“Don’t even try,” said Lester, and sent us back upstairs.
We went outside and sat on the steps.
“Think of all the things Elijah David has to learn,” I said. “Not to run in front of cars, not to play with matches, not to stick vitamin pills up his nose… .”
“He’d never be dumb enough to do that,” said Sara.
19
THE NO-BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY
WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT ALL THE THINGS that had happened in fourth grade, I decided that nine years old was the worst year of my life so far, except for the year my mother died. No matter what I did, it always made things worse between Lester and me.
Then he went and ruined my tenth birthday. Dad had the flu first, and just after he got well, Lester got it next, two days before my party.
I had already given out invitations to my friends. I had folded sheets of paper into fourths and written a name of a friend on each one in yellow and green and copper. I had drawn stars and flowers, coated them with glue, and sprinkled pink and green sparkles over the glue, then tipped the paper so the extra stuff fell off. The invitations were absolutely beautiful, but then I had to cancel the party.
“We’d better not, honey,” Dad said. “We only have one bathroom, and Lester’s in it. I don’t think he’d appreciate girls running around out here while he was in there throwing up.”
“Well, I don’t appreciate him being sick,” I said. I knew it sounded awful, but I said it anyway.
Dad raised one eyebrow. “It’s not as though he planned it,” he told me. “And remember, you may be next.”
I hadn’t even thought about that! Not on my tenth birthday! “God wouldn’t do that, would He? Make me sick on my birthday?” I asked.
“God doesn’t make people sick,” said Dad. “Germs do. And people who live together share their germs.”
That’s when I got mad at Lester. When he came out of the bathroom in his pajamas, he sank down at the other end of the couch, and I scooted as far away from him as I could get.
“Keep your germs to yourself,” I told him.
He just looked at me with saggy eyes. Then he got up, went in the bathroom, and threw up all over again.
When you hear someone else throw up, something happens to your throat. I will not get sick, I told myself. I will not throw up. If I feel like throwing up, I will think about sucking ice cubes.
“I’ll tell you what, Al,” said Dad. “Maybe we could take you and your friends to a movie on Sunday and go out for ice cream afterward. Is there a movie you’d like to see?”
I got the newspaper and we looked through the movie section together.
“Night of the Assassin,” said Dad. “That’s out.”
“What’s assassin?” I asked.
“A killer. A murderer,” said Dad. “What else can you find?”
“Secluded Weekend?” I said, reading the ads. “Lust and Lies?”
“Keep looking,” said Dad.
We couldn’t find any good movies.
“Maybe we could go to a ball game,” Dad suggested.
“Keep looking,” I said.
Lester was still sick on Sunday, though, and Dad said he was really sorry, but he guessed there would be no birthday party for me this year. The following weekend he was going to be busy on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday too, so we couldn’t have my party then. When Lester was better, though, he promised, the three of us would go out to dinner.
I folded my arms over my chest and let my lower lip stick out so far that Dad said he could hang a bucket on it. “All right,” I said in a soft and whiny voice.
At my school, kids bring cupcakes or cookies on their birthdays to share with the class. Dad told Mrs. Nolinstock that Sunday was my birthday, and on Saturday she baked me a four-layer cake. You can’t very well take a four-layer cake to school, especially when there will be three pieces missing. So Dad drove me to school Monday morning, and we stopped at the Giant on the way and bought two dozen chocolate chunk cookies. Rosalind said that a big four-inch chocolate chunk cookie was almost better than a party. We had one extra, and she ate that one too.
I had a piece of birthday cake the day Mrs. Nolinstock made it. I had two pieces of birthday cake the next day, my real birthday. On Monday I had a chocolate chunk cookie at school and two more pieces of birthday cake for dinner. And then I got sick.
“Happy birthday,” Lester said when I came out of the bathroom after throwing up the cake. “Sorry I didn’t give you anything.”
“You gave me something, all right, Lester,” I said. “You gave me your germs.”
“Enjoy!” said Lester, and went down in the basement to get ready for school the following day. He was feeling better, and I was sick.
But the next day I was better too.
“It wasn’t the flu,” said Dad. “It was the cake. Did you ever thank Mrs. Nolinstock for making you a cake?”
“It made me sick!” I said.
“Only because you ate too much of it,” said Dad.
So on Wednesday, when Mrs. Nolinstock came again, I went out in the kitchen where she was making rice pudding.
“Thank you for the cake,” I said.
Mrs. Nolinstock went on stirring. “I’m glad you liked it,” she said.
“It was delicious,” I told her. “Except for the part I threw up.”
If Mrs. Nolinstock was going to be around forever, I decided, then maybe she ought to know why we didn’t like her and maybe she would change. Sometimes Lester didn’t come home on the days she was there until it was almost time for her to leave. That’s pretty bad, I think, when a person doesn’t even want to walk into his very own house.
I decided to write Mrs. Nolinstock a letter. I wouldn’t sign my name, but I would tell her why we didn’t like her:
Dear Mrs. N,
You make good food, but the reason we don’t like you is you hardly ever smile and you were rude to Donald. You don’t say nice things, either, to Alice and her brother. They can take care of themselves.
Yours truly,
A friend
P.S. You’re also mean to her cat.
On Thursday, I left the letter in the vegetable bin in our refrigerator because we hardly ever look in there. I thought she would find it on Friday when she came back to cook. But Mrs. Nolinstock didn’t find it. Dad did.
“Alice Kathleen McKinley!” he yelled that evening.
I went out in the kitchen. I thought maybe I’d forgotten to clean up after my snack. Dad was holding a piece of paper.
“Did you write this?” he asked.
“What is it?” I asked, though I recognized the yellow notebook paper from clear across the kitchen.
Dad handed the note to me. I sniffed it. “It smells like broccoli,” I said.
“Did you write it?” asked Dad.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Do you know what would have happened if Mrs. Nolinstock had found this?” he asked.
“She’d quit?” I asked hopefully.
“You would have really hurt her feelings,” he said. “It was a rude thing to do.”
“Well, she’s been rude too, and I was just saying what I felt.”
“You didn’t even sign your name! Only cowards do that.”
“If I sign my name, can we put it back with the broccoli?” I asked.
“No!” yelled Dad. He crumpled up the paper and threw it away.
“Well,” I told Lester later, “I tried.”
Sara invited me to her house on Saturday. She has a whole lot of brothers and sisters and a messy house with a chain-link fence around it.
First we played with some big wooden boxes in her backyard. Her dad got them from the company where he works. We stacked them on top of each other and made a fort. Then we put them side by side, and we all climbed in and pretended we were dead people. Sara said a prayer over us, and we rose from the dead and we were ghosts.
At two o’clock we were hungry, so we all went inside. Sara opened the ref
rigerator and called out what was in it.
“Cheese?” she said.
“Yeah!” said one of her brothers.
“Salami?” she said, taking out a package.
“I want some!” said a sister.
Sara kept taking out stuff—pickles and cold macaroni and lettuce and leftover sausage and corn and carrots—until there was enough to eat. We ate whatever we wanted. We didn’t use forks. We ate cold macaroni with our fingers. It was delicious.
Sara’s mother came in to get some iced tea. “Did you find everything you need?” she asked us.
“Yes,” I said. “It was very good.”
That’s one of the differences between Rosalind’s house and Sara’s. At Sara’s they stop doing other things sometimes to eat. At Rosalind’s they stop eating sometimes to do other things.
Near the end of May, Dad took Lester and me out to dinner to celebrate my birthday, even though it was two weeks late. We had Mexican food and Coca-Cola and ice cream for dessert.
Dad gave me a pair of Rollerblades, and Lester gave me a disposable camera. I took a picture of him eating a tamale. He took a picture of me holding up my Rollerblades. There was a present from Aunt Sally, too. It was a box with bubble bath and dusting powder in it.
“What do I do with dusting powder?” I asked Dad. “Sprinkle it around my room?”
“You’re supposed to put it on your feet when they stink,” said Lester.
I won’t ever believe another thing Lester tells me.
While we were eating our ice cream, though, I was thinking about Sara’s family—the way the kids take care of themselves. If they could do that, so could we. I decided that sometime soon Lester and I would have to think of a really good way to get rid of Mrs. Nolinstock. Without even hurting her feelings, maybe.
20
DROPPING THE BABY
THE LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL IS “LAST times” week. The last time the art teacher comes to our school. The last time we have music. The last time we get to play kickball at recess.
We don’t learn very much. We learn who has to go to summer camp and who gets to stay home. We learn whose grandma is coming to visit and who has to share her bed with a cousin. We learn who gets to go to Kings Dominion or Disney World.
But the day before the very last day of school, during our very last science lesson, Mr. Dooley was talking about oceans and what we should look for if anyone was going to the beach during summer vacation. And right in the middle of our science lesson a woman came to the door of our room. She was holding a baby against her shoulder.
Mr. Dooley had been sitting on the edge of his desk telling us about sand crabs. He stood up with a big smile on his face.
“Well, class, I thought you might like to meet the little fellow we’ve known since he was a tiny embryo.” He held out his arms for the baby and introduced his wife to the class.
I looked at the baby. I looked at Mrs. Dooley and wondered how a tiny little woman like her could have a big baby inside her. Elijah David was as big as a volleyball. Even bigger. I guess your skin really stretches when a baby is growing inside you.
Mr. Dooley sat down at his desk with Elijah on his lap. The baby was making little sucking sounds with his lips, and his blue eyes were looking about as we gathered around him. Every time Mr. Dooley moved his knee, Elijah David jumped and waved his tiny fists. Sara reached out one finger and put it in Elijah’s hand. His fingers curled around it.
I wished I had done that! I didn’t know that if you put your finger in a baby’s hand, he would hold on. Sara moved her own finger up and down. The baby’s hand went up and down, like he was directing a band. We laughed. I guess if you have as many brothers and sisters as Sara has, you learn a lot about babies.
“So here you have a human animal—and humans are mammals, you know; they drink their mother’s milk,” said Mr. Dooley. “This one grew inside his mother for nine months, and here he is. He has ten fingers…” Mr. Dooley smiled and pulled off the baby’s booties. “. . . and ten toes…” He showed us Elijah’s feet. “. . . two little ears… two eyes… . Isn’t it remarkable that we have two of so many things in case something goes wrong with one of them? What else do we have two of, class?”
“Two legs,” said Ollie.
“Two feet,” said Donald.
“Lungs,” said Jody.
“Kidneys,” said Rosalind.
“But we only have one heart and one brain,” I said.
“That’s right, Alice. Those are two important things we have only one of, so we have to take special care of our hearts and our brains,” said Mr. Dooley. He looked around. “Would anyone like to hold Elijah?”
I stared. This wonderful baby who had taken nine months to grow, and Mr. Dooley was going to let one of us hold him? Before I could blink, all the girls and even some of the boys were waving their hands. I raised mine too late. Mr. Dooley chose Megan. He let her sit in his desk chair and tucked Elijah in the crook of her arm.
While Megan held the baby, Mr. Dooley showed us Elijah’s soft spot on the top of his head, and he told us how we had to be extra careful not to let a baby’s head flop around. I wished that I were the one sitting there holding the baby. Why hadn’t I been the first one with my hand in the air?
When the bell rang to go home, I felt as though I was going to cry. I think I wanted to hold Elijah David more than anyone else in the room wanted to hold him. Mrs. Dooley had taken him now, and all the kids were lining up to go home. I heard Mrs. Dooley tell her husband that she would wait for him in our library.
I decided I was not going home. If Mrs. Dooley was going to wait for Mr. Dooley, I would wait too. When the other kids went out the door, I slipped in the rest room and hid. I stayed until the hall was quiet. Then I went down to the library. Mrs. Dooley was sitting in a chair near the back. Oh no! She was holding Elijah to her chest, with a blanket covering his face, and I knew he was drinking from her breast.
I was such a blunderbuss! I didn’t even guess that he might be nursing. I was ready to turn around and leave when Mrs. Dooley looked up and smiled at me. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I answered.
“I’ll bet you wanted to hold Elijah too, didn’t you?” She had blue eyes, just like her baby, but she had a lot more hair.
I nodded and walked over.
She buttoned her blouse and uncovered the baby’s face. He had milk on his chin, and he looked very sleepy.
“Well, it’s snack time for Elijah, but he needs to be burped,” she said. “Do you want to sit next to me and I’ll show you how to do it?”
I just grinned and sat down. I hoped my hands were clean.
Mrs. Dooley put Elijah against her, his face peeking out over her shoulder. She kept one hand behind his head and the other on his bottom. Then she gently jiggled him up and down.
When she put him in my arms, I tried to hold him just like that. I braced his bottom against my arm and put my other hand behind his head. I jiggled him gently up and down, just the way she had.
Elijah David was warm against me. He squirmed and made little grunting noises. My smile kept getting wider. Mrs. Dooley smiled too. So did the librarian, who was watching from her desk. I jiggled and patted the baby some more. And suddenly an enormous belch came from Elijah David. I didn’t know a baby could make such a loud noise.
Baarrpt! went the baby.
Mrs. Dooley and the librarian and I all laughed.
Baarrpt! went Elijah again, not so loud this time.
“What a great burper you are!” Mrs. Dooley said. “I think that’s about the best burp Elijah ever made.”
I smiled all the way home that day. I even smiled at Mrs. Nolinstock. I wished the whole class had seen me holding Elijah David and heard his enormous burp.
“I got to hold a baby at school today and make him burp,” I told Mrs. Nolinstock.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s one thing I didn’t get that I always wanted: a baby.”
I didn’t know what to say. The wo
man in brown with the rubber band around her hair in back had never told me anything so personal before. I wondered if it was a secret.
I sat down on the couch in the living room and thought about it. Maybe that’s why she liked to cook, I decided. Maybe she liked to go in other people’s houses and feed them because she couldn’t feed a little baby of her own.
“Guess what I am?” I said that night at dinner as we were eating the turkey and noodles that Mrs. Nolinstock had made.
“A girl?” said Lester. “The Creature from the Black Lagoon?”
“A terrific burper,” I said.
Dad frowned a little. “I hope that’s not something you were practicing at school.”
I told him about Mr. Dooley’s baby and how I got to make him burp.
“Oh,” said Dad. “That’s different.”
When Oatmeal jumped up in my lap, I tried to show them how I had held Elijah to my shoulder, but cats don’t belch. They scratch.
“I remember when you used to do that,” said Lester.
“Scratch?” I asked.
“Belch,” said Lester. “You used to belch so loud, I thought it was the door buzzer.”
“Lester!” I scolded.
“You did! You used to belch so loud, I thought it was a jackhammer.”
“You did not!”
“You used to belch so loud, the neighbors could hear you clear down the block,” said Lester.
“I don’t believe you now and I never will, ever again,” I told him.
On the last day of school we helped Mr. Dooley clean up the classroom. We straightened the construction paper in the supply cupboard, put all the Magic Markers in the right boxes, and counted our playground stuff—the bats and balls and jump ropes—in the closet. It was my job to look for the two volleyballs with our room number on them. I found one under some burlap sacks in the closet, but I had to check the other classrooms to find the other one.
When I brought it back and took it into the supply closet, I thought how the volleyball was almost as big as Mr. Dooley’s baby. Probably exactly the size of Elijah David when he was growing inside his mother.
I looked at the volleyball. I looked at my stomach. I pushed the volleyball down the front of my jumper till it got as far as my stomach. Was this what it was like to have a baby growing inside you? I wondered. I couldn’t bend over. I couldn’t even see my feet.