Penelope Crumb

by Shawn K. Stout

  “I hope you do,” she says, “because it would stink to have a big nose for no reason. I’m just saying. Anyway, I’m not supposed to stay. I came over because I have something to tell you.” Littie watches my mom pass through with an armful of glass paint jars.

  “What?” I say.

  “Momma found out about me and you going to Grandpa Felix’s yesterday,” Littie whispers. She points toward the kitchen. “Does she know about it, too?”

  “Yep,” Mom answers loudly. “I do.”

  “Oh,” says Littie. “In that case, Momma says I should say I’m sorry.” Then she adds, “Even though nothing bad happened to us.”

  Mom sticks her head back in the living room and says, “Thank you, Littie. That’s nice of you to come over here and speak from the heart.”

  “Well, my momma made me,” she says. “That’s part of my punishment.”

  “And Penelope will be sure to do the same,” says Mom, nodding at me.

  Right away I tell Littie that I’m sorry that her momma found out. But Mom says that’s not what she meant.

  Littie shrugs. “It’s not all that bad. My momma’s blood pressure went up when she found out what we did, and she had to go to bed with a hot water bottle. But it went back down, her high blood pressure, I mean, and when it did, she said if I promise not to do anything like that ever again, she’ll buy me a helmet and let me skateboard. So.”

  “That’s lucky,” I say.

  Littie nods. “I better go now before she changes her mind about the skateboard. If you ever want another adventure to your grandpa Felix’s, let me know.”

  “Not a chance,” calls Mom from the kitchen.

  “She’s got good ears,” Littie says. “I hope you find your nose powers. I’m just saying.”

  “Me too,” I say. My nose twitches just then. Which makes me think about Grandpa Felix. I go to the hall closet, which is where Mom put his coat after we got home from the hospital. When I swing open the door, his green coat brushes my arm. I pull the coat down off the hook and put it on.

  I bury my nose in the collar and breathe in, but I can’t smell him. I shove my hands into the pockets and pull out two nickels from one and a stack of “A Thousand Words” cards from the other. I use my finger to trace over A Thousand Words. Then I whisper to him, at the card, “Mom said that there aren’t words. And that she wouldn’t know what to say to you, Grandpa Felix. I wish I had a thousand words to give her.”

  And then my brains must start to unfreeze about what to do for my coat of arms because right then and there I know what Grandpa Felix means when he says a picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe I don’t need a thousand words to make things right. Maybe a picture is all I need.

  21.

  After a quick trash-can tour, I’m in my room and I dump out all of my art supplies on the floor. I pull out poster board from under my bed, sharpen my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil, and write “Penelope Crumb’s Coat of Arms” in big letters at the top.

  Inside my toolbox, I find all the magazines that Grandpa Felix gave me. Real careful, I tear out the pictures that he took, including the one of Winston. Then I pull out Mom’s creepy insides drawings, the ones I found in her trash can. And the photograph of Grandpa Felix, and the one of my dad.

  I tear out the pictures from my drawing pad that I drew of my family: Terrible’s alien spaceship and Dad’s toolbox and shoehorn. I add a picture of Great-grandpa Albert as a war hero. I cut around them and lay them out on the poster board, fitting them into the shape of a shield. All I have left to do is paste them on, but when I look over the pictures and drawings, my coat of arms doesn’t really look like anything special.

  My coat of arms doesn’t look that different from Angus Meeker’s. Or Patsy Cline’s. “This is no good,” I say out loud. “Something is missing.”

  Even Mister Leonardo da Vinci agrees. “Not bad, Penelope,” he would surely say. “But you can do better. You have everything you need.”

  “I do?” I say. “But this is all I have!”

  Leonardo must not have the answer either because he doesn’t say anything else. Which is very annoying because what good is having a dead and famous artist talk to you if he isn’t going to be more of a help?

  I read Miss Stunkel’s instructions again: Discover what you don’t know about your family. Make a coat of arms for your family.

  I look around the room for something else to put on my coat of arms. And when I see Grandpa Felix’s coat lying on my bed, right under my nose, I know what I need to do.

  First, I draw a picture of my big nose, the biggest drawing of a big nose that I’ve ever seen before. Then I take the pictures off the poster board and glue everything onto Grandpa Felix’s coat. On both sleeves, on the front, and on the back. Until all of the green is covered in pictures. I save the drawing of my big nose for last. Which I glue to the back of the coat, right in the center.

  “There,” I say when I’m finished. I slide my arms into the coat and look at myself in the mirror. If Mister Leonardo da Vinci was here, he would take one look at my coat of arms and would most surely say, “This is splendid work. A nose at the heart of a coat of arms. Why, that is very interesting indeed.” And he would be right.

  • • •

  At school the next day, I have a note for Miss Stunkel. The note says I need to be excused from gym class on account of the fact that if I get hit in the face by a ball or a knee or something, I could lose my nose powers forever. That may not be exactly what the note says, but I know that’s what it means.

  Patsy Cline taps me on the shoulder and then shrieks when she sees my nose. “It’s a long story,” I say. So I tell her the short version.

  “Nose powers?” she says after I’m done. “From your great-grandpa?”

  “And Grandpa Felix,” I say. “Did your mom call him about All-Star Kids?”

  “Yep, he’s hired,” she says, making a face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Now that there’s a photographer coming to take pictures of me performing, Mom said she’s going to need more time for my hair than usual.”

  “Oh.”

  Patsy Cline slumps her shoulders. “She wants to put ribbons in it.”

  “That’s not so bad.” When she says oh yes it is so bad, I say, “Why don’t you just cut your hair off?”

  Patsy gets a look on her face that says, I Know Something You Don’t Know.

  “What?”

  “Promise you won’t tell Angus Meeker,” she says.

  I give her a look that says, What Do I Ever Tell Awful Angus Meeker? Then, after she looks around to make sure nobody is watching, she lifts up her thick hair. And what I see then is a big surprise.

  “I’ve got my aunt Doreen’s ears,” she says with a grimace.

  I cannot stop staring. I mean, they are the most wonderful things. “Can I draw them sometime?”

  “Maybe,” she says, covering them back up again with her hair. “But not for art class. I don’t want anybody else to know.”

  “Patsy Cline,” I say, having a thought. “You know what? Maybe that’s why you are such a good singer. Maybe you have big ears so that you can hear notes better.”

  “I never thought of that,” she says, smiling.

  Miss Stunkel says, “I want to remind you all that your coats of arms are due tomorrow.” Which makes me raise my hand and say, “Coats of arms don’t have to be in the shape of a shield, do they?”

  Miss Stunkel cocks her head to one side. “Traditionally, that’s how they are done.” She taps her chin. “But if you have another idea, I think that could be very interesting.”

  I repeat, “Very interesting” in the direction of Angus, making a big deal out of the very.

  22.

  Patsy Cline’s singing contest is at Portwaller’s VFW hall. Which Terrible says stands for “Veterans of Foreign Wars.” I didn’t know that there are wars about singing, but I guess you can have a war about anything. A long time ago, there was a war be
tween cowboys and Indians in the Wild West, so I guess that’s why Patsy Cline wears a cowgirl outfit when she sings. She’s dressed for battle.

  When I ask Mom if the losers of the contest get shot with a gun or an arrow, she just shakes her head at me and rubs her eyeballs. Which I take to mean that the losers will be hanged by a rope. So now I have something else to worry about besides what will happen when Mom sees Grandpa Felix taking pictures.

  In the car on our way to the VFW, we have a war of our own going on. Terrible is complaining that he doesn’t know why he has to come to this dumb thing. Mom says that we need to start doing more things as a family. Terrible says he never gets to do what he wants. And then there’s a lot of “Yes, you do” and “No, I don’t” that goes on for a very long time until Mom almost crashes us into a telephone pole. The car screeches to a stop and she yells, “I’m not having this discussion right now!”

  While all of this is going on, I’m in the back of the car, practicing keeping my mouth shut tight so the secret I’m keeping won’t fly out. Which it almost does when Mom nearly kills us. I hug my backpack to my chest and every once in a while look inside it to make sure my arm coat is still there. The picture of my dad on the sleeve peeks out through the opening.

  When we get to the VFW, an orange-and-purple banner that reads ALL-STAR KIDS hangs above the door. I run ahead so that I can be first. Once inside, I push open a heavy door and step into the auditorium. The place is already crowded. I go down the center aisle and look for empty seats. Mom and Terrible soon catch up with me, and we find three empty seats together on the left side of the audience. I slide my backpack under my seat and sit on my feet so I can see over the person in front of me, who’s wearing a hat like a teapot, and look out for Grandpa Felix.

  The lights go out before I can see Grandpa Felix or Patsy Cline. A man with a microphone is onstage then talking about what treats are in store for us tonight at All-Star Kids. But when I lean over Terrible and tell Mom that I didn’t see any treats anywhere, she tells me the treats are the kids performing. Which is when I say that I’d rather have ice cream.

  The first All-Star Kid (no treat) to sing is a boy dressed in overalls with a straw hat, singing some song about Oklahoma. Only he sings it like this: OOOOOOOhhhh-klahoma! Which makes it sound like a place that’s full of surprises.

  I lean over Terrible again and tap Mom on the arm. “When is Patsy Cline going to sing?”

  Terrible tells me to watch it and Mom tells us to keep our voices down and then hands me a program. Patsy Cline Roberta Watson is after the kid who is after the Oklahoma boy.

  After the OOOOOOOhhhh-klahoma! kid finishes, he throws his straw hat in the air, spins around, and catches it on his head. Which would be a good trick for Littie to learn how to do with the Captain Hook marshmallow hat.

  Next is a baton twirler dressed in a sparkly blue shorts-and-shirt outfit who does a routine to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” But she drops her batons twice before crying and running offstage and is probably hiding in the parking lot behind a trash can. Because that is what I would do if I dropped my batons in front of all these people. Everybody in the audience claps real loud for her anyway, and I hope she can hear the clapping from the parking lot.

  Then Patsy Cline Roberta Watson is onstage. I sit up as tall as I can make myself and clap as loud as I can and even try to whistle, only I don’t think any sound comes out on account of the fact that I can’t whistle at all. Patsy’s wearing her purple cowgirl outfit, and her hair is in braids threaded with purple and white ribbons. When she takes the microphone in her hand and faces the audience, she’s got her battle face on.

  Patsy says she’s going to sing a song called “Leavin’ on Your Mind” by the dead country-western singer she was named after. And when she starts to sing, Patsy Cline (the one onstage now, not the one who’s dead) has a voice that is sad and lonesome, like a hound dog calling to the moon that’s gone hiding behind a cloud.

  If you’ve got leavin’ on your mind

  Tell me now, get it over

  Hurt me now, get it over

  If you’ve got leavin’ on your mind.

  Which makes me think about people leaving, not on account of dying or anything. But people just leaving on their own, kind of like Grandpa Felix did when my dad got sick. And like he did at the hospital. Mom must be thinking about people leaving, too, because I peek at her next to me in the dark and she’s got a tear running down her cheek.

  Then, a flash lights up the corner of the room. And in that flash of light, I can see Grandpa Felix near the stage snapping pictures of Patsy Cline.

  My heart thumps in my chest. And I can hardly pay attention to the rest of the All-Star Kids. “How much longer?” I whisper to Mom after Patsy Cline’s song ends.

  “Yeah, how much more of this do I have to listen to?” says Terrible.

  Mom tells us to be quiet and says that if she has to tell us again, we’re not going to be happy. So me and Terrible have a contest of our own to see who can knock each other’s elbow off the armrest. But after a while, Mom puts a stop to that, too, when she says, “Cut it out. You weren’t raised by wolves.” Terrible gives my elbow one more shove, and I smile because it’s been a long time since we’ve been on the same side.

  Onstage, the war drags on and on. But when it’s finally over, the lights come on and nobody gets shot or rope-hanged, thank lucky stars. Silver trophies are handed out, and Patsy Cline gets one for second place.

  As soon as the last trophy is given, I leap out of my seat. Mom says she wants to say hello to Mrs. Watson. And when she goes to find her, I open my backpack, pull on my arm coat, and push my way through all of the people toward Grandpa Felix.

  Grandpa Felix is hunched over his camera bag, and I want to climb onto his back so he can carry me over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. Because that is what grandpas and dads do. But I lose my nerve and tap him on the back of the head instead. He jumps a little when he sees me.

  “Like my coat?” I say, spinning around so he can see all of the pictures.

  “You mean my coat,” he says. “You’ve glued all that on there?”

  “Yep.”

  “I guess it’s yours now,” he says.

  “It’s the Crumb family’s coat of arms.” I spin around again. “You left it at the hospital.”

  Grandpa Felix rubs his whiskers. “You’ve even got old Winston on there, I see.”

  “And your other pictures, too.” Then I put my hand in his. His thick, rough fingers close around mine. And in case Grandpa Felix has got leaving on his mind, I keep a tight hold so he won’t get away. Then I pull at him and say, “Let’s go.” I weave him through the crowds, and we don’t stop until we get to Mom.

  All the way over, my heart pounds. I stand him right beside Mom and Terrible. Patsy Cline grabs both of her braids when she sees me and says, “Look at Penelope!” But everybody is already staring.

  “It’s my coat of arms,” I explain. “It’s all about our family.”

  Mrs. Watson says, “Good earth, Penelope. What happened to your nose?”

  “I fell down and lost my nose powers.”

  Mom looks from my coat to Grandpa Felix and then back to me. Here are the things she doesn’t say about my coat and all of the pictures: Oh, little darling. Oh, my heart. You’re really something.

  And, here is the thing she does say: “Where did you get that coat?”

  “From the hall closet. But before that, from the hospital, and from Grandpa Felix. You took it home, remember?” I spin around again, slowly this time, and point to her drawing of the heart. “Don’t you see all of the pictures of us? And your drawings?”

  Mom gives me a look that says, We’ll Talk about This Later, Missy.

  So I quick change the subject and say, “Look who it is, everybody! Grandpa Felix!”

  Now Mom is staring at him like his name is missy, too. Patsy Cline says, “Thank you for taking pictures, Mr. Crumb.” And then Mom makes a face like
she’s about to sprout a tail. Which must make Patsy Cline nervous because she yanks a ribbon from her braid.

  Mrs. Watson says, “Well, thank goodness that happened after the pictures were taken. Let’s get going, Patsy Cline. And keep your fingers out of your hair.” She tucks Patsy Cline’s trophy under her arm. “Thank you again, Mr. Crumb. When can we take a look at your pictures?”

  “A day or two,” he says.

  Mrs. Watson smiles and says, “That’s perfect,” and shuffles Patsy Cline away while holding her ribbon-less braid.

  Grandpa Felix turns back to us and adjusts his camera bag over his shoulder. Then he does something surprising. He sticks his hand out to Terrible and says, “You’ve grown into a fine-looking young man.” Which makes me think that Grandpa needs glasses. “You look just like your father.”

  And then Terrible does something just as surprising. He smiles with teeth.

  This is going great is what my brains are telling me, until I look at Mom and see her red blotches. This whole time she’s been doing a lot of non-talking. I plant myself right in front of her so she won’t have to find the words. Then I poke her with my finger, which makes her mouth open. “Uh, how have you been, Felix?” is what finally comes out.

  “All right,” he says.

  “Good,” Mom says.

  Then there’s a lot more non-talking. Good gravy. They are really awful at this. So I say, “Fine. I’ll do it. Mom, you tell Grandpa Felix that he is still part of our family.”

  “Penelope,” she says.

  “And Grandpa Felix, you tell Mom that you’re sorry for leaving me at the hospital and for acting like you were Graveyard Dead, even though you were not.”

  Grandpa Felix clears his throat.

  “Penelope,” says Mom. “It’s not that simple.”

  “I know,” I say, “it’s because you don’t have words. But you don’t need words.” I spread the arms of my coat. “Because I’ve got all these pictures. We’re all together. Right here.”