Ten Kids, No Pets

  By six thirty, everything was ready. The food had been set out, Woody and his brothers and sisters were wearing their costumes, and Mr. Rosso, who had left the city early, was sitting behind a wooden stand in the family room, a turban wrapped around his head. He was Madame Zilva, the fortune-teller. (Mrs. Rosso had turned down the job offer.)

  Twenty guests had been invited to the party, and by seven fifteen they had all arrived. Bart showed up with a small white bunny, as he had promised, and Woody dropped the rabbit into his hat and strutted around with Jan all evening. Sometimes he would flap his cape around him, laugh mysteriously, and cry, “I am Kromar the Magnificent!”

  Madame Zilva was a big hit. Woody had his fortune told twice. The first time, his father said, “I see that you have recently moved to a farm…. In your future I see seventh grade. In your past I see fifth grade.”

  “Da-ad,” Woody complained.

  The second time, his father said, “I see someone healthy, wealthy, and wise in your future…. Yes, you are going to marry Benjamin Franklin.”

  Woody laughed and gave up. He escorted Jan through the spookhouse. “Ew!” she kept exclaiming. “Yuck!”

  The evening sped by. Food was eaten, apples were bobbed for, a neighbor from miles away was invited over to be an impartial judge of the costumes. Woody was awarded a wind-up Frankenstein for Most Realistic Costume.

  At nine thirty parents began arriving to take the guests home.

  “Guess what?” Bart said to Woody when he saw his mother at the door. “I can’t take the rabbit home with me. Fluffer-Nut is going to have more babies. I had to tell Mom I was giving you the rabbit.”

  “Oh, yeah?” replied Woody. Hmm, he thought. Instead of panicking he said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out.”

  Woody put the rabbit in a box, put the box in his bedroom, and closed the door. Then he helped his family clean up. With twelve pairs of hands at work, and Mrs. Rosso’s clean-up system in full swing, the house was quickly back to normal except for a few decorations that Jan insisted on leaving up.

  As soon as Woody and his brothers were in their bedroom, Woody opened the box and showed them Fluffer-Nut’s baby.

  “Why is it still here?” asked Bainbridge sternly.

  “Because Bart’s mother won’t let Bart take it back. Fluffer-Nut is going to have babies again.”

  “Well, what do you think you’re going to do with it?”

  “Keep it.” Woody grinned. “It’s homeless now. Don’t you think Mom will feel sorry for it?”

  “Not on your life,” said Abbie’s voice. She poked her head into the room. “She’ll find a way to give it back. She’ll see right through us. She doesn’t fall for anything where a pet is concerned. I just don’t understand her. She is so selfish about pets. It’s not as if one of us was allergic or something.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Candy, appearing behind her sister in the doorway. “Boy, is Mom unreasonable.”

  “Who else is out there?” asked Woody.

  “All of us,” said Abbie.

  “You guys better come in and close the door,” said Bainbridge.

  The kids crowded into the boys’ room.

  “Well,” said Woody. “I finally got us a pet.”

  “But,” said Bainbridge, “what are we going to do with it?”

  Silence.

  Finally Candy spoke up. “I know a place where we can hide it.” She heaved a great sigh, hating to give up her one and only spot for privacy, but it was worth it for a pet. “I found a secret room. Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Nobody really believed Candy, so they followed her amid groans and comments such as “Oh, sure” and “Yeah, right.” But when Candy pushed open the back of the linen closet, the comments changed to “I don’t believe it!” and “Why didn’t you show us before?”

  Candy told them the whole story about wanting a private place and discovering the room. She even showed them Celia’s diary. “See, Woody?” she said. “Celia hid a pet in here once. We can hide the rabbit. We’ll have a pet, and Mom and Dad won’t even know.”

  “Yeah …” said Woody slowly.

  “Abbie?” asked Candy, turning to her older sister for permission.

  Eighteen eyes fixed their gazes on Abbie.

  “I guess we can try it,” she said. “But remember, this is a secret, everybody. It’s the only way we’ll get to have a pet. Okay, Jan?”

  Jan was very poor at keeping secrets, but she nodded her head solemnly.

  * * *

  So the rabbit was named Secret and hidden in the dark, musty room. Woody fixed up a cage for him, and he and the other Rosso kids took turns bringing him fresh water and carrots and lettuce.

  After three days Jan said, “He never hops around anymore.”

  After four days Hannah complained, “All he does is sleep.”

  It was the twins who were able to speak the truth. “He’s depressed,” they said. “We can’t keep him cooped up in this room. He needs sunshine and fresh air. He needs to hop around outside.”

  Woody nodded unhappily. The twins were right. They knew everything about animals. Besides, anyone could see that Secret was miserable.

  “All right. That does it,” exclaimed Woody. “I’m going to talk to Mom.”

  “What?” screeched Hannah.

  “Keep your voice down,” Woody hissed. He faced Hannah and the twins, who were with him in the hidden room. “Do you want Mom to discover this place?”

  “Well, how are you going to talk to her about Secret without telling her where we’ve been keeping him?” Hannah wanted to know.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll manage it.”

  Hannah, who was sitting at the table, leaned forward and buried her head in her arms. “Oh, brother,” she moaned.

  “Hannah,” Dinnie said firmly, “give Woody a chance.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Faustine. “Besides, Secret is dying.”

  So Woody went downstairs in search of his mother. It was unusual to find her alone. With ten kids somebody was almost always in her lap or asking her for help or trying to give her help. But Woody found her in the living room paying bills, with only the radio for company.

  “Mom?” he said, and then he told her the story of Secret.

  Mrs. Rosso was not amused. “And where is this rabbit right now?” she wanted to know.

  “He’s upstairs,” replied Woody.

  “You’ve been keeping him in your room all this time?”

  “Well, not exactly. Sort of in … Candy’s room.” That wasn’t a lie. Not really.

  “Candy and Abbie are in on this?” Mrs. Rosso asked in surprise.

  “Well, we all are.”

  Woody’s mother didn’t press the issue. She appeared to be thinking. But before she could say anything, Woody spoke up again. “Mom, please can we keep Secret? But I mean keep him like a regular rabbit? He’s getting sick cooped up in the box with no sunshine or fresh air.”

  “I should think so,” agreed Mrs. Rosso.

  “So can we move him downstairs? Take him outside to play?”

  Mrs. Rosso shook her head. “No, Woody.”

  “Mom!” Woody cried. “Why not?”

  “You know the rule.”

  “But I don’t understand it.”

  “Honey, there’s nothing to understand. No pets means no pets. You’ll have to find another home for Secret. And fast, please.”

  Woody stormed upstairs.

  “Told you so,” said Hannah, who’d been listening.

  “You didn’t tell me anything,” Woody barked at her. “And the secret room is still a secret. So there.”

  “But the secret rabbit isn’t. And now we can’t even keep him. What are we going to do?”

  “Don’t worry,” snapped Woody. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The next day Woody returned from school in a much better mood. He called his brothers and sisters into the hidden room. “Right after school started this fall,” he said, “this kid in my clas
s, Clarke O’Shea, well, his dog was hit by a car and killed. He didn’t get another dog, and I can see why, but I thought he might like a different kind of pet. I told him about Secret, and he really wants him. I’m going to give him Secret tomorrow.”

  “That,” said Abbie fondly, “is a very nice idea.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Ira. “It was no fun having a hidden pet, anyway.”

  So the Halloween party was a success, the Rosso kids gained a secret room (although Candy lost her privacy), and Secret found a home. But Woody and his brothers and sisters were still without a pet.

  For Gardenia and Faustine, the very best thing about moving to the farm was the outdoors. There was really nothing like it. Dinnie couldn’t get over the way an early November morning in the country felt. Sometimes she stepped onto the back porch in her robe and slippers so that she could sniff the air while the sky was still gray. On school mornings she and her brothers and sisters usually woke up just as the sun was rising. From the back stoop Dinnie watched the clouds on the horizon change from gray to silvery pink and saw the golden rays of sunshine slice through them, turning the frost on the grass beyond to platinum before melting it away.

  The air was biting cold. Dinnie could see her breath and feel her nose and fingertips tingling. Sometimes she could smell a fire burning in a faraway chimney. But she was always most awed by the silence. In New York it was possible to appreciate a cold early morning seen through a frosty window, but no matter how tightly the window was closed, city sounds floated through. Cars honked, truck gears ground, garbage trucks ate noisy meals, a kid walked by carrying a blasting radio on his shoulder, and it seemed that somebody’s car was always in the way of somebody else’s. Dinnie couldn’t remember a morning when she hadn’t heard an enraged shout of “Move ya car!” or “Get outta my place!” The shouts were usually followed by murderous threats.

  Much as Dinnie appreciated the sights and silence of the country, she was most excited about the wildlife. In August she and Faustine had spent hours exploring the farm. They had turned over rocks to find worms and grubs and hundred-leggers. They’d climbed trees to find caterpillars and lazy late-summer butterflies. At dusk they’d caught the last of the lightning bugs, but they’d always let them go before the evening was over. As fall caught up with summer and overtook it, they’d watched flocks of birds gather and head south in great gray bunches. Dinnie especially liked the Canada geese. They flew through the sky in even V formation, and the sight was rarely missed because they announced their arrival with noisy honking that was plainly heard in the chilly nighttime silence.

  “I do wish we had some bigger animals, though,” Dinnie told her twin one day.

  “I know,” agreed Faustine. “Bugs and wild birds are nice, but a dog would be better.”

  “Even a fur-fluff would be better.” (Fur-fluff was the twins’ private word for any small, furry pet, such as a hamster or gerbil.)

  “I guess there’s no reason to try asking Mom and Dad for a pet again.”

  Dinnie received an emphatic “rimbald not” from her blue-eyed, freckle-faced sister, and that was the end of that discussion.

  * * *

  On the morning after the Halloween party, while Secret was still hidden in the little room upstairs, Mrs. Rosso announced, “We are going to have an old-fashioned Thanksgiving this year. A country Thanksgiving.”

  The Rossos were gathered in the kitchen in various stages of breakfast.

  “What do you mean, Mom?” asked Candy, an eager look in her eyes.

  “I mean we’re going to celebrate the holiday as it was meant to be celebrated. You might be surprised to know that Thanksgiving isn’t just rushing to the Stop and Shop on the day before Thanksgiving and filling your cart with stuffing mix, mashed potato flakes, cans of cranberry jelly and peas, a self-basting Mr. Tom turkey, and a carton of ice cream. There’s more to it than that.”

  Over the next few weeks Dinnie found out just what “more to it” meant. With their mother’s help (and with their father’s help on the weekends), Dinnie and her brothers and sisters baked pies and made jelly. They made their own apple butter and cranberry relish. While it was fun for everyone, Woody couldn’t help saying, “I’m surprised Mom doesn’t want a cow so we could milk it and make our own butter.”

  One day the Rosso kids arrived home from school to find the kitchen table covered from end to end with squashes, gourds, and dried ears of corn. “Time to make the table and door decorations,” their mother told them.

  But the most interesting thing (for ten city kids) happened the day Mrs. Rosso made her announcement about an old-fashioned Thanksgiving. As soon as breakfast was over and everyone was dressed, the Rossos piled into their van, and Mr. Rosso started down the driveway, a mischievous look in his eyes. “Where are we going? Where are we going?” Jan kept pestering her parents. But they wouldn’t answer.

  Dinnie glanced at her twin. “Tosh,” she whispered. “Groode!” which meant, “A surprise — very exciting!”

  Mr. Rosso turned right on the country highway at the end of their drive, stayed on the road for a mile, then turned left into the drive of a neighboring farm. It was the Pritchards’ place. Dinnie had met Mr. and Mrs. Pritchard once with her mother. Mr. Pritchard and two farmhands ran a big turkey farm all by themselves. He and his wife looked as old as the hills to Dinnie, but they seemed to work and bake and garden like anyone else.

  “The Pritchards’ Turkey Farm?” asked Dinnie as the van bumped its way slowly along the rutted gravel drive.

  “That’s right!” said Mr. Rosso.

  The Rosso kids were bursting with questions, but they held them in. A surprise was a surprise.

  Wrinkled Mr. Pritchard met the van with a shovel in his hand and a pipe in his mouth. “Right on time,” he said gruffly. “I like that.”

  With a wave of his hand he indicated that the Rossos should follow him, so they did, Ira picking his way carefully through the muddy farmyard. As they rounded a back corner of the barn, they were greeted by an unceasing chorus of gobbling.

  “Groode!” said Dinnie under her breath.

  Before her was a huge pen crowded with turkeys.

  “Those are turkeys?” exclaimed Jan. “They don’t look like turkeys at all!”

  “Well, they are,” said Mr. Rosso, “and one of them will be ours.”

  Dinnie’s first thought was, “Why are Mom and Dad letting us get a pet?” Then she realized what her father meant. “For Thanksgiving?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” replied her mother. “This is a real treat. We can pick out any turkey we want, and Mr. Pritchard will tag it for us and then fatten it up for Thanksgiving. Our turkey this year will be fresh, not store-bought and frozen. It’s up to you kids to decide on one.”

  Dinnie and her brothers and sisters rushed to the fence around the turkeys. Jan, Ira, and Hannah stood on the lowest rung, peering down. The others rested their arms on the top rung and gazed intently at the flock.

  “There’s a fat one!” called Bainbridge.

  “Where?” asked Ira.

  “There.”

  “Look at that one!” exclaimed Woody. “Ooh, he’s tough!”

  “There are twelve of us,” Abbie pointed out. “We better choose the biggest one we see.”

  It took a long time to agree on the biggest one, but at last Dinnie pointed out a fat tom strutting through the flock as if he were turkey king. The Rossos agreed that no turkey was bigger than he.

  “We’ll take him,” Mr. Rosso told Mr. Pritchard.

  “And we’ll name him Goliath,” Dinnie added.

  “That’s not a good idea,” muttered Mr. Pritchard, but nobody heard him.

  * * *

  On Monday afternoon Dinnie persuaded the elementary school bus driver to make a stop a mile before the Rossos’ farm.

  “What are we going to the Pritchards’ for?” Faustine asked her twin as they trudged up the pitted driveway.

  “To see Goliath, of course,” replied
Dinnie.

  Goliath was as big and imperious as ever.

  “I think he’s kind of handsome, don’t you?” said Dinnie as they leaned over the fence that surrounded the turkeys.

  “Kind of,” replied Faustine.

  On Tuesday they were back again. “Look at him. He’s so proud,” said Dinnie fondly.

  “He has nice manners,” added Faustine. “It’s crowded in that pen, but Goliath never steps on the other turkeys’ feet.”

  The twins visited Goliath whenever they could. It was the following week, not long after Woody had found a new home for Secret, that Dinnie, resting her chin on the top rung of the turkey pen, said, “It’s sad to think that we’re going to eat old Goliath for Thanksgiving dinner, isn’t it?”

  “Rimbald brando,” replied Faustine. (Extremely sad.)

  “Maybe we should ask the others if we could choose a different turkey.”

  “Maybe …” said Faustine.

  “But — but I don’t really want to kill any of the turkeys. They’re all Goliath’s friends.”

  “But we especially can’t kill Goliath,” said Faustine.

  “No, I don’t think we can.” Dinnie looked into her sister’s face, which was like looking into a mirror. “We better talk to Abbie,” she said, and Faustine agreed.

  That night Abbie listened patiently to the twins’ pleas. “I know how you feel,” she said, “but everyone chose Goliath. It’s not easy for twelve people to agree on one thing. Besides, I don’t think Mom and Dad would be very happy if they had to go back to Mr. Pritchard and explain that we changed our minds — or why we changed our minds.”

  “We won’t eat Goliath,” said Faustine stubbornly.

  Abbie sighed. “Then don’t eat him. You can eat stuffing and vegetables and cranberry sauce instead.”

  “No, you don’t understand!” cried Dinnie. “We won’t let Goliath be killed. It’s cruel! Come on, Faustine.”

  The twins closed themselves in their bedroom. “We’ve got work to do,” Dinnie told her sister. “Plans to make.”

  The other Rossos had no idea what the twins were up to until Saturday. That morning the warm kitchen, which smelled of cloves and pumpkin and baking pie crust, was invaded by a two-person picket line. Dinnie marched around the table carrying a sign that read SAVE GOLIATH. She was followed by Faustine with a sign that showed a fat red X covering a picture of a cooked turkey.