Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

by Judy Blume

  “Oh sure,” I told her. “If there was something I couldn’t do I’d be the first to admit it.”

  “Me too,” Mouse said. “Like for instance, I can’t turn cartwheels. I’ve tried and tried but I just can’t get my legs up straight. Now, what can’t you do?”

  “Oh, I can’t turn cartwheels either. At least I don’t think I can. I’ve never even tried.”

  “Try now,” Mouse said.

  “Now? What for?”

  “Just to see if you can or you can’t.”

  “I can’t. I’m sure I can’t.”

  “Okay . . . there’s another thing I can’t do,” Mouse said. “I can’t do a backward flip into the pool.”

  “Neither can I,” I told her.

  “Because you can’t swim . . . right?”

  “Well, I don’t swim much and I don’t dive at all.”

  “You mean you can’t.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I can’t dive at all.”

  Mouse smiled. “I brought you something.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.” She reached into her pocket and held up a green yo-yo. She handed it to me. “It’s a genuine Duncan Imperial. The very best there is.”

  “Thanks.” I turned it over and read what it said. “I haven’t had a yo-yo in ages.”

  “Since you were about two, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell you what,” Mouse said, “since you don’t remember much about working it, how would it be if I taught you to do tricks?”

  “Well . . . I really don’t need lessons because I’ll probably remember how to do all my old tricks as soon as I practice a little. But if you want to show me your way I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Good,” Mouse said. “We’ll start tomorrow. I’ve got to go home now. My mother doesn’t like me walking around in the dark.” Mouse turned and started down the front walk.

  I was already planning how I’d be able to tell the kids in the city that my own private yo-yo teacher was none other than the Junior Champion of Tarrytown herself!

  The next day I asked Marty if he could teach me to dive like Betsy Ellis, but without getting my face wet.

  He said, “Impossible!”

  And the more I thought about it the more I knew he was right. So I said we’d have to forget about diving. Marty asked me how I planned to get into the pool when I learned to swim and I told him, “Down the ladder. Same as getting out.”

  I spent three more days just practicing how to kick. Then Marty decided it was time to learn what to do with my arms. He held me in the water and told me to move them back and forth. I was so scared I held onto Marty with one arm and only moved the other. He said that was okay. That he had plenty of time. Two months, if necessary. Because my mother told him not to rush me. She didn’t want me to get more afraid than I already was. And she said she would pay for lessons all summer if she had to. Because she had a feeling that fifteen lessons weren’t going to be enough. But I’d better know how to swim by then or she’d want her money back. And Marty had promised her I would. He really needs the money for college, he told me, like I shouldn’t let him down.

  So I said, “Okay . . .” and I tried letting go of him. He kept his hand under me so I wouldn’t get scared and stop trying. But whenever I used my arms I forgot about my legs. And when I remembered and started to kick I forgot about using my arms.

  I think Marty almost gave up on me today.

  After my lesson I joined Mouse and some of the other kids. The thing I hate most is when one kid dunks another. The only way to avoid that is to stay out of the water, which is what I do. Mouse says everyone knows that I am a beginner and no one would dunk me, but I am not so sure!

  Libby has a crush on a lifeguard named Freddie. He has very hairy legs. Libby says he is just the most terrific boy she has ever met. But Libby says that about every boy she meets. She hangs around his lifeguard chair all afternoon and when he is off duty she runs to get him a soda. My mother says he is much too old for her and she should find some friends her own age. Then Libby cries, “But, Mother, he’s only seventeen and I am practically fourteen and that’s just perfect!” My mother doesn’t think so. And she says if Libby keeps pestering him he could lose his job.

  The Sunday after Mom said that Freddie brought a friend to the pool. She sat next to his lifeguard chair all afternoon. She is much older than Libby. I would say she is at least sixteen. And she doesn’t look like a skeleton in her bikini either.

  Now Libby stays away from Freddie. She says she never really liked him anyway. And who wants a boyfriend with all that hair on his legs?

  “Ha ha,” I said.

  Libby gave me a kick.

  We go to day camp every weekday, from 9:00 until 3:00. Then we go to the pool from 3:30 to 5:30. We are always so busy going somewhere that I can’t believe we have been in Tarrytown for two whole weeks.

  One night, before Daddy got home, I arranged my shoes in the front hall with the toes pointing toward the den. Then I hid behind the drapes and waited. But between the den and the front hall was the living room and dining room. I heard Daddy come into the house and call, “Hello . . . I’m home.” I hoped when he saw my shoes he would come and find me right away, because there weren’t any lights on in the den and the sky was getting darker every second. It was beginning to thunder. I don’t like thunderstorms. Daddy has told me a million times that the lightning isn’t going to get me and I want to believe him, but I can’t.

  I never should have hidden so far away. I should have gone into the closet in the front hall. Then I’d have been near the kitchen, where Libby and Mom were. I wondered what was taking Daddy so long. And what were those funny noises? I wished somebody would turn on the lights.

  I wasn’t having fun at all! Maybe Daddy had forgotten about me. Maybe he wasn’t even looking. I decided then and there that I would have to tell him I don’t want to play this game anymore. Not in this house! I hoped he wouldn’t think it was because I’m chicken. That’s what Libby would say. She’d make her cackling noise and laugh at me.

  When I couldn’t stand it behind the drapes for another second I crawled out and made my way back into the living room on all fours. Finally Mom shouted, “Sheila, come out right now or dinner will be ruined!” I was really happy when she said that. I ran into the kitchen and told Daddy if it is going to take him that long to find me every night we’ll never get to eat. So he agreed that we will stop our game for the summer. Now Libby will never know the truth, so she won’t have to call me chicken.

  Every night after dinner Daddy unchains Jennifer and lets her run around loose. He says she needs the exercise. She tears around the yard yelping. I watch from my bedroom window. Daddy and Libby and Jennifer have a lot of fun playing games. Libby throws a ball and Jennifer catches it in her mouth. And Daddy has taught her to roll over and play dead. Both Mom and Daddy say I am silly to hide upstairs and miss all the fun. Well, maybe I am, but I just can’t help it. I wonder why I had to be born like me instead of like Libby, who isn’t afraid of anything. Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair.

  At least I am getting used to sleeping in a room by myself. I’m not so scared at night now. I just make sure that my ear is always covered with the blanket. I don’t know why, but I can’t stand having my ear sticking out when I sleep.

  Anyway, this house is not nearly as spooky as Mouse’s. Hers is much bigger and much older. They don’t even use all the rooms upstairs. I asked Mouse if it scares her to live in a place like that. And she said she never thought about it. She has always lived in the same house and before that her mother’s family lived in it, and someday she might get married and live there too. She said a long time ago Washington Irving slept in her house.

  “Who’s he?” I asked. “Is he related to George?” I laughed at my own joke.
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br />   “You mean you don’t know about Washington Irving?”

  “No. I never even heard of him,” I told her.

  “You mean you are going into fifth grade and you still never heard about Washington Irving?”

  “I told you . . . no! Who is he, anyway?”

  “Well, I just can’t believe it,” Mouse said. “What’s wrong with those schools in New York City?”

  “If you know so much about him, why don’t you tell me who he is at least?”

  “Oh, I will, I will . . . I just can’t believe that you don’t already know, that’s all,” Mouse said.

  “Go on,” I told her. “I’m listening.”

  “Well . . . he was a very famous writer.”

  “What did he write?” I asked.

  “Oh, he wrote ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’”

  “I heard of Rip Van Winkle,” I said. “He slept for a long time. But I never heard about Sleepy Hollow.”

  “You never heard about Sleepy Hollow and Ichabod Crane?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You people in Tarrytown have a lot of useless information. If this Ichabod Crane was so important, I’d have heard about him in New York.”

  “Well . . . all I can tell you is that the Headless Horseman rode right through here,” Mouse said, spreading her arms. “Right through Tarrytown. So naturally it’s important to us. How many towns do you think have a Headless Horseman riding through them?”

  “What do you mean, headless?” I asked.

  “Oh, he was this man on a horse and he had no head and Ichabod Crane saw him and got very scared.”

  “But it’s just a story, right? I mean, there’s no such thing as a Headless Horseman!”

  “Well . . .” Mouse said. “It’s kind of a story, but I believe it. In fact, I’ve heard him around here lately. Haven’t you?”

  “Heard what?”

  “The Headless Horseman! If you listen at night you can hear this eerie noise. And that’s him—haunting Tarrytown.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “I don’t care if you do or you don’t. People who live in Tarrytown all year long know it’s the truth!”

  “What does he do?” I asked. “Does he kill people?”

  “Oh no! Nothing like that. He just rides around haunting. You know, like a ghost.”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I said.

  “Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t.”

  I had a lot of trouble sleeping after Mouse told me that. I asked my father did he know about Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman and he said, “Sure, it’s a very famous story.”

  “Do you believe it?” I asked.

  “It’s just a story, Sheila.”

  “But there might be a Headless Horseman!”

  “No, no. Washington Irving invented him.”

  “But he lived around here, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but so what?”

  “Well,” I said, “suppose he really saw this Headless Horseman and thought nobody would believe him, so instead he wrote a story about him. You see?”

  “No, I don’t see,” Daddy said. “It’s all made up. I’ll bring you a book of his stories and you can read them. Then you’ll understand.”

  “No!” I shouted. “I don’t want to read about any Headless Horseman.”

  After that, whenever I heard noises at night, I knew it was the Headless Horseman haunting Tarrytown. I wished it was September and we could go back to the city where there isn’t room for any kind of horseman to go haunting at night.

  One gray, cloudy Saturday afternoon Mrs. Ellis said she had to do some shopping. Mouse didn’t want to go so her mother said she could stay at our house. Mouse gave me yo-yo lessons for half an hour, and all that time I wished there was something I could do better than Mouse and the other kids in Tarrytown. If only they had to live in the city for a month, I thought. Then I’d show them plenty! Probably not one of them could take a crosstown bus without getting lost!

  When we got tired of yo-yoing Mouse said, “Let’s call the twins and see if they can come over.”

  The twins are Sondra and Jane Van Arden. They swim at the pool too. They don’t look anything alike. Sondra is very shy and quiet and she always looks at your feet when you talk to her. They are both pretty good swimmers, but I have never seen Sondra dunk anyone. That’s why I like her better than Jane.

  When Mouse called them they said they would be right over because if they stayed home their mother was going to make them clean out their closets.

  When they got to my house we had a snack of Oreos and milk. Sondra and Jane open their cookies and eat all the icing first. I used to do that but Libby said I was disgusting. When we were finished with our snack Mouse said, “Want to play indoor hide-and-seek?”

  “Hey, yeah,” Jane said. “At your house, Mouse!”

  “But we can’t,” I said. “Her mother isn’t home.”

  Mouse and Jane laughed then and Sondra said, “There’s a special way to get into the Mouse House when her mother isn’t home.”

  “And just wait till you see it!” Jane said.

  So we walked down the road to Mouse’s and when we got there the girls showed me the milk door. It’s a small door on the side of the house, near the kitchen. Mouse unlatched it and said, “See, this is where the milkman puts our stuff. My mother never has to go outside to get it. Isn’t that neat?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s really neat. It’s kind of a built-in milk box!”

  “Right!” Jane said. “Only it’s not a box, because it leads right into the house.”

  Mouse boosted Jane up and Jane crawled through the milk door. Then Sondra boosted Mouse and she crawled through. I gave Sondra a boost and was wondering who would boost me when Sondra cried, “Help . . . I’m stuck!”

  “You can’t be,” Mouse said.

  “I am!” Sondra yelled. “I really am!”

  “You need to go on a diet!” Jane called from inside.

  “Please do something!” Sondra begged.

  Since I was the only one left on the outside I pulled Sondra’s legs, trying to get her to back out. When that didn’t work, Jane and Mouse pulled from the inside, hoping to get her through the milk door. But nothing happened.

  Sondra cried, “I’m doomed! I’ll be here forever.”

  Jane said we should call the Fire Department and let them chop her out, but Mouse said her mother might get mad about that.

  I could see that unless I took charge of the situation nothing would get done. So I said, “Mouse, you and Jane open the regular door and help me on the outside.”

  “I never thought of that,” Mouse said.

  “You should have,” I told her. “Because if you had been the only one to crawl through the milk door in the first place, none of this would have happened. You could have unlocked the back door and we would have walked in like any other human beings.”

  Mouse didn’t answer me, but she and Jane did what I told them to and joined me on the outside. “Okay,” I said, “now pull Sondra by the legs.”

  All three of us pulled as hard as we could, but she still wouldn’t budge. “We need rope. Do you have any?” I asked Mouse.

  “I think so,” she said. “In the garage.”

  “Well . . . don’t just stand there. Go get it!”

  Mouse ran to the garage and came back with the rope. I tied it onto Sondra’s ankles and we all pulled and pulled until we got her out. By that time she was crying for real and her ankles were full of rope burns.

  “We’ve got to carry her inside now,” I said. “I’ll take her arms. Mouse, you take her legs and Jane, you grab her middle.”

  As we were carrying her into the house Sond
ra kept screaming, “Put me down! Put me down!” Some people don’t know when other people are trying to help them!

  We got her into the kitchen and put her down on the floor. Mouse said, “Her legs are a mess. The bandages are upstairs. We better get her up there too.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “You go get the bandages and some first-aid cream and we’ll fix her up down here.”

  So Mouse ran upstairs and came back with a million little tubes and bottles and bandages and we all played doctor, fixing Sondra up. Of course I was the only one who knew just which medicine to put on each of Sondra’s wounds. So I was really the main doctor and the others were my assistants.

  We must have done a good job because Sondra stopped crying and said her legs felt much better. She even managed to walk up the stairs so we could start our game of hide-and-seek.

  Mouse told Sondra she didn’t have to be It because she had already suffered enough. The only rules to indoor hide-and-seek were, we had to stay upstairs and the attic was off limits. Home Base was the sink in the hall bathroom.

  We did once-twice-three shoot to see who would be It first. I lost. I hate to be It, especially in a strange place. I always get this creepy feeling. And I’ve never played hide-and-seek inside before, except with Daddy, and that’s not the same at all because nobody’s going to pop out from under something and scare me.

  But I closed my eyes and counted to seventy-five before I hollered, “Ready or not . . . here I come!” I was supposed to count to one hundred, but I’m sure nobody noticed. If they did I would just tell them I am a very fast counter.

  The house was quiet, except for some squeaks now and then. I wanted to find the others in a hurry so I wouldn’t be all alone. I walked from bedroom to bedroom but I didn’t search under the beds or in the closets. I was afraid of what I might find. Suppose Washington Irving left something behind when he slept here a hundred years ago? I wonder if the Headless Horseman ever comes inside houses. If he does, I know he would choose this one, because it’s so old he would feel at home. I went into Betsy’s room. Ootch was on her bed. I made a lot of noise, hoping one of the others would hear me and laugh. But no one did. Just as I was coming out of Betsy’s room Jane made a mad dash for the hall bathroom and yelled, “Home-free-all!”