Ten Kids, No Pets

  Although Hannah had awakened early, she got behind schedule immediately. She wanted to look just right for the party at school that day, so she tried on several dresses before she found one she liked. Then she fussed with her hair and lost some more time looking for her gold heart locket.

  “Come on, Hannah. Hurry up,” Ira urged her.

  Ira, of course, was perfectly dressed and ready for breakfast.

  “I’m coming,” said Hannah.

  “You’re going to be late.”

  “I said I’m coming.”

  Ira shrugged and left the room.

  Hannah finished with her hair and found her locket. Then she ran downstairs and began breakfast. She was only about halfway done when Mrs. Rosso announced, “Five more minutes until the bus comes.”

  Hannah’s brothers and sisters were through eating. They began to collect their lunches and books and put on their coats. Hannah quickly swallowed the toast that was in her mouth.

  “Hannah, get a move on,” said Mrs. Rosso.

  “I’m almost ready.” Hannah dashed upstairs. There was no time to brush her teeth. She pulled open her desk drawer, saw the two piles of envelopes and for a moment couldn’t remember whether the pink ones or the white ones were for school. She should have written people’s names on them, she thought, but it was too late for that now. Finally, she decided that the pink ones must be for school since they were prettier. She snatched them up and raced down the stairs.

  “Have fun at your party, honey,” Mrs. Rosso called to her as she ran out the door.

  “I will!” Hannah called back. Then she hurried after her brothers and sisters who had already reached the end of the driveway.

  Hannah’s third-grade teacher was named Mrs. Pownell. Sometimes she and Hannah got along; sometimes they didn’t. Hannah certainly wasn’t the teacher’s pet. She had played too many practical jokes and forgotten to raise her hand in class too many times. But Hannah liked math and science, and Mrs. Pownell always said nice things to her when she did well on her tests and assignments. So Hannah knew that Mrs. Pownell didn’t hate her.

  At the very beginning of the school year Mrs. Pownell had told Hannah’s class that she especially liked Valentine’s Day. Sure enough, during the past two weeks the class had made dozens of decorations for their room. They had studied about St. Valentine, and they had gone to the local historical society to see a display of old Valentine’s Day cards.

  Now — Hannah was sure of this — her class was going to have the best Valentine party in the whole elementary school. The room mothers were bringing punch and cookies and cupcakes and heart-shaped candy. Mrs. Pownell was going to show her students how to play two games she’d made up called Love Notes and Heart Races. She was even going to give prizes to the winners. And after all that Hannah and her classmates would open their valentines.

  Taped to the front of each desk in Mrs. Pownell’s room was a paper mailbag. Hannah and her classmates had made them in art class. The bags were to hold the valentines that were delivered during the day.

  Hannah couldn’t wait to deliver hers, and she was glad to find that she was one of the first kids to arrive in her class that morning.

  “Hi, Jane!” she cried. “Hi, Leigh!”

  “Hi, Hannah. It’s Valentine’s Day!”

  “I know. I can’t wait for our party. I’m going to deliver my cards right now.”

  “Me too,” said Jane and Leigh.

  Hannah walked proudly around the room and dropped a pink envelope into each mailbag. She left the last one on Mrs. Pownell’s desk. She was already so excited that her heart was thumping. How would she ever be able to wait for one fifteen when the party was to begin?

  It wasn’t easy, but of course Hannah did manage to wait. And she called out of turn only twice and hid Randy Jamison’s pencil once.

  At one fifteen the room mothers arrived. They distributed punch and treats. Hannah could see Mrs. Pownell’s game prizes on her desk. But what she really wanted to do was empty out her fat mailbag and open her valentines. All day long her classmates had been walking from desk to desk, dropping cards in the bags.

  When the games were over, Mrs. Pownell said, “And now, class, you may open your valentines.”

  Hannah let out a whoop. She jumped up so fast that she knocked her chair over. But Mrs. Pownell didn’t mind. Even she was reaching for her mailbag.

  Hannah emptied her bag onto her desk. One, two, three … She counted the envelopes. Good. There were thirteen, one from every kid in the class and one from Mrs. Pownell.

  She began to open them. She was on her third when she heard Jane say to somebody, “Hey, here’s a weird one. It says, ‘A cat, a gerbil, a mouse, a frog. Why can’t we get just one little dog?’”

  The poem sounded familiar, but Hannah was too busy to pay much attention to Jane. Not until Randy Jamison went prancing around the room singing, “Come snow or rain or wind or fog, we’d all be happier if we had a dog!” did she pay attention. Hannah had written that — hadn’t she? But it was for her family. It was one of her pet hints. Uh-oh….

  Soon all the kids in Hannah’s room were comparing the strange valentines with poems about pets.

  “Who sent these?” asked Leigh. “They’re not signed.”

  Hey,” said Jane, “Hannah’s valentines were in pink envelopes. Did you send these, Hannah?”

  “No,” replied Hannah, blushing.

  Jane frowned.

  “Well,” said Randy, looking suspiciously at Hannah, “did anyone get a card signed ‘Hannah Rosso’?” Hannah wished she hadn’t picked that day to tease Randy by hiding his pencil.

  The kids checked through their valentines. “No!” they chorused.

  “Hannah, these are your valentines!” exclaimed Jane. “How come they all say to get a dog or a cat or something?”

  Hannah shrugged. She was trying to think of a good excuse when Dr. Moorehouse came into the classroom. Dr. Moorehouse was the principal of John Bowen Elementary. He was fat and pigeon-toed and always held on to the lapels of his coat when he was talking.

  While he spoke with Mrs. Pownell, Hannah turned her back on the adults. She stuck her feet inward so that they pointed to each other, and she placed her hands on her dress as if she were holding onto lapels. Then she pretended to have a conversation with someone.

  “Mrmph, mrmph, mrmph,” she said, which was how Dr. Moorehouse sounded when he tried to whisper.

  Jane and Leigh began to giggle. So did Randy. So did everyone who could see Hannah. And then the bell rang. The party was over, and Hannah’s valentines were forgotten.

  But Hannah still had a problem. She worried about it all the way home on the bus. The problem was her other valentines, the ones in the white envelopes. They had been made for her classmates, and some of them were … well, it wasn’t that they were mean exactly, but Hannah really didn’t want to give her grandmother a card that said, “Roses are red, glue is sticky, Valentine’s Day would be great if you weren’t so icky.”

  When the bus stopped at the end of the Rossos’ driveway, Hannah jumped off. She followed Jan, Ira, the twins, and Hardy to the house. She was busy thinking. What should she do? What could she do?

  Hannah didn’t bother to eat a snack. She took off her coat and went straight upstairs to her room. Mrs. Rosso watched her worriedly. In her room Hannah left her reading book on her bed. She removed the stack of white envelopes from the desk drawer and took them into the secret room with her. She sat on the floor.

  “Oh, Celia,” she murmured. “What am I going to do now? I can’t give these cards to my family. I don’t have enough money to buy cards, and I don’t have enough time to make new ones.” And then she thought, Boy, all that hard work for nothing. Her pet hints had been wasted.

  Nanny and Grandy, Mr. Rosso’s parents, were coming over for dinner at five o’clock. Hannah looked at her watch. She had only an hour and a half in which to do something. Once her grandparents arrived, she’d be busy with them, with dinner ?
?? and then opening more cards.

  Hannah thought and thought. At last, an idea came to her. It just might work. It was something she could do quickly that would take the place of valentines very nicely. Only this time Hannah would be smart. She’d write names on the envelopes and sign her notes. Hannah found a pen and some paper and got to work.

  * * *

  Nanny and Grandy arrived promptly at five o’clock. Hannah loved her grandparents’ visits. When she heard a knock, she, Jan, Ira, Woody, and Candy stampeded to the back door.

  “Hello, hello!” called Grandy.

  He and Nanny stepped inside, stomping snow off their boots and rubbing their hands together.

  “How are all my chickens?” asked Nanny.

  “We’re fine,” replied Hannah, who never minded that Nanny called her her chicken. But if anyone else had ever called her that …

  Grandy was tall and heavy and ruddy-cheeked, and Nanny was tiny and thin and roselike. They loved the Rosso kids, and Hannah and her brothers and sisters loved them back.

  Nanny and Grandy never arrived at the Rossos’ empty-handed, but Jan was the only one young enough to ask, “What did you bring us?” She jumped up and down.

  Nanny produced a shopping bag, and the kids peered inside. Hannah saw cards, naturally, and a pile of red-wrapped gifts. “But they’re for later,” Nanny cautioned. “They go with dessert.”

  Despite her disappointment over the mix-up with her own cards, Hannah could feel excitement returning. Mrs. Rosso was preparing a turkey dinner, and — who knew? — maybe there would be even more presents.

  When Abbie and Bainbridge added every leaf to the dining room table, fourteen Rossos could just barely squeeze around it. They ate roast turkey and mashed potatoes and peas by candlelight.

  “I know what dessert is!” Jan kept saying, and finally it was time to produce the dessert — a white sheet cake decorated with red candy hearts. Hannah thought she had eaten enough cake and candy in school that day to last a year, but now she wasn’t sure.

  Mr. Rosso served the cake, and Mrs. Rosso poured coffee for the adults, and Jan kept asking, “Is it time? Is it time?”

  At long last, Mrs. Rosso replied, “Yes.”

  There was a scramble as the Rossos reached under their chairs for their Valentine’s Day cards and gifts and passed them out. When they had finished, Hannah found herself facing a pile of envelopes for the second time that day — and two presents. She opened the presents first. In Nanny’s red box was a tiny gold heart to pin on her dress. In a box from her parents were heart-shaped barrettes.

  “Hey, Hannah! Neat!” exclaimed Hardy suddenly. “Thanks.” He held up the Valentine from Hannah — a slip of paper that read “I.O.U. one week of bedmaking. Love, Hannah.”

  “Look at this!” exclaimed Faustine. “‘I.O.U. one week of braided hair.’ You’re going to braid my hair for a week, Hannah? Great!”

  Everyone began searching for their I.O.U.s from Hannah. Her last-minute valentines were a hit. Hannah beamed. She had squeaked through this mess okay. But she’d be doing favors forever. And her pet reminders had gone to the wrong people.

  Oh, well, thought Hannah, I’ll save my pet hints for Christmas cards.

  One Saturday in April the temperature rose to sixty-five degrees.

  “It’s spring!” cried Faustine. “All of a sudden, spring is here.”

  “And it’s the weekend,” added Dinnie. “Rimbald tango.” (Extra specially good.)

  It certainly did seem like spring. On the Rosso farm Faustine could smell spring, see spring, hear spring, and feel spring. It was everywhere. It was in the tinge of green on the trees and bushes, the blush of pink on the dogwoods and magnolias, the fuzz of yellow on the forsythia. It was in the Rossos’ very own brook, which rushed along noisily, still swollen with runoff from the winter’s snow. It was in the newly warm air, which smelled of grass and leaves and other green, living things. It was in the robins and sparrows and wrens and cardinals and chickadees, which had become very busy building nests and raising families.

  Faustine especially liked the birds. She didn’t remember birds in New York, except for sparrows and pigeons. The pigeons had been brash and pushy and uppity. They’d fought over all kinds of things that birds had no business eating in the first place, such as pizza and the ends of hot dogs. But on the New Jersey farm, there wasn’t a single pigeon to be seen.

  In March, Faustine had announced, “I saw a robin today!”

  “Must have been the first robin, bringing spring,” her father had told her.

  “What?”

  “The first robin that you see brings spring. Watch now. Spring won’t be far off,” Mr. Rosso said. Then he’d returned to a carpentry magazine.

  He’d been right. Very slowly, spring had crept up on the farm. It had settled over it like a fresh, warm blanket, and on that day in April, a month later, Faustine was sure it was through arriving.

  “Sixty-five degrees is almost summer,” she said. She and Dinnie had run outside barefoot with their sweat shirts tied around their waists. They planned to go wading in the brook.

  But Mrs. Rosso called them back. “Shoes,” she said, pointing to their feet.

  “Mom, it’s sixty-five degrees today,” Faustine pointed out.

  “It’s the middle of April,” Mrs. Rosso countered. “It’s not that warm. And the brook will be freezing, even if the air isn’t. Put on socks and shoes and your sweat shirts. And no wading.”

  The twins had obeyed unhappily. “Moochie salamin,” they had grumbled.

  But the day was too nice to let socks and shoes and sweat shirts get in the way. And there were plenty of other things to do besides wading in the brook (which was freezing).

  They walked through the woods, and after awhile they were glad they were wearing their sweat shirts. Dinnie had brought a book about wild flowers with her, and Faustine had brought a book about birds. In their pockets were pads of paper and pencils. Faustine’s pad was labeled “Birds.” Dinnie’s was labeled “Flowers.” They planned to make lists of the birds and flowers they saw.

  “Hey, what’s this?” asked Dinnie, pausing by some small purple blooms clustered at the roots of a sycamore tree.

  “Bluebells?” Faustine suggested.

  Dinnie shook her head. “Bluebells were last month.” She opened her book. “Oh, they’re violets!” she exclaimed. She wrote “violets” on her list.

  As the morning wore on, they added lilies, grape hyacinths, and jonquils to Dinnie’s list. Faustine’s list was longer. The twins spotted all sorts of birds — a mud-colored female cardinal, another robin, several sparrows, a blackbird, a crow, and even a hawk soaring overhead. Once Faustine thought she saw a hummingbird, but it turned out to be a large flying insect, which was disappointing.

  Nevertheless, they sat down under an oak tree to examine the insect. When it had flown away, Dinnie said, “We should have brought lunches with us. We could have eaten them right here, just as if we were real nature explorers.”

  She was answered by a harsh squawk and looked at her twin suspiciously.

  “That wasn’t me,” said Faustine. “It came from around the tree.”

  “From around the tree?” Dinnie’s eyes met Faustine’s nervously.

  Faustine stretched out her fingers until they touched Dinnie’s. The twins clasped hands desperately.

  “What do you suppose is back there?” Dinnie whispered.

  “A snark-blandit?”

  “Don’t be silly,” replied Dinnie. “We made up snark-blandits.” But she didn’t look very convinced.

  Squawk. The cry came again.

  “Eeee!” shrieked Faustine. She and Dinnie clutched hands more tightly and leaped to their feet.

  Squawk, squawk, squawk.

  “Whatever it is, it sounds kind of scared,” Faustine whispered.

  “Well, we’ll just have to peek around the tree,” said Dinnie.

  The twins peered around one side of the tree. They leaned over f
arther and farther.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Dinnie.

  “Look down,” Faustine told her.

  Dinnie looked at the base of the tree, and her eyes discovered what Faustine’s had already found.

  It was a grackle, a large blackbird with iridescent feathers and a long tail. It sounded very unhappy.

  Faustine knelt beside the grackle. “Aw, it’s hurt,” she cried softly. “Dinnie, its wing is hurt.”

  The twins crouched beside the bird. It stared at them with beady eyes. When Faustine stroked one of its wings, it let out another squawk and struggled away awkwardly, one wing flapping, the other barely moving.

  “I think its wing is broken!” Faustine exclaimed.

  “We better take it home with us,” said Dinnie.

  “Oh,” said Faustine, “Mom’ll never let us keep a bird.”

  “Yes, she will. She’ll let us have an injured one. We have to make it well. She can’t say no to a bird with a broken wing. That would be cruel.”

  “She can too say no,” replied Faustine. But she knew that she could never leave the bird lying in the woods. She and Dinnie would have to try to convince their mother that it was all right to keep the bird. At least until it was well.

  Dinnie was looking at Faustine expectantly. “Okay,” said Faustine. “Let’s go. But how are we going to get it home?”

  “In my sweat shirt,” said Dinnie immediately. She peeled off her sweat shirt and wrapped it around the bird.

  The grackle squawked. Goosebumps rose on Dinnie’s arms because the woods were shady and cool. But the twins marched resolutely back to the farm.

  “I’ll talk to Mom,” said Faustine on the way. “She still mentions Goliath, and Goliath was your, um, mistake, so she’s not going to be too happy if you bring her another bird.”

  “Okay,” agreed Dinnie, her face reddening. Under her breath she muttered, “Moochie salamin.”