Penelope Crumb Finds Her Luck

by Shawn Stout

  Mr. Rodriguez pats Marcus on the shoulder and says, “That’s enough talk out of me. You guys have a lot of work to do. So I’ll let you get to it.”

  I pull my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil from my pocket and go to the wall. I’m working on the cuffs of Mother Goose’s woolen mittens when I notice that nobody else is drawing. Patsy Cline is chewing on an eraser. Vera Bogg is playing with the flower on her headband. And Marcus is giving me the Stink Eye.

  If Mister Leonardo was here, he’d surely say, “What trouble is plaguing these souls that their hands cannot grip a pencil?”

  I give them all a look that says, Start Drawing, Pronto. And then I say, “Start drawing, pronto.” I think it’s really too bad that I don’t have anything like Miss Stunkel’s chicken-bone finger because it might come in handy at a time like this.

  Even without Miss Stunkel’s finger, Patsy Cline, Vera Bogg, and Marcus start to draw, thank lucky stars. A billion years later. And when they do, I only have to tell them a couple of times to redo what they’ve done.

  “Jack Be Nimble looks more like a Janet,” I tell Vera Bogg.

  I say to Marcus, “The moon has too many craters.”

  “Pussycat’s whiskers are too thick,” I tell Patsy Cline. “He’d never be able to lift his head off the ground.”

  By the end of the day, I’m really tired. Being in charge is hard work. When I say, “See you tomorrow,” to everybody, only Patsy Cline answers. “You’re being a bit too bossy,” she says up close and in a whisper. “More than a bit, if you want to know the truth.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way you tell us all what to do all the time,” she says.

  “Patsy Cline,” I say, “this is what bosses are supposed to do.”

  She shakes her head at me.

  “Have you ever been a Boss?” I ask.

  “No, and neither have you been until now, I believe. But I don’t have to be one to know what bossy looks like. And it looks a lot like you, Penelope Crumb.”

  “I told you that I liked the Pussycat’s whiskers, didn’t I?” I say. “After the last time you redrew them.”

  “The only reason I drew them so big in the first place was because I got a little spooked when I saw his tail.” Patsy Cline folds her arms across her chest. “And, no, you did not tell me that even once.”

  “Well, I meant to.”

  “But you didn’t.” Patsy Cline stares at me, I don’t know what for, and when I tell her I have to go meet somebody, she looks like she’s just seen another tail and is about to have an allergic reaction. Then she says, “Well, I guess if you have to go.”

  I’ve only got a couple of minutes before Mom will be here to pick me up, so I wave at Patsy Cline and walk as fast as I can to find Nila Wister. She’s just where I left her this morning, staring out the same window. I go in without knocking and sit down beside her wheelchair. “I did it,” I tell her. “I stood up to the trouble, but it’s still hanging around.”

  Nila keeps her eyes on whatever is happening outside her window. This time I don’t poke her cheek, I poke her hands, which are folded together in her lap.

  “Nila?”

  “That was a good Popsicle,” she tells me. “Got any more?”

  I say there’s more at home unless the alien ate them all. Then I ask, “Did you hear what I said? The trouble is still here. Now what?”

  She unfolds her hands. Inside them is the butterfly figurine that had been hanging from her wheelchair. “You want my help?” she whispers.

  I nod.

  “Then I need your help.”

  “For what?” I say, because if this is about more Popsicles, between Nila Wister and Terrible, I’ll never be able to have any for myself ever.

  She tells me to come closer. I get up on my knees and lean in so that I’ve got a pretty good view of the butterfly, and I bring my finger toward it. Because maybe if I can just touch it once, just once, I can have some of its good luck for myself. But before my finger gets too close, Nila closes up her hands. Then her tiny voice comes out in a whisper. “I have to go.”

  I whisper back, “Okay, do you want me to get the nurse?” Because I don’t know anything about helping an old lady go to the bathroom, and I don’t want to.

  Nila Wister rolls her eyeballs at me and shakes her head. “Not that, foolish girl,” she says. “I want to leave this place.”

  “You do?”

  “And if you help me,” she says, lifting the butterfly charm in her hands, “I’ll help you.”

  13.

  The alien is stealing Grandpa Felix. I know this because at dinner, Grandpa Felix is going on and on about how Terrible did so good at helping him with the wedding shoot. And how Terrible is the greatest photographer’s assistant in the whole wide world. And that if he knew how amazing and spectacular Terrible was, he wouldn’t have been spending so much time with me.

  Okay, so maybe he didn’t say that last part exactly, or the first, truth be told, but it’s what he meant. I’m pretty sure.

  Our kitchen table is extra crowded because Tildy the girl is having dinner with us, too. She smiles a lot, mostly at Terrible, and so does Mom. And all of a sudden, I wonder if I somehow went dead for real because nobody seems to notice that I’m here.

  “Can I have some more bread?” I say. Not because I want any. I’ve got a whole buttered slice on my plate right next to my spaghetti and meatballs. But because I want to see if I’m really dead or not.

  I must be, because nobody gives me any. And nobody says, “Of course, Penelope, have all the bread you want.” They just keep on talking about things that don’t have anything to do with me and that have everything to do with the alien.

  I can almost hear the meatballs say, “We’ve been sitting on her plate forever and nobody has even noticed the girl’s not eating. Maybe we should get somebody’s attention.”

  Next to me, Grandpa Felix cuts his meatball with his fork just then, and half of it rolls off his plate and onto my lap. “Oh, dear,” he says, “My meatball seems to have grown legs.”

  Terrible laughs like this is the funniest thing he’s ever heard. He smiles at Grandpa and at Tildy the girl. He looks so happy, Terrible does, like he’s never even heard of the Bad Luck. And this makes my face hot.

  Grandpa doesn’t even notice that I haven’t picked up the meatball off my lap. And Mom doesn’t say anything about the tomato sauce and meat stain on my pants. It’s in the shape of a stomach ulcer. Which won’t come out in the wash.

  Then Grandpa tells a story about something that happened at the photography shoot today, something that Terrible did that made his job a whole lot easier and helped him get some of the best wedding pictures he’s taken in a long time. That’s what he says while I, Penelope Crumb, his regular photographer’s assistant and used-to-be Favorite, sit here with half a ball of meat in my lap.

  Then Tildy the girl speaks. “I had no idea you were such a good photographer,” she tells Terrible.

  “He’s not,” I say, finally getting alive again. Everybody looks at me now that I’ve come back from the dead and have something to say.

  Mom says, “Penelope Rae.” (Gingivitis.)

  “He’s the assistant, truth be told,” I say. “And the assistant doesn’t get to take pictures. Right, Grandpa Felix?”

  But instead of saying, “Right you are, little darling. And if I let anyone take pictures it would be you because you’ve been asking forever and also because I love you the most,” instead of that he says, “Well . . .” and sort of shrugs. His face turns Vera Bogg pink.

  “Right, Grandpa?” I say again. Because he’s old and sometimes you have to say things twice.

  “Um,” he says.

  “You let HIM take pictures but you won’t let me!” I yell. I’m up on my feet, and the meatball slides down my leg to the floor.

 
Mom calls my name again and says for goodness’ sakes hold it together. Grandpa Felix tells me not to make a big deal out of this, that it just worked out that Terrible was in a better position for the shot. Only he doesn’t say Terrible, he says Terrence, and that’s when I decide to announce to everyone, including the girl Tildy, that my brother, who they all know as Terrence, is really, honest to goodness, an alien. The kind from outer space. And who is all of a sudden trying to fool everyone into thinking he’s not by playing football and talking to girls.

  Terrible spits his spaghetti into his napkin, because now the truth is out and the last thing he’d want is a mouthful of spaghetti when NASA scientists knock on our door.

  But then the Bad Luck squeezes.

  Mom’s face gets all blotchy, and at first I think it’s because she has an alien for a son. Whose face wouldn’t get blotchy at news like that? But then she gives me a look that says, Not Another Word, Missy. And even though I can tell she really wants to, Mom doesn’t say anything. Probably because Tildy the girl is sitting right there, and it’s not a good idea to holler at the dinner table in front of a guest. Mom likes guests to think that we’re a normal, non-hollering type of family, I suppose.

  I’m about to explain how I know Terrible is an alien, that there’s proof if they would just listen, but Grandpa Felix squeezes my shoulder, kind of hard, too, and I close my mouth. Then he asks Tildy the girl about her favorite subject in school. And just like that, everybody pretends I’m not here, that Terrible’s not from another planet, and that I haven’t been meatballed for no reason.

  Later, Littie Maple knocks on my door. “Do sisters have to share everything?” she wants to know.

  I say, “Absolutely positively no. And it’s better if you put your name on everything that’s yours including Popsicles, because once that baby has teeth, and maybe even before, nothing will be just yours.”

  “Oh,” says Littie, writing that down.

  Then I open the drawer to my desk and pull out the colors I got from May’s Hardware. “Here,” I say, handing them over to Littie, “I got you Celery Stalk, Morning Dewdrop, and my favorite, Rustic Forest.”

  “Rustic Forest?” she says.

  “I decided the new baby’s room should be green.”

  “You did?”

  I nod. “When are you going to start painting? Because I can help with that, too.”

  Littie looks at her feet. “Sorry, Penelope,” she says. “Momma and I already picked out the color.”

  “Without me?”

  Littie says yes.

  I fold my arms across my chest and wait for Littie to tell me.

  “Yellow,” she says.

  “Yellow?” I say. “What kind of yellow? Morning Sunrise? Canary Feather? Citrus Lemon?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Just yellow.”

  I shake my head and say to Littie what Nila Wister is always saying to me: “Big mistake.”

  She says, “What’s wrong with yellow?”

  “Not a thing,” I say. Because if Littie wants the new baby to feel like it’s about to be run over by a school bus, then I’m not going to be the one to tell her different.

  “Let’s not have a fight,” she tells me.

  “Oh, you’ll need to get used to that,” I say, “because having a brother or sister means fights, lots of them. Sometimes over the stuff that’s not yours anymore and sometimes just because. You could be walking down the hall and from out of nowhere your brother or sister just jumps out at you and pushes you for no reason.”

  “Really?”

  I tell her, yes, really.

  She writes that down, too, and then says, “What else?”

  “You really want to know?” I say.

  She nods, but I’m not so sure she does. Either way, I let her have it with the truth. “When you’re a sister, you have to put up with the stink of another person in the family. And you better hope it’s not a boy, because they smell the worst. And if for some reason your brother or sister gets snatched by aliens and returned like my brother was, you are in for a world of trouble, not to mention the worst kind of stink ever.”

  Littie stops writing, but she’s still listening, so I keep going. “Right now, you are your momma’s and dad’s All-Time Favorite. Your grandma’s and grandpa’s Favorite, too. Only you won’t be for long. And even if you ever do get to be again, sometime in the future, your brother or sister will do something, like take a dumb picture, that everybody will think is very much wonderful enough to be in a museum or something, and then you will die right in front of them, and nobody will notice. And they will throw hamburger at you. And think it’s funny. Because you are just the used-to-be Favorite and who cares about that?”

  Littie Maple looks like she might cry.

  I tell her that I’m sorry but she wanted to know the truth.

  She closes up her notebook and slides her pen through the spiral rings. “Maybe that’s just how it is over here,” she says. “That doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to be for me.”

  I shrug.

  Then she tells me, “Jane Goodall was lucky the chimps couldn’t tell her these kinds of things!”

  “Don’t get sore at me,” I say. “I was just trying to help.”

  But all she says is “humph” and nothing else and then slams the door on her way out.

  14.

  Except to tell me that he’s very disappointed in the way I behaved last night at dinner, Grandpa Felix is quiet the whole way to the nursing home. Which suits me fine, because if he doesn’t know that I’m still mad at him for letting an alien take pictures when he never lets me, then I’m not going to be the one to tell him.

  If you ask me, he doesn’t have any reason to be mad at me. After all, he wasn’t the one with a meatball in his lap.

  I don’t have a Popsicle for Nila, and I don’t have an answer for her either. So I go straight to the activity room. When I get there, I know something is wrong. Besides the half-drawn mural, it’s just Patsy Cline and Mr. Rodriguez. “Where is everybody?”

  Patsy Cline gives me a look that says, You Don’t Want to Know.

  “Have a seat,” says Mr. Rodriguez.

  I can almost hear Mother Goose ruffle her feathers and say, “It really is a shame that this is turning out to be quite a mess. Oh dear.”

  Mr. Rodriguez scratches his chin beard. “Penelope, they aren’t coming. The others, they want to quit.”

  “How come?” Then I look at Patsy Cline. “Even Vera Bogg?”

  She shrugs, and then nods.

  Mr. Rodriguez says that he’s sorry and that it’s his fault really. That I shouldn’t take it personally.

  “Why would I do that?” I say.

  Patsy Cline looks me straight in the face and says everybody skedaddled because of me being so bossy and, for crying out loud, people can only take so much. And that’s just how she says it.

  Mr. Rodriguez pats me on the back and says that he should have been more hands-on from the beginning and that he only wanted us to learn to work as a team, so that the mural was one hundred percent ours, but that didn’t happen. “And now . . .”

  “But Patsy Cline and me are here,” I say.

  His shoulders slump. “The party for the unveiling of the mural is next Saturday. Which means we’ve got today and a few hours on Saturday morning to finish up.” He points to the wall. “The drawing isn’t finished, and you haven’t even started painting. I just don’t think the two of you will be able to finish in time. I’m sorry.”

  “What if we worked on it in the evenings, after school?” I say, pretending that Mom would let me do that even after she told me I should come straight home.

  He says that won’t work because the old people use the activity room on weeknights. Then he says, “Penelope, I’m sorry, but I’m going to take over. I’ve got to see if I can g
et the others to come back and help. And while I’m doing that, you two can start painting.”

  “But we aren’t finished the drawings yet,” I say. The pufferbellies have different-size wheels, the Man on the Moon looks like he’s got the measles, the cat from Hey Diddle Diddle needs a fiddle and not something that is supposed to be a fiddle but looks like a guitar, and Hickory Dickory looks more like a sausage than a clock. Mister Leonardo would say, “Unsatisfactory, if you ask me.”

  “We’re going with what we have,” he says. “We have to. Otherwise on Saturday there will be nothing at all to celebrate.”

  Oh.

  Mr. Rodriguez pulls his cell phone from his pocket and tells us he’ll be back. “Wish me luck,” he says.

  Patsy Cline tells him good luck, but I don’t say anything because what’s the point? The Good Luck wouldn’t listen to me anyway.

  When he’s gone, Patsy Cline asks me if she should keep working on Pussycat’s whiskers. I tell her I’m not the Boss anymore, so do what you want. She says, “Don’t be like that, now.” Then she goes over to the wall and starts drawing.

  While Patsy Cline draws, she sings real softly, “If I could see the world / through the eyes of a child / smiling faces would greet me all the while / like a lovely work of art / it would warm my weary heart / just to see through the eyes of a child.”

  And I don’t know if it’s Patsy Cline’s sweet voice or my own weary heart, or maybe both, but I say all at once, “I just wanted you to like me again.”

  She turns away from the mural to look at me. “I like you fine.”

  “Not more than Vera Bogg,” I whisper.

  Patsy Cline doesn’t say anything. Because either she doesn’t hear me or she does and there’s nothing much else to say.

  “How come you came back?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Singing is just me, by myself. And I wanted to do something with people. I’m not like you, I’m not real good at drawing, but it makes me feel nice. And maybe, when we’re all done, other people will feel nice, too.”