Fortune Teller Miracle Fish: stories

Reptile House

/ 61 reptile house Tina Marie loved the zoo and every fuzzy creature, even the monkeys, which she thought were mean, noisy, and stinky, scratching around in each other’s fur and pulling out bugs. The other kids in Tina Marie’s second-grade class stood with her, forming a line around the monkey cage, laughing at their antics, until the teacher’s aide, Mrs. Brighton, said,“Come on everyone, we’re going to tour the Reptile House.” Tina Marie was skipping ahead, until she got close enough to see the giant cobra banner slung over the entrance. She did not love snakes, even though she had never seen one. Now she was about to match the creature with the name she had heard in the garden story her grandma read from the Good Book. In the Good Book the snake’s name was Satan. The Good Book was full of scary things. “Bad folks and fools,” Grandma had said, shaking her head.“Folk gettin above theirselves. Weren’t no reason and still they defied Him.” “Who him?” Tina Marie asked. 62 / cathryn hankla “God Himself, the Creator, the Almighty, the Man Upstairs who watches you and always knows what you do.” After that Tina Marie knew better than to interrupt what her grandma called her “ruminations” with questions. Grandma had a spy upstairs. As the class marched two by two along the sidewalk toward the Reptile House, Tommy flicked the little pink tip of his tongue in and out between his lips, and Elvin hissed behind Tina Marie. Krystal, Tina Marie’s partner, was hurting her hand, squeezing tightly, and then she started to cry. “Make Tommy stop!” Krystal said, gulping back tears. This group was close to the middle of the line and neither the teacher, who marched at the front of the line, nor her aide, who marched at the rear, could see them.Al took matters into his own hands and stomped on Tommy’s toes, and when he did Tommy bit his tongue and a drop of blood appeared on his lip. Elvin continued to hiss, and Krystal squeezed Tina Marie’s hand really hard and wailed again, “Make him stop!” This time Tommy shouted,“Shut up,”and the teacher heard. Ms. Jackson appointed Famous Francis to keep marching up to the Reptile House, and the teacher stood still while the line curved past until Tommy was alongside her. When Tommy marched within her arm’s reach, Ms. Jackson pulled him out of the line, and they stood sidelined together while everyone filed on by. Famous Francis stopped at the entrance to the Reptile House, and the whole line stopped while Ms. Jackson chatted soulfully with Tommy, as shame was her way of scolding. The teacher’s methods took longer than any paddling Tina Marie had ever received from her grandma. Grandma only spanked her open palm a little with a rolled up newspaper and told her to “set still and think” when she did something bad. It was Uncle Spangler who liked to whip her behind, and the way he said the word sounded almost like “bee-hive.” He did not like her “bee-hive” to be “fanning around,” which meant Tina Marie did not sit still all of the time, as he thought she should, but got up sometimes and moved around. So he spanked her “bee-hive.” He laughed when he hit her and smiled when she cried and sniffled, and he always told her not to tell her grandma about the spanking, because then she’d know how bad Tina Marie had been with Uncle Spangler when he was kind enough to baby-sit her for reptile house / 63 nothing, donating his time and staying with her free of charge when he had lots of important things he could have been doing instead. If she told Grandma about the whippings, Uncle Spangler said he wouldn’t keep her anymore and then she’d be in a fix, because anyone else would have to be paid and her grandma could not afford that. Unless she wanted to stay alone in the dark when her grandma went visiting her sick friends in the hospital, Tina Marie better button her lip. This much was clear to Tina Marie, and she had not told her grandma about the spankings, but there were other things that were not so clear. Uncle Spangler was what people called a dandy. “That man rhyme with candy,”her grandma had said...