Trauma Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

little,” she added. Oh, and she was doing a one-woman show this weekend at the community theater, so if the class wanted to see more, they should tell their parents to buy tickets.
    â€œThanks, Ms. Bailey,” Mr. O’Neill said, smiling. “That was certainly memorable.”
    And it was. The kids all remembered to tell their parents, and that Saturday, Mom had maybe her best turnout ever. I forget what she did onstage—I think it was Plastic Surgery—but whatever it was, it didn’t go over as well as Guzzling Oil . Which the kids in my class couldn’t stop talking about, constantly asking me if my mom wore a scuba suit at home, and if the floors in our apartment were all slippery. Finally somebody’s mom—I think it was Sean Koplik’s—complained to the principal that she caught her kid drinking canola, so the principal called Mom and accused her of “sending the wrong message.”
    â€œExcuse me,” Mom shouted into the receiver. “But under the First Amendment of the Constitution I have every right to speak out about protecting our planet. And maybe if you folks were teaching energy awareness and global responsibility, my daughter would actually be learning something important !”
    I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but from the way Mom slammed her bedroom door afterward, I could tell she was really upset. And that night at dinner, Mom didn’t eat very much. Or talk very much either.
    Finally she said, “I think I may have blown it with your principal, Mari.”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I told her. “Nobody likes him, anyway.”
    â€œThat’s not the point.” She sighed. “I just don’t want him taking it out on you.”
    â€œBut he never even yells at me.”
    â€œReally? Well, let’s keep it that way. No youthful hijinks, all right, young lady? ” She wagged her finger, like she was scolding me. And then all of a sudden she grinned, like the whole thing was a joke.
    But it wasn’t. Because the next thing I knew, Mom got uninvited from chaperoning the second-grade trip to the planetarium, and four kids in the class told me their parents wouldn’t let them come to my house anymore.
    â€œYour mom’s a weirdo,” Bradley Miller said to me at recess one day.
    â€œNo, she’s not, she’s an artist,” I’d answered loudly. Kids were starting to crowd around, so I added, “And if she’s so weird, how come you clapped for her? How come you came to the theater afterward?”
    â€œBecause she’s funny,” Bradley said. “But now everyone thinks she’s nuts.”
    â€œAnd she also had a big fight with the principal,” said this older girl I didn’t even know. Which was how I knew that word had gotten out, and it was all over school now, probably all over town.
    Right around this time, the theater told Mom it was canceling her show. (Mom threatened to perform for free in the small park across the street from the theater; they said, “Go ahead,” so she did, wrapping herself with Saran Wrap for all the nannies and the pigeons.) The next year, Mom lost her job teaching improv at the community college. By the time I was in fourth grade, she started walking dogs to pay the rent.
    We moved in the middle of sixth grade, the second year of middle school. At the time Mom said it was so that we could live closer to Dad, but they’d been divorced since I was in first grade, and not together very much before that, so I had my doubts. He was renting a small house about three miles from our new apartment building, but he was a magazine photographer always off “on assignment,” so he was practically never there. I don’t know if Mom had totally realized this before we’d moved. Maybe she expected us to become one big happy divorced family. Or maybe she thought if he saw us more often, he’d pay for more stuff;