“We had better thin it out,” Mrs. Huff said, when she had examined the paste. She removed half of the puddinglike stuff to a second bowl, filled both bowls with water, and once more beat out the lumps with her wire whip.
Amy dipped a strip of paper into the paste and slapped it on the dripping balloon. “Ick,” she remarked.
“How gooshy,” said Marla, as she dipped a strip of paper into the paste.
“Yuk,” said Bonnie, going to work. “How do we make the hole so Mrs. Martin can put the candy and peanuts inside?”
“We cover the whole balloon and cut a hole after the paste dries,” said Amy. “Then we break the balloon and pull it out.”
The girls dipped and pasted in silence until the paste had thickened into pudding once more. This time Amy added water to the bowls, and the girls took turns beating because they wanted to try using Mrs. Huff’s wire whip.
The three continued plastering the balloon with pasty strips of paper, rolling it around as they worked so that the strips of soggy newspaper completely covered it.
While the girls worked Marla taught them a new jumping-rope rhyme:
“Charlie Chaplin went to France
To teach the ladies how to dance
And on the way he split his pants
And this is how he mended them.
Heel stitch, toe stitch, cross stitch, around stitch.”
She demonstrated the footwork to go with the last line of the rhyme, and the girls’ work grew careless as they pasted and jumped. Heel stitch, toe stitch, cross stitch, around stitch. They jumped heel down, toe down, ankles crossed, and turning around. Paste splattered. The girls became stickier and stickier as they dipped, dripped, and slapped paper on the balloon.
Once more Bonnie began to speak as if she were having difficulty reading. “Look at the balloon. It is gooey.” She made it even gooier by slapping on another dripping strip of newspaper.
“Look, look at the gooey balloon,” recited Marla in her first-grade voice. Then she said in her natural voice, “What are some more words with oo sounds?”
“Look, look. The balloon is gooey. I am gooey, too,” said Amy and giggled.
Marla thought of another word with an oo sound. “Goody. The girl is gooey. Goody, goody. Gooey, gooey girl.”
“Go, gooey girl, go,” was Amy’s next contribution to the first-grade reader. “Goody, goody. Look at the gooey girl go.”
At this point Mrs. Huff came into the kitchen. “All right, gooey girls,” she said. “Don’t you think you have enough paper pasted to that balloon?”
“I guess you’re right,” agreed Amy, as she stopped dipping and dripping to look at the big ball of soggy newspaper. “How are we going to stick wings and a tail and feathers on it when it’s so wet?”
“We can’t,” said Marla. “We’ll have to let it dry first.”
“But that is going to take ages,” said Bonnie. “It will probably have to dry overnight.”
Amy airily waved her pasty hands. “Oh well. That just means we’ll have to have another piñata party when it’s dry. We have until Friday to finish it.”
Later, when Mitchell returned from an afternoon at the ice rink, he went straight to the kitchen table. “I thought you said you were going to make a piñata,” he said, examining the gray ball of soggy paper. “This doesn’t look like any piñata I ever saw. It looks more like a moldy basketball.”
“Oh, be quiet, Mitch.” Amy was impatient with her brother. “We just have to let it dry awhile before we finish it. There is plenty of time.”
“It looks pretty wet to me,” said Mitchell, “but you can’t blame me. I was away ice-skating all afternoon.”
By Monday the outer layer of newspaper was dry, but when Amy poked a bit she found that beneath the dry outside layer the piñata was still as soggy as it had been on Saturday.
Tuesday Mrs. Huff tried putting the damp ball of paper into an oven set at a low temperature, and soon the house began to smell of wet newspaper.
“Something cooking?” Mitchell asked brightly.
“You shut up,” said Amy.
“Amy, don’t be rude,” said Mrs. Huff. “We don’t tell people to shut up.”
“Amy does,” said Mitchell.
“Just my pesty little brother,” said Amy.
“I’m one inch taller,” Mitchell reminded his sister, “so don’t call me your little brother.”
“I weigh two pounds more,” Amy pointed out. “Therefore, I contain more molecules than you do.” Mitchell was not the only one who could apply science to argument.
Wednesday a family conference was held. The Huffs decided that cutting the hole in the piñata and removing the balloon would hasten the drying. When Amy tried to pierce the layers of paper with the point of the kitchen shears, she could not make a dent, but her father finally succeeded in sawing out a circle of the papier-mâché; with a sharp knife. When he lifted off the circle and pulled out the broken balloon, the kitchen was filled with the smell of mildewed paper.
“Pee-yew,” said Mitchell. Catching Amy’s eye, he added, “Don’t look at me. I didn’t have anything to do with your moldy old basketball.”
“Oh well,” said Amy, as her mother put the papier-mâché ball into the oven for further drying. “It will probably air out overnight, and tomorrow we will cover it with lots of crepe paper and maybe that will cover up some of the smell.”
On Thursday afternoon after school Bonnie had an appointment with the orthodontist, so Amy had only Marla to help her cover up what the Huff family now referred to as “that moldy basketball.” Mitchell had gone to Bill Collins’s house after school.
“Pee-yew,” was the first thing Marla said, when she caught a whiff of the big gray ball. “What happened to it?”
“It just got a little mildewed, is all,” said Amy.
“Well, come on. Let’s work fast,” said Marla. “My mother says I have to be home before five o’clock to practice my piano before dinner.”
The girls fashioned wings, a head, and a tail from shirt cardboard and fastened them in place with many strips of Scotch tape. Hurriedly they cut strips of crepe paper—red, orange, purple, and green—snipping the edges into fringe, which they hoped looked like feathers, and holding them in place with dabs of white glue. Somehow this piñata party was not nearly so much fun as the first one.
“Does it need feet?” asked Marla, while Amy cut a beak from a bit of cardboard and colored it yellow with crayon.
“Birds don’t fly around with their feet hanging down,” said Amy.
“That’s good. I’ve got to go now or my mother will just about kill me,” said Marla. “She’s already mad at me, because I didn’t practice before school this morning.”
“There,” said Amy with finality, when the beak was fastened in place. “It’s done.” She stepped back to look at her committee’s work.
What a disappointment the gaudy bird roosting on the kitchen table was, not the least bit like the graceful piñata Amy had pictured in her mind’s eye the day Mrs. Martin had appointed her piñata chairman. Its wings were lopsided, and its tail drooped from the weight of too much crepe paper. Its feathers looked unkempt, as if it were suffering from some illness peculiar to poultry. The neck was too long and placed at the wrong angle, so that it looked like the neck of a turkey rather than like that of the exotic tropical bird Amy had imagined.
And I am chairman, was Amy’s first thought. Everybody will laugh. Marla began to giggle. “But it isn’t supposed to be funny,” said Amy.
“But it is,” said Marla.
“I know,” agreed Amy, and began to giggle, too.
“You can tell Mrs. Martin it’s the molting season,” said Marla.
The more the girls looked at the bird, the funnier it seemed. “Our feathered friend,” said Amy between giggles.
Mrs. Huff came into the kitchen to see what all the laughing was about. “It certainly doesn’t look like anything in Field Guide to Western Birds,” she observed.
“It’s a very rare bird,” Amy told her mother. “It’s so rare it’s practically extinct.”
“Like the whooping crane,” said Mrs. Huff and laughed.
Marla glanced at the clock on the kitchen stove and snatched up her sweater. “Now my mother really will kill me.”
Soon after Marla left Mitchell arrived. “Here I am, folks. Live and in color,” he announced, and then his eyes rested on Amy’s bird. “What is it?” he asked. “A turkey or a buzzard?”
“He is my feathered friend,” said Amy, patting her bird affectionately. “He’s funny-looking, but I love him, so don’t you make fun of him.”
Mitchell peered inside the piñata, sniffed it, and thumped its sides experimentally. “Boy!” he exclaimed. “That bird is as hard as concrete, and it still stinks.”
“Oh!” wailed Amy. Everything seemed to go wrong. She had completely forgotten the piñata was supposed to be broken by a whack of a yardstick. “What am I going to do? I forgot we have to break it to get the candy and peanuts out.” She turned to her mother for help.
“Nobody could break that bird with a yardstick,” said Mitchell. “I bet you couldn’t break it with a baseball bat. I bet you couldn’t even break it with a sledgehammer.”
Amy flared up. “You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”
“I’m just pointing out a few facts, is all,” Mitchell told his sister. “Plain everyday facts.”
“Mom, what am I going to do?” asked Amy. “The party is tomorrow, and there isn’t time to make another piñata. Anyway, we used up all the paper and paste.”
Mitchell had a suggestion to offer. “Maybe the class will think it’s too pretty to break.”
Amy dismissed this possibility. “We aren’t in kindergarten. Besides, nobody could ever call it pretty. My class isn’t that dumb. Mom, what am I going to do?”
“At this point there isn’t much you can do,” said Mrs. Huff. “Take it to school and explain what happened to Mrs. Martin. I’m sure she’ll think of something. Probably she’ll decide to tip it over and dump out the candy and peanuts.”
When Mr. Huff came home from work, he examined Amy’s feathered friend and decided it was a rare species of Paper-feathered Dingbat found only in areas of California inhabited by school children.
The next morning Amy put on her favorite dress, ate her breakfast without dawdling, and hurried through her cello practice. As she put on her jacket to go to school Mitchell came into the kitchen with his hair slicked down with water. She turned to her mother, who was busy rinsing dishes so they would be clean enough to put in the dishwasher, and asked, “Could you drive me to school with my piñata? It’s sort of awkward to carry.”
“It isn’t heavy, and Marla will help you.” Mrs. Huff began to load the dishwasher. “I can’t break my vow to the mothers of the neighborhood and drive you to school; they would call me a traitor and never invite me to another coffee party.”
“Come on, Mom. Drive us as a special treat, because this is the day of the Christmas party,” coaxed Mitchell.
“Not a chance,” said their hard-hearted mother cheerfully.
Amy looked at Mitchell and saw that he was thinking the same thing—Alan Hibbler. She and her brother had not mentioned Alan since the day Mitchell had come home with the broken skateboard, but now they both were wondering what would happen if she met Alan Hibbler on the way to school with her piñata. There wouldn’t be any piñata for the Christmas party, that’s what. Amy did not know what to do. Her feathered friend with its flapping wings and drooping tail was too awkward a shape to wrap in paper.
“I’ll walk to school with you, Amy,” said Mitchell.
“Thanks, Mitch.”
“What has come over my children?” asked Mrs. Huff, but Amy knew her mother was not waiting for an answer.
Naturally Amy did not expect her brother to walk beside her any more than she expected him to carry her piñata for her. She knew that a boy will go only so far for his sister, so she was not surprised when he trailed along behind her. A brisk breeze from the North fluttered the wings and tail of Amy’s feathered friend.
“Your bird looks as if it wants to fly,” remarked Marla, who was waiting in front of her house. The girls walked together, the piñata between them, and speculated on the kind of treat their room mother would provide for the Christmas party. They decided they would prefer Hawaiian punch to apple juice and several kinds of cookies to one cupcake. They passed the eucalyptus grove and followed the winding street down the hill with Mitchell padding along behind in his sneakers looking out for Alan Hibbler.
Once past the grove of trees whose trunks were just the right thickness to hide a boy, Amy began to feel safe. She felt even safer when they passed the steep vacant lot with the clumps of greasewood, another good hiding place. Even so, she glanced over her shoulder and was pleased to see Mitchell still padding along behind, although not as close as when they had left home. He, too, must feel that the danger of Alan was past.
Amy and Marla began a fascinating discussion of Christmas presents they hoped to receive. Amy wanted a sewing box with a pair of really sharp scissors and some little dolls to fit the furniture she enjoyed making and books that were not educational and maybe a few clothes, but not things like underwear and sweaters and—
With a yell that sounded as if it came from an old Tarzan movie, Alan Hibbler leaped from an open garage near the sidewalk and landed directly in front of the girls. He was brandishing a stick. Marla screamed, but Amy was unable to move or to make a sound.
“Hey!” yelled Mitchell, and Amy heard her brother’s sneakers pounding down the street.
Alan raised the stick. Amy tried to protect her piñata by turning around, but she was not quick enough. Alan brought his stick down whack squarely on Amy’s feathered friend, knocking it out of her arms. The wings flapped, but they were held in place with so much Scotch tape they did not come off. Whack! Alan hit the piñata again, and again he did not even dent it.
“You cut that out!” yelled Mitchell.
Alan stopped and stared at the crepe-paper bird. “Say, what kind of piñata is this anyway?” he wanted to know.
“A tough piñata,” said Amy coldly, as she rescued her feathered friend from the street. She looked at her brother standing beside her with his fists doubled up. “It’s all right, Mitch. Alan can’t hurt it.” She wanted to laugh. Alan looked so funny standing there wondering why he hadn’t broken the piñata.
Marla knew exactly how to behave. “When our committee makes a piñata,” she said haughtily, “we make it to last.”
“Our piñata is indestructible,” said Amy.
“My sister’s piñata could pass the sledgehammer test,” said Mitchell.
“Stupid,” said Alan. “A piñata is supposed to break.”
Amy assumed the superior manner she sometimes used to annoy Mitchell and said, “Marla, imagine! Alan thinks a piñata is supposed to break.” The whole thing was like a game of pretend. She and Marla were duchesses, and Alan was—Amy wasn’t quite sure what he was. Somebody stupid—a stableboy or perhaps a chimney sweep.
“Well, it is!” Alan was both red in the face and indignant. “How else are you going to get the candy and junk out of it?”
Marla turned to Amy and said, as if in amazement, “Alan doesn’t know how we’re going to get the candy out of our piñata.”
“And you had better get going before we hit you with it,” said Mitchell. “My sister’s piñata is so strong it could just about smash a fellow to pieces.”
Alan, outnumbered even if two of the number were girls, threw down his stick in disgust. “Aw, for Pete’s sake,” he muttered and, turning, ran on down the hill toward school.
“I guess you told him,” Amy said to Mitchell, and could see that her brother was satisfied with the way things had turned out. She was pleased, too, because she had not forgotten the broken skateboard or the lunch bucket Alan had kicked in the second grade or her Brownie beanie
he had snatched and thrown into the boys’ bathroom when she was in the third grade.
When the three reached the school grounds, Amy and Marla carried the piñata to a bench that was beside the stairs leading up to the main floor of the building. Mitchell ran off to a kickball game.
“Hi, Amy,” Bonnie called from the top of the steps. When Amy looked up, Bonnie held her arms out over the concrete wall that prevented Bay View pupils from falling off the landing, and called out, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” A day never passed at Bay View School without at least one girl playing the balcony scene from this spot, just like Olive Oyl in an old Popeye cartoon on television.
The bell rang and quite unexpectedly Alan Hibbler’s face appeared above the concrete wall, almost as if he had been crouched down waiting. Before anyone realized what was happening, Alan leaned over the railing and spat into Amy’s hair. Then he turned and disappeared into the building.
The incident happened so quickly that everyone who witnessed it stood open-mouthed in astonishment, not knowing what to do and unable to think of anything to say. When Amy realized what Alan had done, her eyes filled with tears of anger and humiliation.
“He’s scared to spit on anyone his own size.” Bernadette Stumpf, who had come in from a kickball game, was scornful.
“Come on, Amy,” said Marla with sympathy in her voice. “Let’s go to the girls’ bathroom and wash the spit out of your hair.”
“Yes, come on, Amy,” said Bonnie, who had run down the steps. “I’ll help.”
Amy found herself being borne off to the tiled chill of the girls’ bathroom by half a dozen indignant and sympathetic friends. Her eyes were full of tears, and she could scarcely see. She was so angry and so humiliated she could not speak. She hated Alan Hibbler. How dare he do this thing to her? Hating people was wrong, Amy knew, but at this moment, as her friends dampened paper towels under the faucets, she could not help herself. She hated Alan Hibbler.
The girls scrubbed the top of Amy’s head with wet paper towels while they buzzed with excitement and anger.
“That old Alan Hibbler…thinks he can get away with anything…just because his father is so famous…who does he think he is, anyway?…I’m glad he isn’t in my class…do you know what I heard he did one time?…he used to pick on Amy’s brother, but now….”
Mitch and Amy Page 9