Freaks
The Mercedes bounced from pothole to pothole on the old road; it was slow going. The scenery didn't help: swamplands and marshes on both sides, the road had been raised a bit so it would still be passable in a flood.
"We must have gone 15 miles by now," my wife commented, looking at the instructions again, just in case something had been missed.
"I'm barely doing 15 miles an hour, so, no, we haven't." I looked at my watch, then at the speedometer. "About seven, halfway there."
The car wasn't made for this abuse and neither were we. We were made for the city, where groups of men in overalls would descend on the streets at night or on weekends and fill any holes in the roadway. Neither were we big on family activities, and this only barely qualified. A distant cousin I never heard of had left instructions as to what would become of his daughter if he were to die - which he did, in an aerial accident - not one on an airplane, one on the flying trapeze. My distant cousin was part of an act in a circus.
We never spoke of that part of the family, not because we looked down on them, they just never came up in conversation. When I found I had circus people in the family, I was a bit proud, sort of like finding out you have Native American blood somewhere in your lineage. Being part "circus-folk" was colorful, exciting, dangerous. But after her father had fallen, Emily had been brought up by her grandparents, cousins of my mother. Now they were too old to care for a girl of Emily's age. Emily had just turned 12.
The little traveling circus had just gone into winter camp, where all the new choreography would be rehearsed until perfect. When we arrived, it was a severe disruption to a carefully planned day. We pulled into the muddy open space along side a collection of cars and trucks looking like they were from a museum. Most had heavy-duty trailer hitches. Around this was a circle of trailers, equally old. Most were Airstream brand; many were customized with home-made add-ons. Smoke came from the make-shift chimneys of several of them.
"We didn't expect you so soon." The old man who greeted us so cordially was wearing bright yellow pants with red dots, held up by multi-colored suspenders. Still in his undershirt, his face was half made-up with clown-face. "She's still rehearsing. Come in and see."
We followed the old man in clown-face through the mud to the big top - not so big as we expected, but big enough to hold a trapeze setup. There were three people juggling off to one side, a woman adjusting the harness on a white horse and four people in clown costumes, but lacking makeup, walking through a routine that will be faster and funnier when complete.
High above the center ring, a young girl was swinging from the hands of a man holding onto the trapeze with his feet. They swung back and forward twice and the girl let go, tumbled three times in the air and caught the hands of a woman on the other trapeze, also holding on with her feet. My heart jumped up into my throat. My wife gripped my arm. The girl then let go of the hands that held her, fell into the net below and rolled out onto the ground, landing in a walking stride that brought her to the edge of the ring.
"I saw you coming. You must be Uncle Michael and Aunt Helen." She was glistening with perspiration and her leotard was dark with the dampness. She was a little smaller than I expected, but pure muscle, zero body fat. She was on the underside of twelve, having no curves to speak of. Her hair was tied in a tight bun on the back of her head, held in a gold net.
"Pleased to meet you, Emily," I said, not knowing whether to shake hands or hug, so I did neither.
"Let me clean up, then we can talk." She picked up a small towel by the ring and walked out of the tent. High above, the couple had moved from their perches to a platform around the main pole; they were both watching us intently.
The half-clown stepped up, motioning us to another exit from the tent.
"Come, we'll get some coffee. She's a talented flier; we're sorry to lose her."
"We are sorry to take her from you," I said, trying to sound sincere. In truth, I didn't know what to feel, it was all so new. "Our lives are city-bound, but perhaps she can visit from time to time."
"I'm sure she'll miss the life - it gets into your blood. Don't get me wrong, she's looking forward to going. She wants to see the city, to get a proper education and to have a normal life for a change. She loves it here, just wants to see how the other half lives."
I looked at my wife, who mirrored my expression. "I guess that's us," I said, managing a smile.
"She excels in her studies and is good with numbers and languages. Of course, we have several spoken here, so she is around it all the time. And she is very well behaved. You are getting a real gem! Do you have children of your own?" The old man looked at us expectantly, holding a pot of coffee suspended, ready to pour. When we hesitated, his smile turned upside down, the white paint creased on his forehead.
"No, we don't have any children. Emily will be a new experience." I tried to sound positive about it. I was actually looking forward to the changes in our household; life had taken on a hum-drum rhythm that we hadn't noticed until we had to make room for this trip. Anticipating a pre-teen in the house was exciting and frightening. The old man set the coffee pot down without pouring any into the cups. He turned with a heavy sigh.
"She's not just a little girl. She's a prodigy. She can juggle, tumble, walk the high wire and you've seen her fly. We'll miss her in the clown act, too. When you have to do that all day and still learn your lessons, you learn discipline. We have never had to discipline her, so don't think you have to. She is very responsible. If you run roughshod over her, you'll ruin her. Do you want an angry clown to come looking for you?"
I tried not to laugh at him, but smiled none-the-less. "We'll treat her as you would. I promise." I meant it. I had no intention of spoiling this child.
Emily returned before anyone mentioned that no coffee had been poured. She was in a dress, walking carefully so as to not muddy her shoes. In her hand was a backpack, old and worn; it could have once been pink.
"Did you want to leave immediately?" she asked.
"I'm sure you want to say goodbye to your friends. That is, goodbye until you can visit."
Emily turned to the clown, pointedly. "Goodbye, Carl. Please tell the others."
"I will, Princess," he said softly. I could see his heart was breaking.
Emily turned and walked toward the waiting Mercedes. There were no hugs, no tears and no one stopped or slowed their daily routines to come and see their little princess leave with the strangers from the city. I lifted two small bags into the trunk and opened the door to find Emily already tightly seat-belted in.
"Thank you." I shook the clown's hand.
"Please take good care of her." A tear began to form in the corner of his eye.
"I'll see that she writes," I added, as a way to comfort him and let him know she is not gone, just elsewhere.
"She'll see to that." He wasn't going to let me control her, just raise her. It was clear that Emily had the respect of the circus folk.
I nodded, smiled and gave a final wave. Once in the Mercedes, I turned onto the old road and headed back to the interstate that would take us to the city.
"I'm looking forward to school. It should be interesting."
I had nothing to respond, nothing that sounded intelligent. I nodded into the rear view mirror.
On the drive home, Helen tried to make conversation by plying her with questions. What subjects she studied, what languages she could speak, what was her favorite subject and so on. It was clear that Emily was framing her responses, trying to give us answers that would satisfy. She was about to enter a world for which she was overqualified, but a strange one to her just the same. At the house, Emily walked into the door and looked around as if she had never been in a house before.
"Your room is upstairs - on the right. The door is open."
Emily climbed the stairs hesitantly. "Her room." She had shared a trailer with her grandparents and two other fliers for the past several years. She was used to having no room to move until she got into the air. Now she had our guest room.
"We had no time to decorate it, we thought we'd leave that to you," Helen said, hoping she would like the room. We were prepared for circus posters and garish colors.
"It's perfect," said Emily. She stood at the door looking at our guest room, the room that was now "Her room."
Helen was clearly out of her depth in dealing with a pre-teen. Luckily, Emily was used to dealing with adults. They went shopping and came home with enough bags to require all three of us to make two trips from the car. The clothes were strewn across the bed and hung on every door. They filled the closed and every drawer in the bureau. Emily was awestruck. Clearly, Helen had made up in purchases what she lacked in child-communication skills.
School was about to begin and Emily was ready, armed with a backpack filled with all the materials on the school's list. There was a dress code, so there were no frightening decisions as to what to wear. The concept of meeting other humans her own height and age was more frightening; she had been home-schooled by her grandfather, Carl, the half-made-up clown. There had been no other children of her age. She stood by the front door looking out at the car as if she wanted another week or more to prepare. She was about to meet the seventh grade.
Chatherton is a private school, the result of a two-week whirlwind search that began the day we found out that we were to be foster parents. It was a bit snobby for my taste, but would deliver a top-flight education without some of the pitfalls of public school. That was our thinking, at any rate.
I was called to a construction site to handle problems the foreman should have handled, so Helen did the honors, delivering Emily to the front door of the school. She watched the prodigy chile disappear into a throng of girls in skirts and blouses, all carrying backpacks until she couldn't pick her out anymore. A blast from a rather rude horn informed her that she was tarrying too long at the drop-off point and she drove off before the woman behind her could adequately deliver a piece of her mind, which no doubt came with hand gestures.
Helen was shaking when I got home at 2:00. I came in, dropped my briefcase and held her.
"I did everything I knew. I got her the right clothes, the right bag, the right laptop and got her there on time. I'm still a wreck! I'm out of my element."
"I'm sure you did great. She'll get the hang of it. She'll come home bubbling about the new friends she made. It'll be great. She'll be fine. You did fine."
Helen started on dinner at 2:30, allowing just five hours to prepare a meal that should have taken one. She wanted it all to be just right for Emily's first day at school.
At the Chatherton halls of learning, I sat across from the front entrance waiting for the students to pour out at 3:30. When the doors opened, they did not disappoint. The swarm came at the waiting parents, threatening to overwhelm our vehicles and leave us twisted and broken in it's wake. But that did not happen. The students ran to their respective sedans, mini-vans and SUVs, bubbling over with first-day stories. One by one the high-end vehicles pulled into the roadway and lined up for the light at the corner. Slightly irritated parents scowled at the other cars, wishing they would move and not block the way so the family treasure could be swiftly returned home. I was the only one nervous, I suppose.
When the last one had filed out, and no more came through the doors, I panicked. I got out and walked toward the front doors of the school with fear in my heart, determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.
The sign that said "Office" guided me to a double door inset with panes of glass. The clerk looked up.
"Mr. Buchard?" she asked.
"Yes, that's me," I replied, wondering how, among all the parents who might come through that door, she knew who I was.
"In there." She pointed to an office at the end of the row of doors. I tried not to run, having been told endless times not to run in school since I was five. At the door, I hesitated, girding myself for what was on the other side.
Emily was in a chair, crying. A mountain of a woman stood over her with a stern look. The woman looked up with furrowed eyebrows, assuming I was Mr. Buchard.
"I'm afraid your little girl made quite a disruption today. I hope this is not a glimpse of what the year will be like. You'll have to take her in hand." The admonition was from Mrs. Barker, the headmistress of the school, the one I had impressed with my bearing, my Mercedes and my checkbook two weeks earlier.
"Just what is the problem?" I asked. "She's smart as a whip and was looking forward to school. What could have possibly gone wrong?"
"She was juggling for the students - apples in the lunchroom. One of the students made a comment. She threw the apples at him. There seems to be a consensus that she is not like the other children here."
"No, she's not. She's polite and well educated with special skills and talents. Perhaps the child who made the comment should be here instead of Emily."
"The school day is over, Mr. Buchard. You may take your daughter home."
Mrs. Barker turned on her heel and went into an inner office, where mere parents do not go.
"Come on, Emily, let's go home. Helen will have dinner ready by now - if it's not burnt to a cinder." I smiled, hoping she would also smile at my small joke. She didn't.
All the way home she sniffled and stared out of the window. I let her be. I never liked adults pawing over me at that age. Helen and I had talked quite a bit about when we were twelve, what we liked and didn't like, what we wanted and didn't want. We had hoped it would give us insight.
At the house, Emily went to her room and the door closed slowly and quietly, but it closed. I stood at the closed door pondering the thought that in all the time we had lived there, we had never seen that door closed. It had been our guest room, the one that never saw a guest. Helen had decorated it in case family came to visit or a friend needed time away from a marital tiff, but neither occurred; the door had always been open. Now there was someone in that room and the door was shut.
"Emily?" I ventured. "Princess? Can I come in?"
I stood for what seemed an age, knowing that dinner would be hours away, yet feeling like it was already growing cold on the table, when the door opened, just a little.
I pushed the door open to see Emily slumped on her bed, her eyes red.
"I don't want to ever go back; it's a terrible place. They all hate me," she blurted.
"Oh, I'm sure that's just a little of an over-reaction," I began, sitting on the bed next to her, putting a comforting arm around her slender shoulders.
"No, they hate me, they think I'm a freak."
"Why don't you begin at the beginning. What happened today?"
Emily sat motionless, trying, I suppose, to sort out the events, organizing them in a time-line. "At lunch time, one of the girls asked where I went to school before. I said I was home-schooled by my grandfather. She asked if that covered all the things I should have been taught, was it a proper preparation for Chatherton. She was a little snotty."
"You're going to find some of that at Chatherton, darling. Some of those kids have been told since birth that they are the bees-knees, that the sun rises and sets in their rich and spoiled little eyes."
"Well, I told them that I knew math, history and geography and spoke French, Italian and Romanian. I figured that would do it, but it didn't. The same girl asked where I had lived. I told her all over, that we traveled around, that we had a circus and I was part of it."
"Aha! And how did that go over?" I admonished myself for not prepping her properly, not briefing her on what not to say. I had forgotten, after two weeks of getting ready for the big day, that she had come from a circus, something most people only know from a distance, if at all.
"Most of them just looked at me, so I took an apple from one of them, then two more and juggled them. It was easy, I've been doing that since I was two."
"And were they suitably impressed?"
"Most were, but one boy came up and sneered, 'You're nothing but a circus freak!' They all laughed when he said that. I threw the apples at him and someone sent for a teacher. The kids went back to their lunches and I was sent to the headmistresses office."
"At lunch time? You lasted a whole four hours before hitting the headmistress's office?" I looked at the dejection in her eyes and saw her head drop another inch. I had said it wrong. "No, I didn't mean to sound accusative; I'm impressed. Usually that takes at least a week."
Emily smiled, but ducked her head even lower. She looked up at me, sat back and decided to deliver the clincher.
"She sent me back to class with a warning. But in English class, the same boy raised his hand. We were talking about the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He asked, 'What about circus people? Wouldn't they be considered freaks today?' The teacher said that they would. 'They wouldn't fit in with us very well,' she said, 'so they are 'freaks' in that sense. Anyone who becomes overly dedicated to artistic endeavors becomes unlike the rest of us and has trouble joining in, difficulty communicating and relating. So they would be freaks.' The boy turned around and looked at me, smiling a wicked, evil smile."
"Yeah, I know that smile. I've seen it before." We all have. We all have been the new kid, the smaller kid, the odd-ball at one time or another. There was always some other kid who got his jollies by getting over on you, then smiling - or laughing - about it. Public humiliation is the stock-and-trade of such malicious tykes. Certainly their parents never saw them as wicked little gremlins, but one step out of the SUV and they were on the prowl for victims.
"On the way out of school, he started in again, calling me a freak, a circus freak. I wish I had never come here. This was a mistake, a big mistake!"
What could I tell her? That it will get better? I didn't know that. I pictured myself going to the kid's home, telling his father about the incident and having the father say, "Well, your kid is a freak!" That wouldn't be good. The headmistress didn't seem to be sympathetic at all. She was saturated in the status-quo, drenched in spoiled brats, believing them to be the norm.
For that matter, Helen and I had spent the past decade-and-a-half practicing normality. We got the right careers, bought the right house in the right neighborhood and drove the right cars. On my first day at work at my first job I dropped my old book bag into the trash and got a briefcase exactly like everyone else's. My guitar went into the closet along with Helen's ballet tutu. We put our younger, artistic selves into mothballs.
But I was a developer now, taking condemned slums and turning them into much sought-after real estate. I had turned a nasty, crime-ridden neighborhood into a sprawling shopping mall that had become The Place to go for your holiday gift experience. Helen decorated houses and condominiums to ensure that they sell at first glance; she was an artist. If you wanted your property to sell, you called Helen; if you wanted your shambles of a neighborhood to turn into Rodeo Drive, you called me. We were the top of the list, at least locally.
"You know," I began, talking slow but thinking fast. "I'm a freak."
A red-eyed, sniffle-nosed face turned toward me, a crease forming in the forehead.
"Oh, yes. For that matter, so is Helen. Yes, she was a freak when I met her. I fell in love with her for it. Yup! First time I saw her, I thought, 'Man, what a freaky chick. I gotta meet her!' She was quite the stand-out."
"What happened?" she asked. The crease now formed in my forehead; I wasn't sure how to take that. I pushed forward anyway.
"She was in a ballet: pink tights, toe-shoes; the works. She had her hair pulled back into this tight little bun, kind of like you had when we first saw you. And she was always at rehearsal, night and day, on and on. If I didn't have rehearsal myself, I might have gone out with someone more available."
"What were you rehearsing?" Emily had stopped sobbing. She was listening.
"Oh, me? I had a rock band. I was a guitar freak. We had a drummer with a garage and parents who must have been deaf, a guy with a cheap bass he got one Christmas, and two guitars. We were just like the Beatles. Well, not just like them, but we had two guitars, a bass and a drummer like them."
Emily giggled. I couldn't believe she giggled. A smile actually crossed her face. It was a ray of sunshine that pushed me on.
"So Helen danced and danced until she was worn to a frazzle and I rocked the night away. Other guys played baseball and football, I played guitar. Other girls hoped the boys would ask them to the dance, Helen danced with mostly girls and the boys were dubious. At that age, not to many boys go in for ballet. Those that do are considered..."
"Freaks?"
I nodded, she got it.
"Listen, my new daughter whom I love, when I had a band, I had a passion for music. I did little else. I had to go to school and to my aunt's house on holidays, but all I really cared about was the music. I was a guitar-freak. Helen only cared about ballet and me. It nearly broke her heart that she didn't qualify for professional ballet. She was good, but she was also tall and a little heavy for ballet." I looked at Emily sideways, my eyebrows raised. She smiled, knowing what I was hinting at. One look at busty Helen in a leotard had made the ballet committees of three different cities look for other ways to reject her. They could hardly reject her for being full-figured, but that was the reason. She all but came out of her tutu in one recital. The men loved it, but the committee didn't. Helen hung up her toe-shoes and took to interior design.
"Now I am a developer, I have passion for taking unwanted real estate and making it into something good and fine. Are we freaks, totally dedicated with a passion to what we do? You bet we are! You don't achieve a high level of success without passion."
Emily pulled in a heavy breath, she was digesting the data. I pushed on.
"What I saw when I entered the big-top was a girl with passion, the passion to dedicate herself to a level of skill most people hold in awe. When you did your act, they gasped, didn't they?"
Emily nodded, still taking it all in. It was coming home to her.
"The audience doesn't have that in their lives. They can't conceive of the level of dedication, the amount of rehearsal required, the years of practice to achieve that sort of expertise. Such people would have to give up other things: other pursuits, movies with friends - date night. They would love to be able to do what you do. But would they be willing to pay the price, to put in the hours, to dance til their feet blister, to play until their finger-tips could hammer nails? Would they be willing to put in the kind of regimen that you did to become the girl on the flying trapeze?"
The little girl just looked at me. It was rhetorical, that question. The answer was obvious. If more people had the guts to do that, there would be more ballet dancers, more musicians, more circus freaks.
"OK. Tomorrow, you don't go to school. Tomorrow you come to school with me. I have much to teach you."
Tuesday, I called the school and made a lame excuse to keep her out. Emily and I went across town to where Tommy Corbin, my old drummer from my teen years, had his recording studio. Tommy sported a bright red mustache that came out nearly to his ears. He had lost most of the front part of his hair and he had the visage of Bozo the Clown, all things considered. Tommy still played drums, but he also had become expert on a number of instruments commonly used as grace-notes: banjo, fiddle, mandolin and a number of odd-looking pieces he had picked up at various fairs and festivals over the years. Tommy greeted me with the traditional bear hug and bowed like a royal courtier to Emily. He played several pieces on the banjo and showed us his studio. We spent an hour and a half with him.
In a dilapidated theater not far from Tommy's, the rehearsal was just breaking for lunch when I ushered Emily through the door. Pasha Platkin waved at me from stage and called a break. He came down in make up, shaking my hand and grinning at Emily. He was made up like a cupie-doll, that seemed odd on stage; off stage it was absolutely garish. Pasha and I brushed elbows in college when I played guitar for a production he was in. We became fast friends. He was a theater freak of the first order.
After sharing a soda with Pasha, we went to an artists' studio where a group of Picassos spent their day covering themselves as well as their canvases with paint in search of the perfect rendition of a bowl of fruit. They all fawned over Emily and wanted to paint her. One suggested she model for them. I darted in, saying that she was a bit young to model. I later explained that the unspoken text was that she pose in the nude. Emily blushed very properly.
At home, I sat her at the dining table. It was time to take it to the next level.
"So, does your school have a band?"
"Yeah, I guess. There's kids with instruments they bring."
"Orchestra?"
"Yeah. Violins, oboes, that sort of thing."
"How about an art class, ballet class or football team?"
"Yeah, all those things."
"Got any rockers, anybody got a band?"
"Yeah, when we introduced ourselves in front of the class, several had bands."
"OK, so there's guys who are guitar freaks, like me. There's drum freaks, like Tommy. Do they have a theater group?"
"A little one." She was starting to get the idea.
"OK, now we're gettin' somewhere. What about a chess club? Is there a chess club? How about a debate club, astronomy club, journalism club?"
"Yeah, all of those, I guess."
"Good. Now, have you made any friends you can call?"
"A couple maybe, if they'll talk to me."
"Well, it's not late. Call them. Ask what and how many, you want who's in bands, the ballet, the theater group and so on."
I left Emily to call the couple of friends she had made the day before,when she had been called a freak, confirmed by a teacher. She only reached one friend, who said the incident was all over school, that the rumor was that she had been expelled for being a circus freak. Emily told her where we had gone and that she had not been expelled. She got a rundown on the artistic side of the school, which was most of the students, one way or the other.
On Wednesday, the school called.
"Mr. Buchard," said a familiar voice, a little sharply. "Your daughter is not in school for the second day in a row. This is a bad way for her to start off the year."
"Yes, well, she's not feeling very well after being insulted in front of her new friends and having that insult backed up and confirmed by one of the teachers."
"I beg your pardon? Are you saying that one of our teachers is responsible for her absence?' Mrs. Barker was not asking a question, she was making a statement and I was already wrong.
"Yes! Her teacher told her class that circus performers are all freaks, which reaffirmed an insult by one of the ruder students. I should think your teachers would teach tolerance, not prejudice."
"Our teachers do not teach prejudice. Whatever was said in class, I am sure it was in good taste and not meant to insult anyone."
"Well, the whole school now sees my daughter as a freak."
"Perhaps your little girl is too sensitive."
"She's twelve. Girls who are twelve are allowed to be sensitive."
"None the less, she has to come to class."
"None the less? I paid some big money to get her into that school and the first day she is insulted by a student and a teacher and you are backing them both up. That is not a good start for my daughter's education."
"If you want to remove your child from school, you should know that we do not offer refunds of moneys paid. If you are considering keeping her out of school, I can send a truant officer to see that she comes back in. While he's there, he investigate to see if you are a fit parent."
"I'll have her back tomorrow, Mrs. Barker. You can count on it."
"See that you do, Mr. Buchard. See that you do."
This was war!
My secretary had time on her hands with me out of the office, so she could get on board with my little project. I called the office.
"Buchard Developers," said the sugary sweet voice on the phone.
"Martha, call the Chatherton school. Find out how many instruments are in the orchestra. Find out what the instruments are. Also the marching band. And give me Roger."
"Yeah, Mike?" Roger came on the line.
"Roger, get on the phone and find me a place that'll print tee-shirts. I'll let you know how many as soon as I know. They'll mostly be different, so it'll be a big order and tough to fill. Don't skimp. Time is short."
"Okey-dokey."
I called Helen and several friends, asking them to do the same thing: find out about the various clubs, teams, groups and activities at the school. By noon, I had quite a list. Helen was particularly enthusiastic. The rest of the afternoon was spent at the silk-screener's place. Martha and Roger showed up to help carry the boxes to Helen's SUV.
On Thursday morning, we all went to school. Emily chose a bright red tee-shirt to wear with her gray skirt. The tee-shirt said, "Circus Freak" across the front and back in large, white letters.
As the first student stepped from the outlandishly large SUV, she saw Emily and me at the door with several large boxes of brightly colored tee-shirts. The girl approached cautiously, looking in the boxes. Her face lit up with a smile when she saw a blue one saying, "Ballet Freak." She pulled it up and looked at Emily.
"You can have it," Emily said. The girl beamed and put it on immediately. In the boxes were tee-shirts emblazoned with Ballet Freak, Art Freak, Guitar Freak, Classical Freak, Football Freak, and so on. Every artistic passion was covered.
"Hey, look at this!" yelled the girl to her friends, just starting to arrive. They hit the boxes of shirts like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
Emily saw the violin in a boy's hand and handed him a shirt saying Violin Freak. After that, the rush was on. Everyone wanted to be part of the act.
The boy who had called Emily a Circus Freak came up and stood on the outside of the action. He moved closer, seeing the excited looks, hearing the screams, seeing the brightly colored shirts going on the bodies of excited students.
"Got one for me?" he said, rather sheepishly, I thought.
"No," said Emily, without emotion, "You don't qualify. You've nothing, that I know of, for which you are passionate. You are therefore not a freak. Sor-ry!"
Emily returned to handing out shirts, "What are you passionate about? Classical? I have a 'Classical Freak' here, will that do? Great! Here!"
It was bedlam all day. I didn't leave. I sat in the car with Martha and Roger. We waited for the call we knew was coming.
At ten o'clock, my phone rang. It was Emily, calling from the headmistress office. We got out of the car and began walking toward the school. In the windows, young faces pressed against the glass while teachers screamed in vain, all watching the three grown-up troublemakers walk toward the school.
"Mr. Buchard, this is intolerable!"
"Not at all! Your teacher, therefore your school, labeled my child a freak. I define that as a person who is passionate about what they do and therefore have it in them to excel to greatness. Apparently, your students agree. Would you prefer to have the parents buy my definition, or yours?"
"What you are doing is inciting a riot."
"No, what I am doing is bringing my child back to school, a school she can attend without being ostracized by her teachers and peers. If that is not the case, then let me introduce Roger Anderson, attorney at law, who will be happy to meet your lawyers in court. When I win your school in the suit, I will of course fire you."
I believe Mrs. Barker was speechless.
The school at first banned the tee-shirts, but students wore them anyway. Parents complained that they had to wash the tee-shirts nightly while closets full of expensive shirts and blouses went untouched. The proposed "Annual Freak Shirt Day" didn't go over; students showed up the next day in their "Freak-shirts," as they had come to be known. A few students got creative and "English Horn Freak" and other esoteric classifications were seen that we never printed.
Peace was restored when "Freak-Shirt Day" was announced as the last school day of each month. For the rest of the days, students wore what their parents bought for them and behaved like the little angels their parents believed them to be. But on "Freak-Shirt Day" expressing your individuality was the norm and there was not other. Instruments were carried to class, students danced through the halls, football players high-fived each other at every opportunity. It was uncontrollable! It was chaotic! It was beautiful!
By October's "Freak-Shirt Day" just about everyone in school was wearing a Freak-Shirt and just about everyone was patting Emily on the back. She was often called upon to expound on the philosophy of being passionate about your art, the road to becoming a Freak. Kids ask her about her experiences in the circus and the talents she developed. Only the boy who first teased her didn't wear one on that day. Having been refused a freak-shirt, he thereafter refused to wear one. He became the only one in school dressed normally on Freak-Shirt Day. Not being a freak became the biggest insult of all.
"Thank you, Daddy," whispered Emily, as she went off to school in her red Circus Freak tee-shirt.
I guess it takes one to know one.
Jennifer says: As a homeschooling mommy and a foe of all kinds of snobbery, I really enjoyed the premise of this story. Still, it needs a lighter touch. I felt I was being preached at, and I felt that you were explaining too much to me. You might consider giving the boy who teased Emily a way to redeem himself at the end of the story, as well; perhaps by coming up with his own "freak" shirt that pokes fun of his prejudices.
Plot - 21
Characters - 18
Mechanics - 21
Enjoyment - 21
TOTAL - 81
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