same elementary school. There are four elementary schools in our district but we all go to one junior high, which means that I didn’t know about three-fourths of the kids in the seventh grade.
“Yeah, I guess I will.” By this time the thought of staying in school an extra forty-five minutes, even for a club, didn’t thrill me, but I had announced to everyone that morning that I was going to, so I felt sort of trapped.
“I am too,” said Beth. “I’ll meet you after homeroom, okay?”
“Okay. What room are you in?”
“108. What room are you in?”
“114.”
“Wait for me, will you?”
“Sure.”
Our teacher hurried into the classroom, panting slightly.
“Bonjour, mes élèves.”
“Bonjour, Monsieur Krupkin.”
“Ouvrez vos livres à la page quatorze, s’il vous plaît.”
He wrote “p. 14” on the board, because we were just beginning to learn numbers and hadn’t gotten past dix (10) yet. Mr. Krupkin tried to speak only French in class and sometimes it got kind of confusing. After all, how much French could we understand after three weeks?
The period dragged by. We took turns reading aloud the parts of Pierre and Juliette, who go to école supérieure every day, where they étudient such subjects as la géographie, l’histoire, l’anglais, etc. After école they come home and have a glass of lait and some petits gâteaux. Then they do their devoirs. On Sundays they go for walks dans le parc.
It sounded like a very dull life.
I waited for Beth outside my homeroom. She got there a couple of minutes after the dismissal bell, staggering under a load of books, an instrument case and a gym suit half-stuffed in a brown lunch bag.
“They ought to give us wheelbarrows,” she grumbled, “along with lockers. I don’t know how they expect us to carry all this stuff.”
“Do you think they even care?”
“No. No, of course they don’t care.”
There were about thirty kids in Mr. Kane’s room when we got there. Twenty-eight of them were girls.
Mr. Kane surveyed the group and smiled.
“Welcome to the Hillside Junior High School Drama Club,” he said. “I’m delighted to see so many budding young thespians with us. I’m sure we’re all going to have a lot of fun in this club as we learn some of the rudiments of acting. For those of you who are new to the club I want to tell you that we put on two plays a year so you’ll have a good opportunity to develop your talent in front of live audiences. What I thought we’d do today is a little improvisational pantomime. Pantomime is acting without words; you use movement and action to convey what you’re doing or feeling to the audience. We’ll do simple, everyday things you’ve done all your lives, but you’ll use no props, no words, just your imagination. Who wants to start?”
There was some foot shuffling and a few nervous titters, but no one volunteered. We certainly were a shy group, considering that we should have been eager to get up in front of an audience and act our hearts out.
Finally Mr. Kane said, “Why don’t we have one of our old members start off, so you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about? Jean, would you? And let’s introduce ourselves as we perform.”
A plump, very pretty girl with light brown hair walked to the front of the room. She didn’t look nervous at all. She looked perfectly at ease in front of twenty-nine pairs of eyes.
“I’m Jean Freeman,” she announced.
“Jean played the lead in Sweet Sixteen last year,” Mr. Kane said. “Jean, why don’t you do brushing your teeth?”
She nodded.
Facing us, she took an imaginary toothbrush out of its holder and stuck it in her mouth. She held it there, her mouth slightly open, while she picked up an invisible tube of toothpaste and twisted off the cap with two fingers. She took the brush out of her mouth and squeezed toothpaste on it. Then she put the tube down on the side of the “sink” and reached for the water faucet.
It was amazing. Her movements were so realistic you could almost see the water running and the toothbrush in her hand. She put the brush under the water a couple of times and even examined her teeth in the mirror above the sink as she brushed them. She rinsed off the brush and stuck it back in the holder, then turned off the water. She peered into the “mirror,” baring her upper lip and running her tongue over her teeth. She even picked at the spaces between two teeth with her fingernail, as if she’d missed something. Then she gave a little satisfied nod of her head, capped the toothpaste and put it back on the side of the sink.
“That’s it,” she said, and broke the silence.
Everyone burst into applause.
Jean walked back to her seat and Beth whispered, “Isn’t that something? I could almost hear the brushing noise.”
“Me too. She’s really good.”
“Thank you, Jean,” said Mr. Kane. “Now that you have an idea of what you can do with pantomime, who else would like to try?”
Jean must have inspired us. This time quite a few people waved their hands to be called on, and even I felt the urge to try a pantomime. It looked like fun.
The next person was a short girl with dark, curly hair.
“I’m Rita Lovett,” she said, almost in a squeak.
Mr. Kane had her put on shoes and socks. She wasn’t nearly as good as Jean Freeman had been. In fact, if I didn’t know she was supposed to be putting on shoes and socks, I would have thought she was tromping on ants and spraining her ankles because all she really did was raise and lower her feet a couple of times and kind of hold her hands on them.
Beth looked at me and shrugged, ever so slightly, as if to say, “Either one of us could do better than that.”
I nodded to show I agreed.
“That’s not bad, Rita,” Mr. Kane said. “But remember when you do pantomime there are lots of little details that make it realistic and if you leave them out it’s not as effective. Can anyone suggest something that Rita might have done even before she started to put on her socks?”
What was she supposed to have done before putting the socks on? I couldn’t imagine. It seemed to me that Rita’s problem was mainly that when she was supposed to look like she was putting on socks she actually looked like she was stomping on bugs, but apparently that wasn’t what bothered Mr. Kane.
“She should have gotten the socks from the drawer,” said Jean from the back of the room. “And then she should have unfolded them, or unrolled them or something like that.”
“Right. You remember, Jean didn’t start right off brushing her teeth. She did all the preliminary things you do first, uncapping the toothpaste, turning on the water. It’s those little details that help your audience really see the thing you’re acting out.”
Beth and I both raised our hands. He called on me.
I went to the front of the room and looked back at all those faces. Beth smiled encouragingly at me. I tried not to show that I was nervous.
“I’m Laura Hoffman.”
“Laura’s sister, Jill,” Mr. Kane said, “was in this club a few years ago. She had exceptional talent. It seems to run in the family.”
I sighed. I wished Mr. Kane wouldn’t make such snap judgments. After all he hadn’t even seen me act yet and now that he had everyone