Nobody Cries at Bingo by Dawn Dumont

Author:Dawn Dumont [Dumont, Dawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Social Science, Cultural Heritage, Biography & Autobiography, FIC000000, Native American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Native Americans, FIC016000
ISBN: 9781897235843
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2011-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

It happened on a Wednesday. The day had been rough. The grade threes had been particularly rebellious. One of them had gas and was letting farts go at random. Miss Gramiak identified the student and berated him only to have another student let one go. It was only ten am and she was already hoarse.

A few of the grade threes were in tears but two of them — Hope and Cindy — had crossed over into crazy territory. They had gone where they could not be broken. She would scream at them and they would only smile. It was a demented smile and you had to turn away when you saw it.

You also had to admire them. Where they lived now, yelling, spankings and banishments to the hallway had no more effect. In fact, I envied their trips. Once you were outside the classroom, you could run to the bathroom, the water fountain or anywhere you pleased. Inside, you were trapped.

On Wednesdays it was Tyler’s job to water the plants. Miss Gramiak had a lot of them. “Plants create a joyous environment,” she said at the beginning of the year. “They are for everyone to enjoy.” As our year progressed, the plants grew listless.

Precisely at 1:20 that day, Tyler got up from his seat and went to the back of the room to do his job. The rest of us sat still in our seats as Miss Gramiak taught us about the solar system.

“The earth is the only planet in our solar system that can support life,” she intoned. “Some of the planets are composed entirely of gas.”

The grade threes snickered. Miss Gramiak glared at them.

Behind us, we could hear the water running and hitting the bottom of the plastic watering bucket. Then the water stopped running. Miss Gramiak looked back. Tyler was hunched over the sink with a plant in his hand. He smiled back at her. She returned her gaze to the board.

Then Tyler’s tight control slipped and a word escaped him. “Shit.” A normal person might have been able to murmur a profanity with no chance of detection. Not Tyler. His loud voice propelled the word across the classroom, past the front row, right into Miss Gramiak’s breathing space.

Miss Gramiak called out to him. “Everything okay, Tyler?”

Tyler did not answer. He was too busy trying to balance the heavy plant against the sink. He had over filled the plant and was trying to pour the water out.

Miss Gramiak’s eyes grew large as she saw what he was doing. She ran to the back of the room.

“Not my geranium!” She touched the fronds of the drowned plant. “Get away from it!” she hissed at Tyler.

Tyler backed away and dropped the plant on the floor. The ceramic pot broke and wet dirt sprayed across the floor over his jeans and onto her corduroy skirt. A swarm of profanities flew from her mouth into my belly making it lurch. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears but I worried that it would draw her attention to me.

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