Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

by Judy Blume

  Jennifer is small with brown and white spots and long ears. When Libby saw her she cried, “Oh, what an adorable dog!”

  “She comes with the house,” Daddy said. “She belongs to Professor Egran and she’s ours for the summer.”

  “I’m going back to the car,” I said.

  Daddy held my arm. “She can’t hurt you.”

  “Oh sure,” I said, pulling away from him. “But I’ll just wait in the car until you decide what to do with her. Because I’m not staying here if she does!” I ran down the road, jumped into our car, and started to shake. How could they do this to me? Their own child. Their own younger daughter. Didn’t they understand? Didn’t they care?

  Daddy and Mom hurried to the car. Mom stuck her head in the open window. “Sheila,” she said, “Jennifer is very small. She’s more afraid of you than you are of her.”

  “Did she tell you that?” I asked.

  Daddy said, “She’s got a doghouse and a fenced-in area. She’s chained up. You don’t have to go near her.”

  “Suppose she gets away?” I asked. “Suppose her chain breaks?”

  “That won’t happen,” Daddy said. “But even if it did, someone would catch her.”

  “You’re just saying that!” I told Daddy. “But you don’t mean it.”

  “Have we ever lied to you?” Mom asked.

  “Well . . . no.”

  “Then trust us,” Daddy said.

  I looked out the car window. Libby was cuddling Jennifer. “You promise she’ll never come into the house?”

  “I promise,” Daddy said. “She’s got everything she needs outside.”

  “And you won’t make me go near her?”

  “Of course not,” Mom said. “You can even pretend she’s not there if you want.”

  “And you won’t make fun of me?”

  “Do we ever make fun of you?” Daddy asked.

  “Libby does,” I said.

  “We’ll see that she doesn’t,” Mom promised.

  “Now, don’t you want to come into the house and see your very own bedroom?” Daddy asked.

  “Well . . . I guess so,” I said, getting out of the car.

  We walked up the front lawn to the house. Libby was still holding Jennifer. When Jennifer saw me coming she jumped off Libby’s lap. She barked and barked.

  “You see!” I cried, turning around, ready to run back to the car. “She hates me already!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Daddy said. He took my hand.

  “I’m not being silly. Why else would she bark like that?”

  “Because she doesn’t know you,” Mom said, putting an arm around me.

  “And she’s never going to, either. I’ll tell you that!”

  We went into the house. The downstairs looked pretty nice, but I wanted to see my bedroom. So Daddy and I went upstairs while Libby and Mom poked around in the kitchen.

  Daddy turned right at the top of the stairs and walked down the hall. “Two of the bedrooms are this way and the other two are that way,” Daddy said, pointing. “Since you wanted to be far away from Libby I thought you might like this one.” Daddy pushed open a door and smiled.

  I went in. The first thing I saw was the dresser. It was piled with models of planes, boats, and cars. And the walls were full of team pennants. There wasn’t even a bedspread on the bed. Just an ugly old gray blanket with CAMP KENABEC printed across it. I opened the closet door. The shelves were loaded with sports equipment. And where was my soft, fluffy, yellow rug with the big rose in the middle? No place. The floor was bare!

  Daddy said, “Well. . . .”

  “I hate it!” I shouted, running out of the room, past Daddy, and down the hall. I looked into the other bedrooms. But they were all the same.

  “They’re all boys’ rooms!” I cried.

  Daddy followed me and said, “Well, of course they are. Professor Egran has three sons.”

  When I heard that I got so mad I kicked a closet door and made a mark on it. Mom came upstairs then and said that wasn’t a very nice thing to do in somebody else’s house. Maybe it wasn’t, but I didn’t care.

  Libby wasn’t disappointed when she saw her bedroom. She doesn’t mind having a boy’s room. She loves it! She says it makes her feel very close to Professor Egran’s fifteen-year-old son. Daddy says my room belongs to his twelve-year-old son. But if I hate it that much I can have the room which belongs to his three-year-old son, even though it’s much smaller. I told him, “No thank you. I’d rather sleep in a twelve-year-old’s room than one that belongs to a baby.”

  Mom said if we hurried and unpacked we could go for a ride around Tarrytown. So I went to my room and put my clothes away. When I opened the desk drawers I found six tubes of Testor’s glue, twenty-seven bottles of model paint, and a note. It said:

  WARNING TO WHOEVER USES THIS ROOM.

  I HATE GIRLS! SO IF YOU ARE ONE LOOK OUT!

  AND IF YOU TOUCH ANY OF MY MODELS I WILL

  GET YOU SOMEDAY!!!

  B.E.

  “Ha ha ha,” I said, ripping the note into tiny pieces.

  * * *

  After supper Daddy drove us around Tarrytown. It is a very hilly place. When you get up high you can look down and see the Hudson River. Of course you can also see it right in New York City. When I was younger I used to climb to the top of the jungle gym and look out at it. There is something about the Hudson River that makes me feel good, even if it is polluted.

  When we came home I got ready for bed. Before I climbed in I looked out my window. And what was right underneath my room? Jennifer. That dumb old dog! She looked up at me and barked. I barked right back at her. I knew we should have gone to Disneyland.

  I got into bed. My room was very dark. I’m not used to sleeping all by myself in the dark. I closed my eyes but nothing happened. So I got out of bed and turned on the light. That was a little better. Soon the house was quiet. I knew everyone else was sound asleep. I tossed around for a while. Then I tried lying on my back. I looked up at the ceiling. I tried to think of something funny. Something that would give me a good dream.

  That’s when I saw the spider. He was running across my ceiling. I hate spiders! One time Peter Hatcher put a fake spider in my desk at school. When I took out my English book, there it was. But I knew it was a phony right away. So I held it by one leg and took it up to Mrs. Haver. “Just look what Peter Hatcher put inside my desk,” I said, shaking the spider.

  Mrs. Haver screamed so loud she scared the whole class. And Peter Hatcher had to stay after school for three days!

  I looked at my ceiling again. The spider was still there and this one was no phony. “Go away spider!” I whispered. “Please go away and don’t come back.” But the spider didn’t move. He was right over my head. Suppose he falls on me, I thought. Suppose he’s the poisonous kind and when he falls he bites me. Maybe I should put my head under the covers. Then if he falls on me it won’t matter. No, that’s no good either. He could crawl inside the covers and get me anyway. I could just picture Peter Hatcher telling the kids at school, Did you hear about Sheila Tubman? She got bitten by a poisonous spider on her first night in Tarrytown. In twenty seconds she was dead!

  I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall to my parents’ room. Daddy was snoring. I touched him on the shoulder. He sat right up in bed. “What? What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s just me, Daddy,” I told him.

  “Sheila . . . what do you want? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I can’t sleep, Daddy. There’s a spider on my ceiling.”

  Mom rolled over. She made a noise like ummm.

  “Shush,” Daddy said. “Go back to bed. I’ll get it in the morning.”

  “But, Daddy, he could fall on me. Maybe he’s poisonous.”

  “
Oh . . . all right,” Daddy said, kicking off the covers.

  We walked down the hall together. “How did you notice a spider on your ceiling in the middle of the night?” Daddy asked.

  “I have my light on.”

  Daddy didn’t ask me why.

  When we got to my room he said, “Okay, where’s your spider?”

  At first I didn’t see him. But then he started running across my ceiling. “There he is!” I pointed. “You see?”

  Daddy picked up one of my shoes.

  “Hurry,” I said.

  Daddy stood on my bed, but when he smacked my shoe against the ceiling the spider ran the other way.

  I tried to help. I gave him directions. “That’s it,” I called. “Now just a little to the left. No, no, now to the right. Hit him, Daddy! Hit him now!”

  But Daddy missed every time. He was running up and down my bed, but the spider ran faster.

  Just as Daddy said, “I give up,” he got him. Squish . . . that was the end of my spider. There was a big black mark on the ceiling. But I felt a whole lot better.

  “Now, would you please go back to sleep!” Daddy said.

  “I’ll try.”

  “And if you find anything else unusual . . . tell me about it in the morning.”

  “Okay,” I said, snuggling under the covers.

  I think I fell asleep then. But a few hours later I woke up. I heard this really scary noise. It sounded like whooo whooo whooo. I didn’t know what to do. I buried my head under the pillow, but that didn’t help. I could still hear it. I thought about what it might be—a ghost, or a vampire, or even an ordinary monster.

  I got up and ran back down the hall. Daddy was snoring much louder now. This time I walked around to Mom’s side of the bed and shook her a little. She jumped up.

  “Oh, Sheila!” she said, when she saw who it was. “You scared me!”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a noise in my room,” I said.

  “Go back to sleep,” Mom told me. “It’s nothing.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “You haven’t heard it. It sounds like a ghost.”

  “There aren’t any ghosts!”

  “Please, Mom, please come and see.”

  “Oh . . . all right.” She put on her robe and we went down the hall to my room. “Well,” Mom said, “where’s your noise?”

  “Just wait,” I told her.

  She sat down on my bed and yawned. Soon it started again. Whooo . . . whooo. . . .

  “You see?” I said, throwing my arms around Mom. I could tell from her face that she didn’t like the noise either. “You want me to go wake Daddy?” I asked.

  “No, not yet,” Mom said. “First I’ll have a look around myself. Hand me that baseball bat in the corner.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Just in case,” Mom said.

  I gave Mom the bat. She held it like she was ready to use it. We waited until we heard the noise again. Whooo . . . whooo . . . whooo. . . .

  “That’s coming from outside,” Mom said.

  “So it’s an outside ghost,” I told her.

  She went to the window. She stood there for a minute before she started to laugh.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “Oh, Sheila . . . just look!”

  I hid behind her and peeked out the window. There was a beautiful silver moon. And there was also Jennifer, with her head held high. She was making those noises.

  “What is she doing?” I asked. “Is she crazy?”

  “She’s baying at the moon,” Mom said.

  “What’s baying?”

  “It’s like singing.”

  “You mean she is going to stand there and make that ghost noise all summer?”

  “I think so,” Mom said.

  “I told you to get rid of her, didn’t I?” I said. “Who needs her? Who needs her making scary noises at me?”

  “Come on, Sheila,” Mom said, putting the baseball bat back in the corner. “Get into bed.”

  She tucked me in. I felt very tired.

  “Now go to sleep.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  When Mom left I heard the noise again. Whooo whooo whooo.

  “Oh shut up, you dumb old dog!” I called.

  And she did.

  The next day I meet Mouse Ellis. She is also ten and going into fifth grade. I was sitting on the front steps wondering what to do until it was time to go and register for day camp. Then I saw this girl walking up the road. I watched until she got to the front of my house. She looked at me and waved. I waved back.

  She came up our driveway and over to where I was sitting. She held up a purple yo-yo. “I’m Mouse Ellis, Junior Champion of Tarrytown,” she said. “I can do eleven different tricks without stopping. How many can you do?”

  “I never stopped to count,” I told her.

  She opened her eyes very wide and offered me her yo-yo. “Go ahead and show me,” she said.

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “I’ll bet you can’t do Shotgun six times in a row.”

  “I’ll bet I can,” I told her.

  “Okay, let’s see you do it then.”

  “After you,” I said.

  “Okay.” Mouse wound up her yo-yo, held it close to her hip, and next thing I knew, out it flew, right at me, six times in a row.

  “Very good,” I said.

  She handed me her yo-yo. I examined it all over.

  “It’s a Duncan Imperial,” she told me. “The very best yo-yo made.”

  “It’s not bad,” I said.

  “I’m ready any time you are,” Mouse said.

  I stood up, held the yo-yo to my hip, threw it out, and whacked myself in the head on my first try.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Mouse asked.

  “Oh sure,” I told her. “But I guess I’ll have to tell you the truth now. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings before. But where I come from, yo-yos are for babies. I haven’t done Shotgun for about eight years now. That’s why I missed.”

  Mouse looked at me for a while and I gave her one of my best stares right back. Then she sat down next to me and said, “You’ll never know how glad I am that you moved in for the summer. I’m so sick of those Egran boys!”

  I couldn’t help smiling. She wouldn’t have stayed if she didn’t believe I really was a yo-yoer when I was a little kid. “I’m sleeping in one of the Egran boys’ bedrooms,” I said. “And guess what I found in the desk?”

  “What?” Mouse asked.

  “Six tubes of Testor’s glue and twenty-seven jars of model paint!”

  Mouse laughed. “You must have Bobby’s room. He’s a model maniac.”

  “He left a note for me,” I said. “He signed it B.E.”

  “That’s Bobby!”

  “He wrote that if I touch any of his models he’ll get me someday.”

  “Ha ha!” Mouse said. “He’s all talk.”

  “That’s what I figured. Anyway, who’d want to fool around with his dumb old models?”

  “Not me,” Mouse said. “I’ve got better things to do.”

  “Me too. Say, is your real name Mouse?”

  “No, it’s Merle, but everybody calls me Mouse.”

  “You better watch out,” I said. “My father’s name is really Bertram and everybody still calls him Buzz.”

  “Well, I don’t care if people call me Mouse forever. I like it a whole lot better than Merle. And if you ask me, Buzz is a much better name than Bertram. Bertram sounds awful. Nothing against your father, of course.”

  “I didn’t mean that I don’t like your nickname,” I said. �
�As long as you like to be called Mouse. Personally I think it’s a very nice name. It’s much better than Sheila.”

  “If you don’t like Sheila you should call yourself something else,” Mouse said.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Oh . . . maybe Sugar or Sunny or something like that.”

  “I don’t like Sugar,” I said. “But Sunny sounds pretty good. Sunny Tubman . . . yeah, I kind of like that.”

  “Okay, then that’s what I’ll call you from now on,” Mouse said.

  I told Mouse about Libby then, and how she says Mother and Father and pretends to be very grown-up. And Mouse told me about her little sister Betsy, who still wets the bed every night. We found out we are both going to the same day camp and the same pool.

  In a little while Mouse stood up and started to yo-yo again, and I could see why she is Junior Champion of Tarrytown. While she was showing me her tricks I noticed that her legs were a mess of scabs. I hoped they weren’t catching.

  She must have seen me looking because she said, “They’re leftover mosquito bites. I scratch them until they bleed and then I get scabs. Aren’t they ugly?”

  I didn’t tell her the truth. I said, “They’re not so bad.”

  When Mouse was done with her yo-yo tricks she said, “Let’s take Jennifer for a walk.”

  “Jennifer, the dog, you mean?”

  “Yes. The Egrans always let me walk her. I love dogs.”

  I never make friends with dog-lovers. “Do you have one at your house?” I asked, thinking I might as well find out the truth right away. There was no point in getting to like her if it was all for nothing.

  “No,” Mouse said. “Betsy is allergic to them. She gets hives from dogs.”

  What a great idea. Why didn’t I ever think of saying that? “Me too,” I told Mouse. “I get awful hives from them. You wouldn’t believe how big my hives are. They’d make your scabs look practically invisible, they’re so huge!”

  “Oh, rats!” Mouse said. “I was hoping you and me could take care of Jennifer all summer.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s okay. I guess I’d rather have a girl friend than a dog.”