Completely Clementine

by Sara Pennypacker

  “I didn’t say a single word all night,” I said. I checked her watch. “So now it’s been two days, twenty hours, and fifty-six minutes. It’s really hard, though, Margaret.”

  “Is it harder than not scratching when you had poison ivy last summer? Is not talking to him harder than that?”

  “That doesn’t count,” I decided, after I’d thought about it for a minute. “When I had poison ivy, my mother taped socks over my hands. That made it easier.”

  Margaret sat back, thinking. “Well, I guess you could tape socks over your lips,” she said after a while. “But clean, never-been-used ones, of course. I could get some for you.”

  I said Thanks but no thanks to that, and changed the subject. “Maria and Rasheed want to know if Joe’s dog can be in the wedding.”

  “A dog in the wedding? In the actual wedding? Of course not!” Margaret sputtered. “But find out if Buddy could pull the carriage. Otherwise, they’re going to have to get a horse.”

  When I got home, I found my mother on the kitchen floor.

  “Mom!” I cried. “What are you doing?” Although I could see: she was scrubbing the underneath of the stove…with a toothbrush!

  “Getting ready,” she answered, in a voice that sounded as puffy and sweaty as she looked. “There’s a baby’s coming soon, you know.”

  “But, um, it’s not going to live in the oven,” I said. “We have a crib, remember? So…?”

  Just then my dad poked his head into the kitchen and signaled for me to come back into the living room with him. I did, but I pressed my mouth closed hard so no words could slip out.

  “Your mother,” he said in an extra-loud voice, “is completely sane.” At the same time, he was pooching out his belly and making crazy-circles at his temples with his fingers. He was telling me that Mom was acting a little nuts because of being pregnant.

  Which had been happen-ing more and more lately. On Saturday, she washed and folded all the baby’s clothes, which she had already washed and folded on Friday. On Sunday, she color-coded everything in our hall closet. And last night after dinner, she alphabetized the food in our refrigerator. Dad says what she’s doing is called nesting, and it’s a perfectly normal stage that happens right before a baby is born.

  It didn’t seem that normal to me, though. Actually, it made me a little worried.

  My dad left to go to work. And suddenly, more than anything, I wished I could call him back so he could tell me again that everything was fine with my mom.

  I needed to break his heart with my sad-animal drawings pretty soon, because I didn’t know how much longer I could keep up the silent treatment.

  So I went into my room to make an extra-sad one—one that would work. I decided on a turkey looking at a November calendar with drops of worry-sweat fountaining out of its forehead. I labeled it “THANKSGIVING TRAGEDY” and turned the two “T”s into hatchets, to help my dad get the point. Then I tucked the drawing into my pocket and went to find him.

  He was in the lobby, hanging a big yellow sun from the chandelier. I opened my mouth to ask why, but just in time I remembered, and I clamped it shut. Dad must have noticed my How come? eyes, because he said, “Sunday is the Summer Solstice. It’s a pretty important day—the first day of summer.”

  I watched him tack up a WELCOME SUMMER! sign, and then I remembered why I had come up here in the first place. I pulled out my drawing and handed it to him.

  And my wish came true! His whole face crashed down in sadness—his eyes, his mouth, his ears, and even his beard.

  “Clementine,” he said with a big sigh, “could you please try to remember what we talked about after Beauty and the Beast?” Then he turned away and pressed the elevator up button. As he got in, his shoulders sagged down as if they were sad too.

  I would have been really happy that my drawing had done such a good job, except that now I was too busy trying not to think about the Beauty and the Beast time.

  Because remembering that would have wrecked everything.

  Wednesday morning, after “Yet?”ing and “Not yet”ing, I told Mr. D’Matz the great idea I’d had.

  “You think I’d make a good fourth-grade teacher?” he repeated. “Well, thank you. That’s a compliment.”

  I nodded. “So you should switch. In September.”

  “That’s not how it works,” he said. “There are two fourth-grade teachers in this school already, and they’re both planning on coming back. Besides, I really like it here in third grade.”

  “Oh, sure, you like us in third grade,” I explained, “because we’re such a great class. You never know what’s coming next year. I’ve seen the second graders eating lunch and, let me tell you, some of them are…” Luckily, just then I remembered some words my grandmother had used to describe my father when he was little. “Hellions! Some of them might even be feral. They might bite you, and you’d have to check them for rabies, and—”

  My teacher laughed as if I had told him a good joke. “Well, they won’t be you guys, that’s for sure. You’re a special class, all right. But I like teaching this age group. I like seeing how much third graders change during the year. Take you, for example, Clementine.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “Let’s not take me for example. Let’s take Joe instead. He’s really changed lately. Hey, Joe, come on up here and show Mr. D’Matz how tall you’ve gotten!”

  And it worked. Joe’s growth spurt tricked our teacher into forgetting about saying Good-bye, Clementine, you’ve really changed, so you’re ready for fourth grade.

  He didn’t stay tricked for long, though. In math, we did a short review and then, as he collected our Fraction Blaster packets, he started in again. “It’s added up to quite a year,” he said, and suddenly I knew we weren’t talking about quarters and thirds anymore.

  “I’m so proud of each and every one of you, of how much you’ve learned and grown. You’ve mastered a lot of material, and now you’re ready for new challenges. I’m reminded of the mother bird and her baby birds…”

  Before he could get going with his favorite story about how great it is when perfectly happy, unsuspecting little birds get kicked off their branches, I shot my hand up.

  “Yes, Clementine?”

  “I have to go to the principal’s office,” I said.

  “Right now? Is it an emergency?”

  “Yes,” I said, glad he’d thought up this good reason. “An emergency I forgot about because it just happened.”

  Mr. D’Matz looked confused by that, so I jumped up and left. I stomped down the hall to the principal’s office, which is something I have done so many times this year, I am surprised the hall doesn’t have a path worn into it. When Mrs. Rice answered my knock, I stomped in, sat down, crossed my arms over my chest, and aimed my sting-ray eyes at her. This is called Sending a Message.

  “Hello, Clementine,” she said, completely ignoring my message. “I haven’t seen you in a while. What’s on your mind?”

  “I think you should promote him,” I said. “Our teacher. He’s really grown this year. He’s really mastered the material and is ready for a new challenge. So I think you should kick him off the branch—I mean, promote him to fourth grade. You’re the principal, you can do it.”

  “Well, but moving to a higher grade isn’t a promotion for a teacher. All of our grades provide teachers the same amount of…um…” Mrs. Rice rubbed her chin and looked up at the ceiling, as if she hoped a good word might be hanging there. “Well, never mind,” she said after a minute of not finding it. “But speaking of growing, I’d hardly recognize you from the beginning of the year, you’ve grown so much, Clementine.”

  I jumped off the chair and looked down at my legs to see if a growth spurt had snuck up on me, too.

  Mrs. Rice chuckled. “No, I didn’t mean you’re taller, although I expect you are. I should have said, you’ve really matured this year. Why, I haven’t seen you in here for a chat about your behavior since…” She stopped to think.

  “
Three Wednesdays ago,” I sighed. “My feet were too bored to stay under my desk during a film the nurse showed us about nutrition.”

  Mrs. Rice’s head snapped up. “Not the Super-power Vitamins film? Where the apples wear little capes? The one with the sword-fighting carrots?”

  I nodded. My feet were getting itchy again just thinking about how boring that film was.

  “Good grief, I know that one. Just between us, Clementine, my feet would have gotten bored too, if I had to sit through that film. So that trip to my office doesn’t count. And before that, the last time you were here was…well, I can’t even remember. Which is quite a difference—in the beginning of the year, you were a regular visitor. You’ve gotten so much better about controlling your impulses, and thinking ahead about consequences. So you see, I think you’re the one who’s ready for the promotion.”

  Suddenly, I was all finished being there, so I got up to leave.

  “Have a wonderful summer, Clementine,” said Mrs. Rice. “I’ll see you next year.”

  I stopped in the doorway. And mind-reading must be something they teach at principal school.

  “Yes, Clementine,” Principal Rice promised to the question I hadn’t asked out loud. “I will be right here.”

  When we got off the bus, Margaret led me up to her apartment to show me her new shoes. She took me right into her closet, without even asking if I’d had a shower that day, the way she usually does, and slid a pink box off the top shelf.

  “Wow,” I said when she lifted the lid. “Are they real gold?”

  “Of course. Probably. Maybe. Don’t breathe so hard on them,” Margaret said. “You’ll fog up the patina.”

  So I turned my head and did side-breathing while I admired Margaret’s sparkly new shoes for a while. “How tall are they?” I asked when I thought we had done enough admiring.

  “Oh, eight or nine inches. Maybe ten.”

  “I don’t think so, Margaret,” I said. Then I held one of the shoes against my left forearm and measured it. “The heel is two inches high,” I told Margaret.

  “How do you know that?” she asked. “Because it fits between Betelgeuse and Alula Borealis, which are exactly two inches apart.” I held the shoe up against my arm again to show her. “Well, plus my fingernail. Two inches and a fingernail. Are they hard to walk in?”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Margaret said. “You’ve named your freckles?”

  “Actually, my dad did,” I said. “He named them after stars. We played a game about the constellations on my arms. Orion’s over here and—”

  Suddenly, thinking about my dad made my eyes sting and my throat hurt. “Never mind,” I said. “Those heels are two inches tall, Margaret. Not ten.”

  “And a fingernail.”

  “And a fingernail. Which is pretty high, all right,” I admitted. “I can’t believe your mother let you get them.”

  “She didn’t want to,” Margaret said. “She’s afraid I’ll break my neck. That’s how effective my silent treatment is. How’s yours going?”

  “I’m still doing it,” I said. I checked her watch. “Three days, twenty-one hours, and forty-nine minutes now. But it’s so hard. In fact, I think it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  Margaret’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? It’s harder than…”

  Margaret looked at me and I looked at her. I knew we were both thinking about the same thing, the thing that was so bad neither one of us wanted to say it out loud: when my kitten Moisturizer went missing last winter.

  “I don’t know if it’s harder than that,” I said, after I’d thought about it for a while. “But it’s definitely lonelier. It makes me miss my dad. It feels like he’s in another country, far away, and I can’t go there with him.”

  Margaret’s face crumpled a little at that, and I remembered: Margaret’s mother was going on a honeymoon with Alan after the wedding. To Paris, France, which really is in another country, far away.

  “Are you going to miss your mother next week?” I asked.

  Margaret put her shoes back on the shelf, then she went back into her room.

  I followed her. “Are you?”

  She nodded. “It’s the first time she’s ever left.”

  “Do you wish you could go with them?” I asked. Margaret made the horror face she always makes when her mother and Alan are kissing. “Are you crazy? Do you know what a honeymoon is?”

  I nodded yes, then shook my head no. “Tell me.”

  Margaret shuddered and jumped back, as if some newlyweds were about to burst in and start honeymooning right in front of her. “You’re lucky you don’t know,” she muttered. “You should keep it that way.”

  After she shuddered a few more times, she said, “Besides, I want to stay here. My father’s coming from California, and Mitchell and I are going to spend the whole week in a fancy hotel with him while our mother and Alan are gone. Room service and cleaning ladies every day.”

  Margaret reached down to give her cat a pat. “Even Mascara is coming. We’re going there right after the wedding.” Mascara scrambled under the bed, so I didn’t think he was too interested in the idea of living in a hotel for a whole week.

  But I was. When I was little, I read a book about a girl named Eloise, who lived in a hotel her whole life. “Elevators and vending machines and spying on famous people for a whole week?”

  “And sanitized toilets, and fresh, sterilized bath-robes, and individual wrapped-up bars of soap every day. And cleaning ladies, Clementine. The best part is, my father says I can stay in the room while they’re cleaning it, so I can pick up some professional tips. Hey, I know—you should come visit!”

  I wasn’t sure about that. I did want to go to an Eloise kind of hotel, of course, but sometimes being in a room that’s too neat makes me feel itchy. So instead of deciding, I said, “Hey, Alan’s ashtray is almost finished. Want to see it?” to throw her off that idea.

  When Margaret learned that Alan was going to move in with them after the wedding, she went all historical. It wasn’t the idea of Alan living there, it was his pipe. How would she know where the pipe germs were? was the big worry. But then she had the good idea of giving him an ashtray for his pipe to live in, and the second good idea of having me make it. Margaret got me one of Alan’s backup pipes, so I could make sure it would fit; my mom gave me a big slab of clay from her friend Astrid, who is a potter; and my dad had helped me with the design.

  Margaret did want to see it, of course, because she knew this wasn’t just any old regular ashtray.

  “I’m only going to look, though,” she said. “I don’t touch stuff like that.”

  We rode the elevator down to the workshop, and I swept the dishtowel off the ashtray with a big ta-da! “Look,” I said, “here’s the bedroom, where the pipe rests when Alan’s not smoking it. Here’s the dining room—that’s where Alan can fill it up. And over here, a swimming pool—that’s where you can make him wash it.”

  “So when are you going to bake it clean?” Margaret asked. “The wedding’s on Saturday, you know.”

  No matter how many times I tell her that you fire pottery in a kiln to harden the clay, she still insists that it’s a germ-destroying strategy. I have given up trying to get Margaret to understand art.

  “We fired the ashtray at my mom’s friend’s studio last weekend. That’s why it’s hard,” I explained. “Tonight we’re going to glaze it, then it gets fired in the kiln again, hotter this time. Don’t worry—it’ll be ready in time.”

  And I suddenly remembered something. When my father heard the date that Margaret’s mother and Alan were getting married, he said it was an extremely lucky one. It was the same date he and my mom had gotten married, except thirteen years later. So that meant Saturday was also my parents’ anniversary.

  All the wedding stuff reminded me to ask Maria and Rasheed’s newest question. “Joe said his dog Buddy could pull the carriage along the parade route, no problem. But Maria’s worried about what he’ll do when they
release the hundred white doves. She’s afraid he’ll chase them. What do you think?”

  Margaret shook her head as if this was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “The carriage ride is before the ceremony; the doves are released after. But just to be sure, have them take Buddy to the park to practice not chasing the pigeons.”

  I wrote this down on my arm, being careful not to cover any freckle-stars, so I’d remember it tomorrow. Then I went back to my own apartment to start a new drawing.

  Let me tell you, it is not easy to make a clam look terrified. The problem is the shell—it’s very hard to put any expression at all on someone whose face is in a seashell—but I did it. I took the drawing into my dad’s room and propped it up on his pillow. Just before I left, I noticed the book he keeps on his bed-side table—the one I helped him start a while ago. It’s called The Building Manager, and in it, we keep track of the interesting things that happen in our building.

  I opened it up to see if he’d written anything new. He had. THE BUILDING MANAGER’S DAUGHTER HAD STOPPED SPEAKING TO HIM, I read. THIS MADE THE BUILDING MANAGER TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY SAD.

  I quick-flipped back through the pages. Mostly the stories were fun to remember. I read about the time the ice cream truck blew a tire in front of our building, and we bought all the ice cream from the driver and threw a neighborhood party on the rooftop before it melted. I read about the night the power went out and everyone came down to the lobby with candles and we told ghost stories.

  Then I got to one that wasn’t so good—the time I sold everybody’s charity giveaways to each other. The problem about that was: the things my neighbors were giving away had been presents from other neighbors. When people found out their presents had been tossed, they were mad at each other for a long time. At the end of that chapter, I’d written in the book that the building manager’s daughter promised she’d think ahead about doing things before she did them, so she wouldn’t get into trouble.