Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

Susan slammed her door and didn’t hear anything else from downstairs.

I will not cry I will not cry I will not cry.

She didn’t cry. Instead, she sat down at the desk and wrote on the list. When she was finished, it looked like this:

People who hate me | People who like me

Todd Slover

Mrs. Gray

MOTHER

Creepy Jonathan

FATHER!!!

Vanessa

Raymond

Annabelle

The whole world

The whole universe!!!!!!!

Then, to be fair, she thought for a while about whether anybody liked her. Under “People who like me” she finally wrote, “The dog because he’s too dumb to know how dumb I am and because whenever I spill something which is alot he gets to lick it up.”

Then she thought for a while more and under “People who like me” she wrote in big letters, “GERT FRAM.”

Then Gert Fram started writing another novel. It was called Susan the Jerk. It went like this:

“Once upon a time there was a jerk named Susan. She was the only jerk in the entire world except for the soda jerk and people liked him because they liked soda but they didn’t like Susan because she was also a creep, she was a creep because everytime she did something it was wrong. once she tried to pet a dog but the dog bit her because he didn’t like to be peted. once she tried to vacuum the rug but the vacuum sucked up the whole rug and then the floor and then the whole basement which made everybody mad because they were all in the basement and got sucked up and couldn’t get out until Susan cleaned the dust bag on the vacuum cleaner which she didn’t do right so that everybody yelled at her and made her do all the dishes for a week which wasn’t a good idea because she broke them all.”

Susan stopped and reread what Gert Fram had just written. Boy, wasn’t it the truth!

“They never let Susan go anywhere except with a gag on her mouth because if they didn’t keep her mouth shut she would talk all the time and also they have to tie her up and put her in the corner because she is all the time wiggling and poking people. This is all because Susan is a jerk.”

Gert Fram was beginning to warm up to this.

“Boy is Susan a jerk. She is not only a jerk, she is a jerk with bad manners, she burps and doesn’t say excuse me and kicks people when they are walking by because how was she suppose to know they were going to walk by right then? What a jerk, jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk.”

Gert Fram was running out of paper. It was time to wrap up the novel with a bang. Gert Fram always liked to end her novels with a bang.

“So one day Susan the jerk decided that one jerk on the earth was enough, and it better be the soda jerk because everybody likes him, and so she left the earth and flew off on a rocket. But because Susan was a jerk the rocket crashed and blew up the sun and everybody had to use flashlights all the time from then on because without the sun it was always night and everytime their flashlights ran out of batteries they would shake their fists and yell, boy that Susan is sure a jerk.”

Gert Fram had some space left, so she drew a picture of Susan’s rocket ship crashing into the sun.

Then she got up (with dignity) from the desk and walked to her dresser, where there were a lot of things stacked. There was the china elephant with the broken trunk because she had dropped it. There was the library book that Mother had had to buy because Susan had dropped it in the gutter and the pages had gotten all thick and wrinkly even after they dried. There was the watch with the broken glass because Susan had accidentally scraped it against a cement wall during class break at junior high. There was a ripped picture of Jesus from Sunday School that the teacher had given her because after she ripped it Susan had felt so bad she had cried. This was when she was seven and sometimes let herself cry.

Susan remembered that the Sunday School teacher had hugged her and said, “Hey, Susan, don’t cry like that. You’re sorry you ripped the picture, aren’t you?”

Susan had nodded and said in her squeaky trying-not-to-cry voice, “I didn’t even mean to.”

“I know you didn’t mean to,” said the Sunday School teacher. “And when you say you’re sorry about something, Jesus said that people are supposed to forgive you.”

“I’m sorry,” Susan had said, and cried again, even louder.

The Sunday School teacher gave her an even bigger hug. “That’s all right. I forgive you.”

But Susan had cried even louder.

“Why are you still crying?” asked the Sunday School teacher.

“Because I ripped Jesus’s picture and he’ll be mad at me.”

Susan remembered that the teacher had gotten tears in her eyes. “Jesus is never mad at you,” Susan remembered hearing the teacher tell her. “And to show you, I want you to keep this picture, and every time you see it, you remember that even when you make mistakes Jesus still loves you and forgives you.”

Susan set down the picture on her dresser. If I say I’m sorry maybe they’ll forgive me, she thought.

So she opened the door and started down the stairs. Then she remembered Vanessa and Raymond by the front door and she coughed. She kept coughing all the way down the stairs.

“What is it, you got pneumonia?” said Jonathan, who was sitting in the living room. Vanessa and Raymond were gone. Susan chose to ignore Jonathan’s comment.

Mother was in the kitchen. Father was in the den. Susan decided to go in and say she was sorry to Mother. Then if it went OK she’d go in and say it to Father.

Mother was finishing up the refreshments for the party. She didn’t look up when Susan came into the kitchen, but that never stopped Mother, she always knew when somebody came into the kitchen. “Are you feeling better now, Susan, dear?” Mother asked.

Mother sounded so kind that Susan ran right over and leaned on the counter and said, “Mother, I’m sorry I’ve been acting like such a creep and doing everything wrong and I’m sorry I pulled the stupid petals off the stupid flowers and spilled the lemonade and bought eggs and cut out the crossword puzzle and didn’t announce I was coming and everything.”

Mother looked at her with horror in her eyes. “Susan, for heaven’s sake, look where you’re leaning!”

Susan looked where she was leaning. Her elbows were crushing the jello and whipped cream and pineapple dessert that Mother had all ready for the party. Her elbows were covered with jello. The dessert was completely smashed. Susan looked up at her mother.

“What in the world am I going to do now!” her mother said, wringing her hands. “They’ll all be here in half an hour and there’s not a hope in the world of making anything else! Susan, sometimes I think we ought to build a bomb shelter for all of us to hide in whenever you’re around!” Mother had meant that last sentence to be a kind of joke, but Susan didn’t notice that. She just stood there, deciding not to cry, and then deciding that she couldn’t help it, and then with tears running down her cheeks and her face all crinkled up she ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs and slammed the door.

In the living room Jonathan said, “Well, that’s two slammed doors tonight, tying the world’s record. If we make three slammed doors it’ll be a new champion!”

Mother said, “Jonathan, I’m getting very cross with you.” Then she went upstairs and tapped on Susan’s door.

“Susan,” Mother said.

“Go away and leave me alone,” Susan’s voice said. Susan’s voice sounded like there was a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes and a pillow in front of her face. Mother thought about going in anyway, and then she decided that it was not a good idea. Instead she went to the den and asked Father to go to the store and buy something for dessert for the party tonight.