Harriet the Spy

by Louise Fitzhugh

  NOTES ON WHAT CARRIE ANDREWS THINKS OF MARION HAWTHORNE

  THINKS: IS MEAN

  IS ROTTEN IN MATH

  HAS FUNNY KNEES

  IS A PIG

  Then:

  IF MARION HAWTHORNE DOESN’T WATCH OUT SHE’S GOING TO GROW UP INTO A LADY HITLER.

  Janie Gibbs smothered a laugh at that one but not at the next one:

  WHO DOES JANIE GIBBS THINK SHE’S KIDDING? DOES SHE REALLY THINK SHE COULD EVER BE A SCIENTIST?

  Janie looked as though she had been struck. Sport looked at her sympathetically. They looked at each other, in fact, in a long, meaningful way.

  Janie read on:

  WHAT TO DO ABOUT PINKY WHITEHEAD

  TURN THE HOSE ON HIM.

  PINCH HIS EARS UNTIL HE SCREAMS.

  TEAR HIS PANTS OFF AND LAUGH AT HIM.

  Pinky felt like running. He looked around nervously, but Harriet was nowhere to be seen.

  There was something about everyone.

  MAYBE BETH ELLEN DOESN’T HAVE ANY PARENTS. I ASKED HER HER MOTHER’S NAME AND SHE COULDN’T REMEMBER. SHE SAID SHE HAD ONLY SEEN HER ONCE AND SHE DIDN’T REMEMBER IT VERY WELL. SHE WEARS STRANGE THINGS LIKE ORANGE SWEATERS AND A BIG BLACK CAR COMES FOR HER ONCE A WEEK AND SHE GOES SOMEPLACE ELSE.

  Beth Ellen rolled her big eyes and said nothing. She never said anything, so this wasn’t unusual.

  THE REASON SPORT DRESSES SO FUNNY IS THAT HIS FATHER WON’T BUY HIM ANYTHING TO WEAR BECAUSE HIS MOTHER HAS ALL THE MONEY.

  Sport turned his back again.

  TODAY A NEW BOY ARRIVED. HE IS SO DULL NO ONE CAN REMEMBER HIS NAME SO I HAVE NAMED HIM THE BOY WITH THE PURPLE SOCKS. IMAGINE. WHERE WOULD HE EVER FIND PURPLE SOCKS?

  The Boy with the Purple Socks looked down at his purple socks and smiled.

  Everyone looked at the sock boy. Carrie spoke up. She had a rather grating voice. “What IS your name?” even though by now they all knew perfectly well.

  “Peter,” he said shyly.

  “Why do you wear purple socks?” asked Janie.

  Peter smiled shyly, looked at his socks, then said, “Once, at the circus, my mother lost me. She said, after that, if I had on purple socks, she could always find me.”

  “Hmmmmm,” said Janie.

  Gathering courage from this, Peter spoke again. “She wanted to make it a whole purple suit, but I rebelled.”

  “I don’t blame you,” said Janie.

  Peter bobbed his head and grinned. They all grinned back at him because he had a tooth missing and looked rather funny, but also he wasn’t a bad sort, so they all began to like him a little bit.

  They read on:

  MISS ELSON HAS A WART BEHIND HER ELBOW.

  This was fairly boring so they skipped ahead.

  I ONCE SAW MISS ELSON WHEN SHE DIDN’T SEE ME AND SHE WAS PICKING HER NOSE.

  That was better, but still they wanted to read about themselves.

  CARRIE ANDREWS’ MOTHER HAS THE BIGGEST FRONT I EVER SAW.

  There was a great deal of tension in the group after this last item. Then Sport gave a big horselaugh, and Pinky Whitehead’s ears turned bright red. Janie smiled a fierce and frightening smile at Carrie Andrews, who looked as though she wanted to dive under the bench.

  WHEN I GROW UP I’M GOING TO FIND OUT EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYBODY AND PUT IT ALL IN A BOOK. THE BOOK IS GOING TO BE CALLED SECRETS BY HARRIET M. WELSCH. I WILL ALSO HAVE PHOTOGRAPHS IN IT AND MAYBE SOME MEDICAL CHARTS IF I CAN GET THEM.

  Rachel stood up, “I have to go home. Is there anything about me?”

  They flipped through until they found her name.

  I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY IF I LIKE RACHEL OR WHETHER IT IS JUST THAT I LIKE GOING TO HER HOUSE BECAUSE HER MOTHER MAKES HOMEMADE CAKE. IF I HAD A CLUB I’M NOT SURE I WOULD HAVE RACHEL IN IT.

  “Thank you,” Rachel said politely and left for home. Laura Peters left too after the last item:

  IF LAURA PETERS DOESN’T STOP SMILING AT ME IN THAT WISHY-WASHY WAY I’M GOING TO GIVE HER A GOOD KICK.

  The next morning when Harriet arrived at school no one spoke to her. They didn’t even look at her. It was exactly as though no one at all had walked into the room. Harriet sat down and felt like a lump. She looked at everyone’s desk, but there was no sign of the notebook. She looked at every face and on every face was a plan, and on each face was the same plan. They had organization. I’m going to get it, she thought grimly.

  That was not the worst of it. The worst was that even though she knew she shouldn’t, she had stopped by the stationery store on the way to school and had bought another notebook. She had tried not to write in it, but she was such a creature of habit that even now she found herself taking it out of the pocket of her jumper, and furthermore, the next minute she was scratching in a whole series of things.

  THEY ARE OUT TO GET ME. THE WHOLE ROOM IS FILLED WITH MEAN EYES. I WON’T GET THROUGH THE DAY. I MIGHT THROW UP MY TOMATO SANDWICH. EVEN SPORT AND JANIE. WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT JANIE? I DON’T REMEMBER. NEVER MIND. THEY MAY THINK I AM A WEAKLING BUT A SPY IS TRAINED FOR THIS KIND OF FIGHT. I AM READY FOR THEM.

  She went on scratching until Miss Elson cleared her throat, signifying she had entered the room. Then everyone stood up as they always did, bowed, said, “Good morning, Miss Elson,” and sat back down. It was the custom at this moment for everyone to punch each other. Harriet looked around for someone to do some poking with, but they all sat stony-faced as though they had never poked anyone in their whole lives.

  It made Harriet feel better to try and quote like Ole Golly, so she wrote:

  THE SINS OF THE FATHER

  That was all she knew from the Bible besides the shortest verse: “Jesus wept.”

  Class began and all was forgotten in the joy of writing Harriet M. Welsch at the top of the page.

  Halfway through the class Harriet saw a tiny piece of paper float to the floor on her right. Ah-ha, she thought, the chickens; they are making up already. She reached down to get the note. A hand flew past her nose and she realized that the note had been retrieved in a neat backhand by Janie who sat to the right of her.

  Well, she thought, so it wasn’t for me, that’s all. She looked at Carrie, who had sent the note, and Carrie looked carefully away without even giggling.

  Harriet wrote in her notebook:

  CARRIE ANDREWS HAS AN UGLY PIMPLE RIGHT NEXT TO HER NOSE.

  Feeling better, she attacked her homework with renewed zeal. She was getting hungry. Soon she would have her tomato sandwich. She looked up at Miss Elson who was looking at Marion Hawthorne who was scratching her knee. As Harriet looked back at her work she suddenly saw a glint of white sticking out of Janie’s jumper pocket. It was the note! Perhaps she could just reach over ever so quietly and pull back very quickly. She had to see.

  She watched her own arm moving very quietly over, inch by inch. Was Carrie Andrews watching? No. Another inch. Another. There!! She had it. Janie obviously hadn’t felt a thing. Now to read! She looked at Miss Elson but she seemed to be in a dream. She unfolded the tiny piece of paper and read:

  Harriet M. Welsch smells. Don’t you think so?

  Oh, no! Did she really smell? What of? Bad, obviously. Must be very bad. She held up her hand and got excused from class. She went into the bathroom and smelled herself all over, but she couldn’t smell anything bad. Then she washed her hands and face. She was going to leave, then she went back and washed her feet just in case. Nothing smelled. What were they talking about? Anyway, now, just to be sure, they would smell of soap.

  When she got back to her desk, she noticed a little piece of paper next to where her foot would ordinarily be when she sat down. Ah, this will explain it, she thought. She made a swift move, as though falling, and retrieved the note without Miss Elson seeing. She unrolled it eagerly and read:

  There is nothing that makes me sicker than watching Harriet M. Welsch eat a tomato sandwich.

  Pinky Whitehead

  The note must have misfired. Pinky sat to the right and it was
addressed to Sport, who sat on her left.

  What was sickening about a tomato sandwich? Harriet felt the taste in her mouth. Were they crazy? It was the best taste in the world. Her mouth watered at the memory of the mayonnaise. It was an experience, as Mrs. Welsch was always saying. How could it make anyone sick? Pinky Whitehead was what could make you sick. Those stick legs and the way his neck seemed to swivel up and down away from his body. She wrote in her notebook:

  THERE IS NO REST FOR THE WEARY.

  As she looked up she saw Marion Hawthorne turn swiftly in her direction. Then suddenly she was looking full at Marion Hawthorne’s tongue out at her, and a terribly ugly face around the tongue, with eyes all screwed up and pulled down by two fingers so that the whole thing looked as though Marion Hawthorne were going to be carted away to the hospital. Harriet glanced quickly at Miss Elson. Miss Elson was dreaming out the window. Harriet wrote quickly:

  HOW UNLIKE MARION HAWTHORNE, I DIDN’T THINK SHE EVER DID ANYTHING BAD.

  Then she heard the giggles. She looked up. Everyone had caught the look. Everyone was giggling and laughing with Marion, even Sport and Janie. Miss Elson turned around and every face went blank, everybody bent again over the desks. Harriet wrote quietly.

  PERHAPS I CAN TALK TO MY MOTHER ABOUT CHANGING SCHOOLS. I HAVE THE FEELING THIS MORNING THAT EVERYONE IN THIS SCHOOL IS INSANE. I MIGHT POSSIBLY BRING A HAM SANDWICH TOMORROW BUT I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT.

  The lunch bell rang. Everyone jumped as though they had one body and pushed out the door. Harriet jumped too, but for some reason or other three people bumped into her as she did. It was so fast she didn’t even see who it was, but the way they did it she was pushed so far back that she was the last one out the door. They all ran ahead, had gotten their lunchboxes, and were outside by the time she got to the cloakroom. It’s true that she was detained because she had to make a note of the fact that Miss Elson went to the science room to talk to Miss Maynard, which had never happened before in the history of the school.

  When she picked up her lunch the bag felt very light. She reached inside and there was only crumpled paper. They had taken her tomato sandwich. They had taken her tomato sandwich. Someone had taken it. She couldn’t get over it. This was completely against the rules of the school. No one was supposed to steal your tomato sandwich. She had been coming to this school since she was four—let’s see, that made seven years and in all those seven years no one had ever taken her tomato sandwich. Not even during those six months when she had brought pickle sandwiches with mustard. No one had even asked for so much as a bite. Sometimes Beth Ellen passed around olives because no one else had olives and they were very chic, but that was the extent of the sharing, and now here it was noon and she had nothing to eat.

  She was aghast. What could she do? It would be ridiculous to go around asking “Has anyone seen a tomato sandwich?” They were sure to laugh. She would go to Miss Elson. No, then she would be a ratter, a squealer, a stoolie. Well, she couldn’t starve. She went to the telephone and asked to use it because she had forgotten her lunch. She called and the cook told her to come home, that she would make another tomato sandwich in the meantime.

  Harriet left, went home, ate her tomato sandwich, and took to her bed for another day. She had to think. Her mother was playing bridge downtown. She pretended to be sick enough so the cook didn’t yell at her and yet not sick enough for the cook to call her mother. She had to think.

  As she lay there in the half gloom she looked out over the trees in the park. For a while she watched a bird, then an old man who walked like a drunk. Inside she felt herself thinking “Everybody hates me, everybody hates me.”

  At first she didn’t listen to it and then she heard what she was feeling. She said it several times to hear it better. Then she reached nervously for her notebook and wrote in big, block letters, the way she used to write when she was little.

  EVERYBODY HATES ME.

  She leaned back and thought about it. It was time for her cake and milk, so she got up and went downstairs in her pajamas to have it. The cook started a fight with her, saying that if she were sick she couldn’t have any cake and milk.

  Harriet felt big hot tears come to her eyes and she started to scream.

  The cook said calmly, “Either you go to school and you come home and have your cake and milk, or you are sick and you don’t get cake and milk because that’s no good for you when you’re sick; but you don’t lie around up there all day and then get cake and milk.”

  “That’s the most unreasonable thing I ever heard of,” Harriet screamed. She began to scream as loud as she could. Suddenly she heard herself saying over and over again, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” Even as she did it she knew she didn’t really hate the cook; in fact, she rather liked her, but it seemed to her that at that moment she hated her.

  The cook turned her back and Harriet heard her mutter, “Oh, you, you hate everybody.”

  This was too much. Harriet ran to her room. She did not hate everybody. She did not. Everybody hated her, that’s all. She crashed into her room with a bang, ran to her bed, and smashed her face down into the pillow.

  After she was tired of crying, she lay there and looked at the trees. She saw a bird and began to hate the bird. She saw the old drunk man and felt such hatred for him she almost fell off the bed. Then she thought of them all and she hated them each and every one in turn: Carrie Andrews, Marion Hawthorne, Rachel Hennessey, Beth Ellen Hansen, Laura Peters, Pinky Whitehead, the new one with the purple socks, and even Sport and Janie, especially Sport and Janie.

  She just hated them. I hate them, she thought. She picked up her notebook:

  WHEN I AM BIG I WILL BE A SPY. I WILL GO TO ONE COUNTRY AND I WILL FIND OUT ITS SECRETS AND THEN I WILL GO TO ANOTHER COUNTRY AND TELL THEM AND THEN FIND OUT THEIR SECRETS AND I WILL GO BACK TO THE FIRST ONE AND RAT ON THE SECOND AND I WILL GO TO THE SECOND AND RAT ON THE FIRST. I WILL BE THE BEST SPY THERE EVER WAS AND I WILL KNOW EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING.

  As she began to fall asleep she thought, and then they’ll all be petrified of me.

  Harriet was sick for three days. That is, she lay in bed for three days. Then her mother took her to see the kindly old family doctor. He used to be a kindly old family doctor who made house calls, but now he wouldn’t anymore. One day he had stamped his foot at Harriet’s mother and said, “I like my office and I’m going to stay in it. I pay so much rent on this office that if I leave it for five minutes my child misses a year of school. I’m never coming out again.” And from that moment on he didn’t. Harriet rather respected him for it, but his stethoscope was cold.

  When he had looked Harriet all over, he said to her mother, “There isn’t a blessed thing wrong with her.”

  Harriet’s mother gave her a dirty look, then sent her out into the outer office. As Harriet closed the door behind her she heard the doctor saying, “I think I know what’s the matter with her. Carrie told us some long story about a notebook.”

  Harriet stopped dead in her tracks. “That’s right,” she said out loud to herself, “his name is Dr. Andrews, so he’s Carrie Andrews’ father.”

  She got out her notebook and wrote it down. Then she wrote:

  I WONDER WHY HE DOESN’T CURE THAT PIMPLE ON CARRIE’S NOSE?

  “Come on, young lady, we’re going home.” Harriet’s mother took her by the hand. She looked as though she might take Harriet home and kill her. As it turned out, she didn’t. When they got home, she said briskly, “All right, Harriet the Spy, come into the library and talk to me.”

  Harriet followed her, dragging her feet. She wished she were Beth Ellen who had never met her mother.

  “Now, Harriet, I hear you’re keeping dossiers on everyone in school.”

  “What’s that?” Harriet had been prepared to deny everything but this was a new one.

  “You keep a notebook?”

  “A notebook?”

  “Well, don’t you?”

  “Why?”

  �
�Answer me, Harriet.” It was serious.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you put in it?”

  “Everything.”

  “Well, what kind of thing?”

  “Just… things.”

  “Harriet Welsch, answer me. What do you write about your classmates?”

  “Oh, just… well, things I think.… Some nice things… and—and mean things.”

  “And your friends saw it?”

  “Yes, but they shouldn’t have looked. Its private. It even says PRIVATE all over the front of it.”

  “Nevertheless, they did. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Harriet’s mother looked very skeptical.

  “Well… my tomato sandwich disappeared.”

  “Don’t you think that maybe all those mean things made them angry?”

  Harriet considered this as though it had never entered her mind. “Well, maybe, but they shouldn’t have looked. It’s private property.”

  “That, Harriet, is beside the point. They did. Now why do you think they got angry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well…” Mrs. Welsch seemed to be debating whether to say what she finally did. “How did you feel when you got some of those notes?”

  There was a silence. Harriet looked at her feet.

  “Harriet?” Her mother was waiting for an answer.

  “I think I feel sick again. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Now, darling, you’re not sick. Just think about it a moment. How did you feel?”

  Harriet burst into tears. She ran to her mother and cried very hard. “I felt awful. I felt awful,” was all she could say, Her mother hugged her and kissed her a lot. The more she hugged her the better Harriet felt. She was still being hugged when her father came home. He hugged her too, even though he didn’t know what it was all about. After that they all had dinner and Harriet went up to bed.