Fourth Grade Rats

by Jerry Spinelli

  Her grin disappeared. Her eyes changed. She stroked my hair. “Yeah, I guess you do. Tell you what.” She squeezed my leg. “I think it’s time for a bath.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so too.”

  I dragged myself upstairs.

  When I was a baby, I had upset stomachs a lot. It made me pretty cranky. “You were not a ton of fun to be with,” my mother says.

  But she discovered something that helped — a bath. The warm water would have a good effect on me. I would stop crying. I would calm down. Sometimes she would pour in bubble bath. Pretty soon I’d be laughing and splashing. Suds were flying.

  My mother says each time a bubble burst on my face, it made a freckle. She says suds gave me my curly hair too.

  One thing’s for sure, suds gave me my name.

  I stopped having upset stomachs by the time I was two. But I never stopped liking a warm bath. It doesn’t matter what time of the day or night it is. If I’m sad or ticked off or wound up about something, I usually feel better if I head for the water.

  Well, that’s what she meant when she told me to take a bath. Five minutes later, there I was, in the tub with my tugboat and my dinosaur.

  I guess even I had to admit that I was getting a little too old for toys in the bathtub. But I still liked them. They’ve been with me as long as I can remember. What was I supposed to do? All of a sudden hate them? Throw them away?

  I started thinking about my life, the important things in it. My Disney World T-shirt. My bike. My Klondike bars. My Matchbox car collection. Heavenly hash ice cream. Sliding boards. Spider-Man. Winky, my one-eyed teddy bear, my oldest friend in the world.

  I tried to picture life without them. I couldn’t.

  I always thought when you grew up, stuff like bikes and bubble gum just sort of disappeared from your life. You didn’t want them anymore. They got replaced by cars and coffee and all.

  I never thought you actually had to give them up, whether you were ready to or not. I thought growing up was just something that happened. You just sort of went along for the ride. But if Joey was right, growing up didn’t just happen to you — you had to work at it. And that, according to Joey, meant being a rat.

  For the first time in my life, I wanted time to slow down. I didn’t care if I never had another birthday, as long as I could keep my one-eyed teddy bear.

  My brain was sore from all this thinking. I ran the faucet some more. I let myself sink into the water. The lower I sank, the better I felt. It was like I could feel time slowing down … feel it stopping … going backwards … back to third grade angels … second grade cats … first grade babies … little yellow tugboats bobbing in the water … bobbing … bobbing …

  My mother’s voice: “Sudsie! Dinnertime!”

  As soon as I sat down to dinner, Zippernose — otherwise known as my sister, Amy — sneered at me: “Rat.”

  She didn’t stop there. She puckered her mouth and raised her upper lip, baring her two front teeth. I had to admit, it was a good imitation. “Rat — rat — rat,” she went.

  My mother plopped some mashed potatoes on her plate. “Amy, stop.”

  It was too late. Baby brother Bubba was already baring his little fangs and going, “Wat — wat — wat.” He doesn’t say his r’s right yet.

  “Bubba, you too,” snapped my mother.

  Right, Mom.

  Now Zippernose was nibbling like a rat on a slice of bread.

  And now Bubba was nibbling like a rat on his hot dog.

  And now my mother was standing and slamming a serving spoon down on the table. “I said stop!” She glared at my father. “Elmore?”

  My father looked up from his plate. “Stop,” he said, and went back to his eating.

  My mother is pretty laid back, but compared to my father, she’s a nervous wreck.

  My mother sat back down.

  “Mom,” whined Zippernose. “I can’t help it. He’s a rat now. I’m just treating him like the dirty, rotten, slimy rat that he is.”

  “Wat — wat — wat,” said Bubba.

  “E-nough!” commanded my mom. “Amy, another word from you and you can leave the table.”

  Zippernose’s words stopped, but not her faces. She kept baring her front teeth and nibbling on her food.

  “All right,” said Mom. “Upstairs.”

  Zippernose screeched. “Mom — I didn’t say anything.”

  “You’re making faces.”

  “You said not another word. You didn’t say not another face.”

  “I’m saying it now. Your dinner is over. Leave the table. Upstairs. To your room. Close the door. Good night.”

  Zippernose stomped off. Before she ran upstairs, she yelled back, “Rodent!”

  Bubba echoed: “Wodent — wodent — wodent!”

  Then he started laughing. When Bubba laughs and eats at the same time, he becomes a midget volcano. Pieces of mashed potato and hot dog were flying everywhere.

  I slammed my fork down. “I’m outta here.”

  I stomped off.

  My mother called, “Suds, here!”

  I didn’t say no, like Joey told me. But I didn’t say yes either. I just kept going.

  Later, my mother cornered me in my room.

  “Okay,” she said, “is that how dinner is going to be every day? A madhouse?”

  “It’s not my fault,” I told her. “All I did was get promoted to fourth grade.”

  My mother sat on the bed. “Sudsie, maybe you’re taking this too seriously. It’s just a school kids’ rhyme, you know. I’m sure it’ll pass over in a day or two.”

  “Sure,” I sneered. “Tell that to all the kids at school calling me a rat. Tell it to Zippernose. Tell it to Joey.”

  “What does Joey say about all this?”

  I laughed. “Hah. He loves it. He’s glad he’s a rat. He says it’s nature’s way. He says it’s a step up to being a man.”

  She chuckled. “The way to a man is through a rat, huh?”

  “I keep telling you it’s not funny.”

  “You’re right,” she said. She spanked her own hand. “There. Bad Mom. That’ll teach me.”

  I glared at her. “You can forget it if you’re trying to make me laugh. It’s not working.”

  She pretended to pout. “Darn. Okay, no more funny stuff. You’re miserable and that’s that, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Bath didn’t help?

  “Yeah, it did, till I had to get out.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Ah-hah! All right. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. I’m going to call the school and pull you out of there. We’ll hire a tutor to come in and teach you. She can sit on the toilet seat while you’re in the tub. We’ll serve you your meals there. After a couple months, you should be shriveled down to the size of, oh, a frog.”

  I pointed to the door. “Mom — out.”

  “Or maybe we could put wheels on the bathtub and roll you off to school each day. We could —”

  “MOM!”

  She shut up. She stood. She was biting her lip to keep from cracking up at her own hilarious self.

  She took a deep breath. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Tell you what. There’s more than one way to become a man.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Go sweep the sidewalk. You’ll be a man in no time.”

  She looked at me. I looked at her. Joey’s voice hissed in my ear: Say no to your mom.

  Joey’s voice was no match for my mother’s look.

  I got the broom and went outside. I swept the sidewalk.

  My father had just cut the grass. He was putting the mower back in the garage. His weights were in the corner. They were covered with dust.

  “Dad,” I said, “do you still lift your weights?”

  “Haven’t for a couple years now,” he said. “I’m saving them for you and Bubba.”

  “Did they help you become a man?”

  He looked at them. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess
they helped me look like one.”

  “Can I see your muscle?”

  He wheeled the mower into its place. He laughed. “You haven’t asked me that in a long time. You used to ask me every day.”

  I lifted his arm to get him started. “Well, come on, let me see.”

  He put his hand behind his head and made the muscle. It looked like a baseball in there, or even a softball.

  “Make it bounce,” I told him.

  He made it bounce.

  I reached up and touched it. It was smooth and round and hard, like wood.

  “Pull me up,” I said, “like you used to.”

  He lowered his arm a little. “I don’t know if I still can. You’re not such a shrimp anymore, you know.”

  I grabbed on with both hands. “Hoist away!”

  His arm started to crank up. My legs got straight, then I was on tiptoes, then I was off the ground. I hung there for a couple seconds, then he let me down.

  We went back out. He closed the garage door.

  I asked him if he used to take a lunch box to school when he was in fourth grade.

  He thought. He nodded. “Yep, I did.”

  “Did it have anything on the outside of it?”

  “Nope. It was one of those old-fashioned ones, like Grandpop took to work. I wanted one just like his.”

  “No animals on it, huh? Elephants? Anything?”

  He shook his head. “No, ’fraid not. It was black. About as dull as a lunch box gets.”

  He opened the front door.

  “How about swings, Dad? Did you ever kick a little kid off a swing?”

  He stopped. He looked at me funny. “Where did that question come from? Somebody kick you off a swing?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, heading inside. “Just wondering.”

  When I pulled down my bedcover that night, I found a mousetrap on my pillow. (Dad thought we had a mouse once.) It was set with a little piece of cheese. I tripped it with a pencil. It snapped like a cap pistol and flipped halfway up to the ceiling. I grabbed the trap, charged down the hall to Zippernose’s room, yanked open her door, and rifled the trap into the dark, right about where she would by lying in bed.

  The phone rang. I didn’t bother with the squawks coming from Zippernose’s room. I picked up the phone. A voice whispered: “Did you say no to your mother?”

  Nothing much changed during the next couple days.

  First-graders called fourth-graders “Rats!” Fourth-graders bared their front teeth and snarled. First-graders ran away squealing.

  I kept opening doors for Judy Billings.

  Judy Billings kept ignoring me.

  By the second week of school, the first-graders were tired of the game. And without the first-graders calling them “Rats!” the fourth-graders pretty much forgot that’s what they were.

  Except for Joey Peterson.

  Joey was doing just what he’d said, taking care of Number One. I don’t mean he went around kicking people in the kneecaps. I mean he did things pretty much his own way. He didn’t care what anyone else thought.

  One day in class we had pretend elections, to learn how government works. Joey nominated himself for President of the United States. Then he voted for himself.

  He even looked different. He got his hair cut practically down to the nubs. “Like Marine boot camp,” he said. And he started wearing one of his father’s old sweatbands around his head. He got a black marker and wrote “No. 1” on it.

  Joey was on his way to becoming a man. In fact, I think I saw him become a man before my very eyes. On a Thursday at the school yard.

  It was after lunch. We were just cruising around when a bee started flying near us. I hate bees, as much as I hate spiders. So I took off, flapping my hands.

  I heard Joey call: “Suds — look.”

  I turned. “What?”

  “Look.”

  He was holding out his arm.

  I couldn’t see anything. “Look at what?”

  He was keeping very still, staring at his arm. “Come closer.”

  I came closer — and I saw. The bee was on his arm, crawling up and down.

  Gave me the shakes just to watch. “Swat ’im,” I whispered.

  He just kept staring at the bee.

  By now, other kids were coming over, gawking. One of them was Gerald Willis, the school thug.

  When Willis saw what was happening, he snuck up behind Joey and knocked Joey’s arm from underneath. Joey’s arm jerked up, and the bee took off.

  But not for long. The bee made a U-turn and came right back and — zap — stung Joey right on his arm.

  Kids shrieked. I think a couple of little ones fainted. Everybody rushed forward. A bee sting! Next to a car door slamming on your hand, probably the most painful thing in the world. Major agony.

  I tunneled through the mob. Would Joey be in convulsions? Conscious? Alive?

  He was grinning. He was staring at the little white bee-sting bump on his arm, and he was grinning.

  He was a rat. He was a man.

  Girls swarmed over him.

  “Ouu, Joey, it must hurt so bad. How can you stand it?”

  “Ouu, Joey, don’t you want to cry?”

  “Ouu, Joey, you’re so brave.”

  “Ouu, Joey.”

  One of the girls was Judy Billings.

  Judy Billings followed Joey around the rest of the day like a puppy dog. I walked home with him, but so did she, and it was like I wasn’t even there.

  “Joey, can I see it?”

  (For the millionth time.)

  “Ouu, it gives me the shivers.”

  (It’s not even visible.)

  “Weren’t you scared? I heard people can die from bee stings.”

  (Hey, look at me. I’m the one dying around here.)

  “You think we ought to go to the emergency ward?”

  (Barf!)

  “Can I see it one more time?”

  (Scream!)

  Of course, she couldn’t just look at it with her eyes. She had to look at it with her hands too. I guess she had little eyeballs in her fingertips.

  First she would touch the invisible sting spot and say, “Does that hurt?” And Joey would say, “No.” Then she would press it and go, “Does that hurt?” And Joey would look all cool and say, “Nah.”

  Of course, that wasn’t enough for her. She had to start feeling around the rest of his arm, to see if it was swelling up. She said it was. He said it wasn’t.

  So of course, she had to switch over to his other arm and go feeling around that one, to see how it compared. And all of a sudden, it wasn’t about a bee sting anymore.

  “Wow, your muscles are so hard.”

  She didn’t even see him clenching his arm. Girls are so dumb about that.

  “Do you lift weights?” she cooed.

  “I lift my father’s barbells,” I said, crossing my fingers.

  She gave him a look, like, Did you hear a voice? Is somebody else here?

  As for Joey himself, he was a little hard to figure. I had to admit, he wasn’t exactly sucking up to her. He was letting her do the talking.

  In fact, for a minute there it even looked like he was trying to help me. He gave me a little jab and said to her, “Hey, I happen to know another guy that has pretty good muscles too.”

  “Not as good as yours,” she cooed.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Even better than mine. And you know what? I think he likes you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. And I bet you’d like him too.”

  “Maybe I would.”

  She was blushing. I was blushing. Things were looking up. I was feeling good.

  Joey shot me a quick grin. “Want me to tell you who it is?”

  My face was burning. Tell her. Don’t tell her. Tell her. Don’t tell her.

  She gave him a shy smile. “You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t?” he said.

  “No.”

  “How�
��s that?”

  “Because I already know who it is.”

  I was ready to faint. I wanted to crawl under the nearest car.

  Joey poked me again. “Yeah? Who do you think it is?”

  She giggled. She blushed even redder. She looked up and down the street. She cupped her hands and whispered into his ear. When she pulled away, she giggled again. He just gawked at her. She whispered some more in his ear. Then she ran off giggling down the street.

  We walked. Joey didn’t say anything, so I did. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, who did she say?”

  He shrugged. “Ah, nothing.”

  I grabbed his shirt and jerked him to a stop. “Peterson, who did she say?”

  He sniffed. He shrugged. He looked away. “Me.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. She thought I was making it up about somebody else liking her, ’cause I was afraid to say it was me.”

  I let his shirt go. “Oh, great. Good friend you are.”

  He screeched. “What could I do? I was trying to help ya.”

  “Yeah, big help. I didn’t hear you telling her she was wrong. I didn’t hear you say you don’t like her.”

  “I don’t. You know it. You can have her all you want.”

  “Traitor,” I said.

  “Suds —”

  “Traitor.”

  I went to the other side of the street.

  After a while he called, “Suds, it’s Friday. Stay over my house tonight.”

  “Never,” I said.

  When I got to Joey’s house that night, his room looked the same as always. But not for long.

  “Been working on myself so far,” he said. “Now it’s my room’s turn.”

  First we put up posters. Rambo. Hulk Hogan. And one showing this big, nasty, robot-type dude, except you could see whiskers and a long tail sticking out. It was called “Robo Rat.”

  He checked out the walls. “Good. Now the rest.”

  He started with his bookshelf. He pulled out four or five volumes from his encyclopedia and threw them on the floor. Then he tossed out a couple comic books and a National Geographic.

  He opened every drawer in his dresser. He flipped out stuff from each one — socks, underwear, shirts. They landed all over. He kicked his wastebasket over. He dragged his dirty clothes hamper from the closet and dumped it on the floor. He charged into his desk. Pencils and papers and rubber bands went flying. About the only thing he didn’t do was spit.