Mrs. Kraselnik could see there was something wrong with me, because every now and then when I was staring out the window, in my mind chained to May Hill’s radiator, she would say in her stern low voice, “Mary Frances, are you there? Where have you gone?” I’d have to shake myself back to the four–five split, wishing I could explain how close I’d been to never returning.
If I loved my teacher it’s probably fair to say that William was intrigued by Brianna Kraselnik, who was sixteen in her first spring with us. Her brother, David, had been sent to a military academy after he’d been in rehab, Brianna theoretically the good child. The single community activity that she took part in was the Library Cart Drill Team, her parents no doubt forcing her to do volunteer work for college admission. We were still for the most part full of appreciation for our mother’s kitschy enterprise, it never occurring to us that the project might have been an indictment of her character, or at least proof of her Alcoholism.
The art of Cart Drill at the basic level is to push the shelving carts to musical accompaniment. Sometimes you kick a leg out, or do a hip swivel, and as a team you make patterns as a marching band does, or you get a running start and glide with your feet hooked around the base, although that’s advanced work. Across the nation at that time there were eighty-four teams and counting, Cart Drill not something my mother herself invented. She was hoping we would one day enter the American Library Association Annual Cart Drill Competition in Chicago, and it was perhaps in order to achieve this goal that she invited Brianna Kraselnik, who was on the high school pom-pom squad, to choreograph a routine for us.
We began to rehearse in mid-April for the Memorial Day parade, our single performance of the year. All of our efforts riding on that forty-five-minute spectacle. We were an unusual team because we were not middle-aged librarians in seasonal appliquéd sweaters and gay men employees but a cross section of the community, which highlighted us, the bibliomaniac children. It’s customary for marchers in a parade to throw treats at the spectators but when we performed the crowds rained candy upon us. That’s how much our townspeople loved the team. We always kept our focus, every member serious and in sync, ignoring the great reward, the crowd laughing and whooping, Dubble Bubble and Tootsie Rolls filling the top shelves of our carts.
At our first rehearsal in the back room of the library Brianna made her entrance carrying her own enormous boom box, a canvas bag of CDs, and a clipboard. She set her load on the banquet table. Behold: Brianna Kraselnik in an aqua leotard with gathers between her breasts, those cupcakes sharply delineated. On the bottom half she wore gray sweatpants that were cut off at the knees and dingy pink leg warmers dribbling down around her ankles, around her soft leather shoes. We’d never seen any dancer’s outfit that was so ragged but also obviously professional. She was nothing like the aristocratic Mrs. Kraselnik, Brianna a girl with bovine eyes, the long lashes bristly with mascara, and she had a luscious red mouth, the puff of her lips something you wanted to try to pop, the way we did to Bubble Wrap, and there was the glossy hair all the way to her rump. When she appeared I was already practicing along the wall: forward, back, run, glide, an accomplished pro myself, a team member who was not showing off but rather refining her technique. William, sitting on the floor with a book in his lap was squinting at me and his eyebrows were raised, too, and his forehead furrowed, all of that musculature at work at once. As if to say, Really, Frankie?
Brianna didn’t hang back. She didn’t even wait for my mother to introduce her. “Okay, guys,” she said, clapping, approaching the whiteboard. “Listen up.”
Listen up? I turned to William, to make our gawking face. He, however, was gazing at our neighbor.
She smoothed her hair only to the base of her neck. “I’m Brianna Kraselnik, your choreographer. I know some of you have worked together before, so, wow, this is awesome, all of you showing up. And we’ve got some new members, right?” She smiled at Ramona Peterson, a third grader, and her friend Brittany Garner. Somehow, like a teacher with a magical list, Brianna knew our names and situations. Before she could say anything more the Bershek twins in their size seventeen tennis shoes came tromping into the room.
“Hola, ballerinas!” she called to them. “Just in time to show off your talents!”
The Bersheks were impossible to tell apart, both of them with sandy hair and glasses, both wearing the same style from head to toe, as if they had no interest in making it easy for anyone to know which was which. They always helped us with our hay, and it seemed a bizarre coincidence that Brianna knew boys that in summer were so important to us. “You,” she said severely, “you bad bad boys, you juvenile delinquents, better behave yourselves.” And then she squealed, a high-pitched mocking laugh, although what she was making fun of wasn’t clear.