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Pie on Friday the 13 by Hannah Barry

 


While I was home for my brother’s wedding there was a fundraiser event at the international school where I was teaching that year. One of the activities involved pies. The students could buy tickets to put into a bucket with a teacher's name on it, and then on the day of the event one name would be drawn from each bucket, and the student whose name was drawn would get to throw a pie at that teacher. I was glad to miss out, but a couple of the 7th grade girls were disappointed that I was not going to make it. 

One day after chapel “Ida” and “Caddie” expressed their deep disappointment that I wouldn’t be there for it.

“Miss Barry, do you have to miss it? We really want there to be a bucket with your name on it.”
“You can just throw pies at the other teachers, why does it have to be me?”
“Yes, but we especially wanted you.”

“If you really, really especially want to throw a pie at me… You can just ask me sometime. Maybe I’ll say yes.”
Perhaps I expected them to just laugh and appreciate the thought— in a momentary brain lapse I forgot that 7th graders have all of the brilliant ideas and inclinations, and few if any of the qualms that come with maturity.
”So can we?” Ida asked immediately.
“Wait… can you what?”
“Can we throw a pie at you? We’re asking!"

I should introduce Ida, so you will have a better idea of the glorious mischief that was in her eyes. Ida is one of my primary (informal) aides in the 7th grade. Some days I literally don't know what I'd do without her. She thinks quickly and critically, she's caught my mistakes a few times, and when she has a comment to make I'm almost sorry that I'm the teacher because what she has to say is always spot on. There have been times when she made the point that was rightfully the heart of the lesson, before I had figured out what it was.

She knows exactly what's going on in the classroom, what I'm doing as well as what all the unruly boys are doing. Sometimes she participates, skillfully, in what the boys are doing... passing somebody else's pencil case along so it ends up on the other side of the room before the owner notices it's gone; trying to land a paper airplane in the trashcan while I'm looking the other direction; etc. I know she talks during class as much as anyone else, but she does it quietly so I don't notice. (I've told the whole class that the problem is when I notice--if it's so subtle and quiet that I don't notice it, then it's not disruptive and therefore usually not a problem. But there are very few in the 7th grade class who know how to do things quietly.) Ida has skills.

In some ways she reminds me of my sister Lucy. She's tough, too. I have her brother in 8th grade and I'm pretty sure he's part of the reason for her toughness. I really enjoy her.

So Ida and Caddie asked me right then and there if they could throw a pie in my face, whenever they had the opportunity in the future. We don't see each other outside of class, so they specified: could they do it in class? I said they could, if it was on a Friday, near the end of the class, and only them, and they had to get my signature as proof in case I forgot that I'd given them permission…

And under no circumstances were they to to tell the boys in the class about the plan. The next day they showed up with a folded piece of paper with a little statement for me to sign. I signed it, and I haven't heard anything since. But I know they have not forgotten.

… (about a month later)… 


It's funny how things like "clean" and "modest" can be so relative. 

This afternoon I dug yesterday's wrinkled, not-exactly-fresh-smelling shirt from the depths of my backpack to replace the one that was newly smeared with slimy and souring red and blue whipped cream. A few hours earlier I would have called the former "dirty," but now I thought of it as "fresh."

A red and black baseball cap is not the headgear of choice for women in my neighborhood, but I borrowed one this afternoon for the sake of modesty. Although I tried to get the cream out of my hair it remained slimy and odorous in places, and those places would not resume their "dry" appearance. I had things to do and places to be after school, but it's scandalous to be out with wet hair, so I gratefully accepted whatever covering I could find available.

If you haven't guessed by now, it was this afternoon that Ida and her accomplices acted on the plan that I approved about a month ago. Actually Ida wasn't there— she was sick today— but she is leaving a week from Monday, and I'd told them it had to be on a Friday and at the end of class, so this was the last chance for it to happen while she was around and she told the others to go ahead without her.

The little aluminum pie pan of colored whipped cream had sat in somebody’s locker all day, awaiting its moment, so it was already a little past. For some reason Caddie and Mona basically handed me the pan after they put it in my face, so I got some of it on them, too.

We passed each other on the stairs later in the day and Caddie said, "Miss Barry, do you know how much that stuff STINKS?! I am going to take a shower as SOON as I get home!" It was a great act of restraint on my part not to take her by the shoulders and shake her. "What do you think?! Do you think I don't know??"

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