Molly, pt. 1
“Just paint, guys, this is a Fun Day. Just paint.”
Everybody was mad.
All the fourth-grade kids knew Molly was hyper and clumsy and kinda useless, that’s why no one wanted to sit with her goofy ass. That’s why the critical mass of the room shifted in atomic unison away from Molly and toward the windows and exits as soon as Mrs. Ortiz started counting off.
Molly just smiled agape and glowing like the sun was about to fly out of her mouth.
Even Mrs. Ortiz knew what the deal was here. Basically: Watch her close, hide all fragile objects and cherished articles of clothing.
After Mrs. Ortiz finished assigning everyone into groups, five kids to a table, her lips turned mild and plaintive as she watched Caprice huffing affronted and rolling her eyes and twirling in place next to her stool like a pissed-off backup dancer.
Molly was just happy to be here.
Gnawing the butt of a Wild Strawberry crayon. Stuffing said crayon up a nostril or two. Repeat.
Molly was psyched.
Mrs. Ortiz shoved the huge roll of glossy grey sheeting from one end of the table to the horizon, where Caprice stood eager and ready to catch the roll so it wouldn’t fall to the floor. Before Caprice could indeed catch the cylinder tumbling inbound, Molly slapped it mid-table to a slanted halt, and then she bowed forward with a hearty breathless squeal, basically daring anyone to believe for a second that art class would proceed as planned.
Mrs. Ortiz looked over to Corey, least visibly distressed of Table 4, like, sucks for you guys, I’m sorry.
Table 4 was Molly, Tyler, Caprice, Molly II (all the kids called her Maw), and Corey.
Acrylics. Simple shit. Mrs. Ortiz stacked six wide-mouthed plastic jars at the center of all five tables, and she let the kids squirt all the different colors into the bowls from the cruddy translucent ketchup bottles. Molly sniffed the tip and unscrewed the cap and plowed her nose as deep as it would go. All four of the rest of the kids at the table knew that, if only for a second, Molly was for real thinking, Why does this ketchup smell like paint, and how’d they get it so green?
Maw was sitting on the stool closest to Molly and sharing that side of the table with Molly’s lebensraum-chomping elbow. Already Maw was pretty annoyed, you could tell, not saying much and just trying to focusfocusfocus on the paper and get her paint on. Teasing her thin undipped brush in contemplative sketch an inch over the parchment’s grainy face, her tongue peeking stiff through her thin pinched lips, Maw was quiet and hunched and severe. But Maw was always quiet and hunched and severe, even on Fun Days. No, it was Maw’s wide-eyed flinching whenever Molly’s shoulders swiveled even an inch to or fro on the stool, Maw’s remarkably sharp PreTSD reflexes, that hinted Maw’s fear both for her life and for her crisp super cute black dress with the big brown buttons.
Just paint, guys, this is a Fun Day. Just paint.
This really was not that hard. This really should not have posed any problems. But ten minutes in, with a pent flick of her wrist while she was etching a purple mustache onto (what some may have discerned as) a lion, Molly knocked the jar of candy red paint onto its side and flooded the table with a quick-seeping flesh wound. Soaked the edges of all their paintings except Maw’s, even though Maw’s was closest, because Maw had all along been gauging Molly’s blast radius.
Man down: Caprice.
Caprice sprung from the stool and hollered, “Mrs. Ortiz, she done got paint all over my jeans!” Caprice did not identify who she was, nor did Mrs. Ortiz need Caprice to do so.
“It’s okay, it’s okay—” rushing over with a roll of paper towels clutched in her hands like a steamroller front, Mrs. Ortiz hushed Caprice by her own loud mimicry of a whisper, “Don’t worry, it’s washable, it’s washable. It’s okay.”
Though Caprice sustained a homicidal glare despite Mrs. Ortiz’s managing to swipe most of the red blotch from her knee with a wet paper towel, across the table Molly was sufficiently assuaged: That it was okay.
Molly got back to painting that lion a full head of hair.
For the rest of class Table 4 didn’t talk.
Molly didn’t talk, but she didn’t really notice that she wasn’t talking, through all that drippy grinning, cast downward along with an intermittent trickle of snot that bored a muddy hole in the steep blue slope of one of her mountains. She was just too busy with / proud of her bizarro lion and the flock of green fish that she’d smeared across her crowded skyline, which also featured a blunt yellow sun and a leaking blue moon, all at once and an inch apart.
Only Corey and Maw (and Molly) were still trying to paint at this point. Caprice and Tyler were both like, Wow, just staring blank at their pages and shaking their heads for half an hour.
While Table 4 wasn’t talking, four of the five were thinking and grunting. And they all knew what they were thinking and grunting about: all the reasons why they hated Molly Welsh.
Molly wore high-water overalls.
Molly had a big-ass forehead.
Always, Molly would kick her shoes off in class, and her socks stank like old salad dressing.
Nine times out of ten Molly was the reason you weren’t getting recess today.
Molly never apologized for ruining things.
Molly ruined everything.
That was it for the most part.
That was fourth grade.
