Clementine's Letter

by Sara Pennypacker

  I pulled out the wooden box. “For Mom. She’s going to love it. For her art supplies. She’s going to love it, don’t you think?”

  My dad took the box. “Wow,” he said. “She’s going to love it all right. But we talked about this. You know you don’t have to—”

  “I know,” I said. “I just got thinking about how happy it would make her. I wanted to see her ‘Wow! I must be dreaming!’ face.”

  Dad smiled. “I like it when she makes that face, too. Well, I guess it makes it better then—what you did. It’s a good reason…wanting to make someone happy.”

  “Is everyone in the building still mad at each other?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Let’s just say the air in the elevator was a little frosty today.”

  “They wanted their giveaways to be private,” I said.

  My dad nodded again. “That’s why they were in shopping bags.”

  “But I didn’t know that.”

  “I know.”

  “I like to know the rules ahead of time,” I said.

  “I understand,” my dad said.

  Then we were quiet for a while, watching the masons finish the wall. Which gave me a good idea. I told it to my dad.

  “I don’t see why not,” he said. “There are enough bricks left over and enough money in the building improvements budget.”

  So we asked the masons if they could build a little brick wall around the charity collection area and they said, Sure.

  When it was done, my dad and I built a wooden cover for it with a little door on the top for people to drop their giveaways into. I made a sign that said

  Then I decorated the sign with SORRYs and put in the two dollars I had left from what I sold.

  “That should take care of it,” my dad said. “That should make everyone in the building happy.”

  Almost everyone.

  I asked my dad if we could eat our dinner up on the roof. “And play Life? And could Margaret and Mitchell come, too?” I explained to him about their father not coming this weekend and about Margaret crying. “And could you be a substitute father for her?”

  “A substitute? I don’t know. Margaret seems a little…particular about things. I don’t know if I could figure out her rules.”

  “Well…I guess you shouldn’t worry about Margaret’s rules. Just be your regular, own kind of dad.”

  “Okay,” my dad said, “I’ll do it.”

  We brought my brother inside, and I called up Margaret and asked if she and Mitchell could have pizza up on the roof with us.

  “Thank goodness!” she said. “My mother’s making an ‘I’m sorry’ dinner for Alan. Meat loaf. Extra onions. And he’s probably going to kiss her!”

  Just then, my mom walked in looking kind of droopy. She held up her drawings. “He didn’t like them. ‘Not scriggly enough,’ he said. ‘Too whooshy.’”

  I told her I thought they were the perfect amount of scriggly and not too whooshy at all. “But I have something that will make you feel better!”

  I made her sit down. “Close your eyes!” I said, and then I got the deluxe art supply organizer and put it on her lap. When she opened her eyes, she got so excited she couldn’t finish her sentences, which is usually a bad sign, but not then.

  “Look at all the…for my brushes… And it has a… So now he can’t get into…!” And all the time she was making the “Wow! I must be dreaming!” face, which was so pretty I’m going to make a drawing of it some day.

  My brother woke up then, and we all waited while he said hi to his feet and then showed them to us as if we’d never met them before. Then my mom scooped him onto her lap and gave him a couple of the empty cookie tins. “It’s your lucky day, too,” she told him. “You get presents, too!” My brother grinned and began to bang the cookie tins together. Then my mom looked over at me. “Oh, wait. Clementine, would you like some of them?”

  And right away, without even thinking about it, I said, “No, he can have them all. I don’t mind!” And that was the truth! My dad winked at me and that made his face look so nice that I am going to do a drawing of that some day, too.

  Then we ordered two pizzas and we picked up Margaret and Mitchell on the fifth floor and we all went up to the roof. We didn’t play Life, though, because we had so many other things to do up there.

  The sun was setting, and I listed every color I could see in the clouds over Boston. I counted thirty-three.

  Next, Mitchell pointed to where Fenway Park was. He told us about every ball that was belted out of the park this season—who hit it, how far it went, who won.

  Then we turned the lamp onto Margaret, and she acted out every one of her father’s commercials. My dad clapped like crazy and said, “I’m going to buy that product!” after each one. This made Margaret smile so big, her teeth bracelets sparkled in the lamplight.

  Even Spinach did something up there: he shrieked whenever Mitchell winked at him.

  As we were packing up our stuff to go back inside, Mitchell asked me about my teacher. “So. Did he go camping?”

  “He’s not going now. He’s not going to break his promise. He didn’t want to go anyway.”

  “Well, that’s good that he changed his mind.”

  “He didn’t exactly change his mind.” I explained about the letter to the judges.

  Mitchell stopped and stared at me. “You wrote all those terrible things I told you about Beans McCloud? But what if he reads it? Your teacher?”

  “He won’t. It’s a letter to the judges.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. I’m sure.” But all of a sudden—okay, fine—I wasn’t.

  Back in our apartment, my parents went into my brother’s room to tuck him into bed. I went into their room and opened up my dad’s book. I found the page where he had written about how proud the building manager was because his daughter promised she was going to think ahead from now on. And I wrote:

  On Friday morning, I woke up a little bit excited: today was the last day I’d have to put up with Mrs. Nagel. I felt a little worried, too, as if something bad was about to happen, but I didn’t know what it was.

  I found out at school.

  “We’ll leave for the statehouse after lunch,” Mrs. Nagel announced. She picked up a notice. “It says the ceremony starts with the letter reading at one o’clock.”

  “What do you mean, letter reading?” I asked. “Out loud?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “Letter reading; Winner announcement; Speech. That’s all it says.”

  Which gave me a heart attack. All morning I just sat there with my chest squeezing me so hard I was frozen in my seat. I was so quiet I didn’t have to hear a single “Clementine-you-need-to-pay-attention!” which was a new record for me. That is the good news about heart attacks, I guess.

  And then it was time to go. While everyone was getting jackets and backpacks, I just stood in the corner.

  “Are you all right, Clementine?” Mrs. Nagel asked.

  “I’m having a heart attack,” I told her. “I think I should go home.”

  She squinted at me for a minute. “I doubt that’s it. You’re probably just excited about visiting the statehouse.”

  So I had to walk out with Mrs. Nagel, and when I took a seat on the bus, she sat down beside me.

  “I’m glad we have this chance to talk,” she said when the bus started up. “I’m afraid you and I didn’t have a very successful week.”

  I decided that since I was probably going to die soon, I might as well tell her the truth. “I couldn’t guess any of your rules,” I told her.

  “What do you mean?”

  I took a big breath. “Your rules are different from my teacher’s. It took me a long time to learn those, but I did. So when I saw those apple slices on Monday, I remembered our ‘Feed the hamsters first’ rule, but I didn’t guess about your ‘Don’t touch it because it’s a science experiment’ rule. When you put that math problem on the board yesterday, I remembered our �
��Magic zero placeholder’ rule, but I didn’t guess about your ‘Don’t say the answer out loud’ rule. When you handed out that paper the first day, I remembered our ‘Put your name in the upper right–hand corner’ rule, but I didn’t guess about your ‘Don’t make a mark on it’ rule.”

  I took another big breath. “I like to know the rules about things first. Before I can make a mistake.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Nagel was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “That makes sense. I wish we’d talked about this on Monday.”

  “Me too,” I said. “But I didn’t know what the problem was on Monday.” Then I showed her my arm reminder.

  Mrs. Nagel studied it for a while, and then she took out a pen and wrote the same thing down on her arm, too! I am not even kidding about that! SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO FIGURE OUT THE PROBLEM BEFORE YOU CAN FIGURE OUT THE SOLUTION. “Thank you for that good advice,” she said.

  I just stared at her arm for a minute. Then I remembered my manners. “You’re welcome.”

  “And how about this?” she said. “If your teacher wins the trip, I’ll be here for the rest of the year. So on Monday morning, would you tell me about your classroom rules? Because I don’t know any of them.”

  I said, Sure, even though I knew my teacher was not going to win that trip. Thinking about that made my heart attack hurt worse. By the time we got to the statehouse, I was practically dead from it.

  The other two classes were already in the lobby. One was a group of high schoolers, standing around butting each other with their shoulders. The other was a kindergarten class. They were butting each other with their shoulders, too, but they weren’t standing around, because most of them had been knocked to the floor. Before our class could get going with the shoulder-butting, it was time to go into the auditorium.

  First, the high schoolers filed down and sat on the right-hand side. Next went the kindergartners, and they went over to the left. The sitting-down part didn’t work very well for them, though.

  They were so little that any time they sat back, the seats sprang closed, snapping at them like alligators in a frog pond. Things got a little crazy for a while, with nineteen little kids collapsing into the seats and screaming like they were being gobbled up. Which they might have been.

  “Good grief,” I heard Mrs. Rice whisper to Mrs. Nagel. “Let’s hope our kids are heavy enough! Otherwise the PTA is going to have a canary!”

  Finally, someone got nineteen law books and weighed down the kindergartners’ laps with them. Then our class went in and sat right in the middle.

  In front of us, at a long table with a sign that said JUDGING COMMITTEE, were four people. One of them wore a badge and a serious face, which meant he was the boss.

  Behind them sat the three teachers vying for the award. I kept my eyes turned away so I wouldn’t have to see Mr. D’Matz.

  The boss judge stood up. “We will hear one student letter about each teacher,” he said. “Then we’ll announce our final decision.”

  The kindergarten teacher went first. She beckoned to a tiny girl who was missing all her front teeth. She looked relieved to be away from her snapping seat, probably because she couldn’t bite back. Since kindergartners are too young to write letters, she just told the judges why her teacher should be the winner.

  “My teather ith the betht one,” she started. After that, I had no idea what she was saying, and I don’t think the judges did either, although they kept smiling and nodding.

  Next was the high school teacher’s turn. A boy with purple hair spikes got up and fake yawned to show he wasn’t nervous about reading his letter.

  I didn’t understand much that he said either, even though he had all his teeth. There was some stuff about achievement tests and some stuff about academic atmosphere and some words even bigger than that. I was pretty sure he was making them up.

  The judges smiled and nodded through his letter, too, though.

  Then Mr. D’Matz stood up. The judges handed him a big envelope, and he pulled a sheet of paper from it. “Clementine, would you please come up and read your letter?”

  From my seat, I shook my head no and arrow-eyed him hard.

  He nodded yes and arrow-eyed me harder.

  I looked back at him even harder.

  I didn’t use stingray eyes, of course, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Because then he looked back at me with his best trick: laser eyes!

  Laser eyes are the most powerful eyes of all. They hypnotized me to stand up and walk over to the podium. Mr. D’Matz handed me my letter and I took it. And I started to read.

  “‘I have to tell you some things about my teacher. If you go camping with him, and you have to have beans…’”

  And then I sneaked a look at him—my teacher. Because I wanted to see him one last time before he hated me for life.

  And when I found his face, it was shining with a happy smile that said, I’m going to Egypt and Clementine is helping me.

  The paper fell out of my hands. The judge boss picked it up and held it out to me.

  I pushed it away and shook my head. “It’s okay,” I told him. “I don’t need it. I know what I want to tell you about my teacher.” And then I started over.

  But not with the things I had written on Monday.

  “If you go camping with him and you have to have beans, you will be lucky. Because even if you’ve never made them, it will be okay. My teacher would never say, ‘How come you don’t know how to make beans? I taught you how to do that last week!’ No. He would say something like, ‘Say, I see you’re planning to make some beans. I know you’ll be successful at that because you’re good at so many things. You’ll probably start by opening the can, then you’ll get a clean pot.’ And without you even knowing it, he will teach you how to make beans. And here is the tricky part: somehow, you will think you learned it all by yourself! Plus, you’ll think making beans is the most interesting thing in the world to do, because my teacher makes everything interesting. Even things that other people might think are weird!

  “And every morning when you go to school—I mean when you go camping with him—you’ll be excited to see what he’s got planned for the day. And when it’s time to go home, you’ll be a little bit sorry, because you’ve had a really good time. But you’ll know that’s okay, because he’s got lots of excellent projects planned and he’ll be there the next day. And—”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. Mrs. Rice nodded down at me. “Thank you, Clementine,” she said, as if I was all finished.

  “But there’s more,” I said. “I want to tell them more.”

  “I know,” she said. “But that’s enough for now.” Then she led me back to my seat, which was good, because my heart attack had gotten to my eyes and made them a little blurry.

  The judges got up and walked over to…my teacher. They smiled and shook his hand. Then they walked over to the other teachers and smiled and shook their hands, too. Then the four judges came back to their table, and the boss one picked up the microphone.

  “The winner of this year’s Great Adventure for Teachers program is…”

  And right then I knew they were going to say my teacher’s name, because of what I said about him. Which made me feel really, really sad and really, really happy, too. Which must have confused my ears, because what I heard was: “…Miss Gladys Huffman!”

  The kindergarten teacher must have heard that, too—she walked to the podium with a huge I-can’t-believe-it’s-me! grin on her face. The kindergartners jumped up and started clapping like crazy. This was not such a good idea because the law books all fell off and the seats started snapping at them again.

  “Thank-you-very-much-I-couldn’t-have-done-it-without-my-wonderful-students,” Miss Gladys Huffman said in a hurry into the microphone. “And now I think I better go rescue them!”

  And that was the end of the program.

  My teacher came over to our class and knelt down in front of me. “Thank you so much for that outstanding letter of recom
mendation, Clementine.”

  “But you didn’t win,” I said. “I’m sorry about that.” Which suddenly I actually was! Okay, fine—sort of.

  “Don’t be,” he said. “I’m not.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’m not,” he repeated. “I really did want to win, but when you read your letter, I thought…I’ve really missed my students this week. Everything you said in your letter reminded me of how much I liked teaching you. We’ve started a lot of projects, and I don’t want to leave in the middle of them. I’d planned to be your teacher this year, and I don’t want to miss out. You were right about all of that. So if I’d won, I would have wanted to tell them I was sorry, but I couldn’t accept the prize.”

  He nodded over to the kindergarten teacher. “I’m glad they gave it to her. I figure an archaeological dig will feel like a vacation to her!”

  I tapped my nose and pointed to him—You got that right on the nose! Good thinking!

  And he smiled at me. “I am very proud of you today, Clementine,” he said.

  Suddenly I wanted him to know the truth. “You shouldn’t be proud of me,” I said. “You don’t know what was really in my letter.”

  “Yes I do,” he said. “I read them all this morning.”

  “Oh, no. You couldn’t have read my letter,” I told him.

  Mr. D’Matz raised his eyebrows at me. “‘The smell of his socks could peel the wrapping off a mummy. If he walked by, the Great Sphinx would keel over.’”

  “Then…how come…how did you know I would…?”

  “Do you remember the story about the mother bird?”

  I didn’t make the here-we-go-again face, because just then I wanted to hear that story. But Mr. D’Matz didn’t tell it. Instead, he shook my hand and said, “I knew you could fly, Clementine. And I knew that you would.”

  As I sat there, shaking my teacher’s hand, my heart attack went away. And you will not believe what happened next! I felt a prickling all over my skin.