Because I couldn’t stop for lunch,
It kindly stopped for me.
The van read PIZZAS BY HASSAN
FAST FREE DELIVERY
It’s two weeks later now and I’m
No fatter than the day
I started eating pizza
To postpone mortality.
It’s two years later now and I’m
Still tryna put away
That eighteen-inch cold pizza
Known as immortality.
“I think I heard that song before,” said O, wrinkling up her nose. She was always poking that nose into some ragged anthology in the dayroom, maybe she really smelled a rat. “Heh-heh, I don’t think so,” I muttered, but then my eye fell on Zuk. Her ugly hands were on her hips and her dark eyes flashed. “You have steal Miss Peabody’s song,” she said, “I am shocked.” “No I didn’t,” I said uncomfortably, “I just borrowed it.” True, I had sung Emily’s words to O Susanna in my sloppy haste. Probably that gave away my larceny even to a dreambox mechanic from Outer Hotzeplotz. Yes, all at once I was sure that even in Outer Hotzeplotz, third graders sang “O Susanna!” the same way we sang “La Cucaracha” and “Song of the Volga Boatmen” at P.S. 149. I turned red. “Greedy, greedy girl,” Doctor Zuk rolled her guttural r’s at me, “what I will do with you? Look what you have done,” and she pointed down at gauze-upholstered little Miss Peabody, refusal was her middle name. Emily had managed to twist her face into her wheelchair so all I could see was the tangled back of her head.
I saw I’d better do sumpm for Emily or Zuk would be disgusted with me for weeks. “Hey Em.” She turned back around and she was a puzzle piece of sad lumps around her face, like all Bug Motels when they wonder how they fit in. But the thing about puzzle pieces is, you can turn them. “Say Em,” I said, “I made up that song just for you and if you don’t like it, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” And my neck, it’s a pretty long neck, wilted like a strip of bacon. I got so low and depressed that I even banged my chin on my pukelele, which played a weird, going- nowhere, broken-down fence gate of a chord. Then she had to do sumpm for me, see. Then she fit in again. “That ain’t it, Ursie, I love that song,” she said nobly. “It was my best,” I sniffled.
I slid a glance over at Doctor Zuk to see if she bought it. I don’t think so. Her eyes glowed down at me like nuggets of greenblack kryptonite or sumpm. “You are good little horse thief,” she said to me without smiling. “So- what shall be punishment of Bogeywoman, Miss Peabody? She must be punished. You may choose.”
“Whatcha gonna punish her for?” Emily asked in genuine consternation. “For too big will,” Doctor Zuk replied, “she eats too much, she talks too much, she sings too much, she takes whole room and lives only little bit for somebody else.” “She wrote me that purty song,” Emily pointed out. Doctor Zuk smirked knowingly behind Emily, but only for my benefit. “At everything, everything she touches, Miss Bogeywoman is good,” Doctor Zuk agreed, “but she can be better. So what is right punishment for her?” Emily looked around for some kind of help, her grave little Joan of Arc eyes gone watery, almost scared now. “Make her sing her own ugly song,” I whispered in Emily’s ear. “Make her sing her own ugly song,” Emily repeated in relief. “Your song, please,” Doctor Zuk ordered. She was furious. Her eyebrows arched, her eyelids descended; she was imperially bored. “It’s ugly,” I warned em. “I hope is ugly, since you have steal show from Miss Peabody,” Doctor Zuk said, “now please to get it over.”
MY SONG
Bugs Baloney, who’s a phony?
The fat begins to fry
Nobody home but the telephony
Who’d call a goyle like I?
Doowop dwop dead
The blind eat many a fly
Every slave will have a slave
Why not you and I
It was ugly all right, hungry and repulsive. It was Emily puffed up in her yellow salve and white gauze like a cheese stick, and me trying to save her, and Zuk trying to save her from me, and me showing off and feeling rotten. It was me feeling like kissing somebody, but even more like throwing up.
Egbert caught the smack of gay disgust as only a musical genius could, and gave it a Leprosy Tango beat on the bed-panioforte, and where the eyeball goes into the highball, O oowooed inside the flag with the righteous spookitude of one in whom spookitude is innate. Emily blatted in the classic manner of a fabulous girlgoyle, somewhere in the general vicinity of the beat and just slightly off key. O, she was a Bug Motel all right from the first blat. Now I see it was always Emily who gave us our air of ninny self-confidence, of dumb innocence ploughing on, of infant hope already caught in the jaws of failure but bumping cheerfully over the molars, like a babe bouncing down thickly carpeted stairs.
Just then Dion showed up in the clubhouse and took over the sterilizer-top steel drum, energetically playing pianissimo (it had only one dynamic, pianissimo) so you could thank godzilla hardly hear him. It didn’t matter how he played, for with his black forelock leaping around like Mighty Mouse, he was as handsome as he thought he was, and while we stared at him, he stared entranced at his own spoonified face in the drumhead mirror.
Nobody home but the telephony
Who’d call a goyle like I?
Dwip dwop dwop dead
Boruch a tweet tweet tweet
ENTER THAT DIRTY STOOLIE, MARGARET KODERER
And this is where you came in. “Ursula?” “Margaret! Godzillas sake what took you so long and where the hump have you been. How’d you find me?” You smiled slyly. “This adroit professional showed me around the hospital and escorted me down here poisonally and even fixed the parking ticket on my pickup truck.” Behind you stood the Regicide in his custom-tapered white orderly’s trousers and three-button white jacket, which, pinkies genteelly extended, he was just now buttoning once, at the breastbone, as was the fashion.
Everybody was waiting to be introduced. O even came out of the flag and got in line. Reginald had a new Polaroid camera, ker-POP, ker-POP, ker-POP-a Great Day in the Bug Hospital. That’s why this famous picture exists. “Doctor Zuk and The Bug Motels: Egbert, Dion, Emily, O and me. May I present my older sister, Margaret Koderer?” “Hi.” “Pleased.” “How ya doin.” “Enchante.” “Gr-r-r-r-r.” [“Cheese, O, you look all ballooned up, are you pregnant or sumpm?” “None of your beez-wax, what do you care.” “So whose is it?” “Keep your big nose out of it but suppose I tell you my hubby-to-be is here in this room and is a lowdown royal.” “Reggie! You don’t think the Regicide is gonna marry you?” “He better cause I gotta get better fast or they won’t let me keep my baby, I mean I been in the bughouse two years already.” “You wanna keep it? You call that better?” “Oink yourself, Ursie.”]
“So you are Margaret. I have heard very much about you and now is fascinating to see you with own eyes.” “Well don’t look too hard or my legend will crumble.”
How do you do it, Margaret? Even with O in the room, and Emily, and Doctor Zuk herself, the forbidden love of my life-even in that starry group, you were the center of attention, ker-POP, ker-POP, ker-POP. Well, for a minute, anyhow. That certain air of erotic abandon you have-godzilla knows it isn’t your good looks. “Pfui,” Doctor Zuk muttered, sniffing the air, peering around for the reason the whole clubhouse suddenly smelled like a horse barn. They eyed your bristly pigtails tied off with red vegetable-stand rubberbands, and your muck-stiff dungarees, and your yellow-green eyes afloat in big black eyeglasses like two frogs in two ponds. For maybe a minute they
