George Stories by Sharon Goldner

8/14/2019 George Stories by Sharon Goldner

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"George Stories" ©2009 Sharon Goldner

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GEORGE S TORIES

BY SHARON GOLDNER

Siboban’s mother gives beer to the camp bus driver. Hisname is Mr. Edmonds. He is known for his plaid polyesterpants and the cigarette he wears behind his ear. She tellshim not to drink the beer until he gets home. Mr.Edmonds takes his hat off and she thinks he is tipping itthe way gentlemen used to in the olden days. It is that

kind of hat, too, Englishy with an Oliver Twisty brim. Mr.Edmonds is really taking it off to wipe his forehead with atowel he keeps on the dashboard. Then he wipes his face,but doesn’t wipe below his neck. Now Siboban’s motherknows that Mr. Edmonds isn’t tipping his hat to her. He iswiping his sweat off in front of her instead.

Mrs. Silverman is careful that her hand doesn’ttouch his.

Mr. Edmonds takes the beer. There are six pop-topcans held together by plastic nooses. The person whoinvented that way of connecting them probably thinks

they are all that, Siboban observes. It looks likesomething she could have doodled in camp arts andcrafts.

Her mother says, “Well okay then.”

Mr. Edmonds says, “You know it.”

Mrs. Silverman says for Siboban to hurry up alreadybecause Mr. Edmonds has other stops to make.



Siboban whispers to Beth, the only other passenger,“She’s so bossy. I never want to grow up to be her; I’drather be a person instead.”

Siboban waves to Beth when she is standing outsidethe bus. She once asked Beth if it was a weird thing beingthe only one, and Beth said not really because the quietwas nice after a whole day of loud, but what’s really weirdis how she is the last one on the bus in the afternoon butfirst on the bus in the morning. How a person can be

opposites all in one day is what Beth said she sometimesthinks about in the quiet left on the bus ride home.

Some camp days Siboban’s mother is not waiting atthe bus stop, which is really out in front of their house.Some days Siboban walks off the bus into the house byherself. Those are the days that her mother’s soap opera is

at a good part. She can’t miss it. Siboban can’t even say ahello until a commercial. Mrs. Silverman says the soapssave lives because there was this one time that one of thecharacters had a lady check-up at the doctor’s, and thedoctor discovered cancer down in the lady place. Millionsof viewers, Mrs. Silverman quotes from her soap opera

magazine, went to get checked out because the characterdid.

On the days Mrs. Silverman comes to the bus stop,she gives the camp bus driver beer. It started on a Friday,but now Mrs. Silverman does it every time. She alwaystells him not to drink it until he gets home, and everytime he says the same thing, “you know it.” Her motherthinks he should say thank you instead. Siboban is hopingher mother hasn’t decided to teach Mr. Edmonds somemanners. If this is the plan, Siboban thinks, she is just



going to die. The girl on the bus, Beth, lives with hergrandmother. Siboban thinks she is very lucky.

Beth asks about the beer. “Why does your mother

give it to him?” Her voice always sounds like she has acold. Siboban wouldn’t be able to be friends with Beth if they were in school because everyone she knows wouldprobably make fun of Beth. Beth had something wrongwith her when she was born. Siboban guesses that is whyBeth lives with her grandmother: her top lip was born

connected to her nose. It sounds crazy, Siboban thinks,but it is true; she looked it up at the library to confirmwhat Beth had told her. The librarian even asked what didSiboban want with all these medical books. Sibobanreplied, “Research.” The library lady looked weird at herbut left it alone. The books had pictures of people likeBeth. Some of them had operations. Some did not. Bethdid, but the doctors didn’t do such a great job becauseher lip is still not shaped like a lip—it’s shifty and bent. There’s also a scar that runs down from where everythingwas separated but it gets confused with that indentationthing everyone has below their nose. Beth says hergrandmother will let her wear red lipstick when she’s

eighteen. Siboban always looks at her eyes when theytalk. She thinks that’s best.

“I dunno,” is how Siboban answers Beth about thebeer. She debates putting a really inside it. But that mightmake it sound pathetic. Or stupid, because how can a kidnot know their mother, living with her in the same houseall of this time? A kid’s got to know something.

Siboban tries to think fairly on this. Neither parentdrinks, except for the diet cola that lives in the pantry.



There’s even a big extra stash in the basement. Mrs.Silverman is obsessive about it. Mr. Silverman drinkswhatever because that is what Mrs. Silverman buys. Mrs.Silverman runs the house, is what Mr. Silverman says.

“I think she maybe gets it special for Mr. Edmonds,”Siboban says. She unpeels her thigh from the bus seat. Itmakes a sticky smacking sound. Siboban tries it with herother thigh, but that one turns out to be a dud.

Beth suggests Siboban look into the beer situation.“Who ever heard of giving camp people presents? Theywork at the wrong time of year,” Beth says. “It’s notChristmas.”

So Siboban looks everywhere in her house for thebeer. Everything she sees are things she already knew

were there: the old bottle of Manischevitz, a syrupy sweetwine used to toast God at Jewish festivities, standssingular and cold in the basement, its dust not betrayingany non-holiday fingerprints; an old scrapbook filled withpictures of Mrs. Silverman from before she was Mrs.Silverman lies in wait—a yellowed and sage testimony of

truth as to who a person thought they were a very longtime ago; old clothes that don’t fit the people they usedto; and old, broken, ignored toys.

“Where does beer come from?” Siboban asks hermother after a fruitless search. Siboban thinks somebodycould be funny and say from drunk cows but that

wouldn’t be anyone in this house.

“Why are you asking this?” her mother wants toknow. She is eating her afternoon tomato. It is not visible



beneath the heavy hand of pepper and dressing. It diedonce, pinched from the vine. Here it dies a ghastlier deathof smothering and incisors. Mrs. Silverman’s fork chinksagainst the plate—how spines know to react to thesekinds of sounds is uncanny to Siboban. “Is someoneoffering you beer?” Mrs. Silverman opens a diet colabottle. The lid breaks open with a click and thecarbonation sizzles to the top. “What about drugs? Issomeone putting bad ideas into your head?” Mrs.Silverman takes a long swallow. Siboban hears her burp,

even though it’s on the inside.

“You’re not my real mother,” she wants to scream.She says, “No-body’s offering me anything. God. I want toknow why you keep giving beer to Mr. Edmonds. It’sweird.”

Mrs. Silverman expresses relief by becomingdefensive. “It is not weird. Who says it's weird? It’s nice.It’s a very nice thing I am doing. He’s driving that stuffybus. I’m giving him something to take the hot off. Whosays it’s weird? I want to know.”

“I don’t know,” Siboban says. “It’s just—seems—Idon’t know, you shouldn’t be giving him anything.”

“I will do what I want,” Mrs. Silverman establishes.

Siboban tells Beth where babies come from becauseshe has no good information on the beer. Beth doesn’t

claim to already know. She listens to Siboban with theback of her head against the half-open window. Beth’shair sticks up from the whoosh traffic. Both girls go oooh

at the notion of sticking a boy’s you-know-what inside a



girl.

Then Siboban tells Beth the best dirty joke sheknows. A boy named George told her. It is not the kind

the listener has to fake understanding. There is no rabbi,priest, or parrot. The punchline is only a few lines fromthe beginning. Beth’s smile is almost immediate, gettingwider and wider until both it and the punchline explode,and if laughter was a tangible thing, confetti and sparkleswould be everywhere and the girls would be trying to

hide it from Mr. Edmonds.

Siboban tells Beth how George tries to look up herdress at school. How George wears cowboy boots withpointy toes and worn heels everyday. They had spurs buthe had to give them to the principal for safety. When Mr.Edmonds pulls the bus onto Siboban’s street, she finishes

telling Beth quickly how George wants to marry her. Shepromises to tell the rest the next day’s bus ride home.Siboban is making it sound like the George stories arefrom now even though it was way back in the first grade.George doesn’t look at her anymore because she wearsglasses.

Siboban walks down the bus aisle backwards. Sheteeters on turning it into a beauty pageant walk, hopingto provide adequate distraction from the bus dooropening. “More George stories, I promise,” she says.

Mrs. Silverman is standing in her floral housecoat at

the bottom of the bus steps. She is wearing heels. Thesetake away from the lounge appeal of a housecoat.



She has the whole six pack this time, and her line.She adds, “I mean it now,” to demonstrate the rules of gifted beer.

Mr. Edmonds takes the beer “You know it,” Mr.Edmonds says.

Siboban learns that a distraction is only as good asit is long. Beth’s expression hangs outside the open buswindow, as perfect in curvature as a question can get. All

of Siboban’s handiwork on the bus—her regaling of George stories and jokes and the lively manner in whichshe animated herself—falls to the street, mixing with thesummer smells of frisbee, cut lawns that smell like mint,and bus belches and exhaust which temporarily dim outthe sunlight.

Beth’s question still hangs on the bus as it picks upspeed.

Siboban waves. Beth is too far away to see her now.

Inside the house, Mrs. Silverman is switchingchannels, the whiz of people going by in an absurd speedis dizzying. Siboban stands smaller than everything in thepurple kitchen. The refrigerator is taller, the stove isbigger, the cabinets are higher, and the kitchen table iswider. Siboban picks out the toaster because it is the onlything smaller than her. She feels sad to be empowered bya small appliance with toast particles in its crumb tray,

but it’s all she’s got.

“Stop giving beer to Mr. Edmonds,” she says.



An actress is crying on a talk show. A local newsanchor tells what’s coming up on the evening news. Acartoon cat gets run over for the tenth time by a cartoondog in a big truck. A toothpaste commercial is rhymingwhite and bright.

“I want you to stop already,” Siboban says again.“Please.”

Mrs. Silverman has had time to think about

Siboban’s request. She looks at her daughter without eyecontact.

“If I want to give the bus driver some beer, I amgoing to goddamn give him some beer. It’s a very nicething, what I am doing, you hear? I don’t need you tellingme what to do. When you’re a mother, if you don’t want

to give beer to the camp bus driver, then you don’t haveto. There’s a case of Dr. Pepper down in the basementthat nobody likes; at least I’m nice enough not to givehim that.”

Siboban spends the rest of her evening thinking up

George stories. There is George starting a food fight atlunch, getting hit in the eye with a wedge of cheese, andGeorge secretly admiring her Barbie lunch box but shebetter not tell anyone he said that. George playing thecowbells with perfect pitch in music, and George the lastone standing in dodgeball. George is always chosen firstfor teams in gym. George found a baby wolf and is raising

it like a dog. George who holds her hand except not infront of his friends. George telling the kid who alwaysmakes in his pants that it’s just not cool. She has enoughGeorge stories for a couple bus rides.



Somewhere between musical George and dodgeballGeorge, Beth tells Siboban that Mr. Edmonds held a beercan in his one hand while the other hand drove the busyesterday.

“Did he drink any?”

Beth says, “Not yet, but he rolled the can all alonghis face at a red light.” Beth wants to know if they shouldtell somebody.

“Maybe he just wanted to feel the roundness of hisface,” Siboban says. “Sometimes I roll my head back andforth on the floor so I can feel its circle.”

“Oval,” Beth says. “Heads are ovals.”

“Yeah,” Siboban says, figuring round is round. Shedoesn’t mind being corrected by Beth, with her face likethat and all. “George drinks beer,” Siboban says and goesback inside her head to try and figure out where thatcame from.

“Kids don’t drink beer,” Beth says.

“You know George,” Siboban says, and she reveals howGeorge drinks beer and rides his bike; drinks beer andplays ball; drinks beer and defends the weaker kids fromthe bully; drinks beer and makes his own pizza bagels inthe toaster oven; and drinks beer and brushes his teeth.George drinks beer in so many stories that it becomes a

very minor point when Mr. Edmonds one day pops off atop and sloshes the golden grain liquid down. He is verysafe about it; he’s at a red light. He takes one at



a yellow light. Green lights, too.

“You know it,” he says, wiping froth off his lips withthe back of his hand. He looks in the rearview. The one

little girl with the attached lip is looking out the window.Is what she sees much different than what he sees? Thescenery passes out his window, colors and shapes warpedfrom the movement. She is looking without really looking,Mr. Edmonds thinks, and this is a shame how the youngdo, unaware that they are passing time even by being

young. Somewhere, someone is counting.

So Mr. Edmonds slows the bus up some, cars behindhim annoyed. He slows the bus up even more but he’s ata green light now and car horns scream and yell what astupid bus. Some children in back seats learn curse wordcombinations.

“Now I don’t know what they’re teaching you all atthat fancy camp of yours, but I’m going to teach you howto take the time. We’ll do it together. Don’t matter yougot years on me; in this moment we can take the timetogether.”

Mr. Edmonds puts the bus in park on a street that isnot hers. Beth doesn’t know what adrenaline is, that rightnow it’s what is banging through her body with incrediblepunch. All she knows is that Siboban Silverman never toldher any George story like this before.

“Don’t be afraid,” Mr. Edmonds says, walking zigzagto the back of the bus. His calves are bowed, like twoparenthesis, looking like the waddle of the ducks she andher grandmother feed stale bread to. Beth always



wondered if there was a duck alive that had ever tastedbread fresh. She wonders if Mr. Edmonds is to beconsidered a stranger that she is not supposed to talk to.She wonders if you don’t answer a stranger when theytalk to you, is it considered rude behavior, because Bethwon most polite last school year and wishes to keep thehonor.

Mr. Edmond’s zig and zag settles into the bus seatdirectly in front of Beth. He would have his legs stretch

out straight in front of him but their curved nature saysno to this basic straight line geometry.

He does a beer burp. He thinks it sounds louder inhis head, but Beth hears the mouth explosion, too. Mr.Edmonds is grateful that it tastes better than a cola burp.He smiles. He means it to look sincere. He looks at the

girl. She doesn’t look back. He wonders on the politenessof today’s youth—eye contact being so important tosomeone who always keeps their eyes on the road in frontof them. He stares and he thinks it’s okay politeness-wiseto stare when you are seeking something. He noticesBeth’s scars. “What’s that?” he slurs, the beer making a

comfortable presence inside his mouth.

Beth takes her glance from outside the window toMr. Edmonds and back again.

“It’s me,” she says. “It’s just me.”

Mr. Edmonds doesn’t hear her. The beer is in hisears, too. He makes to reach out to her, one fingerpointing, the rest bunched up together—one index fingerlike a horizontal rocket ship, calloused from spinning a



bus steering wheel round and round, and from a lifebefore that.

“What?” Mr. Edmonds asks.

The finger comes through bus time and space.

“It’s me,” Beth screams so she can hear. “It’s mine,”she screams louder.



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George Stories by Sharon Goldner