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mounted the staircases and, at the water fountain on our floor, had treated myself to a long, relaxing drink. (With Pop’s warning whispering in my ears, I took care, of course, to avoid contact with the spout.) The opportunity to get an extra drink had been planned but the opportunity to snoop around Madame’s desk hadn’t been. I just did it without thinking about it first, so it was probably a venial, not a mortal, sin. (Sins that you plan out are worse than sins you just do without thinking about it first.)
    Madame’s grade book lay open on her blotter. Since she’d discontinued Sister Dymphna’s practice of publicly ranking each of us on the left end of the blackboard, I decided to check out the current standings. Rosalie still had the longest string of check-plusses, big surprise, and I was still in second place. But from the look of it, both Oscar L. and MaryAnn H. were closing in on me. Lonny’s check-minuses had put him in dead last place.
    Madame’s top left desk drawer held a collection of stuff that she, and Sister Dymphna before her, had confiscated: a kind of graveyard for squirt guns, wax lips, Lonny’s whoopee cushion, et cetera. There was a Beatles magazine in there, a Jughead comic book, a “Watermelon Pink” lipstick, some packs of Wacky Plaques. And tons of candy: Mounds, Milky Ways, a Sky Bar, a box of malted milk balls. All of the above, plus enough packs of gum to fill the rack down at the lunch counter. I reclaimed the Juicy Fruit I’d lost the week before. “Gum, monsieur ?” Madame had asked, one eyebrow raised. “Or are you chewing your cud?Heh heh heh.” I grabbed the whoopee cushion, too, and hid it in my social studies book, figuring I’d give it back to Lonny once we were safely off school property. I was being a little like Robin Hood, I figured.
    Peering into Madame’s open pocketbook (and shaking it a little), I’d spotted a pink wallet, a pack of brown cigarettes called Gauloises, some keys on a key chain, and two bottles of perfume: that lily-of-the-valley stuff that made me sneeze whenever Madame roamed the aisles to check our seatwork, plus a second kind of perfume called “cognac.”
    Recalling my official mission, I’d grabbed Madame’s sunglasses and turned to go back outside, but then had done an abrupt about-face, curious to check out something I’d seen out of the corner of my eye: a sheet of paper turned face down on Madame’s desk, on the back of which she’d scrawled, in red correcting pencil, Merde! On the bus the day before, a seventh grader named Jacques Lavoisseur had taught Lonny and me some French words that were nevergoing to show up on any of Madame’s mimeographed sheets. I’d forgotten most of them, but for some reason remembered that merde meant shit. I flipped the paper over.
    From what I could figure out, it was some kind of report card for teachers. It had three categories with typed comments under each. Mother Filomina’s signature was at the bottom.
    S ATISFACTORY
Rapport with students seems generally positive.
Bulletin boards are educational and neatly organized. I especially liked your display of the upcoming presidential election. You should note, however, that it is Electoral College, not Collage. Please correct.
    N EEDS I MPROVEMENT
Students should refer to you by your surname, not your given name, as this more formal appellation is more respectful and will result in fewer discipline problems. Speaking of which, were you aware that several of the children were passing notes during your arithmetic lesson, and that Pauline Papelbon was surreptitiously sucking on a Sugar Daddy before I gave her a sharp look?
Fifth grade students should be assigned 60 to 90 minutes of homework per night. Playing outside so as to experience the joy of the natural world should not be considered homework. (I have received calls from parents.)
Please try to dress as demurely as possible. Open-toed high heels and seamed fishnetstockings, for example, are not