We did our Historical Figure presentations the week before Christmas break. I’d been spending my lunches working by myself on my letter to give to Mr. Trent Hickman when he came to Boulder, but of course I hadn’t forgotten my presentation.
Talia went first, and read a wonderful poem she’d written about Langston Hughes, and taught us some of his style and about the Harlem Renaissance. I knew she’d wanted to do someone from Samoa, but there weren’t any in our textbook. More people missing, I guess. I told her she could find a world-changing Samoan for next semester’s presentation, and I thought it was pretty smart of Ms. Trepky to make us look outside the textbook for people to study.
Then Dustin played a video he’d made about Buffalo Bill, and even though it was silly and goofy and went on too long, he remembered to teach us actual things about Mr. Bill, like how he fought for the Union in the Civil War.
And I did my presentation on Eleanor Roosevelt. I used a PowerPoint, because PowerPoints make me more comfortable.
When I pulled up the first picture of Eleanor Roosevelt, though, Dustin and his cronies snickered from the back row.
“Something’s wrong with that lady’s chin,” Dustin said. “Is that why you picked her?” More snickers.
Then I had something that maybe could be called a Silent Moment. I don’t mean I suddenly went deaf. What I mean is that it felt like I could see everybody in the room as if they were moving in slow motion, slow enough for me to read their faces. I saw Dustin look back and forth at his two buddies and I knew he was saying whatever he thought might make them laugh, might make them think he was cool. Ms. Trepky was standing in the back of the room, and I saw her look down at Dustin, ready to stop the nonsense. Except then she looked at me and I knew she was asking me a Silent Question, asking me if I wanted to respond to the Nonsense Boys myself.
I did.
“Well,” I said. “Since you’re kind enough to bring that up, I’ll start with a quote from Ms. Eleanor Roosevelt, who, if you’ll remember, was First Lady of the United States.” I clicked ahead in my PowerPoint to a page with a big block quote. “She said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ And so I think, since we’re trying to figure out these historical figures like they were our best friends, what I think is that if Eleanor were here right now, she wouldn’t care at all what you thought of her chin. And not like she was trying to ignore it and she secretly did care. No, what I think is that if she heard you say that, she might look at you and smile and maybe even blow you a kiss with that weird mouth and then go back to talking to people who had more interesting things to say.”
Dustin’s face was red, and his shoulders slumped. I did feel a tiny bit bad for being mean like that. Only a tiny bit, though, because saying those things out loud made me realize something. It made me realize that sometimes I only pretended not to care when people whispered my name and I couldn’t hear, or about my neck being thick on the sides, or being one of the slowest runners in PE. I wanted to know how to really not care. How to spend more time thinking about more important things. Like Eleanor.
Ms. Trepky was smiling.
I finished my presentation on Eleanor Roosevelt.
I got an A.