Pow!
by Nancy Bell
Then a new lady came in who said, “And now, we will go into the galleries!”
I was supposed to be making the collage thing, but I realized I had been looking out the window for a while. There was a lot of new kinds of noise then, chairs scraping and louder talking. The others were all popping up all around me and gathering their stuff. I looked down at my paper. They told us to find pictures that spoke to us. By the time I had picked my magazines to cut from, there were only two left. Cutting out the picture of the football from Men’s Health took longer than I thought and after I glued it on, there was still a lot of white space. The other magazine I had was something called AARP. All I could mostly find in there was grey-haired people and big pictures of vegetables. I had found a dog, but I guess I started looking out the window before I finished cutting it. I’m not sure it talked to me, anyway.
“I wish we could have gone in before the art activation so that you could be inspired by the art, but because you all were late, we had to do it before the education wing closed.”
Then she said really fast, “And that’s fine! It’s raining and the busses were late, nothing we can do about that. Right? It’s still exciting we get to look at art, right?”
Her voice faded out at the end, and she looked worried for a second. We all lined up in front of the door to the gallery, holding our papers with our sticky fingers. I realized I had to pee.
First, they had to tell us all the things about the gallery and ask us questions that they already knew the answer to. They always do that. How many people have been to an art museum before? What must we do in the art museum? Should we touch the art? Should we run? Should we stray from the group? No, no, no.
Last year, we went to the zoo, and we saw a bird show. We sat crisscross applesauce on the grass while they held a hawk and talked about how it breeds and stuff. The whole time she was talking, she was feeding little tiny shreds of bloody meat right into its sharp beak. Because of watching that, I stopped listening for a minute, but then she said:
“They are dying out. Soon they’ll be gone. Do you know why that is?”
We knew the answer and we said it all together.
“Because of us.”
“That’s right. Because of us.”
The education wing was kind of like school, but newer. There were little red plastic chairs and the walls to the rooms were made of glass. It was quiet except for all the yelling and screaming and fighting over magazine clippings everyone was doing. The ceilings were low, and they had plastic rectangles of lights inside. After telling us what to do with the clippings, the adults had stood against the walls, watching us seriously and saying little things to each other.
We lined up behind the door. The museum lady stood there with her hand on the doorknob. Our teacher took out his phone and fell back as she pushed it open and led us in.
The museum lobby was big and echoey. As we walked across the middle part, the walls and the ceiling felt really far away, like being outside, but we were inside. I looked at the windows on the far side of the gallery. I followed the line of them up, up, up to the second-floor balcony that hung over a big staircase that disappeared down into the floor below, all dark down there where the bathrooms were. I stepped on my right foot with my left foot and untied my shoe accidentally.
I dropped down to tie it, and everyone flowed around me and moved on. Now I was in the back of the line.
The first thing they showed us was a painting of a couple of babies making out.
I guess they were supposed to be angels but really, they were just babies, and they were like, going in for a really serious kiss. Looking at it made me feel sick. It’s not that I think it’s bad that babies should make out, although it is weird that someone thought of that. But it was something about the skin, all fat and pink and brown and it looked really real but also really not real, really fake. Not fake like it was plastic, but fake like fake meat. Like a really real painting of really fake meat that was supposed to be baby skin. Babies made up of painted breakfast sausage.
I was thinking about this when I heard the tour guide say my name. I was really confused at first because how did she know my name? But then I remembered that we were all wearing the name tags.
“Kier?”
I suddenly realized that the sound of her voice that had been going on while we all stood in front of the babies had stopped. And then I noticed everyone was looking at me—not just the other kids but also a grownup couple who was hovering right outside our group. They were just a couple looking at stuff in the museum, and they had been trailing along after us listening to our tour guide. I guess they thought they could eavesdrop on us and get a free tour or whatever. But I saw them looking at me in that quiet moment and one of them was kind of smiling a little bit in a way like I didn’t know what it meant. Maybe she thought I was dumb, like laughing at me? Which would be bad, but then also I kind of thought that maybe it wasn’t really me she was laughing at. It’s hard to tell these things.
“Your name is Kier, right?”
I looked up at the guide.
“Yeah?”
“Just wondering what you might be thinking. You seem to be enjoying the painting.”
“No, I’m not” I said really quick, and everyone laughed.
I looked at Ben. He was smirking at me, and I totally knew what that meant.
“No, I’m not,” I repeated.
I said that one right to Ben. Then I looked back at the tour guide, and I felt bad.
“I mean, it’s fine.” I tried to smile at her, but not too much.
Her face did something. Her head was still cocked to one side, and she still had her smile, but it was like the muscles behind her face kind of slipped and rearranged behind it.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to share your thoughts about it.”
I turned and looked back at the sausage babies. I looked at Ben, who was now staring right at me with a huge grin, one hand leaning on Tim’s shoulder, who was also now grinning.
“I don’t have any thoughts.” Which was the wrong thing to say. Everybody laughed.
“You don’t have to like it. Maybe you have feelings instead of thoughts?”
Ben and Tim burst out laughing then, which was bad, but what was really bad was to see the guide lady’s face do that thing again, only worse, as she looked around at all of us. I felt bad for her.
Ben said, “Yeah, Kier, what are your feelings about the painting?”
The tour guide turned back to me like in slow motion, and when she was done turning, her smile was gone, and her face looked naked.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to share. I was just checking in.”
I saw her struggle with her mouth a little bit.
“Anyone else have any thoughts about the painting?”
Ben and Tim really bust up then, and then Heather and Sava delightedly slapped them and yelled Stop in a way that meant Go On.
The tour guide looked down and I saw the part in her hair and the places where each strand of it poked through her blue scalp and I saw that she dyed her hair and because of that there was a line on either side of the part that showed where the gray hair was taking over.
The teacher stepped up and said, “Hey.”
Everybody shut up then.
“It’s okay,” said the guide but she smiled normally again, this time at the teacher, who stepped back outside the circle.
“Art makes us feel vulnerable. That’s okay.”
This was too much. Everyone cracked up again except for the kid from Germany who looked around at everyone like what? But even he was kind of smiling a little, just to keep up. I took one step back.
The teacher came back and said, “Ben. Tim.”
The girls shushed each other as Ben and Tim went over to him.
Heather raised her hand and said, “I love babies.” And Sava said, “I think the painting is cute!”
That couple were standing behind Sava when she said that, and my eyes slid off Sava and onto one of the women. She was taller than the other one. One of her hands was holding the other woman’s hand. She leaned to the side to whisper in her ear out of the side of her mouth, the whole time keeping her eyes on the guide lady, like being sneaky so no one would notice. The other one cracked up, but the first woman just kept smiling and looking at the guide, like nothing was happening. But I could tell she was laughing inside.
I guess that’s when I started to pee. First, I saw the shorter lady suddenly look at my feet and her smile disappeared. Then the tall lady looked too. I saw her look at my feet then look at my face. Then I felt the warmth. I looked down. I saw the half-finished collage dangling from my fingers, and past that, the floor, my shoes, the little yellow puddle. Not too big but it was there. The warm place in the front of my pants was already getting cold. I looked down real quick and there was a big dark spot.
I looked up at the couple, who were still staring at me. They were standing straighter. The short one slowly took her hands out of her pockets and they just sort of hung in front of her. The other one took a step toward me and then a step back, her hand on her purse.
I looked around. I was at the back. No one was looking at me yet.
I looked back at the couple. Nothing happened for a minute. Then, the tall one said something and quickly walked toward me. The whole time she was walking, she was watching the teacher, who was still crouched down talking to Tim and Ben. Behind her, the short one was following kind of slow, looking at the tour guide. Then all of a sudden, the tall one had my hand, and she was walking fast with me away, into another gallery.
I looked back and saw the class and the teacher and Ben and Tim getting smaller and the shorter woman trying to catch up with us. The tour guide’s voice faded. I could suddenly hear my breathing because this gallery was quiet. When the tall lady talked, it echoed.
“Don’t cry! I can’t stand it.”
I started to tell her I wasn’t crying and then I realized I was. The short woman caught up to us.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she whispered. She was talking through a toothpick she had between her teeth.
“I don’t know! I just….”
“You’re a little maniac,” she said, but she was smiling. “You kidnapped a kid at the art museum.”
“Kid pissed himself! He was standing there pissing himself!” She started out really serious and then at the end of the sentence she was laughing hard but trying to keep it in. She paused for a minute and bent over with her hands on her knees and breathed in and out, laughing. But not at me. The other one put her hand on her back and said, “You’re a little maniac. You maniac.” They laughed silently and shushed each other. Then the tall one snapped up.
“No! I’m serious!” she said. “Those other little bitches will eat him for breakfast. You saw.”
She was taking off her pink sweater. I thought she was going to be naked, but she had another shirt on underneath. She squatted down in front of me and tied her sweater around my waist. She looked at me with her face close.
“Gonna tie this around your waist and those little bitches will be none the wiser, am I right?”
I could smell her breath, which smelled wrong. But she was smiling at me. I looked up at a giant red and yellow picture of a man made of a million tiny dots. His fist was crashing into another guy’s chin.
She shook me a little until I looked back at her.
“Fuck those guys, Kier. Give them all your fucks. Because they are bitches. That guy, Ben? He’s a bitch.” The other lady kind of whooped and said, “Maniac.”
“Kier?”
I turned around and the teacher was standing in the doorway. He started to walk toward me slowly, but then he ran-walked the last few steps.
“Who are you?” he said to the ladies.
I looked back at them right before he pulled me out the door. The tall one was sitting facing away from me on the floor in front of the punching guy picture, looking in her handbag. The other one was patting her hair and singing a little to herself as she watched us leave. She pulled her toothpick out of her mouth and raised it up to me a little. Last thing I saw was the big star exploding out of the guy in the picture’s fist.
I was supposed to be making the collage thing, but I realized I had been looking out the window for a while. There was a lot of new kinds of noise then, chairs scraping and louder talking. The others were all popping up all around me and gathering their stuff. I looked down at my paper. They told us to find pictures that spoke to us. By the time I had picked my magazines to cut from, there were only two left. Cutting out the picture of the football from Men’s Health took longer than I thought and after I glued it on, there was still a lot of white space. The other magazine I had was something called AARP. All I could mostly find in there was grey-haired people and big pictures of vegetables. I had found a dog, but I guess I started looking out the window before I finished cutting it. I’m not sure it talked to me, anyway.
“I wish we could have gone in before the art activation so that you could be inspired by the art, but because you all were late, we had to do it before the education wing closed.”
Then she said really fast, “And that’s fine! It’s raining and the busses were late, nothing we can do about that. Right? It’s still exciting we get to look at art, right?”
Her voice faded out at the end, and she looked worried for a second. We all lined up in front of the door to the gallery, holding our papers with our sticky fingers. I realized I had to pee.
First, they had to tell us all the things about the gallery and ask us questions that they already knew the answer to. They always do that. How many people have been to an art museum before? What must we do in the art museum? Should we touch the art? Should we run? Should we stray from the group? No, no, no.
Last year, we went to the zoo, and we saw a bird show. We sat crisscross applesauce on the grass while they held a hawk and talked about how it breeds and stuff. The whole time she was talking, she was feeding little tiny shreds of bloody meat right into its sharp beak. Because of watching that, I stopped listening for a minute, but then she said:
“They are dying out. Soon they’ll be gone. Do you know why that is?”
We knew the answer and we said it all together.
“Because of us.”
“That’s right. Because of us.”
The education wing was kind of like school, but newer. There were little red plastic chairs and the walls to the rooms were made of glass. It was quiet except for all the yelling and screaming and fighting over magazine clippings everyone was doing. The ceilings were low, and they had plastic rectangles of lights inside. After telling us what to do with the clippings, the adults had stood against the walls, watching us seriously and saying little things to each other.
We lined up behind the door. The museum lady stood there with her hand on the doorknob. Our teacher took out his phone and fell back as she pushed it open and led us in.
The museum lobby was big and echoey. As we walked across the middle part, the walls and the ceiling felt really far away, like being outside, but we were inside. I looked at the windows on the far side of the gallery. I followed the line of them up, up, up to the second-floor balcony that hung over a big staircase that disappeared down into the floor below, all dark down there where the bathrooms were. I stepped on my right foot with my left foot and untied my shoe accidentally.
I dropped down to tie it, and everyone flowed around me and moved on. Now I was in the back of the line.
The first thing they showed us was a painting of a couple of babies making out.
I guess they were supposed to be angels but really, they were just babies, and they were like, going in for a really serious kiss. Looking at it made me feel sick. It’s not that I think it’s bad that babies should make out, although it is weird that someone thought of that. But it was something about the skin, all fat and pink and brown and it looked really real but also really not real, really fake. Not fake like it was plastic, but fake like fake meat. Like a really real painting of really fake meat that was supposed to be baby skin. Babies made up of painted breakfast sausage.
I was thinking about this when I heard the tour guide say my name. I was really confused at first because how did she know my name? But then I remembered that we were all wearing the name tags.
“Kier?”
I suddenly realized that the sound of her voice that had been going on while we all stood in front of the babies had stopped. And then I noticed everyone was looking at me—not just the other kids but also a grownup couple who was hovering right outside our group. They were just a couple looking at stuff in the museum, and they had been trailing along after us listening to our tour guide. I guess they thought they could eavesdrop on us and get a free tour or whatever. But I saw them looking at me in that quiet moment and one of them was kind of smiling a little bit in a way like I didn’t know what it meant. Maybe she thought I was dumb, like laughing at me? Which would be bad, but then also I kind of thought that maybe it wasn’t really me she was laughing at. It’s hard to tell these things.
“Your name is Kier, right?”
I looked up at the guide.
“Yeah?”
“Just wondering what you might be thinking. You seem to be enjoying the painting.”
“No, I’m not” I said really quick, and everyone laughed.
I looked at Ben. He was smirking at me, and I totally knew what that meant.
“No, I’m not,” I repeated.
I said that one right to Ben. Then I looked back at the tour guide, and I felt bad.
“I mean, it’s fine.” I tried to smile at her, but not too much.
Her face did something. Her head was still cocked to one side, and she still had her smile, but it was like the muscles behind her face kind of slipped and rearranged behind it.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to share your thoughts about it.”
I turned and looked back at the sausage babies. I looked at Ben, who was now staring right at me with a huge grin, one hand leaning on Tim’s shoulder, who was also now grinning.
“I don’t have any thoughts.” Which was the wrong thing to say. Everybody laughed.
“You don’t have to like it. Maybe you have feelings instead of thoughts?”
Ben and Tim burst out laughing then, which was bad, but what was really bad was to see the guide lady’s face do that thing again, only worse, as she looked around at all of us. I felt bad for her.
Ben said, “Yeah, Kier, what are your feelings about the painting?”
The tour guide turned back to me like in slow motion, and when she was done turning, her smile was gone, and her face looked naked.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to share. I was just checking in.”
I saw her struggle with her mouth a little bit.
“Anyone else have any thoughts about the painting?”
Ben and Tim really bust up then, and then Heather and Sava delightedly slapped them and yelled Stop in a way that meant Go On.
The tour guide looked down and I saw the part in her hair and the places where each strand of it poked through her blue scalp and I saw that she dyed her hair and because of that there was a line on either side of the part that showed where the gray hair was taking over.
The teacher stepped up and said, “Hey.”
Everybody shut up then.
“It’s okay,” said the guide but she smiled normally again, this time at the teacher, who stepped back outside the circle.
“Art makes us feel vulnerable. That’s okay.”
This was too much. Everyone cracked up again except for the kid from Germany who looked around at everyone like what? But even he was kind of smiling a little, just to keep up. I took one step back.
The teacher came back and said, “Ben. Tim.”
The girls shushed each other as Ben and Tim went over to him.
Heather raised her hand and said, “I love babies.” And Sava said, “I think the painting is cute!”
That couple were standing behind Sava when she said that, and my eyes slid off Sava and onto one of the women. She was taller than the other one. One of her hands was holding the other woman’s hand. She leaned to the side to whisper in her ear out of the side of her mouth, the whole time keeping her eyes on the guide lady, like being sneaky so no one would notice. The other one cracked up, but the first woman just kept smiling and looking at the guide, like nothing was happening. But I could tell she was laughing inside.
I guess that’s when I started to pee. First, I saw the shorter lady suddenly look at my feet and her smile disappeared. Then the tall lady looked too. I saw her look at my feet then look at my face. Then I felt the warmth. I looked down. I saw the half-finished collage dangling from my fingers, and past that, the floor, my shoes, the little yellow puddle. Not too big but it was there. The warm place in the front of my pants was already getting cold. I looked down real quick and there was a big dark spot.
I looked up at the couple, who were still staring at me. They were standing straighter. The short one slowly took her hands out of her pockets and they just sort of hung in front of her. The other one took a step toward me and then a step back, her hand on her purse.
I looked around. I was at the back. No one was looking at me yet.
I looked back at the couple. Nothing happened for a minute. Then, the tall one said something and quickly walked toward me. The whole time she was walking, she was watching the teacher, who was still crouched down talking to Tim and Ben. Behind her, the short one was following kind of slow, looking at the tour guide. Then all of a sudden, the tall one had my hand, and she was walking fast with me away, into another gallery.
I looked back and saw the class and the teacher and Ben and Tim getting smaller and the shorter woman trying to catch up with us. The tour guide’s voice faded. I could suddenly hear my breathing because this gallery was quiet. When the tall lady talked, it echoed.
“Don’t cry! I can’t stand it.”
I started to tell her I wasn’t crying and then I realized I was. The short woman caught up to us.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she whispered. She was talking through a toothpick she had between her teeth.
“I don’t know! I just….”
“You’re a little maniac,” she said, but she was smiling. “You kidnapped a kid at the art museum.”
“Kid pissed himself! He was standing there pissing himself!” She started out really serious and then at the end of the sentence she was laughing hard but trying to keep it in. She paused for a minute and bent over with her hands on her knees and breathed in and out, laughing. But not at me. The other one put her hand on her back and said, “You’re a little maniac. You maniac.” They laughed silently and shushed each other. Then the tall one snapped up.
“No! I’m serious!” she said. “Those other little bitches will eat him for breakfast. You saw.”
She was taking off her pink sweater. I thought she was going to be naked, but she had another shirt on underneath. She squatted down in front of me and tied her sweater around my waist. She looked at me with her face close.
“Gonna tie this around your waist and those little bitches will be none the wiser, am I right?”
I could smell her breath, which smelled wrong. But she was smiling at me. I looked up at a giant red and yellow picture of a man made of a million tiny dots. His fist was crashing into another guy’s chin.
She shook me a little until I looked back at her.
“Fuck those guys, Kier. Give them all your fucks. Because they are bitches. That guy, Ben? He’s a bitch.” The other lady kind of whooped and said, “Maniac.”
“Kier?”
I turned around and the teacher was standing in the doorway. He started to walk toward me slowly, but then he ran-walked the last few steps.
“Who are you?” he said to the ladies.
I looked back at them right before he pulled me out the door. The tall one was sitting facing away from me on the floor in front of the punching guy picture, looking in her handbag. The other one was patting her hair and singing a little to herself as she watched us leave. She pulled her toothpick out of her mouth and raised it up to me a little. Last thing I saw was the big star exploding out of the guy in the picture’s fist.
*
The bus was waiting for us when we filed out after the Subway lunch. I got on last and sat behind the driver. No one else wants to sit there. I looked at the back of the driver’s head. I knew him because he drove my route sometimes. Sometimes he said, “Have a good one” when I got off. He had a lunch bag open on the floor by his seat. Inside was a little plastic thing full of toothpicks. I thought about the short lady saluting me with hers while the teacher dragged me away. I thought about the maniac lady and about the meat babies and about Ben and fucks. I thought about things being because of us.
“Why are you wearing a pink sweater?” Sava screamed from the seat across from me.
I stood up and took it off. It didn’t matter. My pants were mostly dry then. I tossed the sweater into Sava’s face. She screamed more. I sat down and saw the driver looking at me in the mirror. He wasn’t mad.
“Why are you wearing a pink sweater?” Sava screamed from the seat across from me.
I stood up and took it off. It didn’t matter. My pants were mostly dry then. I tossed the sweater into Sava’s face. She screamed more. I sat down and saw the driver looking at me in the mirror. He wasn’t mad.