Chapter Two

Our home-room teacher, Mr. Keogh, is the only teacher in the whole school who calls Al “Al.” All the others call her Alexandra and she turns about eight colors of the rainbow. I said it to myself under my breath and it sounded pretty. But you know how kids are about their own names. Even if they really like them, they pretend they don’t.

Al doesn’t want to take cooking and sewing. She wants to take shop. But in our school only boys get to take shop, and when Al told Mr. Keogh about this he said he would talk to the principal but not to hold out too much hope.

Al and Mr. Keogh are friends. She talks to him before class. She found out Mr. Keogh’s wife was having an operation.

“It’s so sad,” she said. “I feel so sorry for Mr. Keogh. His wife is having an operation.”

I wondered about Mr. Keogh’s wife. I feel sorry for her. She’s the one who’s having the operation.

“What’s the matter with her?”

“She has ball stones,” Al said.

“What?” I said. “I have never heard of ball stones.”

“She has ball stones,” Al said like she was an authority on the subject. “You know. In her gladder.”

It must be so if Al says so. I am not up on operations.

Except for taking out tonsils. It is supposed to be a breeze. Everyone is very jolly, saying ho ho, what fun it will be. Just think. You will get ice cream and ginger ale whenever you want. Won’t that be fun? What a blast.

Mr. Keogh came back after lunch and said he had talked to the principal and the principal said that Al cannot take shop. It is against the rules, he said. She will have to take cooking the first half of the year and sewing the second half, like all the other girls.

“Why don’t they make up a new set of rules?” Al wanted to know. “I bet they never had a girl before who wanted to take shop. I want to make a bookshelf like those guys are making. I don’t want to learn how to sew a dumb old skirt or make a mess of muffins.”

Al was mad as anything and she marched out of the room and her pigtails were swinging like someone was hanging on to the ends of them.

“Why can’t she take shop if she wants to?” I asked. “What’s the harm?”

Mr. Keogh had on his blue polka-dot tie today. That meant it was Tuesday. He wears a red one for Monday and a green one for Wednesday and switches around for the rest of the week.

“You can’t fight city hall,” he said.

It’s another one of those things people say, like, “I’m from Missouri,” which is what my father says when my mother says she’s going to budget her food money so we can eat out once a month on what she saves.

I happen to know my father is from Chicago, Illi-nois.

So there you are.

Anyway, I could see that Mr. Keogh felt pretty bad about Al not being able to take shop and make a bookshelf.

“Maybe her father can help her at home,” he said to me. “All it takes is a saw and a couple of pieces of wood.”

“Al’s father is usually in Atlantic City or Mexico at a convention,” I explained. “He is divorced.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Keogh. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. That is too bad. Well.”

Al came back into the room and she was walking just as straight and mad as before. “Suppose I say I won’t take dumb old cooking and sewing. What then?”

Mr. Keogh sat on the edge of his desk and tugged at his ear, which Al has pointed out to me usually means he doesn’t know what he is going to say next.

“They’d probably make you take an extra math course,” he said. “To fill in the time.”

Math is Al’s worst subject.

“Mr. Keogh,” I said, “I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s ball stones.”

Mr. Keogh looked like he’d had a hard day.

“What?” he said.

“Your wife. I’m sorry she has ball stones.”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Keogh said, and he put on his hat and went home.