Morris Gleitzman grew up in England and came to Australia when he was sixteen. He was a frozen chicken thawer, sugar mill rolling stock unhooker, fashion industry trainee, student, department-store Santa, TV producer, newspaper columnist and freelance screenwriter, then in 1985 he wrote a novel for young people. Now he’s a children’s author.
Other books by Morris Gleitzman
The Other Facts of Life
Second Childhood
Two Weeks with the Queen
Misery Guts
Worry Warts
Puppy Fat
Blabber Mouth
Sticky Beak
Belly Flop
Water Wings
Bumface
Gift of the Gab
Wicked! (with Paul Jennings)
Toad Rage
Self Helpless
Deadly (with Paul Jennings)
Adults Only
Toad Heaven
Boy Overboard
Teacher’s Pet
Toad Away
Girl Underground
Worm Story
Once
Aristotle’s Nostril
Doubting Thomas
Give Peas a Chance
PAN
Pan Macmillan Australia
The characters and events in this book are ficticious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
First Piper edition published 1992 by Pan Macmillan Publishers Australia
This Pan edition published 2000 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney
Reprinted 2000 (twice), 2001 (twice), 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009
Copyright © Gleitzman McCaul Pty Ltd 1992
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia
cataloguing-in-publication data:
Gleitzman, Morris, 1953–. Blabber mouth.
ISBN 978 0 330 27353 4.
I. Title
A823.3
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
These electronic editions published in 2010 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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Blabber Mouth
Morris Gleitzman
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For Chris, Sophie and Ben
I’m so dumb.
I never thought I’d say that about myself, but after what I’ve just done I deserve it.
How could I have messed up my first day here so totally and completely?
Two hours ago, when I walked into this school for the first time, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and, apart from a knot in my guts the size of Tasmania, life was great.
Now here I am, locked in the stationery cupboard.
Just me, a pile of exam papers and what smells like one of last year’s cheese and devon sandwiches.
Cheer up exam papers, cheer up ancient sanger, if you think you’re unpopular, take a look at me.
I wish those teachers would stop shouting at me to unlock the door and come out. I don’t want to come out. I want to sit here in the dark with my friend the sandwich.
Oh no, now Ms Dunning’s trying to pick the lock with the staff-room knife. One of the other teachers is telling her not to cut herself. The principal’s telling her not to damage the staff-room knife.
I hope she doesn’t cut herself because she was really good to me this morning.
I was an Orange-to-Dubbo-phone-line-in-a-heap-sized bundle of nerves when I walked into that classroom this morning with everyone staring. Even though we’ve been in the district over a week, and I’ve seen several of the kids in the main street, they still stared.
I didn’t blame them. In small country towns you don’t get much to stare at. Just newcomers and old men who dribble, mostly.
Ms Dunning was great. She told everyone to remember their manners or she’d kick them in the bum, and everyone laughed. Then when she saw the letters me and Dad had photocopied she said it was the best idea she’d seen since microwave pizza, and gave me permission to hand them round.
I watched anxiously while all the kids read the letter. I was pretty pleased with it, but you can never tell how an audience is going to react.
‘G’day’, the letter said, ‘my name’s Rowena Batts and, as you’ve probably noticed by now, I can’t speak. Don’t worry, but, we can still be friends cause I can write, draw, point, nod, shake my head, screw up my nose and do sign language. I used to go to a special school but the government closed it down. The reason I can’t speak is I was born with some bits missing from my throat. (It’s OK, I don’t leak.) Apart from that, I’m completely normal and my hobbies are reading, watching TV and driving my Dad’s tractor. I hope we can be friends, yours sincerely, Rowena Batts.’
That letter took me about two hours to write last night, not counting the time I spent arguing with Dad about the spelling, so I was pleased that most people read it all the way through.
Some kids smiled.
Some laughed, but in a nice way.
A few nudged each other and gave me smirky looks.
‘OK,’ said Ms Dunning, ‘let’s all say g’day to Rowena.’
‘G’day,’ everyone chorused, which I thought was a bit humiliating for them, but Ms Dunning meant well.
I gave them the biggest grin I could, even though Tasmania was trying to crawl up my throat.
A couple of the kids didn’t say g’day, they just kept on with the smirky looks.
One of them was a boy with red lips and ginger hair and there was something about his extra-big smirk that made me think even then that I was probably going to have trouble with him.
‘Right,’ said Ms Dunning after she’d sat me down next to a girl with white hair who was still only halfway through my letter, ‘who’s on frogs today?’ She looked at a chart on the wall next to a tank with some small green frogs in it.
‘Darryn Peck,’ she said.
The kid with the big red smirk got up and swaggered over to the tank.
‘Clean it thoroughly,’ warned Ms Dunning, ‘or I’ll feed you to them.’
We all laughed and Darryn Peck gave her a rude sign behind her back. A couple of kids laughed again and Ms Dunning was just about to turn back to Darryn when a woman
came to the door and said there was a phone call for her in the office.
‘Ignore the floor show,’ Ms Dunning told us, giving Darryn Peck a long look, ‘and read something interesting. I’ll only be a sec.’
As soon as she’d gone, Darryn Peck started.
‘I can speak sign language,’ he said loudly, smirking right at me. Then he gave me the same finger he’d given Ms Dunning.
About half the class laughed.
I decided to ignore him.
The girl next to me was still having trouble with my letter. She had her ruler under the word ‘sincerely’ and was frowning at it.
I found my pen, leaned over, crossed out ‘Yours sincerely’ and wrote ‘No bull’. She looked at it for a moment, then grinned at me.
‘Rowena Batts,’ said Darryn Peck. ‘What sort of a name is Batts? Do you fly around at night and suck people’s blood?’
Hardly anyone laughed and I didn’t blame them. I’ve had better insults from kids with permanent brain damage.
I thought about asking him what sort of a name Peck was, and did he get sore knees from eating with the chooks, but then I remembered nobody there would be able to understand my hand movements, and the trouble with writing insults is it takes years.
‘My parents’d go for a kid like you,’ said Darryn, even louder. ‘They’re always saying they wish I’d lose my voice.’
Nobody laughed.
Darryn could see he was losing his audience.
Why didn’t I treat that as a victory and ignore him and swap addresses with the slow reader next to me?
Because I’m not just mute, I’m dumb.
‘Your parents must be really pleased you’re a freak,’ brayed Darryn. ‘Or are they freaks too and haven’t noticed?’
He shouldn’t have said that.
Dad can look after himself, but Mum died when I was born and if anyone says anything bad about her I get really angry.
I got really angry.
Tasmania sprouted volcanoes and the inside of my head filled up with molten lava.
I leapt across the room and snatched the frog Darryn Peck was holding and squeezed his cheeks hard so his red lips popped open and stuffed the frog into his mouth and grabbed the sticky tape from the art table and wound it round and round his head till there was none left.
The others all stared at me, mouths open, horrified. Then they quickly closed their mouths.
I stood there while the lava cooled in my head and Darryn Peck gurgled and the other kids backed away.
Then I realised what I’d done.
Lost all my friends before I’d even made them.
I ran out of the room and down the corridor past a startled Ms Dunning and just as she was calling out I saw a cupboard door with a key in it and threw myself in and locked it.
The smell in here’s getting worse.
I don’t think it’s a cheese and devon sandwich after all, I think it’s a dead frog.
I’m not opening the door.
I just want to sit here in the dark and pretend I’m at my old school with my old friends.
It’s not easy because the teachers out there in the corridor are making such a racket scurrying around and muttering to each other and yelling at kids to get back in the classroom.
Ms Dunning’s just been to phone Dad, and the principal’s just asked if anyone’s got a crowbar in their car.
It doesn’t sound as though anyone has, or if they have, they don’t want to go and get it.
I don’t blame them. Who’d want to walk all the way to the staff car park for the least popular girl in the school?
Dad arrived just in time.
I was getting desperate because the smell was making me feel sick and Ms Dunning pleading with me through the door was making me feel guilty and the sound of an electric drill being tested was making me feel scared.
But I couldn’t bring myself to open the door and face all those horrified kids.
And angry teachers.
And Mr Fowler the principal who’d skinned his knuckles trying to force the lock with a stapler.
Not by myself.
Then I heard a truck pull up outside.
I’ve never been so pleased to hear a vibrating tailgate. The tailgate on our truck has vibrated ever since Dad took the old engine out and put in a turbo-powered one with twin exhausts.
There were more scurrying and muttering sounds from out in the corridor and then Ms Dunning called through the door.
‘Rowena, your father’s here. If you come out now we’ll try and keep him calm.’
I grinned to myself in the dark. She obviously didn’t know my father.
I took a deep breath and opened the door.
The corridor was full of faces, all staring at me.
The principal, looking grim and holding a bandaged hand.
Ms Dunning, looking concerned.
The other teachers, looking annoyed.
Kids peeking out of classrooms, some horrified, some smirking.
Plus a couple of blokes in bushfire brigade overalls carrying a huge electric drill, and a man in a dustcoat with Vic’s Hardware embroidered on the pocket holding a big bunch of keys, and an elderly woman in a yellow oilskin jacket with State Emergency Service printed on it.
All staring at me.
I don’t think anybody said anything. But I wouldn’t have heard them if they had because my heart was pounding in my ears like a stump excavator.
Then the door at the other end of the corridor swung open with a bang and all the heads turned.
It was Dad.
As he walked slowly down the corridor, taking in the situation, everyone stared at him even harder than they’d stared at me.
I didn’t blame them. People usually stare at Dad the first time they see him. They’re not being rude, it’s just that most people have never seen an apple farmer wearing goanna-skin boots, black jeans, a studded belt with a polished metal cow’s skull buckle, a black shirt with white tassels and a black cowboy hat.
Dad came up to me, looking concerned.
‘You OK, Tonto?’ he asked.
He always calls me Tonto. I think it’s a character from a TV show he used to watch when he was a kid. I’d be embarrassed if he said it out loud, but it’s OK when he says it with his hands because nobody else can understand. Dad always talks to me with his hands. He reckons two people can have a better conversation when they’re both speaking the same language.
‘I’m fine, Dad,’ I replied.
Everyone was staring at our hands, wondering what we were saying.
‘Tough day, huh?’ said Dad.
‘Fairly tough,’ I said.
Dad gave me a sympathetic smile, then turned and met the gaze of all the people in the corridor.
Mr Fowler, the principal, stepped forward.
‘We can’t have a repeat of this sort of thing, Mr Batts,’ he said.
‘It was just first day nerves,’ said Ms Dunning. ‘I’m sure it won’t happen again.’
Dad cleared his throat.
My stomach sank.
When Dad clears his throat it usually means one thing.
It did today.
He moved slowly around the semicircle of people, looking each of them in the eye, and sang to them.
Their mouths fell open.
Mr Fowler stepped back.
The hardware bloke dropped his keys.
As usual, Dad sang a country and western number from his record collection. He’s got this huge collection of records by people with names like Slim Dusty and Carla Tamworth—the big black plastic records you play on one of those old-fashioned record players with a needle.
This one was about lips like a graveyard and a heart like a fairground and I knew Dad was singing about me.
Part of me felt proud and grateful.
The other part of me wanted to creep back into the cupboard and shut the door.
Several of the teachers looked as though they wanted to as well.
Da
d thinks country and western is the best music ever written and he assumes everyone else does too. They usually don’t, mostly because he doesn’t get many of the notes right.
When he’d finished, and the hardware bloke had picked up his keys, Dad put an arm round my shoulders.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘Rowena Batts is taking the rest of the day off. Apologies for the inconvenience, and if anyone’s out of pocket, give us a hoy and I’ll bung you a bag of apples.’
He steered me down the corridor.
Just before we went out the door, I glanced back. Nobody had moved. Everyone looked stunned, except Ms Dunning, who had a big grin on her face.
In the truck driving into town, I told Dad what had happened. He hardly took his eyes off my hands the whole time except when he had to swerve to avoid the war memorial. When I told him about the frog in Darryn Peck’s mouth he laughed so much his hat fell off.
I didn’t think any of it was funny.
What’s funny about everyone thinking you’re a psychopath who’s cruel to frogs and not wanting to touch you with a bargepole?
Just thinking about it made my eyes hot and prickly.
Dad saw this and stopped laughing.
‘OK, Tonto,’ he said, steering with his knees, ‘let’s go and rot our teeth.’
We went and had chocolate milkshakes with marshmallows floating on top, and Dad did such a good imitation of Darryn Peck with the frog in his mouth that I couldn’t help laughing.
Specially when the man in the milk bar thought Dad was choking on a marshmallow.
Then we played Intergalactic Ice Invaders and I was twenty-seven thousand points ahead when the milk bar man asked us to leave because Dad was making too much noise. I guess the milk bar man must have been right because as we left, a man in a brown suit glared at us from the menswear shop next door.
We went to the pub and had lemon squash and played pool. Dad slaughtered me as usual, but I didn’t mind. One of the things I really like about Dad is he doesn’t fake stuff just to make you feel better. So when he says good things you know he means it. Like on the pool table today when I cracked a backspin for the first time and he said how proud it made him because he hadn’t done it till he was thirteen.