Long before they stepped into the car, it was too late.
“Have we got everything?” his mother asked. Cole held the magicians kit between the seat belt and his lap, with both hands.
“Check,” he said.
He could have said something. After Mrs. Van Loonen announced that Sennet Middle School, for the first time in history, would host a talent show, then she encouraged participation by describing some of the acts already signed-up, from a ventriloquist to a group of five eighth grade students who planned to run around dressed as dwarves, he could have said something. When Mrs. Van Looned handed a sign-up sheet, attached to a clipboard, to the student at the front of the room, Cole glanced over at Darrin, who mouthed the words “you have to do something.” But Cole only shrugged, and looked away. He turned to Ben, the only Jewish kid in his class, who sat three rows to his right. What would happen – Cole thought -- if a group of students signed up to be Jewish kids for the talent show? What could Ben have done? Like Cole, would his first question be, “what are you going to wear as costumes?”
He could have stolen Mrs. Van Loonen’s list of participants, then ambushed the fake dwarves after school. He could have slashed Mrs. Van Loonen’s tires, spray painting “say no to dwarves” on the door of her car. He could have said, “What’s up with the dwarves!”
“You can’t let them do this to you!” Darrin said, outside of Mrs. Van Loonen’s classroom, waiting for Cole to march back inside and put a stop to the talent show. When Cole said nothing Darrin threw up his arms and walked away.
When the clipboard made it halfway across the classroom, Mrs Van Looned asked how many had signed up so far. When no one raised a hand, she walked to the middle of of the classroom and looked at the clipboard for herself. She stared at it for a moment as if in disbelief. Then, afraid no one would sign up, Mrs. Van Loonen raised her voice, “But we are going to have a ventriloquist and we are going to have . . .”
“We know!” Darrin interrupted.
Mrs. Van Loonen frowned at Darrin, seemed about to yell at him, then stopped herself when she noticed Cole, who looked like he might cry.
“What’s wrong,” Mrs. Van Looned asked.
“Nothing,” Cole mumbled.
Mrs. Van Loonen fumbled with the clipboard, dropped it back on the desk where it had left off, then blurted out, “It’s going to be so fun!” before going back to the front of the room.
The boy who sat in the middle of the room, who had the clipboard taken from him by Mrs. Van Loonen, must have been afraid, because he wrote down his name. And as the sign-up sheet made its way across the second half of the room, closer to Cole, others signed up also.
Cole looked closely at Mrs. Van Loonen, remembering that there had been times when he lied about his height. Shuffling through some papers at her desk, Mrs. Van Loonen glanced up at Cole’s stare, smiled back, and then returned to her papers. Despite his deception, Cole found it hard to believe his teacher would forget that he was a dwarf.
Cole didn’t notice the girl to him, waiting for Cole to take the clipboard from her hand, until she impatiently cleared her throat. Startled, Cole grabbed the sign-up sheet and quickly wrote down his name, and next to that wrote down magician, remembering the magic kit given to him by his grandfather for Christmas.
After school, Cole’s friends met on the baseball diamond. With not enough players for a game, they hit a ball around using Darrin’s wooden bat, playing long past the moment it was too dark to see the green tennis ball. Jason Adams, standing in center field, asked Cole, who was in left, about the talent show.
“I am going to belch out the National Anthem,” Jason said, then laughed at himself. “What are you going to do?” Cole looked at Darrin, who stood in the field not far from Jason, ignoring everything, squatting down and pulling at the grass. Cole wondered what Darrin thought.
Cole wondered what Darrin thought last summer when Darrin’s father took them shopping for the Little League picnic. After he loaded the car with groceries, Darrin’s father sent them back into the supermarket to pick up the jar of pickles he had left off the list. They ran back into the store; Darrin grabbed the first jar within his reach, and then they raced back to the check out line. He didn’t notice until he was at the register that it was a jar of midget pickles. Darrin looked at the label, grinned awkwardly at Cole, then dashed back for a jar of dill.
“I am going to be a magician,” Cole told Jason.
“Magician?” his mother asked when Cole told her about the talent show. Cole mimicked the laugh of the Count from Seasame Street. His mother stepped back, looked at Cole, and rubbed her chin. “I could probably make you a cape,” she said.
Mr. Mead, the Drama Teacher and the Talent Show coordinator, posted the list of performers on his classroom door. His classes were on the other side of the school, but Cole studied the list everyday.
Starting on the day Mrs. Van Looned announced the talent show, Darrin stopped eating lunch with Cole. At first, after Darrin stopped sitting with him, Cole ate alone. On those days, he found a new hobby. He spied on the eighth graders who had signed up as dwarves. Everyday, three of them ate lunch together at one of the round tables in the far corner of the cafeteria. Cole would sit near them, eavesdropping, trying to learn about them. As Cole watched them eat, he developed plans for sabotaging their skit; and everytime he listened to them talk, he hoped he would uncover some clue about the act. But they never talked about the talent show. They talked about girls; they talked about sports; and they talked about other people in their classes who they didn’t like, but they never talked about the talent show -- not even on the day one of the eighth graders, the one named Greg, caught Cole looking at them.
On a day when he was quickly growing tired of the eighth graders’ talk about cafeteria food, Cole met a boy named Christopher. As he sat at a rectangular table just adjacent to the round table, with his back to Greg, Cole played with the uneaten corn on his plate then looked up to find a very thin, very petite, very blond-haired boy staring at him.
“I know what you are doing,” the boy said, and motioned to the eighth graders.
Cole shrugged. “I am not doing anything,” he said.
Christopher sat down across from Cole. “You sit across from them everyday,” he said, and looked at the eighth graders.
“No I don’t.”
Christopher also had some corn on his plate. He took a bite. While still chewing, he said, “Listen, if I were you, I wouldn’t want a bunch of people from my own school making fun of midgets.”
Cole’s face turned red; he looked back down at his plate. “Dwarf,” he mumbled, under his breath.
“What?” Christopher asked.
“Nothing,” Cole said.
“Why don’t you ask Mr. Mead to take them out of the show.”
The next day, Cole sat two tables away from the eighth graders. He couldn’t hear them talk, but he could watch them. Halfway through lunch period, Christopher sat down next to him. Cole didn’t say anything, and, for a few minutes, neither did Christopher.
Not long before the bell, Christopher said, “I know how you feel.” He waited for Cole to say something, but he didn’t. Then Christopher continued. “Most kids don’t like me either.”
“Why?” Cole asked.
“Because I have epilepsy,” he answered. That’s when Cole recognized Christopher, and remembered something that had happened in January. Half the school went on red alert when Christopher had a seizure in gym class. No one knew what to do. The principal called the paramedics, cordoned off a clear path between the parking lot exit and the gymnasium, then sent Christopher’s classmates home. His classmates hailed Christopher as a hero that day.
Sitting with Christopher, Cole imagined another skit -- a group of epileptics, Jews and dwarves performing the Makaraena.
His mother helped him practice, smiling patiently when the card tricks failed and water spilled over the carpet. She circled May 30, the date of the talent show, with blue marker on the calendar.
As Cole tried to generate the courage to confront the eighth graders, he abandoned old habits. Habits developed to avoid himself -- like combing his hair without a mirror, and ignoring family photographs.
He picked up new habits. With his mother tied up on the phone, he stared at his body through the full-length mirror in her room. He’d stand in his underwear, studying the bone structure, noting how his body differed from the bodies of others. Sometimes generating curious looks, he’d step before the large mirrors in the school bathrooms, comparing himself to the boys twice his size, who combed their hair next to him.
On Friday, Cole stepped before the eighth grade lunch table. Christopher waved frantically, motioning for Cole to sit with him. Cole imagined Christopher confronting the eighth graders if they had planned to perform as epileptics. He imagined Christopher slipping seizure inducing drugs into their tomato soup, then writing “fraud” in red lipstick across their foreheads as they convulsed.
Darrin sat with Christopher. So did Cole’s mother. He saw them all sitting at the table, saving him a seat.
Unable to face them, Cole retreated to a table in the far corner of the room. For the remaining days leading up to the show, he didn’t talk to anyone. He ate alone. He did everything alone. When his other friends gathered on the diamond after school to play baseball, he watched them from the south entrance. Their shouts and laughter bounced off the heavy glass doors and through the afternoon sunlight. He watched the game for a long time then cut through the school to the opposite exit and walked a block out of his way to avoid the park.
His magic act was not spectacular, but it was better than magic acts he had seen at Boy Scout Fundraisers. On the night of the talent show, his mother gave some advice about the angle at which to hold his wand. Cole practiced waving the wand at the new angle, then faced his mother. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.
They drove to school in silence. His mother clutching the steering wheel and Cole clutching the magic kit.
At the school, he dropped the kit backstage then joined his mother in the audience. As the crowd filed into the auditorium, his mother turned in her seat and looked around.
“Isn’t that Darrin?” his mother asked, motioning toward his friend, who sat near the back. “You didn’t tell me he is in the show?” Cole looked back at Darrin, who sat reading a magazine. Then Cole faced the stage and sat deep in his chair. After a few minutes, he pulled himself up.
“I should get backstage,” he said, giving his mother a kiss on the cheek, and walking away toward where Darrin sat.
“Good luck,” his mother called.
He slowly approached his friend.
“What are you doing here?” Cole asked, standing in the aisle next to Darrin’s seat. Darrin looked up from the magazine, looked at Cole, then stared ahead. Up front, a dark blue curtain was drawn across the stage.
“I came to see you,” Darrin answered, without looking away from the stage. “All six of you.”
Cole sat down in the seat across the aisle from Darrin, unable to say anything. The two of them stared at the same dark blue curtain. When the house lights dimmed, Cole left the auditorium and cut across the cafeteria to the hallway that led backstage.
It was crowded backstage. He made his way to where he had left his magic kit. As Mr. Mead took the stage to thank everybody who helped with the show, about thirty middle school students waited anxiously for their cue, either huddled in one of the few dressing rooms making final preparations for their act, or sitting silently in the wings. Sitting alone in the corner backstage, Cole thought of eating lunch each day in the cafeteria. He thought of Darrin, sitting alone in the audience. He thought of Christopher. He thought of the pretend dwarves, who were slated to go on stage two acts before his magic act.
Leaving the magic kit behind, Cole began searching for the eighth graders. He found them in the corner of the large dressing room. Four of them sat cross-legged on the floor, playing euchre, while the fifth sat watching on a couch. They all looked up when he came in the room. He stared mostly at the one on the couch; the one named Greg.
“What do you want?” one of them, who sat on the floor, asked. Cole stepped back out of the doorway and turned away. He looked down the hall from the dressing room. A girl in face paint was juggling. Over the intercom, Mr. Mead thanked Mrs. Van Loonen for her help with the show. Cole stepped back into the room and turned to the eighth graders again. The four on the floor kept playing cards, occassionally looking up at Cole. He didn’t say anything. After a few minutes he moved over and sat on the couch next to Greg. Five jump suits hung on a hook behind the door. They were kind of like the suit the school janitor wore – navy blue with two pockets on the chest and one on each hip.
“Do these turn you into dwarves?” Cole asked Greg.
“We have to get ready soon. You have to leave,” Greg told Cole. He sounded angry. On the floor, the eighth graders stopped their game. They put the cards down and looked up at Cole. For some time, for the time it took the first two acts to perform on stage, they stared at each other. One of the eighth graders yelled at him, screaming at him to get out of the room, and to leave them alone. Another one yelled, “If you don’t get lost we are going to fall out of character.” They all laughed at this, except for Greg, who just scoured at Cole.
At the end of the third act, still two acts away from their performance, they got up, leaving the cards on the floor. Greg stood up last. By the time Greg made it to the door, the others had already left, taking their suits with them. He made as if to move out the door, then he stepped back inside, walked over to Cole and punched him in the stomach. Cole hugged his stomach and slumped over the cushion. Greg stood over the couch, watching Cole cringe. With Cole moaning on the couch, Greg left, turning off the light and closing the door as he walked out of the room.
It hurt him badly, and at first he couldn’t breath. He doubled over across the couch, slowly sucking in air, grimacing each time his ribs moved. He lay there in the dark, with his hands over his stomach, breathing more regularly as the pain went away. Then he began to cry. He cried a long time, until he heard Mr. Mead introduce the pretend dwarves. Their skit ran just a few minutes. He listened to the performance, to the accompanying music and to the audience’s laughter. He listened closely, hoping that no one who sat around his mother laughed.
Before the act was over, he rolled off of the couch, his arms still holding his stomach. With his head down, he opened the door and shuffled into the hallway. He looked up, and he stopped. Greg wasn’t on stage. He sat on the floor against the wall, just before the juggler in face paint, who was still practicing. Cole clenched his stomach and stepped back. Greg sighed, looking relieved, like someone who just finished an exam.
********
Gary Arnold has worked on the Disability Pride Parade since it began. He Co-Chaired the 2005 Parade. He coordinates public relations at Access Living.