Egg-Drop Blues (4 page)

"Here it is," he said, his hands still in the bag. He pulled out a glossy, slick-looking pamphlet. On the cover was a multiracial bunch of, apparently, happy kids, each wearing an identical red and white T-shirt. Mama took it from his hand.

She continued eating her dinner as she read out loud. It was the first time I've ever seen her do that during dinner. She's a reader. I've seen her read just about everywhere, even during meals when she's eating alone, but never at dinner with all of us sitting there.

"Hey, this rally is a big deal. It's nationwide, like the science fair."

I looked over at Jury, but he was watching her read. Maybe he was more interested in the rally than he let on.

"This is going to be fun."

"Why do you say that, Mama?" Jury asked.

"There'll be kids there from all over. There's three in the state on the same day. Look at this." She showed us a map of the state divided in three parts. "All the applicants for southwest Kentucky will be over at the college. This sounds like so much fun."

I exchanged glances with my brother.

"It says here, 'The egg must remain uncracked when dropped from the distance of twelve feet.'"

"Twelve feet," I repeated—not because I wasn't sure I heard her, but so I would remember it.

"Okay, I know that ladder out in the garage is nine feet. I wonder what you can use as a surface?" She wasn't asking us as much as she was asking herself.

"What would you say the distance is from the patio awning to the ground?" Jury asked her.

"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it's higher than the ladder."

"Why don't we just build something that can survive the drop from the ladder and then we can test it at school," I suggested.

They both stopped eating and reading to look at me. It wasn't that profound, but that's how they were looking. Since the meeting with Mrs. Norville, they seem to think I'm incapable of a normal thought.

"That's a good idea, Judge. What are they using at school?"

"Somebody said the top of the gym, but I don't know yet."

My mother stood with her plate. "Why don't the two of you brainstorm about the possibilities. Remember it can't cost more than a dollar-fifty to make."

Last year she went to a P.T.A.-sponsored class on helping children with their homework. The speaker talked about "brainstorming" and "first drafts." Now every time we get ready to do something we have to "brainstorm" first, and every time she reads something one of us has written she'll say, "It's a good first draft." It doesn't matter if it's your last draft or not—she expects you to redo it.

I heard her singing in the kitchen and, with all the banging around, I could tell she was doing the dishes—giving us time to "brainstorm."

Sometimes Jury has an expression on his face that makes me think he's further away than most daydreamers. A couple of times, I heard him say
that he'd like to write a book, not just the world's biggest collection of expressions and clichés, but a real novel. It's the only thing he's consistently mentioned since about the fourth grade. As I looked at him, I suspected that he was somewhere far away, inside one of his plots.

"A picture would last longer."

"What?"

"Stop staring at me. What do you want?"

"We're supposed to be brainstorming," I said.

"What is there to brainstorm about? We build a better mousetrap and the world beats a path to our door." After saying that he got up and left.

He was always saying confusing things, and I wasn't sure if he'd finally slipped over the edge or if that was another cliché.

I went into the kitchen and asked my mother; she told me it was an old saying.

"It's a pretty good one, too," she added.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's your brother's way of saying he plans to win the rally."

I just nodded and went upstairs. I'm sure she had read too much into it. All it meant to me was that he didn't plan to do his part.

Things started heating up the next day. For some reason, Faye suddenly had nearly as much
enthusiasm for the rally as my mother. I asked Tommy about it since he and Angela were part of Faye's question bowl group.

"I think she likes Jeff Sewell this week," he said quietly. When it comes to friends, Tommy's the best. He has a way of telling you stuff that I'm trying to copy. He just says what he wants to say; you never know how he feels about it unless you ask him. Jury says I "wear my heart on my sleeve." That's Jury's way of telling me that people always know what I'm thinking.

If Jury and Faye hadn't had a big argument about Jeff Sewell, I wouldn't have known what Faye's crush had to do with anything.

Faye asked us if she could put one of us down as the alternate for her group.

"That's cool," I said. "Use Jury's name. I don't do well under pressure. That's when my dyslexia really kicks in."

"Is that okay with you, Jury?" Faye asked.

"I'd like to know why you asked Jeff in the first place. I didn't hear Ms. Hennessey say anything about GATE teams. In fact, she made an announcement during our regular class. Am I right?" Jury said.

"Yes, but..."

"But what?" he interrupted. "What's up with you asking Jeff ? It would be different if you went
and asked somebody who's obviously smarter, but my grades are better than Jeff's. And Jeff can't talk!"

They went back and forth like that. Angela even got involved in it. Finally Angela and Tommy said that Jury could be the main selection if it meant that much to him.

It was pretty confusing. I didn't think he wanted to be in the event he was already in, much less two.

"I didn't say I wanted to be the main selection," he finally said, after everybody had joined in the argument. "I just want to know why my best friends never asked."

That really set Angela off. She accused him of jerking them around and making the rally a test of friendship. You'd have to know Angela to know that she's not a person you test.

Angela jumped up in his face and asked him if it was just some kind of test. They were nose to nose, and to some people it probably looked like they were getting ready to fight. I looked at Tommy and we both started cracking up. That started Jury and Angela laughing too. Faye ran off, which is normal for her; she can be a little too dramatic sometimes.

There were four other egg-drop groups—each was made up of kids I know and like. The
really great part was that we were using the top of the multipurpose building. The building is really just one huge room. There's a stage and chairs, like an auditorium, but most of the time it's used as an extra classroom for music or a special assembly. I guess it was chosen because the top is flat.

Mr. C. (Carlisle), the vice principal, showed us how to get to the roof by pulling down a kind of ladder from the top of the storage closet. My grandparents have the same kind of setup to get into their attic. Mr. C. was nervous about letting us be up there. He spent fifteen or twenty minutes giving us a bunch of rules to follow. I noticed he looked at me and Jury a lot while he was talking, especially when he said no roughhousing. Jury didn't notice because, like the rest of us, he was looking at the dead pigeon that was laying right behind Mr. C. The roof was loaded with cool stuff like that. There were balls and Frisbees and even a dead cat. But the best thing was the view. From the roof you could see everything going on around the school and most of the neighborhood.

Miss Bailey, a student teacher, was our supervisor and she was nice. She was as interested in the dead cat and pigeon as the rest of us.

I knew things were going to be all right when
Jury came up to me and handed me a Frisbee after Mr. C. left. I threw it at a group of girls who were standing near the girls' restroom. They didn't have a clue where it came from.

"This might be okay after all," he said, as we ducked down so the girls couldn't see us.

I was hoping Jury would start to take an interest in what I was doing when it became obvious I was building our first egg container.

He didn't.

After breakfast on Saturday morning, I took the four eggs that we had left and boiled them. My mother smiled at me when she saw me getting the old pot we use to boil water and eggs. She has this theory that you shouldn't cook food in your water pot because, the way we wash dishes, she could end up with greasy instant coffee. I guess I should have felt pleased about her "good boy" smile, but I didn't. It made me feel stupid. There was my brother, the one they sometimes call the "other half," just sitting there picking at some runny yolk on the edge of his plate. I know he was humming some dumb jingle or seeing the revenge of the yolk people over the
syrup patrol or something just as foolish. First he'd drag his fork through the runny yolk and then the stem of his spoon through the leftover syrup. Sometimes I'd like to be the one sitting around wasting time while he's being the "good boy."

While the eggs were boiling, I cut two pockets from the egg carton. He put his plate in the sink and then stood at the refrigerator door and drank some orange juice from the carton.

"I wish you'd stop doing that," I told him.

"I wish you'd stop talking to me." He put the carton back in the refrigerator.

"Like we want to drink your backwash in the orange juice!"

He ignored me. The next thing I heard him say was to Angela on the telephone in the other room.

"Go figure, two good months before Easter and the boy's in there playing with egg cartons."

I think Angela must have told him he should be helping me because I heard him say, "Who asked you?" That was when I figured he must have been in a really bad mood to be taking on Angela.

, Although we spend more time with Tommy now, Angela used to be our best friend in the posse—in the world for that matter. Our mothers are friends and our fathers are friendly. Our fathers don't call each other or go places together, but when they're together they seem comfortable. It's kinda hard on kids when their mothers are friends because they end up telling each other all kinds of embarrassing stuff about their kids. I remember walking through the kitchen one time when I was in the third grade and hearing my mother telling Angela's mother that I had wet the bed the night before. I could have died. I couldn't think what to do, so I did the first thing that came to my mind. I ran over to my mother and hung up the telephone. She screamed because she thought something terrible must have happened to me or my brother. I screamed because I thought her scream meant that she was so mad she was about to hit me. Jury came running in from the back yard, grabbed a steak knife from the drawer, and started yelling, "Where, where?" because he thought somebody was attacking us. Then I started crying.

When my mother finally got me calmed down I told her that she couldn't tell Mrs. Collins things about us that Mrs. Collins might tell Angela. My mother tries to be what she calls "progressive," but she was raised in an old-fashioned southern black home and, I know—now—it was hard for her to accept what I was saying. She
called Angela's mother back and apologized for hanging up. She wanted me to stand there and listen while she told Mrs. Collins that I had had that accident for the first time since I was a baby and she'd appreciate it if she didn't mention it to Angela. I don't know how much of our personal business is shared with Mrs. Collins, but over the years Angela hasn't been able to tease us about inside information any more than we've been able to tease her.

Angela must have made Jury feel a little guilty because the next thing he did was come back into the kitchen and ask me what I was doing.

I explained to him that I was trying to approach this egg-drop thing in a logical way. It seemed to me that egg cartons would be the best approach to take because protecting eggs were their jobs already.

"So there is a method to your madness?"

I just smiled. I didn't know if what he said was a good thing or not, but he looked pleasant enough.

"Are you going to help?" I finally asked, when it seemed he didn't have anything else to say.

"Have you ever known me to cut off my nose to spite my face?"

"No, but are you going to help?"

"Judge, you were standing right there when Hennessey told me I had to participate."

He wanted something. He was being much too agreeable. "Are you ready to start now?" I asked.

"I was thinking we'd go out and get some fresh air pushing through our lungs. Nothing like a quick workout to get the creative juices flowing."

"Quick workout?"

"Right. We'll swing around by Tommy's, get him, and then over to the park."

"For a game of pom-pom tackle?"

"Hey, if that's what you want to do, it's fine with me," he said, his voice dripping with innocence.

"Only if
I
want to?"

"All for one and one for all."

It was after three o'clock when we got back home. My mother was a little miffed because, while we were gone, she had gone upstairs and found out we hadn't cleaned our room like Jury claimed. I was disgusted with myself for taking so much time away from the project. Unlike some dyslexics, I don't have a big problem focusing on a task. If I don't have a lot of distraction, I can zone out on whatever I'm doing. My problem is shifting. If I'm distracted, it takes me a while to
mentally "get back" to whatever it was I was doing. Mrs. Collins said it was a good thing that I can be so focused, but as hard as she tried, she wasn't able to help me much with the shifting thing. She gave me two fun things to do and every few minutes she would say, "switch." If I was doing the hidden picture puzzle, I was supposed to change to the easy crossword puzzle when she said "switch" and then go back to the hidden picture when she said "switch" again. It was designed to be hard for me, and it was. The first time I was supposed to switch, I just sat there looking at my pencil. It was like I'd forgotten what it was for. I had to start silently talking to myself: Okay, now you're working a crossword puzzle, so look at the next clue three down, "the part of a plant that is in the ground." Suddenly the words "plant" and "ground" had no meaning. I had to think about each word. I'd just barely written in the word "root" when Mrs. Collins said "switch" again and I was looking at the alien pencil in my hand.