I was class president of Grade =4, and manager of the =LowerSlocumElementary
=SchoolDramaClub. I had already starred in two productions, one of them a musical. In an ornate
crepe paper costume composed of giant overlapping yellow petals, I had played =LeadButtercup
to a full house. Even Miss =Prescott's aggressive piano playing had failed to drown me out, had
not prevented me from stealing the show from the =FlowerQueen. My mother kept the clipping
from the =Shelburne =CoastGuard up on the kitchen notice board. It included a blurred
newspaper picture of me, with extended arms and open mouth. Below it, the caption read,
"=JulietteWesthaver was the surprise star of the production, with three solos and a most sprightly
little dance, performed skillfully and with gusto. Broadway, look out!"
=Mama was still talking. "=Mm? Oh. =Henrietta. Yes. Well, she's fine, I guess, just fine. Such a
serious responsible little girl, and so fond of her sister." I looked up at =Henrietta, who was
surveying me over the top of her comics. There was no expression on her face at all.
But then, =Henrietta was not often given to expression of any kind. She was my twin, but apart
from the accident of our birth, or the coincidence, we had almost nothing in common. It was
incredible to me that we had been born to the same parents in almost the same moment, and that
we had been reared in the same house. But =Henrietta was my friend, and I hers. We were, in
fact, best friends, as is so often the case with twins. And as with most close childhood
friendships, there was one dominant member, one submissive. There was no doubt in this case as
to who played the leading role. =Henrietta even looked submissive. She was thin and pale. She
had enormous sky blue eyes surrounded by a long fringe of totally colorless eyelashes. Her hair
was a dim beige color without gradations of light or dark, and it hung straight and lifeless from
two barrettes. 


"It's like a little secret universe all folded in on itself," said Mrs =Pond. =Harriet tasted it. With
her tongue, she popped a little red bud against the roof of her mouth. The taste startled her, made
her laugh.
"Tonight," Mrs =Pond said, "=Mars is only =77 million kilometers away." They drank a cocoa
toast to that. Then she told =Harriet about another time when =Mars had been even closer on its
orbit around the sun. She had been a girl then, and had heard on the radio the famous broadcast
of "The War of the Worlds." An actor named =OrsonWelles had made a radio drama based on a
story about =Martians attacking the world, but he had made it in a series of news bulletins and
reports, and a lot of people had believed it was true.
=Harriet listened to Mrs =Pond and sipped her cocoa and stared at the Earth's closest neighbor
and felt deliciously chilly and warm at the same time. =Mars was wonderfully clear in the
telescope, but even with the naked eye she could imagine canals and raging storms. She knew
there weren't really =Martians, but she allowed herself to imagine them anyway. She imagined
one of them preparing for his invasion of the Earth, packing his laser gun, a thermos of cocoa and
a golfer's chair.

"What in heaven's name is this?" Ms =Krensky was standing at =Harriet's chair staring down at
the green =bristol board. There was only one planet left.
"=Harriet says it's =Mars." =Darjit started giggling.
"And how big is =Mars?" asked Ms =Krensky. Her eyes said Unsatisfactory.
"Compared to =Kevin's marble =Earth, =Mars would be the size of a pomegranate seed,
including the juicy red pulp," said =Harriet. Ms =Krensky walked to the front of the class. She
turned at her desk. Was there a hint of a smile on her face?
"And where is it?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
=Harriet looked at the calculations she had done on a corner of the green =bristol board. "If the
sun
was at the crosswalk," said =Harriet, "then =Mars would be much closer. Over there." She
pointed out the window at the slide in the kindergarten playground. Some of the class actually
looked out the window to see if they could see it.


Another time, she sent me mittens with cutesy kittens embroidered on them. I always opened
Aunt =Marie's present first, to get it over with.
My parents said it was the thought that counted. They made me write thank you notes to Aunt
=Marie and pretend to like the sing-along tapes and the cutesy kitty mittens. I made my notes as
brief as possible. Last year, I thought I had figured out a way to educate Aunt =Marie so she
wouldn't keep wasting her money on gifts I'll
never use. I bought a present for her, wrapped it, and had it
ready to add to the box that =Mom always sends to Aunt =Marie for her birthday. I figured when
Aunt =Marie opened my present, it would make her think twice before she sent me something   
Mom started packing the box for Aunt =Marie, she picked up my present, felt it, and said, "It
feels like a ping-pong paddle."
I said that's exactly what it was. =Mom told me Aunt =Marie is =sixtynine years old and would
have no use for a ping-pong paddle. I said I didn't expect her to use it.
And that's when =Mom told me about Aunt =Marie's life. Aunt =Marie lost her husband when
she was =thirty years old; he died in a fire which also gutted her home. Her only child, a son, was
killed =ten years later, in the war. Aunt =Marie doesn't have much money and she probably goes
without something she needs herself in order to remember all of us with gifts on our birthdays
and at Christmas. She does it because we are the only family she has left.
"I know the things she sends you are too babyish," Mom said, "but she sends them out of love.
And if you want to send something to Aunt. =Marie, it must be chosen with love, too."

&&000