Little Killer A to Z by Howard Odents

Author:Howard Odents
Language: ara
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781611947250
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
Published: 2016-07-06T14:00:00+00:00

N is for Nancy

Who Questions Tradition

I’M VERY LUCKY.

My mother is Catholic and my father is Jewish, so I’m both Catholic and Jewish.

Mrs. Berg, my first grade teacher, says that’s a lie. She says I can only be Jewish if my mother is Jewish, and she should know because she’s Jewish, too.

Still, I don’t believe her. I can be anything I want. That’s what my parents always tell me.

“Nancy,” they say, “You can be anything you want.”

I don’t know what I will be just yet, but I hope it’s something good.

The playground at Spruce Hill Elementary is cold today. I’m playing on the teeter totter with my best friend, Alana. She’s not as lucky as me. Both her parents are Jewish, but her father lives with his new wife in Boston and her mother’s all alone.

“You’re so lucky,” Alana tells me as we go up and down, up and down. “You get to have Christmas and Hanukkah. We only have Hanukah at my house.”

“Do you get eight days of presents on Hanukah?” I ask her, because I do.

“No,” she says. “I only get one present from my Mom and one present from my Dad and Debra.”

“Oh,” I say. I shouldn’t tell her that I also get presents on Christmas morning, but I do anyway. “Santa Claus brings me presents on his sleigh.”

“There’s no such thing as Santa Claus,” Alana says. “Everyone knows that.”

Alana’s fibbing, just like Mrs. Berg is fibbing about me not being both Jewish and Catholic. Of course Santa Claus is real. I just saw him at G. Fox Department Store in downtown Springfield, and he let me sit on his lap. He asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told him. Then one of his elves gave me a stocking filled with candy.

I suppose I feel sorry for Alana. She probably can’t see Santa because she doesn’t believe in him.

“Children?” Mrs. Berg calls out from the classroom door. “Recess is over. Please come inside.”

Alana and I stop going up and down, up and down. We have to be careful to get off the teeter totter at the same time or one of us can fall down and hurt our bums. Sometimes when I’m cross, I want to jump off first and make the person on the other side go splat, but that wouldn’t be nice.

Together, we head for the door. I start unzipping my pink parka and peeling off my red gloves.

“You’re a stupid head,” says Britt Peters as he pushes by us. Britt is short for Britton. He always seems to be everywhere I am, and he always calls me names. My mother says he does things like that because he likes me, but I’m not so sure.

“No I’m not,” I tell him. “You’re a stupid head.” Alana laughs and Mrs. Berg gives me a dirty look that makes my face turn red.

Inside, we hang our winter coats in our cubbyholes, take off our boots, and put our shoes on. There are a few kids who don’t have cubbyholes.

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