Gooney Bird and All Her Charms

  Napoleon’s spine leaned against the back of the chair, and each arm, bent at the elbow joint, rested on a wooden chair arm.

  “Look, Mrs. Pidgeon!” Malcolm stroked the long bone of Napoleon’s upper right arm. “Do you find this humerus?”

  Mrs. Pidgeon groaned at the joke. She had explained to the children that the human arm had this one oddly named bone. “Yes, very humerus, Malcolm,” she said with a laugh.

  “We need to show him using his brain,” Gooney Bird said. “So he should be reading something really hard.”

  “How about this?” the librarian asked. “It couldn’t be more appropriate. Mr. Furillo just returned it. He loves history, but he said this was pretty tough going.” She went to her desk, held up a book, and read the title aloud. “The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

  “He wouldn’t be reading about himself!” Malcolm said loudly. “That’s dumb!”

  “But, Malcolm,” Mrs. Pidgeon said, “if there were a book in this library called Malcolm: The Difficult Life of an Eight-Year-Old Boy with Triplets at Home, don’t you think you would read it?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Malcolm admitted.

  “Well, duh!” said Chelsea.

  “I always look up Laysan albatross when I come across a book about seabirds,” Gooney Bird said, “because you know what their other name is!”

  “Gooney bird!” the second-graders all said, laughing.

  “I think we should let Napoleon read about himself,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. She took the thick book from Mrs. Clancy and looked at it. “Even though it is six hundred and four pages long!”

  Mrs. Pidgeon placed the book, open, on the skeleton’s lap. Beanie and Tricia carefully arranged Napoleon’s hands on the book.

  “Look,” said Beanie placing Napoleon’s thumb and forefinger around a page, “he’s just turning from page three forty-seven to three forty-eight.”

  “It’s going to take him forever to finish that book!” Tyrone said.

  “Maybe he’s a really fast reader, like me!” Keiko suggested.

  “He’d better be,” Gooney Bird said, “because he only gets a few days in the library. Then we have to move him to his next spot.”

  “What’s his next spot?” her classmates asked.

  “Depends what body part we study next. That’s up to Mrs. Pidgeon.”

  “We still have work to do here, class,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “We have to dress Napoleon in his brain-using outfit. Gooney Bird? You first.”

  Gooney Bird reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses. Gooney Bird kept many pairs of glasses in her cubby. She bought them at yard sales. She didn’t need glasses—her vision was perfect, she said, 20/20—but she liked to wear them occasionally. She felt that they made her look interesting, intellectual, and sophisticated.

  The ones she had chosen for Napoleon’s stay in the library were large and round, with dark frames. Carefully she placed them over his eye sockets. “Too bad he doesn’t have ears or a nose,” she said. “That would help.” But she managed to adjust the glasses on the skull, and when she took her hands away, they balanced there.

  “Malcolm?” Gooney Bird said. “You’re next. That will help.”

  Malcolm came forward and held up his furry green earmuffs. He stretched them apart, placed them on the skull, and when the metal connector tightened, they snapped in place over the earpieces of the glasses, holding them firmly.

  They tilted the skull slightly so that Napoleon’s skull was looking at the book that he held in his lap.

  Gooney Bird frowned. “You know what? We talked about a brain-warming hat, but I don’t think he needs one. He looks very brainy just like this.”

  “Studious,” Mrs. Pidgeon commented.

  “Attentive,” said Mrs. Clancy.

  “And a good reader,” Keiko added.

  “So: no hat,” Gooney Bird said. “The only things left are the signs. Tyrone? Felicia Ann? How are you doing?” Gooney Bird looked toward the computer wall. Tyrone and Felicia Ann had been hard at work on two computers.

  “Napoleon’s signs be almost done,” Tyrone chanted. “Me and Felicia Ann, we havin’ fun!”

  Mr. Pidgeon went to the printer and looked at the pages of large print that had appeared one after another.

  “Good job, guys!” she said. She handed the pages to the children. Mrs. Clancy found some Scotch tape in her desk.

  First they taped a sign to the door of the school library.

  COME MEET NAPOLEON

  PLEASE BE QUIET

  The next sign was taped to the table beside Napoleon’s chair.

  NAPOLEON IS USING HIS BRAIN.

  IT IS INSIDE HIS SKULL.

  HIS SKULL PROTECTS IT.

  On another nearby table they taped another sign.

  HIS BRAIN IS FULL OF NEURONS.

  THEY SEND MESSAGES TO HIS OTHER PARTS.

  Carefully they placed the third sign on the floor near Napoleon’s foot.

  HE IS READING.

  HIS EYES ARE SEEING THE LETTERS

  AND SENDING THE MESSAGES TO HIS

  BRAIN.

  “Where shall I put this one?” Keiko asked, holding a sign.

  The children thought it over and decided to tape the next sign to the side of the chair. Keiko placed it there neatly.

  HE IS WEARING EAR MUFFS

  SO THAT VIBRATIONS WON’T ENTER HIS

  BRAIN WHILE HE IS READING.

  PLEASE BE QUIET IN THE LIBRARY!

  “One more,” Gooney Bird said. “I’ll put this one here on the front of Mrs. Clancy’s desk.”

  THE BRAIN ALSO SENDS MESSAGES

  ABOUT SMELLING AND TASTING

  AND PAIN AND DANGER AND HAPPINESS

  AND MANY OTHER THINGS!

  THE BRAIN IS VERY, VERY IMPORTANT!

  BE CAREFUL NOT TO DAMAGE YOUR

  BRAIN!

  “What does that mean?” Malcolm asked. “How can you protect your brain from getting damaged?”

  “You should know that, Malcolm,” Beanie told him. “Wear a batting helmet!”

  “Or a bike helmet!” Nicholas added.

  “Or a seat belt!” Felicia Ann said. “And don’t do drugs, either. Here. I brought you one more.” She and Tyrone had turned their computers off and joined the other children. She handed the final sign to Gooney Bird.

  Gooney Bird looked at it and laughed. She tore off a piece of tape, leaned down, and attached the last sign to Napoleon’s left upper arm.

  MRS. PIDGEON’S SECOND GRADE

  FINDS THIS HUMERUS.

  “Goodness,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “It’s almost lunchtime. Have a nice stay in the library, Napoleon. We’ll be back for you in a few days!”

  The children all waved to Napoleon as they left the library. Napoleon didn’t wave back. He was very busy using his brain to read.

  5

  “I don’t know how you can stand to eat that, Malcolm,” Gooney Bird said, looking at the pizza slice that Malcolm was folding into thirds. “It’s not even interesting.”

  It was Thursday, and the school lunch on Thursday was always pizza. Malcolm took a bite of his, and then nibbled a dangling bit of cheese into his mouth.

  “That’s gross, Malcolm,” Chelsea said. “I bet you slurp spaghetti, too.”

  Malcolm grinned. He made a loud slurping noise and Chelsea rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway,” Malcolm said, with his mouth full, “food isn’t supposed to be interesting. It’s just supposed to taste good and fill you up.”

  “I disagree,” Gooney Bird told him. “I think food should be nutritious, and filling, and delicious—”

  “Right! And my pizza is all of those things!”

  “Let me finish. And also it should be colorful to look at—”

  “My pizza is! Look at it! Orange, mostly! And the pepperoni is sort of maroon!”

  “I haven’t finished. And it should also be interesting. That’s why I always bring my lunch from home. Every single day I put something in my lunch that
is from a foreign country. Usually for dessert. Yesterday I had a Brazil nut, remember?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “And the day before that, a kumquat. And on Monday, a red banana.”

  Malcolm nodded again. He looked at the half slice of pizza that he was still holding. “My mom doesn’t have time to make me an interesting lunch,” he explained sadly. “Every morning she has to feed all three of the babies, and they throw stuff, and they smear oatmeal in their hair, and—”

  Gooney Bird sighed. “Yeah,” she said sympathetically. “It’s hard. You know what? Finish your pizza while I finish my cucumber and hummus sandwich. Then I’ll share my dessert with you.”

  Malcolm brightened. “What’s your dessert?” he asked.

  “Pomegranate,” Gooney Bird told him.

  “Oh. I was hoping you were going to say brownies.”

  “Brownies aren’t half as colorful and interesting as pomegranate!”

  Barry Tuckerman, who was seated near them in the multipurpose room where they were having lunch, was listening. He folded his napkin neatly into a rectangle and used it to brush the crumbs off the table onto the floor. Bruno, Mr. Furillo’s Newfoundland, looked over from his bed in the corner, raised himself to his feet, came over next to the table and licked up the crumbs, then returned to his bed. He wagged his bandaged tail slightly.

  “Uh-oh,” Beanie said. “We’re not supposed to feed him. He’s on a diet.”

  “It was only a few crumbs,” Barry pointed out. “You know what?” He picked up a cookie and examined it. “It’s nice to have an interesting lunch. And it’s nice to have a colorful lunch. And it’s important to have a nutritious lunch. You should have some salad with your pizza slice, Malcolm.”

  “Yeah, I will.” Halfheartedly Malcolm poked his plastic fork into a little cup of coleslaw.

  “But after you chew it all up, it doesn’t matter if it’s a red banana or a brownie or a kumquat or a whatever. Because after your teeth work on it, it’s all just moosh.” Barry took a quick bite of the cookie he was holding. He chewed it loudly, then stuck out his tongue. “MOOSH,” he said. “See?”

  Keiko, seated at the end of the table, whimpered and put her hands over her eyes. “Yuck,” she whispered.

  “It’s true,” Tricia said. “By the time it goes down the . . . the . . . What’s it called? That tube it goes down?”

  “Esophagus!” Barry, Beanie, and Tyrone all said it loudly together.

  “Yes. Esophagus. It’s just moosh when it goes down that into your stomach.”

  “Did I hear someone say esophagus?” Mrs. Pidgeon appeared at their table. “Does that mean you were all paying attention to our science lesson this morning?”

  The children all laughed and nodded their heads.

  “What happens to the food while you chew it?” she asked.

  “It gets mixed with—?”

  “Saliva!” they said together.

  “And then it goes through the—?”

  “Esophagus!”

  “Into the—?”

  “Stomach!”

  “Right! Does everyone have a full stomach? Have you all finished your lunch?”

  Bruno looked up as the children threw away their paper napkins, closed their lunchboxes, and returned their trays. His big brown eyes watched carefully to see if any more crumbs or scraps of food had fallen on the floor. Then, disappointed, he went back to sleep.

  Gooney Bird looked around the multipurpose room as her class prepared to leave. The lunch ladies behind the counter were cleaning up and storing the leftover milk cartons in the big refrigerator. Mr. Furillo was standing in the doorway with his huge broom. Very soon, when all the classes had finished their lunch, the custodian would move the tables to the side and sweep the floor, Bruno following him in hope of crumbs.

  “Mr. Furillo?” Gooney Bird said politely as she approached the door with the rest of her class. “I have a favor to ask.”

  He listened while she described her request. Then he nodded his head. “Gotcha,” he said.

  Walking back to the second grade classroom quietly, Gooney Bird spoke to Mrs. Pidgeon. “I know we have math this afternoon, and spelling, and recess, but . . .”

  “But what?” Mrs. Pidgeon asked.

  “Now that we’ve learned all about the digestive system,” Gooney Bird said, “I think it’s time for Napoleon to make a move.”

  Napoleon had been in the library now for four days. His glasses had become a little lopsided and his book was tilted, about to fall out of his hands. But he still looked like a guy using his brain.

  Every classroom in Watertower Elementary School had been to visit him. Three kindergarten children had been frightened and cried, but most of the students had found Napoleon fascinating. One fourth grade boy, Philip Romano, who had trouble concentrating on schoolwork, announced that from now on he would wear ear muffs, as Napoleon did.

  Sixth-grader Marlon Washington, who was often a troublemaker, announced at first that he thought Mrs. Pidgeon’s second grade was just a bunch of babies acting like big shots because someone gave them a stupid skeleton. But after his class visited the library and Marlon examined Napoleon, he changed his mind. “That is one very cool dude,” he said. “Look at him, using those neurons!”

  Mr. Leroy did not allow any student to have a cell phone in school. But he did have one himself, and he agreed to take a picture of each child standing beside Napoleon. Some of the children tried to make a big toothy smile so that they would resemble the skull, but most looked very serious and solemn in their photographs.

  One mother, Mrs. Gooch, wearing a hat and gardenia perfume, came to the school to complain that having a skeleton in the library was disgusting. It was un-American, she said, like something they might do in a foreign school, maybe in Sweden or a place like that. Mr. Leroy told her that the skeleton was being used for educational purposes and that the children were learning valuable information about the human body. Mrs. Gooch said that her Veronica, a third-grader, was entirely too young to learn anything about the human body. Mr. Leroy listened politely to Mrs. Gooch and then agreed that Veronica could stay in her classroom and read a book while her classmates visited Napoleon, if that’s what her mother wished. Mrs. Gooch said, “That is precisely what I wish!” in a meaningful voice and then went away, and Mr. Leroy sprayed air freshener in his office to get rid of the scent of her gardenia perfume.

  The other children, all but Veronica Gooch, paid very careful attention to Napoleon and what they learned from him. But Mrs. Clancy, the librarian, said that not one single student understood the sign that read MRS. PIDGEON’S SECOND GRADE FINDS THIS HUMERUS. She had to explain it again and again, she reported, even to Mr. Leroy.

  “Well, we have to educate them,” Gooney Bird said. “Save that sign about the humerus, Tyrone,” she said. “We can throw all the brain ones away because we have new ones for the digestive system.”

  Tricia and Beanie carefully removed Napoleon’s glasses and earmuffs. Then Ben and Barry lifted the skeleton onto his rolling stand and prepared for his move. Gooney Bird held the door of the library open as the boys maneuvered the stand, with Napoleon, undressed and dangling, out of the library. In the doorway, Barry lifted the skeleton’s arm and waved goodbye with it to Mrs. Clancy.

  She grinned. “I find that humerus,” she said.

  6

  “Where to?” Ben asked as they made their way down the hall.

  “Multipurpose room,” Gooney Bird instructed. “Mr. Furillo’s waiting.”

  Tyrone and Felicia Ann remained in the library, at the computers, working on the next set of signs. Mrs. Pidgeon and the other second-graders all accompanied Napoleon on his journey past the classroom doors.

  “I have his digestion clothes,” Chelsea announced. She held up something neatly folded.

  Mr. Furillo held the door for them as they wheeled the stand inside. The large room was neatly swept as it was each day after lunch. The lunch ladies had gone home, and the
kitchen area was tidy and clean. The trays were stacked.

  “I did what you asked, Gooney Bird,” the custodian told her. “Left one table out, and one chair. Over here in the corner.”

  Bruno, who had been sleeping, got up and ambled to the corner with them. When they got to the table and chair, Ben and Barry carefully unhooked Napoleon, lifted him from the stand, and sat him in the chair. It was easier this time than it had been in the library because they knew now just how his hip and knee joints worked.

  The lunch chair had no arms, but when they pushed it in under the table, Napoleon’s arms rested on the table and he looked quite comfortable. Gooney Bird went to the kitchen area and came back with a plate, fork, and napkin.

  Chelsea began to dress Napoleon in his digestion clothes. First she put on his plaid bow tie. It was already tied, and snapped neatly around the skeleton’s neck.

  “It’s my dad’s,” Chelsea explained. “My dad said that if Napoleon was going out for dinner, he should be dressed up and wearing a tie.”

  The children nodded. They all agreed. And with the bow tie at the base of his neck, below his chin, Napoleon did look quite formal.

  “Now this,” Chelsea said, and she unfolded a large paper bib. Across the bottom of the bib were the words CAP’N BILL’S SEAFOOD SHACK and a cartoon picture of a lobster.

  “Don’t cover up his bow tie!” Tricia said.

  “I won’t.” Chelsea tied the bib onto Napoleon and arranged it carefully so that the bow tie appeared above it.

  Gooney Bird placed a plate on the table in front of Napoleon and gently arranged his hands on either side. She put a fork between his right thumb and fingers. Then she spread the paper napkin across his lap.

  “He needs something to drink,” Ben said.

  “I’ve got it,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. She reached into her large purse and brought out a stemmed glass. She placed the glass on the table near Napoleon’s right hand.