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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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Dirty Fingers
Rachel Luria
On Halloween, Miss Bell’s classroom smelled like fire. It smelled like fire and a little like pumpkin pie from the candle that burned too bright in the jack-o-lantern. The room was draped in black and orange crepe paper that flickered in the breeze from an open window and Miss Bell sat at her desk reading aloud from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Cynthia Scrogg sat in the back.
Cynthia always sat in the back and tried the best she could to disappear into the wallpaper. No matter how quietly she sat, however, her classmates always seemed to know she was there. Her presence prickled their skin like pins and needles against their necks. They felt her eyes always watching, watching.
Her strange effect could not be explained by her appearance. To look at Cynthia was to look into a saucer of milk. She wore plain white shirts and pleated gray skirts to the knee; her face was clean and pale. But still, she burned with a strange fire from the back of the room
Miss Bell finished reading. She closed the book with a sigh and drummed her fingers against the jack-o-lantern. In the quiet classroom, the hot thumps of her fingers sounded like heart beats. The children watched her with open mouths, some with fingers pressed to their cheeks, and shuddered at the sound.
“That was pretty spooky,” said John Blake from the second row.
“It was meant to be,” said Miss Bell. She continued to drum her fingers.
The quiet held for a few beats more, but then the students began to stir. They whispered and giggled and scooted around in their seats and the noise swallowed Miss Bell and her tapping fingers, though she stayed seated at her desk with a far off look in her eyes.
Cynthia grew restless with the rest of them. She brushed her fingers along the fringe of crepe paper that hung from the wall beside her. She pulled a piece off, wound it around her fingers until it snapped and then she tore it into tiny pieces. Cynthia watched Miss Bell and the grinning pumpkin. Her expression said she wanted to push the pumpkin to the floor and pummel it, wanted to feel its goopy flesh mush through her fingers, but instead she just tore another strip of paper and stuck it in her mouth.
“Good God, Cynthia,” said Lindsey Jones, who had turned all the way around in her chair to look at Cynthia. “Hungry much? It’s almost candy time. Can’t you wait five more seconds?” Lindsey giggled and her friends giggled too.
Cynthia spat the paper out in a wet blob. It landed inches from Lindsey’s feet, who shrieked and whirled around in her chair. She leaned over to the girl beside her and said, “What a full-blown freak.” The girls continued to whisper until Miss Bell quieted them with a disapproving look.
“OK kids. Listen up,” said Miss Bell. “It’s time.” She stood up from her desk, walked around it, and paced before the waiting class. She looked around the room meeting every anxious eye. “It’s time,” she said, “for what I think you have all been waiting for.” Miss Bell stood at the head of the classroom, grinning and clasping her hands beneath her chin. Every head but one snapped forward and a collective scrape was heard as twenty-three desks jerked forward. “It’s spelling test time.”
The classroom erupted in protest: feet kicked the back of desks, fists pounded desktops. Miss Bell gasped with delight and held her hand over her mouth, stifling her laughter. “Settle down. I’m only teasing. It’s time, of course, for the candy exchange. Everyone, quietly, get your candy out of your knapsacks and we’ll start from the left of the classroom and move to the right.”
Cynthia felt her stomach knot and turn inside out. She began to tear more intensely into the crepe paper and stared at the wall as, one by one, each of her classmates filed past and deposited a piece of candy. As the pile grew, she could smell the chocolate through the wrappers. It made her sick and she hid her face in her hands to try to keep her stomach from heaving. Finally, the candy stopped coming and it was Cynthia’s turn. She looked out at the expectant faces of her classmates.
“Well, Cynthia? Are you ready to share your treats with everyone?” asked Miss Bell. She leaned back against her desk and crossed her legs at the ankles. Cynthia picked up her knapsack and held it to her chest. She felt inside for the bag from her mother and wrapped her hand around the stack of tiny pamphlets.
She thought of her mother in the early light of that morning. She’d stood, as always, at the kitchen counter making Cynthia’s lunch. Her mother fixed a jelly and butter sandwich and trimmed the crust from the bread with a paring knife. The light through the window lit her hair in a silver halo, like sun through a storm cloud.
Cynthia had watched her. She’d watched her mother in her faded bathrobe and counted the soft folds of skin at her eyes and mouth. Do I have to, she’d asked. Can’t I stay home just this year?
No, her mother had said. No, we must tell them. They have to see, she’d said as she reached across the counter and took Cynthia’s hand. Cynthia remembered the feel of her mother’s skin as she held the tissue pages of the little books.
Cynthia looked up from her desk and to the waiting Miss Bell. Miss Bell uncrossed her ankles and nodded her head. “It’s OK,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Cynthia turned her eyes away and said, “No. I’ve got nothing.”
Miss Bell dropped her head and watched the floor. Still leaning against the desk, she drummed her fingers again against the metal top. The class looked from Cynthia to Miss Bell and waited for the verdict. At last she looked up and said, “So that’s that. The candy exchange is done.”
“That’s not fair,” complained Lindsey.
“I knew she’d hold out on us,” said John. “The little freak does it every year.” Soon the other students added their voices to the complaint and their whispers and clucking tongues sounded like flames licking kindling.
“Quiet down,” said Miss Bell. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone has plenty already. It’s all right, Cynthia.”
Cynthia couldn’t meet Miss Bell’s eyes and began stuffing the candy on her desk into her knapsack. As soon as the bell rang she bolted out of her chair and ran for the door. She didn’t stop running until she was blocks away from school, alone, bent over and panting by a dirty neighborhood canal. She collapsed to her knees and dumped her knapsack out in front of her.
She picked up one of her pamphlets and flipped through it. Stern faces, wagging fingers and frantic warnings filled the pages. She opened it to the middle, a page depicting a dark-haired woman handing a razor-laced apple to an innocent looking little girl. The caption read: Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
The woman in the picture looked a bit like her mother, Cynthia thought. She looked weak and soft and the longer Cynthia looked at the page the more she felt a yearning for home. She wanted to quiet the roar of blood in her ears and to stroke her mother’s hair until they both drifted into sleep. But Cynthia stayed where she was and read again her mother’s pamphlet. That girl looks hungry, she thought. That little girl looks like everyone I know. After a while, Cynthia took a piece of chocolate and folded it into the pages. She mashed the paper together, oozing brown paste over her fingers and knees.
She stayed like that for an hour, then two. When the sun was low enough to cast a flickering red glow over the streets, Cynthia tossed the wadded chocolate and paper into the canal. She reached into her knapsack and pulled out a packet of sewing needles. After some consideration, she picked up a handful of candy and began slowly inserting needles, making certain that no part was visible and crinkling the wrappers to disguise the tiny pinpricks before putting the candy back in her bag. She picked up the rest of the pamphlets by the fistful and threw them all into the canal. They floated a moment on the murky water before being pulled under and were lost. Cynthia licked some melted chocolate off her dirty fingers and listened as the streets slowly filled behind her.
