You're a Brave Man, Julius Zimmerman

by Claudia Mills

  This week’s list seemed even more gruesome than last week’s. Week two of summer vacation looked as if it was going to be, if anything, worse than week one.

  * * *

  On Monday, Julius and Ethan passed Lizzie as they biked together to West Creek Middle School. She was walking. Julius had never seen Lizzie on a bike. Maybe she was the only kid in Colorado who couldn’t ride one, just as last year she had been the only kid in Colorado who couldn’t light a match to start the bunsen burner in science class.

  Lizzie caught up with them while they waited at the next traffic light. “Hi,” Julius said, to break the awkward silence.

  “Hi,” Ethan echoed.

  Lizzie flushed with pleasure. Julius thought she’d probably sit all morning writing “Hi” over and over again in the notebook she always carried with her.

  The light was taking a long time to change. Ethan was beginning to get the desperate, trapped look he often got around Lizzie. Julius tried to help out. “How’s it going?” he asked her.

  “Wonderful! Don’t you love French? I dreamed I was in Paris last night, living in a garret on the Left Bank, in the Latin Quarter, selling flowers on the streets all day and then writing poetry all night. By the light of one flickering candle.”

  “They have electricity in France,” Julius couldn’t resist pointing out.

  “In my dream they didn’t. Maybe it was long-ago Paris, like in La Bohème, or maybe I couldn’t afford electricity because I was so poor and nobody would buy the flowers I was selling.”

  She paused. “Except you, Ethan. You were in my dream, too, and you were the only person who bought any flowers from me.”

  “The light’s green now,” Ethan said in a strangled voice.

  “See you later,” Julius said for both of them as they pushed off, Ethan in the lead, pedaling as furiously as a rider in the final time trial in the Tour de France.

  Julius didn’t usually tease Ethan about Lizzie—Ethan got teased enough by the other kids—but this time he couldn’t help himself.

  “What kind of flowers did you buy from her?” he asked when they were locking their bikes.

  Ethan punched him in the arm. “Cut it out.”

  Lizzie arrived a few minutes later. “You bought a bouquet of purple violets,” she said to Ethan, as if the conversation at the traffic light had never been interrupted. “One small bunch of half-wilted purple violets.”

  Julius noticed then that Lizzie was wearing a wilted-looking artificial violet in her bright red, curly hair.

  * * *

  That day they were learning the French words for the parts of the body. La tête. The head. La main. The hand. Le pied. The foot.

  “Now we will play un petit jeu, a little game,” Madame Cowper announced. “I believe you all know how to play it. Allons, debout! Get up, everybody! You will form a circle, un cercle. And we will play la version française of le Hokey Pokey.”

  The first question that occurred to Julius was: Is this really happening? Were they really going to put their right pied in, take their right pied out, put their right pied in, and shake it all about?

  Apparently they were. Madame Cowper produced a portable tape player, and pushed the play button, and the familiar music for the Hokey Pokey began to fill the room, only whoever was singing it was singing it in French. Julius tried to listen for words he knew, the parts-of-the-body words, but they were all jumbled together with the words for put, in, and shake it all about. It was easier to watch Madame Cowper and do what she did.

  But Julius almost couldn’t bear to watch her shaking different body parts all about. Instead he watched his classmates. Ethan wasn’t as good at the Hokey Pokey as he was at frying bacon. He kept getting his body parts in and out a second after everybody else.

  Lizzie had managed to find a place next to Ethan in the circle. Julius could tell she was really listening to the tape and trying to hear the announcement of each body part as it came. Her face wore the look of rapt concentration that it did when she was writing her poems.

  Alex and Marcia were laughing so hard they could barely turn themselves around for the last line of each verse. The more Madame Cowper shook, the more they laughed. Julius hoped she thought they were laughing at the silliness of the game itself.

  The French voice kept on singing. The other kids kept on shaking their body parts. Julius tried to shake the same body parts, but he was one of the world’s less talented Hokey Pokey players. If only he could be at the pool doing the backstroke instead.

  The tape came to an end. “Monsieur Zimmerman,” Madame Cowper said, turning to him.

  Uh-oh.

  “I think you are having some trouble with le Hokey Pokey, non?”

  Was he supposed to answer? “Um—I guess I got a little mixed up in a couple of places.”

  “Monsieur Zimmerman, you must listen to the words—écoutez bien—rather than watching your classmates. Encore.”

  The music began to play again. Put your something in, put your something out. Julius tried to listen, he really did, but the words ran together so fast he couldn’t do it. He stole one glance at Lizzie. She was shaking her foot. He looked again. Her left foot. But now the music was on to the next body part.

  Madame Cowper clicked off the tape. She was red and panting from the exertion of Hokey-Pokeying. “Alors!” she said. “We have had our exercise for today, non? Go outside, mes enfants, and have a little recess. If we have time at the end of class, maybe we will do le Hokey Pokey again. Monsieur Zimmerman, would you please stay here?”

  Alex casually hummed a few bars of Chopin’s Funeral March as he headed toward the door with all the others.

  When Julius was left alone with Madame Cowper, she said in what was obviously meant to be a kindly tone, “Maintenant, Monsieur Zimmerman, we will try it again. Allons-y! Come! I will give you une leçon particulière, a private lesson, in le Hokey Pokey.”

  Julius knew then that he had reached rock bottom in his life. Lower than a private lesson in le Hokey Pokey you could not sink.

  The tape began to play. Put your something in. Julius strained to listen. Pied? Main? Tête? Tentatively, he twitched his right foot.

  “Non, non, le pied gauche, the left foot.” Awkwardly, Julius wiggled the other foot. This was like kindergarten, when he couldn’t remember which hand he was supposed to put over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.

  As the tape wore on, Julius shook his way through each body part under the sharp eyes of Madame Cowper, who seemed to be correcting practically every one. By the second time through, he still couldn’t hear what that French voice on the tape was saying, but he had managed to get the order of the body parts fairly well memorized. The song ended with shaking your whole self. He knew that much for sure.

  As if to celebrate the progress they had made, Madame Cowper joined in on the final verse, shaking her whole self, too. Julius made the mistake of glancing toward the classroom window. Half the class had their faces pressed up against the glass, watching Julius and Madame Cowper shaking themselves frantically in their private little Hokey Pokey duet.

  Why couldn’t he have learned something useful in French class, such as what the French Foreign Legion was, and how soon he could join it?

  6

  Edison still howled when his mother left every afternoon and then, three hours later, he howled when Julius left. This might have shown how attached he was to his mother and Julius, or it might have shown how attached he was to howling.

  That Monday afternoon, Edison howled as usual while he watched his mother’s station wagon back out of the driveway. Julius had learned that it was best to ignore Edison’s tantrums. He picked up a few toys from the family room floor, but Edison, still shrieking, snatched them out of the toy box and repositioned each one exactly where it had been before.

  Finally, Edison’s tantrum subsided. His thumb went into his mouth like a little round plug.

  “Hey, buddy,” Julius said, “want to go in your stroller to
the library?” He needed to get A Tale of Two Cities if he was ever going to read it.

  “Edison’s stroller!” Edison shouted happily. He scrambled up off the floor and ran over cheerfully to stand in front of Julius.

  But then his face changed. He pressed his lips together. He shut his eyes. He gave a little grunt. His cheeks turned red.

  “No, Edison, no!”

  It was too late. An unmistakable odor filled the room. Edison’s face looked normal again, or, rather, normal for when he wasn’t howling. But Julius could feel all the color draining out of his own. He couldn’t believe that little kids could just … go … like that, standing up, in front of other people, their faces giving away the terrible secret of what was going on in their pants.

  Julius checked his watch. It was only one-fifteen. Could he really leave Edison like that for two hours and forty-five minutes and then pretend it had just happened? Wouldn’t the contents of Edison’s diaper be squished in a telltale way by then? Besides, Julius wasn’t looking forward to two hours and forty-five minutes spent in the company of someone who smelled the way Edison smelled.

  “Edison’s stroller!” Edison sang out again, as if nothing had happened. He headed toward the back door, where his stroller stood waiting.

  “Wait a minute, buddy! You can’t go like that.”

  Storm clouds gathered over Edison’s face. Was it time for tantrum number two already?

  “You have … you know … you can’t sit in that stuff. I have to—we’re going to have to change your diaper.”

  At least Edison didn’t launch into another round of howling. Apparently he didn’t mind having his diaper changed. Little kids were strange: they minded stupid, unimportant things, such as having their shirts changed, but they didn’t mind catastrophic, cataclysmic disasters, such as having their diapers changed.

  Julius followed Edison up to his room. He was going to have to change a diaper. He was just going to have to do it. Every day millions of people in America changed diapers. They survived. Julius would survive, too.

  No. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t like millions of other people. That millions of people in France spoke French didn’t mean Julius could speak French. People were different. Some spoke French, and some didn’t. Some changed diapers, and some didn’t.

  He’d have to call someone to come over and change it for him.

  His mother? She had gotten him into this mess in the first place. And she had to know how to change a diaper, because once upon a time she had changed Julius’s own diapers—a sickening thought. So he could call his mother. But, according to his mom, the job was supposed to be teaching him about responsibility. Would she think he was learning about responsibility if he called her for every single catastrophe?

  Octavia lived right next door. But she had already said that life was too short for babysitting. And life was definitely too short to deal with the contents of diapers. Maybe Octavia could pretend she was a character in a play and that changing a diaper was part of the script? Julius suspected that there wasn’t a single diaper-changing scene anywhere in the complete works of Shakespeare.

  His only hope was Ethan. Julius could almost imagine his friend briskly and efficiently changing a diaper, the way he had briskly and efficiently fried the bacon.

  Almost, but not quite. But there wasn’t anyone else he could call.

  “Edison, stay right here. I have to make a phone call. Stay right here and don’t sit down.”

  Luckily, Ethan was home and not at the pool.

  “What’s up?” Ethan asked.

  “I’m at Edison Blue’s house. There’s a problem. A big problem. Can you come over?”

  “Sure. What kind of problem?”

  Julius had to tell him. Ethan would never forgive him if he didn’t. But it was all he could do to say it out loud. “He … went in his diaper,” Julius whispered into the phone. “I have to change it.”

  There was a long pause on Ethan’s end of the line. Then Ethan said, “Number one?”

  “Number two.” There was another, longer pause. “Listen, if you can’t, forget it.”

  “What’s the address?”

  Julius told him. Then, weak with gratitude, he hung up.

  Upstairs, Julius found Edison sitting on the floor playing with his wooden train tracks. How could he sit in it? And the smell—couldn’t he smell himself? Maybe Julius needed to start a list of lifetime goals in the back of his journal.

  Goals for the Rest of My Life

  1. Don’t have kids.

  Though maybe he could adopt one who had already been toilet-trained.

  A few minutes later, he heard the doorbell. Ethan hadn’t wasted any time biking to the rescue. Julius let him in, and the two of them hurried upstairs.

  “Edison, this is my friend Ethan. He’s going to help me change your diaper.”

  “No!”

  Edison hadn’t objected to the prospect of the diaper change before. What was his problem now? Not that Edison was famous for consistency.

  “Hi, Edison,” Ethan said. “My mom is Mrs. Winfield, your teacher at school.”

  “My teacher is Patty!” Edison contradicted him.

  “That’s her! That’s my mom!” Ethan said.

  “Not Mrs. Winfield.”

  “Patty Winfield. Patty is her first name, Winfield is her last name.”

  “Not Mrs. Winfield!”

  Julius decided to cut the conversation short, fascinating as it was. “Okay, buddy, let’s get that diaper changed.”

  “No! You don’t change Edison’s diaper. Edison change Edison’s diaper!”

  Julius thought for a minute. Could Edison really change his own diaper? If he could, Julius’s problems were over. Still, he really ought to stick around and supervise, in case anything … fell out.

  “Okay, Edison, you change your diaper. Ethan and I, we’re only here to help.”

  Edison looked suspiciously at Ethan.

  “That’s right,” Ethan confirmed. “We’re just your helpers, your diaper-changing helpers.”

  “Don’t look,” Edison commanded them.

  Julius pretended to shut his eyes, keeping them open just enough to squint through his eyelashes.

  Edison pulled down his shorts. Then he tugged at the little sticky tabs on the sides of the diaper.

  “Hey,” Julius interrupted, “maybe we should do this in the bathroom.” Someplace where there wasn’t light-colored wall-to-wall carpet.

  A brilliant idea he should have had fifteen seconds ago. Off came the diaper, and down onto the middle of the wall-to-wall carpet covering Edison’s bedroom floor. Fortunately, it looked as if it fell clean side down.

  “Edison need wipes!”

  Ethan was able to unroot himself first. He grabbed the box of wipes from the diaper table and placed it on a chair next to Julius.

  “Come on, buddy.” Julius recovered his voice. “Let’s go do this in the bathroom.”

  “Mommy changes me here!”

  “Yeah, but Mommy’s not changing you now. Julius and Ethan are changing you now—well, helping to change you—and we think we should be doing this in the bathroom.”

  “No! Here!”

  For answer, Julius took Edison by the arm and began to lead him down the hall to the bathroom.

  “No!” Edison yanked himself away and tried to run back to his bedroom, his shorts still bunched around his ankles. “Edison do it here! Like Mommy!”

  Just as he got back to the bedroom, he tripped and fell, unwiped-bottom side down, and began to howl. But not as loud as Julius and Ethan were howling.

  * * *

  By the end of the afternoon, Julius was pretty certain that there was one thing worse than changing a diaper: scraping and scrubbing the contents of that diaper off a light-colored carpet. He would owe Ethan for this one for the rest of his life.

  Luckily, once they managed to open the childproofed cupboard of cleaning products, they found one bottle for removing “pet stains.” Apparen
tly, pets stained carpets in much the same way that three-year-olds did. By the time they were done, only a suspicious antiseptic-smelling wet spot on the carpet remained.

  When Mrs. Blue came home, Ethan was gone and Edison was getting ready for his closing tantrum. Everything was back to normal. But, not surprisingly, Julius hadn’t gotten to the library to check out A Tale of Two Cities. He wouldn’t have had the strength to start reading it that night, anyway.

  7

  Julius didn’t take Edison to the library until Friday. He would have gone sooner, but the weather turned hot, and he couldn’t face the long trudge to the library in the blazing sun when he could lie on the couch in Edison’s air-conditioned family room, watching TV Besides, the diaper episode had definitely unnerved him—not that he had all that much nerve in the first place. What if Edison pooped again in his diaper? In public. For example, right in the middle of the children’s room at the public library. Julius could imagine the lady from the park appearing out of nowhere to sniff and say, “I think you need to change your little brother.”

  One thing Julius had to say for that lady, though, was that Edison hadn’t thrown any more sand since the incident at the park. They had gone outside to the sandbox twice that week, when Julius had started to feel guilty about all the TV they were watching. Both times Edison had picked up a handful of sand, looked at Julius, then dropped it and looked away. So maybe there was something to the discipline idea, after all. It was worth thinking about.

  The heat affected everybody in Intensive Summer Language Learning, too. West Creek Middle School wasn’t air-conditioned, so that when it got hot, it got hot. Julius felt even sorrier for Madame Cowper when the temperature hit ninety degrees by midmorning. On those days, she didn’t just perspire under her arms and on her high, glistening forehead; she sweat all over, so that big, blotchy dark stains appeared on the front and back of the tops of her too-tight polyester pantsuits.

  On Friday morning, in French cooking class, the menu was something horrible called a croque-monsieur. It was a kind of ham and cheese sandwich on french toast. Julius liked ham and cheese sandwiches and he liked french toast, but he couldn’t get used to the idea of the two together. He had to break the eggs for the french toast, and one splattered all over the counter. Still, better one egg on the counter than a whole quiche Lorraine all over the floor.