Putnam fell to the ground. The men reached him, panting. Old Carson MacCullers raised his wooden stake and brought it down forcefully over his heart. The heart of Clay Horace Putnam, “The Man with the Mysterious Box.”
“Open that box!” MacCullers ordered. “Let’s get to the bottom of this mystery.”
Old Edward Albee leaned over the dead man. An air of expectation surrounded the men.
“Here goes!” Albee yelled, lifting the lid.
“Holy God in heaven above. ”
And the surprised eyes of the inhabitants of Finstown contemplated Putnam’s horrible secret: there was another head on his shoulder!
That was Putnam’s mystery. “Finstown’s Bicephalous Man.”
Agar shuddered. The drawing of the other head made quite an impression on him. He was now reading “Vampires in the Belfry” when he sensed the door creaking behind him.
“What are you doing?” Mama Pepita asked roughly. “Why are you shaking? Get to the table!” She said, turning around. “I want you to finish that plate of chickpeas without a single complaint.”
At Twelve, an Old Lady Snivels
You went back to your room.
You could also play “The Colors a Blind Man Sees.” You cover your eyes and press them tight with your fingers. That’s how the pain comes, but you’ll see a kaleidoscope of lights and unknown colors. And best of all, a red dot at the center through which you can escape and see yourself from the inside.
Grandma Hazel would tell you that you’re going to go blind from so much squeezing, but deep down, the idea doesn’t bother you.
To go blind. Marching with a red-tipped walking stick and being protected by everybody. Then Papa Lorenzo wouldn’t be able to raise his hand to me and I would eat whatever I wanted and on Sundays I could go to the theater to see this movie or that and. shit! How would a blind person go to the movies?
So you preferred to stay as you were. Although you remembered the joke: “It was twelve at night and the sun was beating down on the rocks. Under a burnt-out lamp, a blind man read a newspaper without letters.”
You started to laugh.
You really were happy alone.
“Ah!” you said. And you thought. And you thought about your penis. Although you didn’t take it out because Mama Pepita could come in whenever she wanted and the very thought of such a scene made you die of shame.
Maybe she would say: You disgusting thing! Are these the filthy things you learn in school?
And the word “school” reminded you that vacation would soon be over and you’d have to see the face of Agrispina Pérez Pérez again, the fifth-grade teacher. Do you remember? That day, she was teaching a class on Descriptive Anatomy.
“This,” Agrispina said, “is the kidney. Here are the bladder and the liver. And this is the urinary tract.”
And she tapped on the human map with her pinewood pointer.
Henry moved behind you, excited.
“Did you see that?” he whispered. “Agrispina pointed at the balls.”
Agrispina continued singing to her class in a soprano voice and walked around the room looking up at the ceiling. On the beach at Santa Fe, they said she didn’t have a husband. Was it true? In any event, the West Side Boys said it was, while talking in a circle at recess.
The Boys on one side and the teachers on the other. Both groups talking in low voices and looking at each other with reciprocal loathing.
Sometimes, Agrispina called someone from the group and made him stand up before her. She then turned to the other teachers and said with contempt,
“Look at this one!” And with that, she made a gesture, waving her hand. “You can leave now!”
They hated her. The West Side Boys had even made up a song about her. You remembered it now that you were drawing a naked woman.
Old Agrispina
has never seen a wiener.
Green grass, green grass,
she has a smelly ass.
“The human body is made up of 204 bones, as you all know,” she was saying, and then she brought the pointer down on Ulysses’ head, a hunched over and silent boy who spent the day drawing Martian spaceships. Then she turned to you and grabbed you tightly by the ear.
“Give me that piece of paper, you little cretin,” Agrispina Pérez Pérez said. “Do you think I didn’t see the filth you drew?”
You were livid. You stood up and quickly put the drawing in your mouth.
“He swallowed it! He swallowed it!” The voices sang.
“Spit it out!” Agrispina ordered. “Spit it out or I will keep your ear!”
Paper is paper. And notebook paper won’t go down a dry throat. You could feel the cartilage in your windpipe.
“Spit it out!”
You let it go. The rolled up ball fell to the floor and she calmly leaned over to pick it up.
“Ha!” She smiled with satisfaction. “How good is this?”
“This time, you can say goodbye, Agar,” expectant voices whispered. “They’re going to throw you out. They’re going to throw you out.”
Agrispina adjusted her wire-rim glasses and began to straighten out the saliva-ridden ball of paper on her desk.
To you, it seemed like the Earth was opening up under your feet, and that you were falling, falling, falling into the void again.
“Splendid!” Agrispina exclaimed. “So very illustrative, very illustrative, very. ”
And the bell rang. But you stayed inside. With Agrispina and the smell of the dead classroom.
The difference now. Without the children’s sweat. Without the leather of their book bags. From the walls, the patriots again looked at you strictly.
“Swear!” Papa Lorenzo said, suddenly emerging from your memory.
“What’s up, Doc!” Bugs Bunny said, hopping around inside your head.
Agrispina looked at you in silence. With the drawing of the naked woman in her hands.
“I would like to know,” she said, “what do all of you have in your heads? Do you think that I don’t know what you do when you get together in your circle at recess? Make fun of me, that’s what you do! And say dirty things and write terrible things about me in the bathroom.”
He looked at her, expressionless.
“And now you draw this!”
And she held up the drawing of the woman.
“Who told you that women are like this under their clothes? Tell me! Did your father tell you? Who? I’m waiting. come on!”
This is the island of Cuba, discovered by Columbus. Rodrigo de Triana also came along. What did Columbus do when he first set foot on the island?
“Place the other one behind it, dude. If he hadn’t, he would have lost his balance.”
Laughter. Laughter. Laughter.
“Names!”
“Who?”
“What’s up, Doc!” Bugs Bunny said.
Hardy har har.
We were in the West, son. in the West. in the W —
You shook your head. You would have liked to turn into an ant. You would have liked to say, Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock.
“Fuck the mouse!” You screamed in your head.
Agrispina slumped down in her desk, overcome by defeat.
“Come on.,” she said, exhausted. “What do the kids say about me? What’s that thing they sing?”
Come on.
Tell me.
Sing it.
At Thirteen, a Midget Can Be Seen
At noon, the guys from the Rotary club arrived. They came in a gray truck, with the words “Rotary Club International” inscribed on the door.