You're a Brave Man, Julius Zimmerman

by Claudia Mills

  The program would be performed in the school all-purpose room. The first guests began arriving at ten. Julius waved to his parents, glad that Madame Cowper was too busy with last-minute costume adjustments to chat with anybody. So far, so good. He saw Ethan’s mom and older brother, Peter; Ethan’s dad had to work. He recognized Lizzie’s mother, short, like Lizzie, with hair almost as red.

  “Julius! Julius! Julius!”

  Edison ran up to him, and, touched by the exuberance of the greeting, Julius swung him up for a hug. Behind Edison came Mrs. Blue, looking sheepish, pulling Edison’s little red wagon.

  In the little red wagon sat Edison’s potty.

  “One of my parenting magazines came yesterday,” Mrs. Blue began apologetically, “and it had an article on toilet training, and it said that for the crucial first weeks of training, it’s important not to go away from home, and if you do go, to take the potty with you.”

  Julius stared at her.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Mrs. Blue said, her face suddenly anxious.

  “Mind? No! Of course not!” If Alex found out that one of Julius’s guests for the play was a potty, and teased him about it for the rest of his life, that was the way it would be.

  “My potty likes plays!” Edison said. Julius had never realized how piercing Edison’s high little voice was until he uttered this particular sentence in hearing range of all Julius’s classmates.

  “Well, I hope it will like this one,” Julius told him.

  Back with his class again, he scanned the room for Octavia. Remarks about potties were usually her cue for a grand entrance. He didn’t see her anywhere.

  Not that he had thought she would come.

  Only he had thought she would come.

  In any case, she wasn’t there.

  It was time for the program to begin. Madame Cowper, magnificent in a flowing Moroccan caftan, which suited her better than her usual pantsuits, stepped up to the microphone. She beckoned to the cast, in their costumes, to crowd around her.

  “Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs, amis et familles, friends and families. Today we present for you une petite pièce, a little play.” She went on with a speech about all they had learned in the past five weeks and about how much she had enjoyed having them as students. Julius knew she couldn’t have enjoyed having him as a student—someone who couldn’t put a quiche in the oven without spilling it all over the floor, someone who couldn’t even put his right foot in and take his right foot out.

  As Madame Cowper’s speech wound to a close, Julius’s palms turned clammy. It was time for him to make his speech. Since it was his idea to give Madame Cowper the present, he felt it was his responsibility to do it.

  “Excusez-moi,” Julius said, stepping forward from the rest. “Nous avons un cadeau pour vous. We have a present for you. Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much.” He felt foolish saying it in French, especially in his French, but he had decided to do the thing all the way if he was going to do it at all.

  “Un cadeau? Pour moi?”

  Madame Cowper sounded so genuinely pleased and surprised that Julius wondered fleetingly what Alex was thinking right then. Was he a little bit sorry he hadn’t contributed anything?

  She tore off the wrapping paper and lifted the top of the box. Then she pulled out a scarf with Monet’s water lilies printed on it. Julius hadn’t been able to believe his eyes when he had found it on sale in the regular department store in the mall.

  “Ohhh!” Madame Cowper gave a long sigh of ecstatic appreciation, sounding almost like Lizzie Archer, as she held up the scarf for everyone to see. The applause was loud and long. Ethan and Lizzie were clapping hardest, of course, but the others were clapping as well, including Marcia. Even Alex was clapping, as hard as if he had picked out the present himself and helped to pay for it.

  The play began. Lizzie-as-Cinderella sat alone in her ashes. Marcia-as-wicked-stepmother was mean to her. So far it seemed like ordinary school. During his few moments onstage, Julius acted as much as he could like a rat, even though Octavia wasn’t there to critique his tail. Cinderella’s fairy godmother appeared. Yes, Cinderella was going to the ball!

  Just as Julius whipped off his rat mask and got ready to whip on his coachman jacket, a piercing little voice from the side of the stage summoned him.

  “Julius, my wee-wee is ready to come out!”

  Mrs. Blue had hurried after Edison and was trying to shush him. “Edison, Julius has to be in the play now, honey!”

  Edison, hopping from one foot to another, clutching his shorts, looked exceedingly like a toddler who had to go.

  “I want my wee-wee to come out in my potty!” Edison wailed.

  Julius shot a frantic look at the fairy godmother. She was still working on transforming Cinderella’s rags into a ball gown. He had a minute, maybe two.

  He dropped his jacket and mask, slipped off the stage, and raced with Edison, Mrs. Blue, and the little red wagon out to the hall.

  “Oh, Julius—do you think…?” Mrs. Blue breathed.

  Julius expertly tugged at Edison’s pull-on diaper and positioned the potty for him to sit on.

  There came a small tinkling sound that could mean only one thing.

  “It came out!” Edison danced around his potty as best he could with his shorts and diaper still bunched around his ankles. “Look, Julius, look! My wee-wee came out!”

  Julius looked, hoping this was the last time in his life he would be called upon to admire anyone’s wee-wee. Then, from inside the all-purpose room, he heard the fairy godmother’s voice, tinged with exasperation, announcing in emphatic French that now this rat would become a coachman.

  Oops!

  Julius sprinted back to the stage. Panting, he shrugged into his jacket and presented himself to the irate fairy godmother.

  A long silence followed. Wasn’t somebody supposed to say something?

  He was supposed to say something. Lizzie, radiant in her ball gown, whispered the line to him: “Cendrillon, votre carrosse est ici!” Julius gasped it out.

  He was supposed to say another line, too. Now, or later on?

  There was another long silence.

  Okay, he was supposed to say it now.

  “Allons au bal!” Julius said.

  At last the play was over, and all that was left was le Hokey Pokey. Julius shook his body parts as best he could, knowing that half the time he was putting the right foot in when he was supposed to be taking the left foot out. The reality of what had happened outside in the hall finally hit him. Edison had made pee-pee in the potty! And the glory of that moment belonged to him, Julius!

  When they returned for refreshments back in their classroom, Julius grabbed a croissant. He took one big buttery bite and turned around to find his mother standing right in front of him.

  “Oh, Julius,” she said. Her “Oh, Julius” carried such a different meaning from Mrs. Blue’s “Oh, Julius.”

  “Where did you go? I felt so sorry for that girl playing the fairy godmother. She stood there without the faintest idea what to do.”

  His mother looked as if she was trying to keep herself from saying more, but she couldn’t do it. “Julius, the whole point of the babysitting job was to help you learn to be more responsible. Oh, Julius, what am I going to do with you?”

  “Nothing, I guess,” Julius muttered. “There’s nothing you can do with me.” His post–pee-pee exhilaration had evaporated.

  He felt someone tugging at his leg. Edison. The little boy’s tight hug brought to Julius’s eyes the tears that hadn’t come with his mother’s scolding.

  Mrs. Blue put her hand on Julius’s mother’s arm. “You must be very proud of Julius.”

  Julius’s mother hesitated before responding, as if wondering what feature of Julius’s performance in the play or the Hokey Pokey could have inspired such a comment. “Oh, we are,” she said slowly.

  “He is just working wonders with Edison this summer. Edison is blossoming because of Julius. That’s the o
nly word for it. Blossoming. And do you know what happened just now?” Mrs. Blue lowered her voice as if the miracle about to be revealed were too sacred to be spoken out loud.

  “Edison used the potty! For the first time! Right now! During the play! And Julius was kind enough to rush away from the play to help him do it. I don’t know any other boy his age who could give so much to a young child. Julius, I can’t thank you enough for this morning, and for everything.”

  Julius let himself look at his mother. Now she looked ready to cry.

  “I think Julius has a gift, a real gift, for working with children,” Mrs. Blue went on. “I was telling Patty Winfield about him, and she said Edison talks about Julius all the time at school, too. Patty said when Julius is old enough to get a real summer job, she’d be glad to help him get one at Little Wonders.”

  A job working with lots of little kids like Edison Blue, all day long? Julius never would have believed that the thought of it could make a slow smile spread across his face.

  His dad came up to them then. “Son, I sure enjoyed that Hokey Pokey,” he said with a big grin.

  As Julius’s dad led Mrs. Blue and Edison to the refreshment table, Madame Cowper appeared and pumped Julius’s mother’s hand. For a moment, Julius thought she was going to kiss his mother on both cheeks, but she didn’t. “Madame Zimmerman, I have so enjoyed knowing Julius.”

  Was she kidding?

  Madame Cowper put her arm around Julius’s shoulder. “Julius a un grand coeur.” She said the words with unusual distinctness, to help Julius’s mother understand what she was saying. She couldn’t, of course. Julius couldn’t, either.

  “Julius has a big heart,” she translated, with the same exaggerated emphasis on each word. “On our class trip, he leaves us. For half an hour, he leaves us. I worry, I fret, my hair turns gray. Why does he leave us? Because he sees a friend, and she is crying. That is Julius.”

  Madame Cowper fingered the Monet scarf, which she had tied around her neck. “And this scarf. It is not an easy task to find the right present for une femme d’un certain âge. An old woman. A woman whom some call the Cow. Eh? Non, Julius Zimmerman, he has a big heart.”

  With that, she left to talk to other parents.

  “Oh, Julius.”

  He turned to face his mother.

  “I had no idea … Somehow I thought … I thought things this summer weren’t working out for you. Did you really toilet-train Edison? And all those things your teacher said … Oh, Julius, you and I are so different, it’s hard for me sometimes to see that—well, your goals may not be the goals I picked for you, but they’re your goals, and I’m proud of you for accomplishing them. I hope you know that. I’m proud of you.”

  She reached out her arms to him, and Julius gave her a quick, stiff hug, then pulled away, to bring himself back under control.

  It wasn’t turning out to be such a bad summer. Intensive Summer Language Learning and Edison Blue had both been his mother’s ideas, but Julius had to admit they had worked out all right in the end, even if they hadn’t worked out exactly the way his mother had planned. Unbelievable as it seemed, he had accomplished almost everything on his goals list. He had redeemed himself in French class and even learned some French. Edison had used the potty. His mother understood him a little better.

  The only things he hadn’t done were cheer up Octavia and read A Tale of Two Cities. He’d return the book tomorrow; maybe he’d check out some books on child development instead.

  Mrs. Blue returned and touched his elbow. “I almost forgot to give you this.”

  It was a folded piece of paper. Julius opened it and read:

  Dear Julius,

  I’m so sorry I can’t be at your play today. Twitch that tail for me!

  The reason I can’t be there is because I have an audition in Denver. Wish me luck!

  Octavia

  P.S. If I get the part, I’ll buy you ice cream.

  P.P.S. If I don’t get the part, I’ll buy you ice cream.

  Edison tugged at Julius’s leg again, and Julius picked him up for another hug.

  ALSO BY CLAUDIA MILLS

  Dinah Forever

  Losers, Inc.

  Standing Up to Mr. O.

  Copyright © 1999 by Claudia Mills

  All rights reserved

  First edition, 1999

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mills, Claudia.

  You’re a brave man, Julius Zimmerman / Claudia Mills. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Losers, Inc.

  Summary: Twelve-year-old Julius has his hands full over the summer when his mother attempts to improve his grades and teach him responsibility by signing him up for a French class and getting him a job babysitting.

  ISBN 0-374-38708-7

  [1. Identity—Fiction. 2. Self-acceptance—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Babysitting—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M63963Yo 1999

  [Fic]—dc21

  98-50799

  eISBN 9781466852884

  First eBook edition: August 2013