FOR THE NEW SEMESTER AT SCHOOL I HAD MISS IRIS FOR Homeroom. She is nice as a teacher, she is young and she wears lots of make-up. She has blond hair. She has nail polish and nice clothes like on tv. She wears perfume which is divine. Also she is easy, man, she never yells. Once she said to us, “I let you children walk all over me,” but I never walked on her.
(Last semester I had Krepnik, who is mean. One time Andy Debbs picked his nose during belltime and Krepnik saw. She screamed, “You disgusting child, don’t you realize that is the foulest habit?” But Andy didn’t say an answer because he is shy, and she yelled, “Go to the lavatory and wash your hands!” Andy leaned on his desk and then Krepnik said he’d have to wash the desk now. “Who taught you such manners?” screamed Krepnik, and Andy Debbs said, “Nobody, I learned all by myself.” Andy Debbs is from the Home. Miss Krepnik is mean to Home kids because they are poor, but I feel she is the foulest habit.)
But Miss Iris is nice to everyone. But one time something happened. I came home and Miss Iris was in our kitchen eating lunch with my mom. My mom said, “Dolores just dropped by after the PTA meeting, would you like to join us, Burt?” I ran up to my room and slammed the door. It isn’t right when you see teachers outside of school. Miss Iris was wearing slacks.
But the third day of the new semester Miss Iris announced that the next day we were going to go to the zoo for a trip. She passed out permission slips, they were mimeographed. I smelled mine for an hour. She said we were going to have a picnic at the zoo but everybody had to bring lunch.
The next day I woke up early by myself. I made myself breakfast, ketchup and a Mars bar. Shrubs came to call for me, he rang the doorbell and woke everybody up. All the classes in the third grade got to go to the zoo, Miss Hellman’s room and Miss Craig’s room and our room. We had a bus. Miss Iris counted everybody, then she came up to me and said, “May I sit next to you, Burt?” I said no, but she did anyway. Then we went.
Mimeograph. M I M E O G R A P H. Mimeograph.
At the zoo we had to have a buddy who was the person you sat next to on the bus, so Miss Iris was my buddy. I said, “Can’t I have Shrubs?” and she said, “Why Burt, that hurts my feelings.”
At the zoo is trees and fences and cement things that have the animals in them, and refreshment stands. There is a trail that is big yellow elephant footprints. I asked Miss Iris if they are real and she said why of course. We followed them. They went to the Zoo Train. I said, “Is the train so small because the elephant squashed it?” and she said, “Oh Burt, you’re so precious,” and she put the key that’s shaped like an elephant into the Talking Storybook that tells about the animals, and Shrubs said, “I’m going to push ‘Hound Dog,’” but then the train came.
It is like the ones at Kiddyland, only realer. Miss Iris said, “Will you protect me from all the wild animals, Burt?” I said no.
The train went all around the zoo. Miss Craig told us to wave at all the animals and Marty Polaski said he would drop them a postcard. Sometimes the train turned a corner and Miss Iris slid against me and it made me feel funny. She had perfume. Then suddenly Marty Polaski started screaming, “I’m getting mangled by a gorilla, I’m getting mangled by a gorilla!” Everybody turned around. He pointed and said, “Here’s the gorilla.” It was Marcie Kane, she sat next to Jessica, they were buddies.
After the train we went to the chimps. They were picking their noses like Andy Debbs and Shrubs started to sing
Everybody’s doin it
Doin it, doin it
Picking their nose
And chewin it, chewin it
Miss Hellman made him stop. She doesn’t like music.
We went to the snakes who stuck their tongues out and I got scared, and we went to the penguins who wore tuxedos, and we went to the deer. Then it was lunch. I had a tuna fish sandwich, it was warm and mushy how I like it, and an apple and a Twinkie. My mom had left it in the fridge for me. (The bag had a paper clip. She must have ran out of staples.) Each Homeroom got a table in the picnic area. Miss Iris had a thing of lemonade she made herself. Miss Hellman had a box with pop in it, she made the bus driver carry it.
I like to eat by myself so I can pretend. At the zoo I pretended I was up in the tree eating my lunch that I killed with a knife and that down below were humans who were the enemy because they didn’t have good citizenship in the jungle. Then something happened. One of the humans saw me and came over to the tree. It was a white hunter.
“Want this?” he said. He held out a bottle of Nesbitt’s orange pop and I hit it out of his hand and it spilled all over his green dress because he was Jessica.
She looked at the ground. The pop dripped off her finger. She still had her arm out.
“I just thought you might want it instead of lemonade,” she said.
I said, “Umgawa.”
Then Marty Polaski started yelling, “Burton has a girlfriend, Burton has a girlfriend!”
“You better shut up,” I said.
“Make me.”
“I don’t make monkeys,” he said, so I socked him. I aimed at his stomach but I hit his face by accident and he fell down. Then he kicked me in the peenie, and I couldn’t stand up. Everything went around and around. Then I rolled under him and he fell on top of me and I socked him again and he got up but I chased him and caught him and threw him down, but he kicked me in the peenie again and I couldn’t see. He was on top of me.
The next thing I knew he was gone, and I was on the grass and Miss Iris leaned over me. I could smell her perfume. She kept asking if I was ok. I got up. I had to lean on someone. He was right there. Shrubs.
Then I saw a crowd of children over by the drinking fountain. They were looking at Marty Polaski, who was on the grass with a cut in his head. Shrubs said that Jessica Renton had hit him with the Nesbitt’s bottle when he was on top of me. I saw Miss Hellman was holding Jessica real tight and yelling at her. The water fountain had the water coming out of a lion’s head. He was puking.
I sat down at the picnic table and Miss Iris sat down next to me. She did this to my hair, and said “Are you ok, Honey? Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t call me Honey, ok?”
Soon it was time to look at animals again. Everybody switched buddies. I got Shrubs. He walked with a limp. I said, “Why are you limping?” and he said, “A lion ate my knee.”
We had to go to the birds. I hate them because they aren’t wild animals and they smell. When we got there Shrubs and me didn’t go in, we waited outside and made a plan to ambush Marty Polaski when he came out and throw my shirt over his head and beat him up. Then Shrubs said that he didn’t want to because he wanted to go see the mooses because he knew one of them. I said who. He said Bullwinkle.
I feel that sometimes Shrubs is a moron. Once I taught him idiot, and he stood on his front porch and said idiot to everyone who walked past his house.
Everybody started to come out of the bird house. The first one out was Miss Iris. She said, “Burt, why in the world do you have your shirt off, do you want to catch pneumonia on top of everything else?” I said yes.
Then Jessica came out and she saw me and walked over to me, and I was embarrassed because you could see I had a crewcut on my stomach.
“It doesn’t matter that you don’t have your shirt on,” Jessica said. “Germs and bacteria give you sickness, not drafts. I’m just telling you.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“I read it in a magazine.”
“No you didn’t, you’re too young.”
“I did,” she said. “We get them in the mail at my house. My daddy’s a high school teacher and he lets me read all I want.”
“Big wow,” I said, and I put my shirt back on, only I buttoned it crooked and had to do it over. “Ig bay eal day,” I said. (This is Pig Latin. It is eat nay.) Then I saw Shrubs was asking the man from the zoo where the mooses were. Then we all went to look at the porcupines. They were all sleeping in a hole, you could hardly see them. I remember once on “Popeye” a porcupine shot needles at him and then he drank some water and it came out all over him. Jessica leaned on the chain around the porcupines. She was angry.
“You didn’t have to knock the bottle out of my hand,” she said. “You could have said, ‘I don’t care for any thank you.’ It stained my dress.”
“I was like Tarzan,” I said.
“You’re mental,” she said, and went to the llamas.
In the same thing as the llamas there was a bird, he was large. It was a Kukaberra. Jessica looked at him, and I sang a song, I learned it in Music.
Kukaberra sits
In the old gum tree
Merry merry king
Of the bush is he
Laugh Kukaberra
Laugh Kukaberra
Gay your life must be.
Jessica looked at me for a minute, she listened to my song. Then she like shook her head.
“It doesn’t cost anything to be nice,” she said. “My dad said so.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So what?”
The llamas were all sleeping but they weren’t in holes, so you could see them.
“Sometimes I don’t read magazines,” said Jessica. “Sometimes I just look at the pictures. I like to look at clothes. They are very elegant.”
“I never look at clothes,” I said. “Never.”
“You look at Miss Iris’ clothes,” she said.
“Do not.”
“Do so,” said Jessica. “She sits next to you all the time and you look at her clothes and when she crosses her legs you look at her shoes. I saw you on the bus.”
Then we both looked at the llamas. I think they are spelled wrong.
“There’s a pretty one,” Jessica said. “He’s all black with white socks like my horse.”
“You don’t have a horse.”
“Do so.”
“Where?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
I looked at the llama. He spit on the ground.
“Once I had a horse, Jessica, and I told him to step on Miss Filmer’s head and then blood shot out of her eyeballs and they took her to the furnace and burned her up and I rode away on my horse.”
“I bet she smelled shitty,” said Jessica, and I got angry.
“You aren’t supposed to say shit,” I said. “It’s swearing.”
But Jessica just walked away saying, “Shit, shit, shit.”
Then we went to the bison. They were all sleeping. No holes.
“I can swear if I want to, it’s a free country, Burton,” said Jessica.
“My name isn’t Burton,” I said. “It’s Randy.” (I don’t know why I said this.)
Then we went to the alligators who are my favorite animals because once I almost got one in Miami Beach Florida when we were there, they sold them in little cardboard boxes. Babies. At the zoo they were on an island that had a pit around it and then some grass and then a chain. No cage. I looked at them. (I have an alligator at home, his name is Allie. He is dead. I got him at the airport, he has stuffing.) They were all smiling. So I climbed over the chain and walked over the grass up to the side of the pit, and I leaned over and said, “Hi, alligators.”
There were five of them. They were all sleeping and one of them had his mouth froze open. I decided to pet them while they were sleeping. That’s when I heard the whole third grade screaming. I turned around and saw Miss Iris running back and forth back and forth. Shrubs said, “It’s ok, Miss Iris. I think he knows them.”
But Miss Iris screamed, “Come back here right now, Burton, or I’ll brain you.”
“His name isn’t Burton, It’s Randy,” someone said. I turned around. Jessica was standing right beside me.
“You better get out of here,” I said. “They’ll kill you and eat you up, Jessica, they aren’t your friends.”
“I’ll introduce myself,” she said. The wind blew her dress a little, you could see her knee socks. And one of the alligators swished his tail.
“I’m Jessica Renton,” she said to the alligator.
“They don’t understand,” I said.
“I think they’re French alligators,” she said. “Once I saw a cartoon where Popeye socked an alligator and he went up in the air and came down as suitcases.”
“So what?”
“Nothing,” she said. Then she started to walk up to the alligators. I grabbed her arm.
“Let go.”
The children screamed louder. Miss Iris was biting her hand and waving at a man from the zoo.
“Jessica,” I said.
“My name isn’t Jessica.”
“What is it?”
“Contessa. My daddy calls me that. But you can’t.”
She walked toward the alligators and one started to walk around.
“Je m’appelle Jessica,” she said.
Suddenly somebody grabbed us. It was the man from the zoo. But Jessica pulled her arm away real fast and started running and when he looked at her I got away too. We jumped over the chain and ran away. We ran past the leopards. (Once I saw Popeye put spot remover on one.) We ran past the bears who were sitting up like dogs. We ran past the seals. (They play horns on tv and are boring.) We ran past the giraffes and ran until we got to the elephants. Jessica beat me, she is fast, man. She wasn’t even out of breath.
And suddenly all the children from the third grade came running up to where we were, it was a stampede, they were all yelling. Miss Iris came too, she was running. I have never seen Miss Iris run before, it looked wrong. Miss Hellman and Miss Craig came too. Hellman grabbed me on the arm and started to shake me. Then Jessica turned around.
“Miss Hellman, didn’t you say we could all get ice cream when we got to the refreshment stand? It’s right there. Can we?”
All the children started singing “We want ice cream, we want ice cream!” and they pulled on Miss Hellman till she let go of me. “All right,” she said.
They went. Everyone had ice cream except Jessica and me. She was leaning on a sign, looking at the elephants. The sign said
DON’T MISS OUR
RIB-TICKLING ELEPHANT SHOW
AT 4PM AND 5:30!
It was hot. I looked at the elephants, they made dust when they walked, there were three of them. They were all gray and dried up and cracked. They moved in slow motion back and forth back and forth. Then two of them moved backwards and the middle one turned in a circle. Then they all went forwards, then they all went backwards. It was so slow it seemed like weeks.
(I was going to give the call, and they would wake up and carry me off to the jungle, but I didn’t.)
Behind us the whole third grade was talking and eating ice cream and getting yelled at.
Jessica stood next to me. “Look at the elephants, Randy,” she said.
“My name isn’t really Randy,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
And we stood there next to each other. The elephants went back and forth back and forth.
Jessica said, “Look, Burt, they are doing their elephant show in their sleep. They’re sleeping, but they can’t stop.”
Miss Iris didn’t sit next to me on the bus ride home. She sat next to Marty Polaski.