Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade

by Barthe DeClements

  I paid attention to my hamburger. I didn’t want to get into that subject.

  “I guess your job isn’t worth all this trouble, eh?” my father said to my mother.

  “Or your bowling isn’t worth all this trouble,” my mother said to my father.

  Things were pretty quiet on the way home. When I got out of the car, I called D.D. I figured she would be hungry. I expected to see her come swishing around the house with her tail up. She didn’t. I called and called. I looked in the backyard and out behind the garage. Finally Daddy yelled at me to get in the house and go to bed.

  I lay in bed awake a long time. I was tired, but I wasn’t sleepy. I wondered what was happening to Elsie. I wondered where my cat was. I really liked them both very much. Finally I did fall asleep, but then I was awakened by howling and screeching outside my window. I got up and peered into the outside darkness. I could see three animals race across the lawn. I couldn’t tell if one was D.D. I hoped she wasn’t hurt.

  The next morning was Sunday. I lolled in my bed, watching the sun stream through my window. The smell of pancakes was drifting up from the kitchen. The ride in the truck seemed as if it had happened in a movie. I stretched and thought of butter and syrup oozing over pancakes. D.D.! D.D. hadn’t come home! I hurried out of bed and into the bathroom. I went down the stairs to the kitchen, hoping she’d come when I called.

  She did! She hopped up the back steps, walked through the door as if she’d never been gone, sat down on the kitchen floor, and proceeded to lick her messed-up fur.

  I crouched beside her. “Where have you been, D.D.?”

  Daddy, Mother, and Kenny were at the kitchen table, eating. “How old’s that cat?” Daddy asked Mother.

  “Oh, a little over six months,” Mother said. “Fine,” Daddy said sarcastically. “Did you get her spayed?”

  “No, did you?” Mother asked. She was certainly standing up to Daddy since she got her job. I thought that was neat.

  I held D.D. in my arms. “Do you think she’s going to be a mama?”

  “Many times,” Daddy replied.

  Peace Talks

  On Monday it seemed that school took forever. I was anxious to get out so I could find out from Elsie what happened after we left the police station. School wouldn’t have been so boring if Mrs. Hanson had let us do crafts like we did in the fourth grade or let us make a movie like the sixth graders were doing. But she just liked us to be in our seats, working quietly. I wished she had retired before we got her.

  After school half the class crowded around Elsie in the school yard. Jack wanted to know what the police did to the truck driver. I wanted to know first what was going to happen to Elsie. We were all pushing and talking to her at once.

  “Shut up,” Diane told everybody. “I want to know what happened.”

  Jack ignored her. “Tell us about the truck driver, Elsie.”

  “He told the police that he was going out to Snohomish to get a horn for his truck,” Elsie said, “and that he was coming back to Lynnwood to the shopping center. He said he thought we kids would enjoy the ride.”

  Diane put her hands on her hips. “Well, then how come he didn’t answer us when you pounded on the window?”

  “He said he had his radio on. He said he didn’t even know we’d jumped out of the truck until the State Patrol stopped him.”

  “Did the police buy all that?” Jack asked.

  Elsie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “My mother said he’s just lucky he didn’t drive over a state line or he’d have been in real trouble,” Sharon said. Sharon always tells everybody what her mother says. If you know Sharon, you can get pretty sick of what her mother says.

  “So nothing happened to him?” Jack persisted.

  “The police gave him a ticket for driving without a horn.”

  “Cripes,” Lester said, “he got off easy.”

  “You girls were sure dumb to get in that truck,” Jack told us.

  I didn’t want to hear about that. I wanted to hear what Elsie’s mother was going to do to her. “Is your mother going to send you away?”

  Elsie looked down at the playground and kicked some of the gravel around. “I have to leave in June for a boarding school summer camp.”

  “That’s only a month away,” Marianne said.

  The boys left. They didn’t care what happened to Elsie. We girls started walking home. Marianne went partway with us. She reached out and took Elsie’s hand and swung their hands between them as they walked. I felt like telling Marianne we were too old to hold hands.

  Diane, Elsie, and I sat around Diane’s kitchen table with our arithmetic books closed. There was only one more week of fractions. We didn’t really need to have Elsie teach us any more, but my mother said we should finish the week out together. She was enjoying all my hundreds.

  Diane plunked the ice up and down in her glass of grape juice with her fingers. “Couldn’t you just explain to your mother that it wasn’t your fault your sister got back in the truck?”

  Elsie shook her head. “Mama doesn’t listen to me explain. She explains to me—why I am going.”

  From what I saw of Mrs. Edwards, I believed that. “You need a grown-up to talk to her,” I said. “How about your mother, Diane?”

  “Not my mother,” Diane replied. “Your mother. She’s the one who can talk people into things.”

  It was true. My mother could sweet-talk anyone. Already, at work, she was selling more plants in a day than any other clerk in the nursery.

  My mother was making dinner when I got home. I helped her cut the vegetables for salad to get her in a good mood. While I sliced a tomato, I asked casually, “Do you think you could visit Mrs. Edwards?”

  “I suppose I could, but why should I?” she asked. She was putting the fish in the broiler.

  I waited until she finished. “I don’t think Elsie’s mother understands that Elsie couldn’t get her sister out of that truck.”

  “I think Mrs. Edwards understands she’s got real problems with both Elsie and that little girl.”

  “Mother, she doesn’t have a problem with Elsie any more. She just thinks she does. Elsie drinks grapefruit juice when we drink grape juice. She never touches any extra food. Mother, you can get anybody to listen to you. You could try Mrs. Edwards.”

  “O.K., I’ll give it a try.” She peeked in the oven to see how the fish was doing.

  I was stunned that she had agreed so fast. I’d hardly gotten into my argument. “When will you go?” I asked.

  “Oh, tomorrow I might have time.” She took the lid off the pan of steaming green beans. “I think we’re about ready. Let’s get this food on the table.”

  My mother wasn’t there when I came home the next afternoon. I hoped she was with Mrs. Edwards. I set the table and put some potatoes in the oven to bake. She arrived as I was standing in the middle of the kitchen trying to decide what else I could do for her. I hurried out to the living room.

  “Did you visit Mrs. Edwards?”

  “Yes,” she said. She was taking off Kenny’s sweater and shooing him into the bathroom.

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?” I sat down on Daddy’s big chair. I couldn’t believe it.

  Mother sat down on the davenport. “Jenifer, Elsie was suspended from her last school and she is remaining in this school only on probation.”

  “I know that, Mother. But why does she have to be sent away?”

  “Elsie has to go to school somewhere.”

  “Maybe Mr. Douglas will let her come back to our school in the fall.”

  “Maybe he will and maybe he won’t.”

  “Why couldn’t Mrs. Edwards at least try?”

  Mother sighed. “I don’t know why. I think she may have given up on Elsie.”

  “I think she has, too, and that isn’t fair.”

  “Well, Jenifer, one of the things you’re going to find out in life is that you can’t straighten o
ut other people’s lives if they don’t want you to. And I don’t think Mrs. Edwards wants our advice. Maybe she would take somebody’s. But I don’t think she’s going to take ours.”

  “Can I call Elsie on the phone and tell her it didn’t work?” I asked. “She was hoping and hoping.”

  “You be careful what you say.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  I went to the phone and dialed Elsie’s number. She answered.

  “Hi, it’s Jenny,” I said. “I’m sorry, but my mother said it didn’t work.”

  “I know,” Elsie replied softly.

  I waited a second. She didn’t say any more, so I told her I’d see her tomorrow and hung up.

  Walking home from school the next day, Diane was being discouraging. She didn’t think anybody could convince Elsie’s mother to keep her if my mother couldn’t. I insisted my mother had said maybe Mrs. Edwards would take somebody’s advice.

  “My mother said,” Sharon started in, “that your mother certainly seems to favor your little sister, Elsie.”

  “She does,” Elsie said flatly.

  We were walking by Chris Johnson’s house. He and Mark Howard and some other sixth grade boys were tossing a basketball through a hoop in front of the garage. Chris Johnson held the ball as we passed. “Well, well, the terrible threesome has turned into three pins and a bowling ball.”

  “Naw,” one of the other boys corrected him, “that’s three asparagus spears and a yellow tomato.”

  I turned and screamed at them, “You shut up, Chris Johnson! You’ve got a humpy nose and pig eyes. You’ve got nothing to talk about.”

  Chris held the ball to his chest and, pretending he was overwhelmed, shrank backward into the other boys. “Why, Jenifer Sawyer, I didn’t know you cared.”

  Diane laughed, but I didn’t. They were so prejudiced. Just to show them, I held Elsie’s hand as we walked away.

  When the dinner dishes were finished, I went into the living room and sat down on the davenport with D.D. on my lap. Mother was crocheting beside me. “Do you think D.D.’s any fatter?” I asked.

  Mother looked up from her crocheting. “She doesn’t look any fatter to me.”

  “Don’t worry. She will be,” Daddy said from behind his paper.

  “The sixth grade boys teased Elsie on the way home from school,” I told mother. “They called her a yellow tomato and a bowling ball.”

  Daddy tipped his paper down, so he could see me. “Seems to me I remember your calling her ‘that thief Elsie’ a few months ago.”

  “I didn’t know her then,” I explained.

  My father put his paper back up. “That’s usually the way prejudice works.”

  I stroked D.D.’s sides. She seemed a little plumper to me.

  The Old Lady Winked

  The day of the school’s spring concert, Elsie wore a new navy blue cotton pants suit. She said her mother made it for her. I thought that was a good sign. In P.E., Mr. Marshall noticed how nice she looked, too. We were standing with him while we waited for the boys’ teams to finish their relay race.

  “My, Elsie,” he exclaimed, “you’ve lost a lot of weight. You’re going to be absolutely skinny.”

  Elsie wasn’t skinny yet, or even down to chubby, but she had lost that fat-lady-in-the-circus look.

  “I won’t be skinny until I lose a lot more pounds,” Elsie told Mr. Marshall in her usual honest way.

  “Ah, the rest will come off like skimming grease off chicken soup.”

  Elsie shook her head and looked down at her shoes. “It isn’t that easy.”

  He patted her on the back. “You can do it, a smart girl like you.” Mr. Marshall blew his whistle and our class lined up to return to our classroom and the spring concert.

  Spring concerts are boring. All the orchestra kids get on the stage and squeak their violins and violas. When they’re finished, they troop off and the band kids come on to struggle through Sousa marches. It takes an hour and a half. Before it’s over, the little kids begin to wiggle and the bad older kids shove the chairs in front of them with their feet. There’s a lot of “Cut it out!” until the teachers come down the aisles with mad faces to shush us up. As we file out of the gym, the teachers change their faces to smiles and nod at the performers’ mothers, who sit in the back row.

  Watching Mrs. Hanson greet Lester’s mother gave me the idea. I dropped back to where Elsie was in line. “I’ve got an idea,” I whispered to her. “Let’s ask Mrs. Hanson to talk to your mother.”

  Elsie shook her head as we rounded the outside corner of the gym. “She won’t listen.”

  “She’ll have to,” I insisted, “if Mrs. Hanson calls her in for a conference.”

  “Jenifer!” Mrs. Hanson called out sharply. “Since you can’t be quiet, come and walk with me.”

  I walked beside Mrs. Hanson silently until we almost got to the door of the fifth grade unit. Then I asked her if I could talk to her after school.

  When our class had been dismissed, I brought my chair up beside Mrs. Hanson’s desk. I’ll say one thing about Mrs. Hanson—she’s a good listener. I told her the whole story about the ride in the truck, Elsie’s sister, and Elsie’s diet. “Elsie has really tried,” I explained. “It isn’t fair.”

  I was fiddling with the calendar holder on Mrs. Hanson’s desk as I talked. She reached over and put her hand on mine. “Jenifer, please don’t say it isn’t fair again. If there’s one thing that makes me look forward to retirement, it’s knowing I won’t have to hear ‘It isn’t fair’ any more.”

  “Oh. O.K.” I put my hand in my lap. “It’s just that Elsie has tried so hard and she’s going to be sent away. She helped Diane and me with our math after school for a month.”

  “So that’s it.” Mrs. Hanson sat back in her chair, nodding. “That’s the answer to your good papers. I was wondering.”

  “She’s a very good teacher,” I said.

  “I imagine she is,” Mrs. Hanson agreed.

  “So couldn’t you help her? You know how to say all those words to parents.”

  She looked at her calendar. “Well, maybe it is time for another conference with Mrs. Edwards. Let’s see, today’s Friday. You’ll have gym again with Mr. Marshall next Tuesday. I’ll talk with Mr. Douglas and see if we can set up a conference next Tuesday during gym time.”

  I got up to go. I thanked Mrs. Hanson twice for being so kind.

  Tuesday was a long school day. We didn’t have P.E. till the afternoon, so the whole morning had to be gotten through before Elsie’s mother would even arrive at school. After lunch there was English before P.E. I had my usual trouble getting my paper started. Elsie wrote her paper quickly and spent the rest of the hour staring at a page in her library book and pulling on her hair. Toward the end of the hour I gave up and signed out for the bathroom. On the way back to the room, I peeked out the unit door. Mrs. Edwards’ car was in the parking lot.

  “She’s here,” I whispered to Elsie as I slid back in my seat.

  Elsie nodded. There was no color in her face.

  “Line up for P.E.,” Mrs. Hanson ordered. “Quietly! Please.”

  Mr. Marshall had some sixth graders in the gym demonstrate tumbling to us. I thought Chris Johnson was the best tumbler. Diane thought Mark Howard was. I don’t think Elsie cared.

  Mrs. Edwards’ car was gone from the parking lot when we left the gym to go back to the room. I grabbed Elsie’s shoulder. “It’s all decided now,” I said.

  Mrs. Hanson was at her desk when we entered the room. I looked carefully at her face as we marched to our seats to see if I could tell from her expression what the decision was. She winked at me. That old lady actually winked at me. I shoved Elsie in the back. She turned around, nodding. She had seen it, too.

  During our reading lesson, Diane scribbled on a scrap of paper and passed it to me. The note said, “Did Mrs. Hanson wink at you???” I wrote on the bottom of the paper, “Yes,” and handed it back. I leaned over and poked Elsie. When she looke
d up, I winked. She winked back. I felt so good I could have flown out the classroom window.

  Elsie had to go to the doctor’s after school so we didn’t get the details of the conference until we met Elsie at school the next morning. We were barely at the school door when Diane and I climbed all over Elsie to tell us what Mrs. Hanson and her mother said.

  “My mother said Mrs. Hanson said that I improved in behavior more than any other student she’d ever had.”

  “Do you get to stay? Do you get to stay?” I interrupted her.

  “If the principal will let me back in the fall, I do.”

  “Will he?” I asked.

  “He said I could try taking regular recesses with the kids, and if I didn’t get in any more trouble, he would admit me in the fall. Mrs. Hanson said there were only two weeks left and she was sure I’d make it.”

  “Mrs. Hanson must have really laid it on,” Diane said.

  Elsie agreed. “She even told my mother that I was the top student in the class, and that I generously helped other students with their work.”

  “So that did it?” I asked.

  “Well, Mama didn’t say much on the way to the doctor. But when I got on the doctor’s scale, we found I’d lost another four pounds, which made a total of thirty pounds.”

  “Thirty pounds!” I exclaimed. “I only weigh ninety.”

  Elsie looked at me wistfully. “I’d like to weigh ninety.”

  “You will,” I told her. “We’ll help you keep on your diet all next year.”

  “But you know my mother,” Elsie warned. “If I do one little thing.”

  “Don’t do anything, Elsie. Don’t do anything,” I told her.

  “Don’t worry,” Elsie said. “I won’t.”

  And she almost didn’t.

  I Can See My Shoes

  The first week that Elsie had recess everything went smoothly. Then Diane got the brainstorm that she should teach Elsie to bat so we all could be on a softball team during the summer. Elsie was coordinated enough, but she didn’t know anything about baseball. We took her way out to the edge of the playfield. I pitched the ball and Diane coached Elsie’s swings.