~ Delta Poetry Review ~

David Armand

Ball

The last day of school before Christmas break begins:

all the kids in Miss Guy’s second grade class sitting

around a table with a little tree on top, presents waiting

beneath it, wrapped and numbered so that their distribution

would be random, like a lottery. The only rules had been

to spend no less than five dollars but no more than ten, to be sure

your gift was wrapped nicely so that everyone would find

something special to open when their number was called.

It all seemed simple enough. But there was one present,

wrapped in stained comic book paper, which looked

more like wadded up trash under the tree, an afterthought

someone had at the bus stop that morning, a last minute

effort—if you could even call it that—the number “four”

taped to its crumpled side.

                                          Surely, everyone was wondering

who would get that unfortunate slip of paper, thus matching

them to the only gift that was so poorly, carelessly wrapped,

and which just had to be a reflection of what was inside,

becoming, somehow, to the eight-year-old child that got it,

a reflection of them as well, a complete and total humiliation.

Miss Guy started passing out the slips of folded loose leaf paper,

on which she had written random numbers in pencil; she told

the children not to open them until they all had one. Be patient,

she said. Some of the mothers watched from the side of the class,

likely wondering which of their lot was responsible for that gift,

which seemed to be waiting there like a burl on the side of a tree,

something you’d shoot at with a pellet gun on a cold winter morning.

Once each child had a slip of paper, Miss Guy told the kids to open

them, one at a time, to look at their number, then go up to the tree

and get their gift that matched what she had written on the paper.

After that, they were to all sit back down and wait for everyone

else to have their present, before they all opened them at once.

But all the people in the classroom seemed more interested

in who had gotten that number four–who the unlucky kid would be–

than they did the presents that sat before them on the floor.

Finally a boy walked up (he must have drawn that unlucky four),

picked up the crumpled gift, took it back to his place, and waited

for the teacher to say they could all open their presents.

                                                                        It was a tableau.

No one moved. They all watched the kid with the number four

and that ominous gift, wrapped in a piece of comic book paper.

to see what was inside, what he had gotten

in exchange for what he had given. He looked at them, then tore

open the wrapping.

                               It was a ball. A deflated rubber ball—

with a hole in it. He wanted to cry, not because of disappointment

or anything like that (he knew he’d get more presents at home

on Christmas), but because he knew the other kids would laugh

at him and that even after the holidays they’d still remember

and laugh at him again. Kids in second grade are relentless

when it comes to things like that. They have been ever since

second grade existed and will likely always be that way.

All the kids knew by now who had given the gift, and why:

his name was Adrian and he was poor. Really they all were,

but Adrian was even more poor than they were.

And that was a sad fact that no one in the class

wanted to address. So they focused their attention on him,

the boy who got the deflated ball and who set it beside his leg

as the other kids finally tore open their gifts: G.I. Joes, Silly

Putty, puzzles, Rubik’s cubes, toys that wouldn’t get you

made fun of for getting them. And the boy who had given

the deflated ball as his contribution, wrapped in comic paper,

he got one of the best gifts of all. It doesn’t matter now

what it was, but you have to wonder if he felt guilty

or shamed. Or what he felt.

                                             The other kids seemed to forget

all of this temporarily as they played with their new toys,

all except the boy who had gotten that ball. He just got up

to go back to his desk and wait for the day to be over with

so he could go home and throw the ball in the trash.

I know it won’t surprise you by now if I told you

that I was the boy who got that deflated ball that year.

Though maybe that doesn’t even matter now. You see,

I could have just as easily been the boy who gave it

(my family was poor too) so I understood, in a way.

But still. Here I am, more than thirty years later, thinking

about that deflated ball I got for Christmas one year

and wondering what the meaning of all that was.

God, what is it we’re supposed to learn from all this pain?

David Armand was born and raised in Louisiana. From 2017–2019, he served as writer-in-residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he is currently assistant professor of creative writing. An award-winning author, including the 2022 Louisiana Writer Award, Armand has published four novels, three collections of poetry, a memoir, and a collection of essays. Website: www.davidarmandauthor.com