Puddles of Mockery

Mrs. Wrung paces around the gym and talks loudly. “You guys need to focus and stop talking to each other. This isn’t a birthday party. We’re here to play a game and get some exercise. You need to stop acting like a bunch of brats. I’m tired of telling you this.”

Aren’t we all? Me and my classmates are seated on the floor in rows with our legs crossed. Ms. Wrung is talking loudly; through the gym’s echo it sounds as though she is bellowing at the top of her lungs. She paces between students, her muddy sneakered feet slightly too close for comfort. Her words are interspersed with dirty looks. Her sloppy mane of dark curly hair blends perfectly with her pale skin and her excruciatingly sharp tone. She is somewhat short with a slightly hunched back, giving her a witch like appearance.

I clench my arms around my chest tightly and stare down at the ground. As always a thin layer of dirt lines the hard gray floors.

My peers seem to look forward to gym class, they act giddy and excited as we line up to go each day. Gym is my least favorite class, hands down. The gym is gross, smells like dirty feet and fake cheese. Painfully bright lights with metal fixtures hang from the high ceiling like spiders and every sound is significantly amplified by the echo.

I don’t know why anybody thinks that playing games that usually involve waiting in line forever makes any of this worth it. Every class Ms. Wrung gets burnt out and releases her wrath on us.

I don’t have a lot of friends and the other students aren’t eager to choose me for their teams. They tell me that I’m bad at sports. It’s true that sometimes I don’t know exactly what I need to do, or I don’t see the ball coming my way. I don’t understand why they get so mad at me, who really cares if we win or lose the game? It’s not like Ms. Wrung’s ever going to give us a pat on the back with a cookie.

Maybe it’s part of those ‘hidden rules’ that my parents are always talking to me about. Like to only talk for a minute at a time, not to use my ‘baby voice,’ and not to interrupt people. I try to follow along but sometimes I don’t understand them at all. Yesterday they told me to look at people when I’m talking instead of looking around. I tried looking at my teacher, Mrs. Merryweather, today and it was super uncomfortable. I got that feeling I’ve been getting in the pit of my stomach where my heart seems to be beating too fast.

At the beginning of the year Mrs. Wrung and Mr. Ketz gave us assigned spots along the gym floor. Mine is 3rd in the middle row. Katie Holtz is sitting next to me, her long blonde hair flowing over a pink shirt. Hank Stungroo is in front of me, his large form slightly bulging from a striped yellow polo shirt that does little to flatter him. Katie doesn’t usually go out of her way to bully me but she doesn’t like me either, the other day I asked her to play Pokémon at recess and she told me to go away. Hank is mean to me; he calls me a retard almost every day and a few weeks ago he put gum on my chair. A lot of kids laughed at me and I had to change my pants.

“You guys are so ridiculous, never stop talking. You’re like a bunch of babies,” Wrung’s words bang against my eardrums, I wish I had my headphones.

I hear Katie’s voice around me, she is loudly whispering something to Hank. He turns around and looks at me with the same face he makes when he’s making fun of me. I quickly look away in hopes that he will move on. But he doesn’t.

“Hey, you making a waterfall over there?” he whispers loudly.

I’m not sure what he means.

Ew, get away from the puddle before it spreads,” Katie backs up.

I look down and see that the floor below me is wet.

Mrs. Wrung averts her gaze towards us. “Why are you guys talking?”

“She’s drooling,” Katie squeals.

Mrs. Wrung wrinkles her nose as she walks towards me. “You are drooling, aren’t you?!”

“Um, I…” I look down only to see a large puddle of water. I had no idea that I was drooling and I don’t know what to say. My heart starts to beat really fast and it feels like the bright lights are burning my eyes out of their sockets.

“This is disgusting! You need to clean this up right now!”

“Can I move somewhere else?” Katie asks, her nose wrinkled and her tone tainted with disgust.

“Yes, move away her, there’s a ton of germs over here.”

She kneels and puts her face about an inch away from mine. You’d think that it was impossible for this woman to appear angrier than she typically does, but right now her black eyes appear jolted by lightning. “Clean it up!” she bellows. Loud noises are very uncomfortable, so I reflexively move my hands over my ears. This seems to make her angrier.

“Listen to me!” she yells.

“I will, I have nothing to clean it up with though.” I’m not sure if I can stand up.

“Go get some paper towels, you little brat!”

I feel penetrated everyone’s gaze as I stand up. The room is filled with laughter. There are no paper towels on the dispenser outside of the door, so I head over to the bathroom.

I head into a stall and begin to cry. I struggle to control my tears; they will just make this all the more humiliating. I mope until my eyes stop flowing. I hate being here, the other kids don’t like me. The teachers don’t seem like they do either.

I just wish that I had one friend, somebody to play with at recess. Maybe trade Pokémon with. Everybody else could continue to hate me if I just had one person. My mom tells me that the Asperger’s makes it harder for me to get along with people. I don’t really know what she means but I would give anything for it to go away. It’s also why I must go to speech therapy every day, and likely why I can’t eat any sugar.

I really don’t want to go back to the gym. But if I don’t come back, I’ll get into even more trouble. I roll a bunch h of towels out of the dispenser and slowly walk back.

When I return to the gym Ms. Wrung is still talking about the wet floor. The class is seated on the other side of the room, I assume that she asked them to move. “Took you long enough, now clean up!” she barks.

I kneel next to my drool and wipe it up, wishing that their laugher could melt me into a puddle as well.

For the rest of the day, I sit at my desk with my head down. Sometimes I plug my ears to tune out the insults. Tears intermittently drip from my eyes, I wipe them with a tissue.

I let them flow when I get home a few hours later. I curl into a wingback chair and sob loudly. My Mom asks me what’s wrong. For the longest time I can’t answer, I just cry while she rubs my back.

Eventually my sore eyes seem to run out of tears. Mom folds me into a hug and continues to rub my back. “What happened?”

“People were mean.”

“When?”

“Gym class.”

“What happened in gym?”

“I made a mess and Ms. Wrung was mean about it.” I’m not sure how much to tell her, if I mention the drool she might yell at me too.

“What kind of mess?”

“I kind of got the floor wet.”

“Did you spill water?”

“No. So she was yelling and I started drooling. I’m sorry, I didn’t know that I was doing it. I guess she was making me nervous. Kids started laughing and Ms. Wrung started yelling at me. She made me clean it up in front of everyone and they were so mean to me for the rest of the day.

“So you were drooling and she yelled at you in front of the whole class?!” Mom exclaims angrily. Her fists clench and her eyes appear fiery, similar to Ms. Wrung’s but gentler. My heart starts pounding again; this is the look she has when she catches me doing bad things, like sneaking extra time on my Gameboy when I’m supposed to be sleeping.

“I’m sorry, don’t get mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you, honey. I’m mad at Ms. Wrung. That was horrible that she did that. I’m going to go in there tomorrow and talk to the principal.”

A flicker of hope radiates through me, mom is on my side. Maybe there was a mistake.

Mom makes me a bowl of ice cream with some M&Ms on top, a treat that I only get to have sometimes. We sit on the couch and watch Pokémon. She tells me that she’ll get me a new stuffed animal this weekend.

When I go upstairs to take a bath, I hear her and my father talking loudly downstairs. I slip out of the tub and crack open the door so that I can hear her more clearly. I hope that they aren’t mad at me.

“Vanessa has Asperger’s and she’s different. People aren’t supposed to make fun of her. What doesn’t this school understand? They’re so stupid!” my mom exclaims.

“That teacher shouldn’t have done that,” Dad agrees.

“I’m going to call the lawyer!”

“Stop, let’s not do that yet. Go over there tomorrow and see what happens.”

“Alright. These people are just so incompetent!”

I get back into the tub before I get caught eavesdropping. The other day Mom caught me and told me that this isn’t polite. Another social rule that I don’t understand. If a discussion pertains to me, shouldn’t I be able to listen?

I barely sleep that night. Laughter and mockery haunt my dreams. I dream that Ms. Wrung turns into a dragon and burns in one flaming breath, right in that awful gym.

When I wake, I gaze through the window in my room. The vague orange light of dawn sneaks through the blinds. I imagine jumping out and floating through the air, my body meeting with the ground to send me onward to a better world. In Sunday school they say that I’ll go to heaven when I die. I want to go to heaven now.

My mother knocks on the door. “Time to wake up,” she says.

“I don’t want to go.” I never do, but especially not today.

“You have to go, but you can sleep for a few more minutes since I’m driving you today.”

I groan. I close my eyes to sneak a bit more sleep before Mom knocks again. We go through this every morning. I like waking up early even less than I like school.

Once I’m finally up she helps me with my teeth and clothes, then drives us to school. My heart beats and my chest hurts. I tell Mom. “It sounds like you’re having anxiety. I don’t want you to worry. We’re going to talk to the principal about what Ms. Wrung did.”

We park in front of the office when we arrive. My mom and I walk in together. I sit on one of the red chairs with the wooden armrests lining the front of the office as Mom walks up to the desk. “I need to see the principal,” she tells Mrs. Mayweather, the pretty red head who works at the front desk.

“He’s busy right now, do you want to make an appointment?” she says.

“Tell him to make time now or I’m calling my lawyer.”

A few minutes later Mr. Drusdt, the principal, comes out, we follow him to his office in the back. He is an older teacher who has seen better days, with a big belly and barely any hair.

My Mom immediately starts talking, very loudly. I press my fingers into my ears.

“Ms. Wrung treated my daughter horribly yesterday. Vanessa was drooling and she made her wipe it up in front of her whole class. She yelled at her and humiliated her. We have worked so hard with you to help Vanessa have a normal year here, to make her fit in with the other kids despite Asperger’s. And this is what your gym teacher does, throws away all our progress.”

“I am so sorry, this shouldn’t have happened. I will talk to Ms. Wrung today.”

“No, I will talk to her too. Right now.” Mom is still talking very loudly.

“She’s teaching a class right now.”

“Go get her, or I’m going to go find her. She shouldn’t be around children anyways.”

A few minutes later Ms. Wrung comes into the office. Mom charges towards her screaming. “Are you stupid?! How dare you treat my daughter like that! You have no idea how much we have been through!”

“I’m sorry,” Ms. Wrung cowers. She looks panicked

“You should be!” Mom yells. Ms. Wrung is crying now, Mom continues to yell for several minutes. Ms. Wrung apologizes repeatedly, Mom doesn’t want to hear it.

Once she is finished Ms. Wrung slinks out of the office, nearly in tears. Mom walks me back to class.

Hank points at me and calls me ‘waterfall’ in the hallway.

Mom steps in front of him, blocking his path forward. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Hank stutters.

My Mom puts her face close to Hank’s, similar to what Ms. Wrung did to me yesterday. “You’re right it was nothing, and you will have nothing to say to my daughter ever again, or I’ll call your mother and tell her to ground you for the rest of your life.”

When we reach the classroom she hugs me goodbye tightly. I pull out my Gameboy and start playing, usually Mom makes me keep it home but she let me bring it today. I catch a Pikachu and a tentacool in Pokémon before the morning announcements come on. I put the game away before the teacher, Ms. Merryweather, can tell me to put it away.

After the announcements are over Ms. Wrung enters the room. Her eyes appear moist with tears.

“So yesterday our friend Vanessa had a medical problem and I made a big mistake. She was drooling in the gym and I yelled at her. I didn’t understand why she was doing this, but now I do. It was completely normal, and I was out of line. I’m sorry, Vanessa.”

I nod, the class is silent.

The rest of the day is normal. Nobody talks to me, but nobody says anything else about the drool or the waterfall. Perhaps word got around about Hank. I feel better than I did yesterday. Mom has my back.

I have my Gameboy with me during recess, this is a lot more fun than watching the other kids play.

“Hey, is that Pokémon red?” says Tommy Hart.

“Yeah, do you want to play?” I ask.

“Sure!” he says and sits down next to me. Perhaps I will have a friend after all. Tommy is another outcast, a kid the kids laugh at and don’t play with. I don’t care what they think.