It was a week before Halloween, 1988. All of us in the class were sitting in a
circle on a little piece of carpet in the room of our teacher, Miss Everina
Blood. And yes, that was her real name.[i] She was a very, very old woman, so she never
got down on the floor with us. She
always sat in one of our little chairs.
She was so thin and frail and small that the chair actually seemed the
right size for her.
Miss Blood always wore black—with
long sleeves. Even on the hottest days
in September while we were running around the playground at lunch, she would
stand there in the sun in her long sleeves—sometimes wearing a thick black
sweater—checking her watch, nibbling at an apple, not perspiring in the
slightest. It was weird.
“Class,” said Miss Blood that morning, “what
holiday is coming up soon?”
“Halloween!” a dozen voices chirped
in unison.
“That’s right, boys and girls,” she
said. “And what do we do during Halloween?”
“We trick or treat!”
“Right again!
And what else do we do?”
“We wear costumes!”
Then Miss Blood went around the
room asking everybody what they were going to be for Halloween.
“A pirate!”
“A princess!”
“A witch!”
“A ghost!”
“Dracula!”
“A skeleton!”
“Victor Frankenstein!”
Everyone stopped the shouting and
looked at me. For I was the one who had
said “Victor Frankenstein.”
Miss Blood was staring at me with
surprise. “Victor Frankenstein?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Victor Frankenstein.”
“I didn’t know Frankenstein had a
first name!” blurted out some kid. “I
thought his name was just Frankenstein.”
“It is!”
announced a chubby boy named Blue Boyle who settled every argument by sitting
on you. “And I’ll sit on anyone who says it ain’t.”
He looked darkly around the room to see if anyone wanted to be sat
on. No one did.
Except Miss Blood, I guess, for she
said: “Blue … class … you forget one thing.”
“What?”
“Frankenstein was not the creature’s name, was it, Vickie?”
“No, Miss Blood. It was the name of the man who made the creature. And his
first name was Victor.”
“That’s stupid!”
announced Boyle. But he didn’t say it
too loud. Miss Blood was looking at him
with her Death Face, the one she wore when she wanted everyone to do exactly
what she said.
Miss Blood went on: “All right, if
the scientist’s name was Frankenstein, does anyone know what the creature’s name was?”
“Frankenstein!” declared Boyle.
“BLUE
BOYLE!” yelled Miss Blood. “Are you
looking for trouble! Because if you are”—she paused for just a
minute while we all held our breath—“then … I will”—another long, long pause—“SIT on you!”
And everyone started giggling like
crazy, even Boyle, as we tried to picture what it would look like, Miss Blood
sitting on him.
After we all settled down, Miss Blood
continued. “Vickie, do you know the
creature’s name?’
“He didn’t have one, Miss Blood.”
“That’s exactly right, Vickie. Frankenstein never gave his creature a
name. Isn’t that sad, class?”
“Maybe he just forgot,” said Lucy,
a girl who cracked her gum all the time.
“Sometimes people forget.”
“He didn’t forget,” I said. “He didn’t think the creature deserved a name. At least, that’s what I think.”
“I think you’re right,” said Miss
Blood. And everyone seemed to think about that for a moment … about how that might
feel, not deserving a name.
“Now, class,” Miss Blood said, “since
Halloween is coming up, tonight, for a little homework project, I want you all
to draw something scary. Tomorrow
morning, when it’s still a little dark outside, we’ll take turns showing the
class our scary drawings.” Everyone got
excited; we all liked Miss Blood’s idea.
Next morning, sure enough, it was
pretty dark. The season was turning, and
the sun did not rise until nearly eight o’clock. And it was also very, very cloudy—it almost
looked as if it might rain … or maybe even snow. Before class started, a lot of the other kids
ran around the room showing their drawings to one another. Not me, though. I kept mine—which I had drawn on a large
piece of poster board—rolled up. I wanted
it to be a surprise.
It was.
In the classroom, Miss
Blood—wearing black as usual—had us all sit on the circle on the little piece
of carpet while she pulled the blinds and turned off the lights. She lit a little candle, and that was the
only light in the room. It was
spooky. While we weren’t looking, she
put on a pointed witch’s hat and cackled so loudly that Harriet and some of the
other kids screamed. And that made her
laugh a great screeching witch’s laugh.
And then we saw that she had blacked out some of her teeth, too. More kids screamed. And then she laughed her normal Miss Blood
laugh, and we all relaxed. A little bit,
anyway.
“Boys and girls,” she croaked in her witch’s
voice, “who would like to be first to show a scary picture?”
“I will!” brayed Boyle, standing and holding
his up by the candle. It showed
something black that covered almost an entire sheet of paper. But it wasn’t scary at all. In fact, I couldn’t even tell what it was.
No one else could, either, because the questions were coming fast and
furious:
“What’s that,
Boyle?” asked Harriet.
“Didn’t you finish your drawing, Boyle?” asked someone else. And …
“Is yours a secret, Boyle?” asked another.
“Boys and girls!” shrieked Miss
Blood-witch. “Let Blue tell us what it
is!”
“It’s a witch,”
snarled Boyle. “Anyone can see
that!” He looked threateningly around
the room. “And anyone who says it ain’t a witch ….” But there were no takers. To me, though, it looked like a black
shoeprint.
Then other people took turns. Harriet had drawn a ghost. (I didn’t tell her that it looked like a
pillowcase.) Someone else, an old
haunted house. Someone else, a
jack-o’-lantern. Most of them weren’t
very good—but then what would you expect?
This was kindergarten, after
all.
And then it was my turn
When I unrolled it and held it up
in the candlelight in front of the class, I didn’t need to explain anything. It was perfectly clear what I had drawn.
Covering
practically the entire poster was a drawing of the face of Frankenstein’s
creature. His rotting yellow flesh was
stitched together; blood oozed from the fresh stitches. His fiery eyes gleamed an angry orange and
red. His mouth was wide open, and blood
gushed from the sides. Sitting on each
huge spiked tooth was a different kid from our class (I had room for almost all
of them), all looking so much like themselves that there was no doubt who each
one was. The figure of Boyle was saying
something. I’d put his words in a little
cartoon balloon over his head: “Don’t bite me, Frankie, or I’ll sit on
you!” But there was a sharp tooth right
through him, and Boyle’s insides—colorful and slippery—were spilling out in wet
coils. It was gross. And scary.
Kids screamed when they saw it.
And screaming the loudest was Boyle.
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